* * *
I don't know how Gavin managed to haul Tony and me to Merrill's—it was half a mile away and neither Tony nor I were in any shape to walk. We were sobbing the entire time and Gavin had his own sorrow to deal with. The door was locked and the lights were dim inside the manor, so Gavin had to work to get me calm enough to mist the three of us through the door. I did it finally, but it was painful. The house was completely deserted for some reason and it was near dawn, too. Gavin pulled Tony and me upstairs, tending to Tony first while I wept on Tony's bed. Gavin shoved Tony into the shower, turned it on as cold as it would go, got him out of his clothes and eventually calmed him down.
"Lissy, what am I going to do?" Tony was wrapped in a robe and shivering as he crawled onto the bed beside me. I'd never seen him like this.
"Anthony, should the Honored One allow it, I will take over my cousin's teachings," Gavin's voice was rough with emotion as he sat on the edge of the bed.
"I'm so sorry," I flung my arms around Gavin's neck, shedding even more tears.
"Cara, don't," Gavin wrapped me in his arms. Tony hugged up against my back and that's where dawn found us.
* * *
I got Tony situated on his bed and then carrying Gavin easily, took him down to our shared bedroom, undressing him and covering him up. After that, I wandered listlessly through the house. Deryn and Paul—the two werewolves, were gone. Their rooms were empty on the third floor and their scents were only a memory. Giff's things, too, were all gone, just as Kifirin said. Franklin, Greg and Merrill were also gone, and Merrill hadn't mentioned that they were going anywhere. I wasn't about to go to the basement. It would be weird to find Wlodek sleeping the sleep of the dead so I left that alone. I wanted to call Merrill but it was daylight. I thought about calling Charles and the same reason reared its ugly head. That's why I ended up calling Weldon, who quickly put me on a conference call with Winkler.
"They killed René," I was trying not to cry again.
"Lissa, baby, it's all right," Winkler was trying to soothe me from thousands of miles away. He didn't need to be handling a vampire basket case right now—he was a new father and had his own set of worries.
"Lissa, there's nothing we can say right now that will lessen the pain. All we can tell you is that we love you and we'll support you through this in any way we can. If you need someone to come, then someone will come." Weldon always knew the right words.
"Weldon, I'll have to let you know. Right now, I don't know where Merrill is. And Tony's worse off than I am, I think."
"René was his sire. I figured that out," Winkler sighed. "This is bad."
"Yeah," I wiped a tear away. We talked for a few more minutes and Weldon convinced me to lie down.
"Try to get some sleep, sweetheart. Just close your eyes for a while, all right?" We said goodbye and I huddled on the sofa inside Merrill's large media room on the first floor. That's where Charles found me later when the sun went down.
I jerked awake when his fingers touched my cheek. "Lissa, how are you here?" he asked, stunned wonder in his voice.
"Charles," my heart was pounding now with remembered pain. "René is dead. He was killed with a wooden arrow."
Gavin was shouting my name only a heartbeat later, and he and Tony were both racing downstairs, searching for me.
"I'm here, honey, I'm fine, I just fell asleep on the sofa," I brushed more tears off my face. Wlodek and Rolfe found us there; Gavin sat next to me and crushed me against him while Tony sat on the other side.
"René got killed," Charles passed the information off to Wlodek.
Wlodek sat down heavily in a chair nearby. "Explain, please," he sighed. Gavin was the one to tell the story.
"They came through a gate?" Wlodek asked.
"Lissa saw it, I did not," Gavin said. "Nevertheless, René and I both heard the bowstring as it was drawn back. Lissa tried to gather us up as quickly as she could, but René rushed to protect his youngest. That is how he died."
Tony was the target, I'm sure of it, I sent directly to Wlodek. He never twitched, although I know he heard me.
"Gavin, Anthony, come with me. There are arrangements to be made," Wlodek said after he'd gotten the whole story, asking questions here and there and going over parts of it two or three times. Gavin and Tony rose and followed Wlodek and Charles as they made their way toward Wlodek's temporary offices in the basement. Rolfe stayed upstairs—he would be guarding the house.
"Rolfe, where is Merrill?" I asked.
"Your surrogate sire is in New York at the moment," the tall vampire replied. "He will return tomorrow, I believe." He walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
If Merrill was in New York, then Franklin and Greg were with him. I climbed off the sofa, feeling cold and out of sorts. Nothing was going to make me feel any better—not for a while, anyway. Time was the only thing that would make grief easier to bear. In the meantime, I headed toward the hot tub, and throwing caution to the winds, I dropped my clothes beside it and crawled in naked, doing my best to get rid of the chill that wouldn't leave.
* * *
"Anthony, René's assets will be divided between you and René's other living child, Devlin. Meanwhile, I will be granting temporary custody to Gavin. His claim is strongest—Devlin has never expressed any desire to have a vampire child and in my opinion, he is a bit immature, although he is nearing six hundred. Therefore, pending the Council's approval, your lessons will be with Gavin from now on." Wlodek had lists of René's assets on his desk—Charles had printed them off and handed them over. Tony nodded, not looking at Wlodek.
"Now," Wlodek went on, "we must deal with another death. Gavin knows of this already, as did René, but we held off telling Lissa because we knew it would upset her and destroy her focus, more so in light of recent events." Tony looked up at those words.
"What happened?" He was steeling himself for more bad news.
"Greg, Franklin's mate, has passed. He contracted pneumonia a month ago and the physicians could not find a way to combat the disease since he was already so ill. He slipped into a coma and died four days ago. Merrill and Franklin carried his ashes to New York—that is where Greg wished to be buried. They will return tomorrow and we must inform Lissa somehow."
"This will destroy her," Gavin muttered.
"I know you disagreed with my decision not to tell her, but she needed to focus her mind on what she was doing, instead of worrying over a sick friend. Now we must try to make her see the reason in this, or at least work to convince her to forgive and move past it." Wlodek steepled his fingers and gazed at the two vampires who sat before his desk. "And we have the Annual Meeting in less than two weeks. She must be prepared to attend, Gavin, as I intend to make the announcement then. We have a Queen and she must hold her head up and go."