A smile tugged at Blair's wide mouth. She reached for the hunk of bread Glenna had set out, ripped it in two with nails painted a deep candy pink. "That's the one. In the heartland, Planet Earth. You?"

"New York. This is Moira, and her cousin Larkin. They're from Geall."

"Get out." Blair studied them as she ate.

"I always figured that for a myth."

"You don't seem particularly surprised it's not." "Nothing much surprises me, less now after the visit from the G.o.ddess. Heavy stuff."

"This is Hoyt. He's a sorcerer from Ireland. Twelfth-century Ireland."

Blair watched as Glenna reached behind her for Hoyt's hand, the way their fingers smoothly intertwined. "You two paired up?"

"You could say that."

Now she lifted her wine, took a small sip.

"That's taking going for older men to a new level, but who could blame you?"

"Your host is his brother, Cian, who was made a vampire."

"Twelfth century?" Blair leaned back, took a good, long look at him, with all the interest but none of the amus.e.m.e.nt she'd shown when studying Hoyt. "You've got nearly a thousand years? I've never met a vamp who lasted that long. The oldest I ever came across was a couple decades shy of five hundred."

"Clean living," Cian said.

"Yeah, that'll be the day."

"He doesn't drink humans." Since it was there, Larkin got another bowl, spooned up stew for himself. "He fights with us. We're an army." "An army? Talk about delusions of grandeur. What are you?" she asked Glenna.

"Witch."

"So, we've got a witch, a sorcerer, a couple of refugees from Geall and a vampire.

Some army."

"A powerful witch." Hoyt spoke for the first time. "A scholar of remarkable skill and courage, a shape-shifter, and a centuries-old vampyre who was made by the reining queen."

"Lilith?" Now Blair set down her spoon.

"She made you?"

Cian leaned back against the counter, crossed his ankles. "I was young and foolish."

"And had really bad luck."

"What are you?" Larkin demanded.

"Me? Demon hunter." She picked up her spoon to resume eating. "I've spent most of my life tracking and dusting his kind."

Glenna angled her head. "What, like Buffy?"

With a laugh, Blair swallowed stew. "No.

First, I'm not the only, just the best."

"There are more of you." At that point, Larkin decided he could use some wine as well. "It's a family thing, has been for centuries. Not all of us, but every generation one or two more of us. My father's one, and my aunt. His uncle was-and like that. I have two cousins on the job now. We fight the fight."

"And Morrigan sent you here," Glenna put in. "Only you."

"I'd have to say yes, since I'm the only one here. Okay, so the last couple of weeks, things have been weird. More undead activity than usual, like they're getting some bra.s.s ones.

And I'm having these dreams. Portentous dreams go with the package, but I'm having them every time I close my eyes. And sometimes when I'm wide awake. Disturbing."

"Lilith?" Glenna asked.

"She made some appearances-cameos we'll say. Up till then, I figured she was another myth. Anyway, in the dream, I thought I was over here-Ireland. It looked like here anyway.

I've been to Ireland before, another family tradition. But I'm on this rise. Barren place, rough ground, deep chasms, wicked rocks."

"The Valley of Silence," Moira interrupted.

"That's what she called it. Morrigan. She said I was needed." Blair hesitated, looked around. "I probably don't have to fill in all the details since you're all here. Big battle, possible apocalypse. Vampire queen forming an army to eliminate humankind. There would be five waiting for me, gathered together. We'd have until Samhain to prepare. Not a lot of time considering, you know-G.o.ddess, eternity. But that's how it's laid out."

"So you came," Glenna said. "Just like that?"

"Didn't you?" Blair shrugged. "I was born for this. I've dreamed of that place before, as long as I can remember. Me standing on that rise, watching it rage below. The moon, the fog, the screams. I always knew I'd end up there."

Always a.s.sumed she would die there.

"I just expected a little more backup."

"In three weeks we've killed more than a dozen," Larkin said with some annoyance.

"Good for you. I don't keep a tally of kills since I had my first thirteen years ago. But I took out three tonight on the road, on the way here."

"Three?" He held up his spoon. "Alone?"

"There was another. It stayed back.

Chasing it down didn't seem like a good way to stay alive, which is the first rule in the family handbook. There might have been more of them, but I only scented the one. You've got more stationed around the perimeter of this place. I had to slip through them to get inside." She pushed her empty bowl away. "That was really good. Thanks again."

"You're welcome again." Glenna took the bowl to the sink. "Hoyt, can I have a word with you? Excuse us, just for a minute."

She drew him out of the kitchen, toward the front of the house. "Hoyt, she's-"

"The warrior," he finished. "Yes, she's the last of the six."

"It was never King." She pressed her fingers to her mouth as she turned away. "He was never one of the six, and what happened to him-"

"Happened." Hoyt took her shoulders, turned her to face him. "Can't be changed. She's the warrior, and completes the circle."

"We have to trust her. I don't know how we begin to do that. She d.a.m.ned near killed your brother before she bothered to say h.e.l.lo."

"And we have only her word she's who she says she is."

"Well, she's not a vampire. She walked right into the house. Added to that, Cian would know."

"Vampyres can have human servants." "So how do we know? Do we take what she says she is on faith? If she is what she says, she's the last of us."

"We have to be sure."

"It's not like we can check her ID."

He shook his head, not bothering to ask her meaning. "She has to be tested. Upstairs, I think, in the tower. We'll make the circle, and we'll be sure."

When they were gathered upstairs, Blair looked around. "Close quarters. I like things roomier. You're going to want to keep your distance," she warned Cian. "I might stake you, just knee-jerk."

"You can try."

She tapped her fingers on the stake in her belt. There was a ring, a ridged band of silver, on her right thumb. "So, what's all this about?"

"We had no sign you were coming,"

Glenna began. "Not you specifically."

"So, you're thinking Trojan Horse?"

"It's a possibility we can't dismiss without proof." "No," Blair agreed, "you'd be stupid just to take my word. And I feel better, actually, knowing you're not stupid. What do you want?

My demon hunter's license?"

"You actually have-"

"No." She planted her feet, very like a warrior bracing for battle. "But if you're toying with doing some kind of witchcraft that involves my blood or other bodily fluid, you're out of luck. Line drawn on that."

"Nothing like that. Well, witchcraft, but nothing that requires blood. We're linked, the five of us. By fate, by necessity. And some, yes, by blood. We are the circle. We are the chosen.

If you're the last link of that circle, we'll know."

"Otherwise?"

"We can't harm you." Hoyt laid a hand on Glenna's shoulder. "It's against all we are to use power against a human being."

Blair glanced toward the broadsword leaning against the tower wall. "Anything in the rule book about sharp, pointy objects?"

"We won't harm you. If you're Lilith's servant, we'll make you our prisoner."

She smiled, one corner of her mouth rising, then the other. "Good luck with that. All right, let's do it. Like I said, if you'd swallowed everything without a hmmm, I'd be more worried about what I'd walked into here. You guys around this white circle, me in it?"

"You know witchcraft?" Glenna asked her.

"I know something about it." She stepped into the circle.

"One of us at each point," Glenna instructed, "to form a pentagram. Hoyt will do the search."

"Search?"

"Of your mind," he a.s.sured Blair.

"There are some private things in there, too." Uncomfortable, she moved her shoulders, frowned at Hoyt. "Am I supposed to think of you as my witch doctor?"

"I'm not a witch. It will go more quickly, and without discomfort if you open to this." He lifted his hands, and lit the candles. "Glenna?"

"This is the circle of light and knowledge, formed by like minds, like hearts. Within this circle of light and knowledge no harm will we impart. We seek to link so we may know, within this ring only truth bestow. With mind to mind in destiny, as we will, so mote it be."

The air rippled, and still the candle flames rose straight as arrows. Hoyt held out his hands toward Blair. "No harm, no pain. Only thoughts within thoughts. Your mind to my mind, your mind to our minds."

Her eyes looked deeply into his, had something flickering in his head. Then they went black, and he saw.

They all saw.

A young girl fighting a monster nearly twice her size. There was blood on her face, and her shirt was torn. They could hear each drawing of her labored breath. A man stood off to the side, and watched the battle.

She was struck to the ground with a vicious backhanded blow, and sprang up. Struck down again. When the thing leaped, she rolled.

And stabbed it through the back, into the heart, with a stake.

Slow, the man said. Sloppy, even for a first kill. You'll need to do better.

She didn't speak, but the mind inside her mind thought, I'll do better. I'll do better than anyone.

Now she was older, and fought beside the man. Ferociously, savagely. The odds were five to two, but it was done quickly. And when it was done, the man shook his head. More control, less pa.s.sion. Pa.s.sion will kill you. She was naked, in bed with a young man, moving with him in the low light of the lamp.

She smiled as she arched to him, nipped his lip.

A diamond winked madly on her finger. Her mind was full of pa.s.sion, of love, of joy.

And of despair and misery as she sat on the floor in the dark, alone, weeping out the shards of a broken heart. Her finger was bare.

She stood on the rise above the battleground, with the G.o.ddess a white shadow beside her.

You were the first to be called, and the last, Morrigan told her. They're waiting for you.

The worlds are in your hands. Take theirs, and fight.

She thought, I've been coming toward this all my life. Will it be the end of it?