“We did not anticipate an American king,” Jake said.

“Echo says what we really didn’t anticipate is that it took centuries to build the council’s power base, and we expected it to transfer seamlessly to the next ruler, the next council,” Fortune said.

“A little naïve of you all, wasn’t it?” I asked.

Kaazim gave me a sour look. “Perhaps in retrospect,” Jake said, smiling, but not like he was entirely happy with it all.

“Kaazim, I’m sorry we got through your shields further than you wanted, or we wanted, but can you get past it to do your job here and now?”

“We can put out this fire tonight, Anita, but it is like a house fire when the world is about to burn.”

“Can you follow orders and do your job to help us save Dublin, or not?”

“What does one city matter if you carry the seeds of the apocalypse inside you?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” I said, and looked to Jake and Fortune. “All right, tell us what you’ve learned, because we need a plan before nightfall that doesn’t need Kaazim to work.”

“I will do my part of any plan,” he said.

I shook my head. “You had your chance, Kaazim. You said you’d let Dublin burn, let Ireland be destroyed tonight, because you’re worried about a disaster that’s not here yet.”

“You feel her power inside you. You must,” he said.

“Power is not destiny,” Jake said.

“I’m a big believer in free will,” I said.

“And I have seen too many centuries not to believe in fate,” Kaazim said.

I turned to the rest of them. “Let’s find Edward and get our plans off the ground without gloomy puss here.”

“I am not a puss,” he said.

“Fine. Without gloomy dog here—no, that doesn’t work, does it?”

“Gloomy puppy?” Nathaniel offered.

“Gloomy pup?” Pride suggested.

“I expected better of you,” Kaazim said.

“Dev isn’t perfect, Uncle Chaz, but he’s trying, and you really are a gloomy hound and always have been.”

“Uncle Chaz?” I said.

“When we were little, they were Uncle Jake and Uncle Chaz,” Pride said.

Kaazim ignored the old nickname; too angry to care, I think. Then he said, “You are right.” He turned to me. “And you are right, as well. I have made the mistake of a soldier: letting the fear of defeat in war steal my courage for fighting today’s battle. Thank you for reminding me that if we do not win today’s battle, then we will never survive to win the war.”

“I was thinking more, you win the war one battle at a time, but okay, let’s go find Edward and get our well-armed ducks in a row.”

“How do you know what ducks you need, our queen?” Jake asked.

“We’ll figure that out as we go,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “Just like that.”

“It’s Edward. It’s me. It’s all of you, Nolan, and his people. It’s the gentle folk of Ireland singing sweet songs in our ears. With all that on our side, Jake, we’ll figure out which ducks we need.”

“Before nightfall?” Kaazim asked.

“Yes.”

“There is no doubt in you,” he said.

“I don’t have time for it.”

Fortune came up to me and Dev because he was so close, throwing an arm around us both. “We’ll find gigantic carnivorous ducks,” she said, and kissed us both one right after the other so that I tasted the echo of his mouth on hers. Nathaniel came over and added his kisses to ours, and Damian came to kiss two out of the four of us. Kaazim made an impatient sound that we were wasting time, but I’ve gone into a lot of fights now, and starting with a kiss beat the hell out of starting with a punch.

71

DAMIAN GAVE ADDRESSES of the old lairs that his old master and cronies had used five years ago; since they’d been using some of them for centuries it was a good bet they were still using some of them. You’d expect that once we knew possible places to go we’d suit up and bust down some doors, but it didn’t work that way in America or in Ireland. The police would be gathering information on the addresses: public records, blueprints, find out if they were owned and lived in by human beings we could verify, because some of the addresses hadn’t been used by M’Lady and her crew in a while, like decades. He made a list of centuries-old lairs. Not because they had been used recently, but because she owned them and she gave up nothing. Some of the buildings probably didn’t even exist anymore. Those would be weeded out first and then they’d gather as much intel as possible. I’d worked with enough tactical units to know that the information gathering saved time and possibly lives later, but it was still a delay that always drove me a little crazy. It wasn’t as bad this time because we didn’t know which address we needed to hit, and the info would help us narrow the choices.

What to do while we waited? Edward and I both had some ideas; they just weren’t the same ones. “If we can figure out why the holy objects didn’t work at the police station and get them working before we send people into battle again, it will give us an advantage. It will give an advantage to the newbies who have never fought vamps before.”

“How do you know the newbies will have that much faith?”