He could date. Maybe that would help—and make him more likely to let her date. He was attractive in that old-guy way. He had hair that was dark enough still that she teased him that he secretly got it dyed, no wrinkles that she could see, blue eyes with the sort of thick lashes only seen on cartoon characters and baby dolls, and, despite only minimal exercise and an atrocious diet, a physique that would shame most guys her age. If not for the way he dressed, she suspected that he could pass for an older brother rather than her father. It was the benefit of being a witch: he was almost creepily attractive to human women despite being hundreds of years old.
She, unfortunately, had none of his genes. Her hair was a nonremarkable brown; her eyes were a normal brown; and her calories added up. She wasn’t unattractive; she was simply closer to average than to inhumanly striking, smart, and healthy like Adam. If she were more like Adam, she’d have had no trouble getting boys to actually ask her out. If she were a witch, she’d be able to learn spells to protect herself. If she were a witch, so much would be easier. Regrettably, she was just a human.
She sighed as she poured the tea.
“Mals? Is something else wrong?”
“I was just thinking that it’s not really fair that I want to date, but I look like me when you look like”—she motioned at him—“that and don’t date. I wish I had your genes . . . well, for a lot of reasons, but sometimes, for utterly shallow reasons too.”
He ignored the reference to dating and said only, “I wish you had my genes too.” Then he glanced at the clock. “I have an hour free. Cards? Television? Chess?”
Mallory picked up both cups of tea, feeling guilty for hoping that the rest of her life wasn’t like this. She loved her father, and she understood that there were dangers in the world, but sometimes she felt like she was smothering under his protections—and every time she tried to argue with him, the will to do so vanished before she could speak more than a word. It sounded ludicrous, but she’d wondered if his being a witch made it impossible to argue with him. Humans found witches attractive. Maybe it made it hard to argue with them too.
Adam walked over to the door, took a handful of the powder he kept there, and spilled it in a line over the doorway as he did every night. Then, he grabbed his plate. “Come on, Mals. I think we have a few episodes of that police show recorded.”
CHAPTER 8
BELIAS CAME INTO CONSCIOUSNESS with a yell that rolled into a name: “Aya!”
“Keep it down,” someone muttered.
The unfamiliar voice brought Belias to his feet. Several frightening moments wherein he couldn’t see passed, but as he blinked and stayed still, his vision returned. However, what he saw wasn’t particularly comforting: a strange woman in a gray suit sat on a chair in front of a table.
Belias felt his flesh where he’d been stabbed with Aya’s toxin-laden knives: no injury remained. Am I dead? If he was, he had been thoroughly wrong about the afterlife. If not, he wasn’t sure where he was. The woman, her clothes, and the room were unlike anything he’d seen in his life.
He stepped toward the woman—and hit an unseen wall.
Witch. He looked again at her. Unmasked witch. That clearly couldn’t be good. No witch walked around unmasked in The City.
She looked only a few years older than him, but witches—like daimons—lived for centuries, so he had no idea how old she truly was. Few witches older than three hundred existed. Most of the older ones had been killed in the wars, but this witch seemed more poised than even the elder ruling-class daimons were.
He watched her as he put both hands up and pushed, but unlike the fight circles, this barrier didn’t shock him. It simply wasn’t permeable. He paced the perimeter of the circle, running his hands over it, nudging the base of it, and confirming that he was held as securely within it as he was within fight circles.
All the while, the witch continued to work on whatever the papers on her table were. She paid him so little attention that if not for her initial words, he’d wonder if she knew he was there. He felt for the weapons he’d had in the fight, but only found one knife. After ascertaining that he was still armed, he decided to speak. “Witch!”
She glanced up, spearing him with a cold gaze from her blue-and-gold witch’s eyes. “Daimon.”
Then her gaze returned to the paper in front of her.
Belias had never been ignored. He was a favored son in a ruling-class family, a well-regarded fighter, an experienced bedmate, and, of late, a finalist in Marchosias’ Competition. He frowned, and then said, “I demand my freedom, witch.”
“No.”
“You cannot—” His words died on his lips as she lifted one hand and waved it in the air.
“I can do whatever I want, Belias.” She didn’t look up even as she silenced his voice. Her pen continued scratching across the paper for several more moments.
He tried to speak, tried to clear his throat, and finding no sound possible, began running his hands over the barrier again. She had silenced him. It was more effective than anything he’d ever encountered in The City, but he didn’t need to speak, especially if she wasn’t going to listen. He’d tried conversation, but she resorted to her spells rather than act honorably.
It wasn’t surprising: witches were lesser beings, capable only of treachery unless they were kept in check. They’d murdered his father and countless other daimons. This one had imprisoned him. If witches tried to live openly in The City, they would be murdered in their sleep—as they should be. It had been that way for centuries. They’d traded in the flesh and blood of daimons to work their spells, had set nature against The City, and until they were all but purged from his world, they’d been a constant threat to order.
After the war, the witches had been given the human world; the daimons kept The City—what little of it they could save from the uncontrollable growth of the Untamed Lands. It was a fair treaty, far more so than the witches deserved. There were little conflicts after the treaty. A few daimons had exposed some witches somewhere called Salem, but daimons had become too complacent. Rumors of daimons summoned and bound as witches’ familiars circulated from time to time, and there was talk that other, stronger witches lived in the Untamed Lands, but there was no proof.
Except here I am, caged and silenced by a witch.
He’d been taught to always win, to never give in no matter the odds, so he wasn’t going to let some witch kill him. He was going to escape, and once he was home, he would use this experience to gain support for his plan to eradicate the remaining witches from The City.
Methodically, he began at the ground and slid his fingers around the edge, seeking a flaw or opening he could use to tear a hole in the circle. As he did so, he let his fingertips become talons. Animal wasn’t a form he preferred, but his talons were sharper and more sensitive than fingertips.
He heard a book close with a soft thump, and the witch’s footsteps clacked over the stone floor.
At her approach, he stood again. Even if he couldn’t get out of the circle, he wasn’t going to stay on the floor as if he was her subordinate. When he stood, he saw how very tiny she was: frail bones and no musculature to speak of, yet she had boldness unlike any witch he’d seen in The City.
“I dislike being interrupted when I am working, Belias.” She walked around the circle, and he turned as she did so, continuing to face her rather than let her stand behind him. “You’re different from the ones I’ve summoned before.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
She murmured something in the language of witches and motioned to him.
The temptation not to speak at her command vied with the need to know. The desire for knowledge won over pride. “Summoned where?” he asked.
She studied him as objects were studied in the Carnival of Souls, and Belias felt an unfamiliar prickle of fear spread over his skin. His hand went again to the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh—and he realized that it was Aya’s knife, one he’d bought
for her.
Why do I have Aya’s knife?
Nothing made sense.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You are at the offices of Stoneleigh-Ross, Belias. Specif-ically, you are in my office, in my summoning circle.” The witch looked bemused. “You are also completely and utterly unable to be anywhere else unless I allow it.”
Belias hadn’t ever heard of Stoneleigh-Ross, but he had heard of summoning circles. Daimons were only able to be summoned if the witch had their full name. “How? Who are you? Why? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to stay here as your prisoner. Witches aren’t free from judgment. If Marchosias—”
“You aren’t within his domain,” the witch interrupted. “This is my domain.”
Belias narrowed his gaze. “Who are you? Where are we?”
“I’m Evelyn Stoneleigh, and we are in North Carolina.”
“Where?”
“The human world, Belias.”
Horror filled him. The human world was terrible. Every treatise his father had given him on the place highlighted the perversions and barbaric nature of humanity. The City wasn’t perfect, but it had a functional caste system, breeding control, and healthy commerce. Marchosias kept order, and judgments were swift.
The witch walked past him then, leaving him alone in the room, trapped in her summoning circle.
How did I end up here, in a world where witches hold dangerous amounts of power?
The last thing he remembered was his former betrothed stabbing him. He’d expected to die, been certain of it, in fact—and he wasn’t sure that waking up imprisoned by a witch in the human world was a much better fate.
CHAPTER 9
KALEB WATCHED THROUGH HOODED eyes as Zevi heated the needle in the candle flame. The amount of blood he’d lost this time was alarming enough that he wasn’t sure if this was going to be the end of his fighting or not. A tiny but very real part of him hoped it was. He wanted to rest, even if resting meant slipping into unconsciousness. The other, more insistent part of him could only focus on how few competitors were left. To be so close and lose seemed wrong.
“Stay awake.” Zevi didn’t bother to clean the knife blade—or heat it—before he cut away the remains of Kaleb’s torn trousers. He wasn’t rough, but he wasn’t wasting time on unnecessary steps either.
“Am.” Kaleb’s eyes fluttered shut again—until Zevi poured a bucket of saltwater over the bloodied gashes in his thigh. The water was clean; Zevi was always prepared with clean water when Kaleb fought. It wasn’t freezing, but it stung.
“He tried for an artery. Smart move.” The hands on Kaleb’s leg were as gentle as possible, but that didn’t make them painless. “Keeping the claws in here was wise.” Zevi poked around the wound, digging out the claws that had been left behind.
Kaleb blacked out again, but he came to a few moments later when Zevi stabbed the needle into his leg. Thankfully, he’d missed the second dousing with saltwater. Zevi was thorough, and finding foreign objects in the wound always meant saltwater washes. It was wise, but it still hurt like hell.
Not that stitches are fun.
The hot metal jabbing into his skin burned, and the feel of thread being forced through the tiny hole in his leg felt alien, but Zevi was good at stitching evenly and quickly. It was a rhythmic pain—piercing, tugging, piercing, tugging, pushing flesh together, piercing, tugging—as the stitches closed the gash.
“He missed the artery.”
“Good.” Kaleb looked up.
Zevi knelt over Kaleb’s bloody, wet leg. He had one knee on either side of Kaleb’s leg, and he squeezed tightly. “Not enough,” Zevi muttered. “Can you push here?”
“Where?”
Zevi positioned Kaleb’s hands on his torn leg. “Like this. Just hold the skin together.”
Mutely, Kaleb did as he was told.
“Better.” Zevi stabbed the needle into the flesh again and again. He finished sewing the tear closed without another word. When he was done, he left the needle and remaining thread lying on Kaleb’s bruised leg.
“Hate this part.”
“I know.” Zevi’s voice held no sympathy, though. Sympathy was reserved for the truly dreadful in his world. This wasn’t the worst injury Zevi had tended. It wasn’t the worst either of them had recovered from either.
The cave was silent for a moment as Zevi walked to the bucket that hung over the fire. Kaleb turned his head to watch. He’d experimented with the idea that not seeing it coming was better, but for him, at least, the shock was worse.
Methodically Zevi wrapped his hand in a faded but clean cloth; he reached out and gripped one of the handles that stuck out of the bucket and withdrew a knife that had been heating in the saltwater over the fire.
The instinct to run wasn’t as easy to ignore as it had been the first time. Then, Kaleb hadn’t known how much this part would hurt. Now, he’d had plenty of experience with it; he knew cauterization was worse than stabbing. That first injury happened quickly, and for the first few moments, the shock kept the pain at bay. Sometimes, if Kaleb was fight high, the pain didn’t hit him for a few minutes. This pain, however, was on top of the injury; this pain was without the rush of a fight.
Kaleb swallowed. Every muscle tightened in anticipation. Then, Zevi pressed the blade to the skin he’d just stitched.
The sizzle and the stench of burning skin added to the already awful feeling, and Kaleb turned his head to the side and vomited.
HE WASN’T SURE HOW long he’d lain on the floor after Zevi had cauterized the incision. Heat and salt worked on most of the toxins that could be left behind in a fight. The few extra-magical ones that made their way into The City were countered by steel or silver. Kaleb and Zevi had bought or acquired enough blades that had both metals in them that Zevi usually had a reasonably sized blade for most injuries. Occasionally, he’d had to resort to multiple cauterizing blades, but thankfully that was not the norm.
“Drink.” Zevi handed him a mug of something.
Kaleb sniffed it.
Zevi snorted. “I’m not going to drug you after I just sewed you up. If I wanted to knock you out, I’d have let you bleed out or skipped burning you.”
“Sorry. Reflex.” Kaleb propped himself up, lifted the mug to his lips, and drank the contents. It was far from tasty, but whatever noxious plants Zevi had brewed were mixed with halfway-decent whiskey instead of the home brew he usually used. From the taste of it, these were plants not found for sale at the Carnival of Souls—at least not without far more coin than they had. Kaleb had been nursed back to health often enough in his seventeen years that he’d learned which medicines were rarer than others.
Kaleb looked at Zevi as he handed the mug back. “I’d have been dead years ago without you, but that doesn’t mean that I want you going into the Untamed Lands without me.”
“I thought the whiskey might cover the taste.” Zevi shrugged unapologetically.
“It didn’t.”
Neither of them liked to mention the years Zevi had spent in the Untamed Lands outside The City. Out there, witch magic had made nature grow so rapidly that the pockets of daimons who lived beyond the safety of the overcrowded city were not so far removed from animals. The City might seem barbaric, but there were entertainments, pleasures to be bought and sold, and reasonably safe streets. Admittedly, safe was a relative concept, but on the occasions when Kaleb had needed to leave The City briefly with Zevi, he had been disturbed by how primitive life was in the wilds.
“I needed things. You were busy,” Zevi pointed out in that absurdly factual way of his.
Kaleb debated starting the old argument about Zevi traveling outside The City, but knew the other part that they didn’t discuss: Zevi had lived there for years. He was more comfortable there than Kaleb ever could be. He was quick enough to avoid predators, and out there, he could let himself be that quick without attracting attention. The problem was Kaleb’s, not Zevi’s. His instinct to keep Zevi safe at any co
st was the inevitable result of being in charge of their little pack of two. Zevi was his packmate, his responsibility, his only family. That’s what pack was, and losing Zevi would destroy Kaleb. None of that was stuff he knew how to say—or even needed to. All he said was, “You could’ve told me.”
“Could’ve. Didn’t. We’re both fine, so what’s it matter?”
Kaleb growled.
“I won’t let you down, Kaleb. Not ever.” Zevi stood there for an awkward moment. Then he said, “It’s not all selfless, you know. I’d be dead if I wasn’t under your protection. The City still confuses me sometimes.”
Kaleb sighed as he lay back on the floor. “And you’d be less of a target without my being in this competition.”
“True.” Zevi frowned. “The prize is worth it. You said so. You’ll win. Then everything will be better . . . unless you die. Flynn and Aya are both good enough to kill you at your best. Maybe Sol. And right now, even bad fighters could kill you.”
The beauty of Zevi’s honesty was that there was never any guessing as to his thoughts on anything, but there were times that his bluntness was less than encouraging. His doubts were as freely verbalized as his hopes. Sol was likely to kill Kaleb, especially in the shape Kaleb was in now. Flynn was the fighter likely to win the entire competition. Aya wasn’t as good a fighter as Sol or Flynn, but she’d had the strength to stand against the untrained, the strategy to defeat the cagiest of the contestants, and the ruthlessness to resort to means that were as unsportsmanlike as a daimon could get. She had more total kills than anyone left in the running.
Except me.
His, however, were mostly from years of fighting and from wearing the black mask. Very few of those kills were ones that anyone knew about. There were rumors, murmurs crediting a few particular kills to him. Rumors were useful tools in establishing a reputation. Most of the stories were the ones he’d allowed to leak. His true kill count was known only to him.