Pleasure slithered through me—which was absurd and probably spoke more of my exhaustion than anything else. “Of course, unless Stane can uncover some paperwork that will give us a lead as to who that last person is, we really can’t do anything more.”
“Why not talk to the Brindle? They would at least know whether there are any dark practitioners active in the city.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ilianna is going to owe the Brindle big time as it is. I don’t want her under a greater obligation.”
“I didn’t mean that she should talk to them. I meant that you should.”
“Me?” I couldn’t help the surprise in my voice. “I doubt they’d discuss that sort of stuff with an outsider like me. I’m not even a witch.”
“But did Kiandra not tell you where to find Selwin and then give you permission to come to this place? Did she not warn you that the Brindle is not safe from the Aedh? I think that one knows more about this situation than you currently believe.”
“Ilianna might have said something to her mom. And we did ask her to translate the text in the Dušan’s book.”
He acknowledged the possibility with a slight nod. “I still think it’s worth talking to her.”
“Then I will talk to her. But not tonight.” I glanced past him as Ilianna and her two stretcher bearers reappeared and pushed away from the tree trunk to join the procession.
“He’s still burning up,” I murmured, lightly touching Tao’s gaunt face. It was as if the fires were consuming him from the inside out. I shivered and glanced up at Ilianna. “You’ll let me know if anything changes in the next couple of hours?”
Relief washed across her face. “Don’t tell me you’re actually going home to rest?”
“If I don’t, I’m not going to be of any use to anyone—even myself.” I kissed my fingertips then brushed them across Tao’s fire-touched lips. “Come back to us, my friend. We need you.”
Ilianna gripped my hand and squeezed it lightly. “If there’s a way to heal him, we’ll find it.”
As the two women loaded Tao into the back of the van, I gave Ilianna a hug. “Don’t promise them too much,” I whispered. “Your life is worth just as much as his. Don’t exchange one for the other.”
She pulled away and smiled, although we both knew it was forced. “A life for a life is not something the Brindle would ask.”
I didn’t mean literally and she knew it. “Kiandra wants you back at the Brindle. She may use this as a lever.”
“If I was to go back to the Brindle, it would have to be done willingly, with no form of inducement. The building and the magic would not accept my presence otherwise.”
I raised my eyebrows, but she waved away my questions before I even asked them. “Trust me to do what is best for both myself and for Tao,” she said softly.
“I do.” I gave her another hug then stepped away. She climbed into the back of the van with one of the gray-clad witches, then the driver closed the door and climbed into the front. Five minutes later they were gone and the normal night sounds of the forest returned.
I sighed and slowly walked across to Ilianna’s car. Thankfully, she’d left the keys in the ignition, because I hadn’t even thought to ask for them.
I opened the door, then stopped and looked across to Azriel. “You might have to come with me, just to make sure I don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
“Why not let me transport you home? We can retrieve the car later.”
Because I don’t want to be that close to you. It was disturbing on far too many levels. Then I sighed, reached in, and grabbed the car keys. I was being an idiot again.
I turned and caught a brief glimpse of annoyance before his expression cleared again. I really, really needed to keep my thoughts in check.
I locked the car and forced a smile. “Okay, brave sir, whisk me away to safety on your wild white steed.”
He walked toward me, his strides long and graceful. “I am not brave, but merely do what I am assigned to do, and I do not possess a white horse. That sentence does not make sense.”
I didn’t rise to the bait—and bait it was, given the amusement teasing the corners of his lips. He wrapped his arms around me, and I did my best to ignore his closeness and the way his body seemed to fit perfectly against mine, not to mention the musky, enticing scent of him.
Power surged—a song that ran through every part of me, taking what I was, making it more, making it less, until there was no me, no him, just the sum of the two of us—energy beings with no flesh to hold us in place.
Then the forest was gone and we were on the gray fields, and somehow everything seemed brighter, more beautiful, and so damn tranquil that I wanted to cry. It almost seemed like I was seeing it clearer than I ever had before.
And then something happened.
The gray fields shuddered. Shifted. Leaned. As if it were a structure from which one of its main supports had been removed. The brightness flickered briefly then returned, but the tranquility was gone, replaced by a sudden uneasiness.
Then the fields were gone and I was back in my room at the Langham. I pulled away from Azriel, my heart going a million miles an hour as I said, “What the hell just happened?”
“That,” he said grimly, “was the answer to your previous question.”
No, I thought. No. I licked dry lips and said, “And just which question are we talking about?”
And all the while, the litany inside my head was going, No, no, no. Please God no.
“Remember wondering what the thief planned to do with the key?” He thrust a hand through his matted hair, and the sheer depth of the anger and frustration rolling off him just about stole my breath. “Well, that movement we felt in the gray fields was our answer. They’ve forced the first portal open.”
I all but collapsed onto the bed. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “The shit has well and truly hit the fan.”
And it was all our fault, because we’d had the key in our hands and still had managed to lose it.
“We need to stop this, Risa, before it goes any further.”
I raised my gaze to his. “How? We’re doing all that we can right now.”
“But it’s not enough. These people obviously seek the destruction of both our worlds, and they are still out there.”
“That doesn’t answer the question, Azriel.”
“No.” He spun away, walked to the window, every movement screaming of anger. “We do what we have to do—we track down these people by whatever means necessary.”
By whatever means necessary.
I had a bad feeling the days ahead were going to get very long and very dark.
And very fucking bloody.
And if you missed it, be sure to pick up
Darkness Unbound
by
KKERI ARTHUR,
the first exciting installment of Risa’s story.
Available now.
Here’s a special preview:
I’VE ALWAYS SEEN THE REAPERS.
Even as a toddler—with little understanding of spirits, death, or the horrors that lie in the shadows—I’d been aware of them. As I’d gotten older and my knowledge of the mystical had strengthened, I’d begun to call them Death, because the people I’d seen them following had always died within a day or so.
In my teenage years, I learned who and what they really were. They called themselves reapers, and they were collectors of souls. They took the essence—the spirit—of the dying and escorted them onto the next part of their journey, be that heaven or hell.
The reapers weren’t flesh-and-blood beings, although they could attain that form if they wished. They were creatures of light and shadows—and an energy so fierce, their mere presence burned across my skin like flame.
Which is how I’d sensed the one now following me. He was keeping his distance, but the heat of him sang through the night, warming my skin and stirring the embers of fear. I swallowed heavily and tried to stay calm. After all, b
eing the daughter of one of Melbourne’s most powerful psychics had its benefits—and one of those was a knowledge of my own death. It would come many years from now, in a stupid car accident.
Of course, it was totally possible that I’d gotten the timing of my death wrong. My visions weren’t always as accurate as my mother’s, so maybe the death I’d seen in my future was a whole lot closer than I’d presumed.
And it was also a fact that not all deaths actually happened when they were supposed to. That’s why there were ghosts—they were the souls uncollected by reapers, either because their deaths had come before their allotted time, or because they’d refused the reapers’ guidance. Either way, the end result was the same. The souls were left stranded between this world and the next.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket and walked a little faster. There was no outrunning the reapers—I knew that—but I still couldn’t help the instinctive urge to try.
Around me, the day was only just dawning. Lygon Street gleamed wetly after the night’s rain, and the air was fresh and smelled ever so faintly of spring. The heavy bass beat coming from the nearby wolf clubs overran what little traffic noise there was, and laughter rode the breeze—a happy sound that did little to chase the chill from my flesh.
It was a chill caused not by an icy morning, but rather by the ever-growing tide of fear.
Why was the reaper following me?
As I crossed over to Pelham Street, my gaze flicked to the nearby shop windows, searching again for the shadow of death.
Reapers came in all shapes and sizes, often taking the form most likely to be accepted by those they’d come to collect. I’m not sure what it said about me that my reaper was shirtless, tattooed, and appeared to be wearing some sort of sword strapped across his back.
A reaper with a weapon? Now, that was something I’d never come across before. But maybe he knew I wasn’t about to go lightly.
I turned into Ormond Place and hurried toward the private parking lot my restaurant shared with several other nearby businesses. There was no sound of steps behind me, no scent of another, yet the reaper’s presence burned all around me—a heat I could feel on my skin and within my mind.
Sometimes being psychic like my mom really sucked.
I wrapped my fingers around my keys and hit the automatic opener. As the old metal gate began to grind and screech its way to one side, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder.
My gaze met the reaper’s. His face was chiseled, almost classical in its beauty, and yet possessing a hard edge that spoke of a man who’d won more than his fair share of battles. His eyes were blue—one a blue as vivid and as bright as a sapphire, the other almost a navy, and as dark and stormy as the sea.
Awareness flashed through those vivid, turbulent depths—an awareness that seemed to echo right through me. It was also an awareness that seemed to be accompanied, at least on his part, by surprise.
For several heartbeats neither of us moved, and then he simply disappeared. One second he was there, and the next he wasn’t.
I blinked, wondering if it was some sort of trick. Reapers, like the Aedh, could become energy and smoke at will, but—for me, at least—it usually took longer than the blink of an eye to achieve. Of course, I was only half Aedh, so maybe that was the problem.
The reaper didn’t reappear, and the heat of his presence no longer burned through the air or shivered through my mind. He’d gone. Which was totally out of character for a reaper, as far as I knew.
I mean, they were collectors of souls. It was their duty to hang about until said soul was collected. I’d never known of one to up and disappear the moment he’d been spotted—although given that the ability to actually spot them was a rare one, this probably wasn’t an everyday occurrence.
Mom, despite her amazing abilities—abilities that had been sharpened during her creation in a madman’s cloning lab—certainly couldn’t see them. But then, she couldn’t actually see anything. The sight she did have came via a psychic link she shared with a creature known as a Fravardin—a guardian spirit that had been gifted to her by a long-dead clone brother.
She was also a full Helki werewolf, not a half-Aedh like me. The Aedh were kin to the reapers, and it was their blood that gave me the ability to see the reapers.
But why did this reaper disappear like that? Had he realized he’d been following the wrong soul, or was something weirder going on?
Frowning, I walked across to my bike and climbed on. The leather seat wrapped around my butt like a glove, and I couldn’t help smiling. The Ducati wasn’t new, but she was sharp and clean and comfortable to ride, and even though the hydrogen engine was getting a little old by today’s standards, she still put out a whole lot of power. Maybe not as much as the newer engines, but enough to give a mother gray hair. Or so my mom reckoned, anyway.
As the thought of her ran through my mind again, so did the sudden urge to call her. My frown deepening, I dug my phone out of my pocket and said, “Mom.”
The voice-recognition software clicked into action and the call went through almost instantly.
“Risa,” she said, her luminous blue eyes shining with warmth and amusement. “I was just thinking about you.”
“I figured as much. What’s up?”
She sighed, and I instantly knew what that meant. My stomach twisted and I closed my eyes, wishing away the words I knew were coming.
But it didn’t work. It never worked.
“I have another client who wants your help.” She said it softly, without inflection. She knew how much I hated hospitals.
“Mom—”
“It’s a little girl, Ris. Otherwise I wouldn’t ask you. Not so soon after the last time.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. The last time had been a teenager whose bones had pretty much been pulverized in a car accident. He’d been on life support for weeks, with no sign of brain activity, and the doctors had finally advised his parents to turn off the machine and let him pass over. Naturally enough, his parents had been reluctant, clinging to the belief that he was still there, that there was still hope.
Mom couldn’t tell them that. But I could.
Yet it had meant going into the hospital, immersing myself in the dying and the dead and the heat of the reapers. I hated it. It always seemed like I was losing a piece of myself.
But more than that, I hated facing the grief of the parents when—if—I had to tell them that their loved ones were long gone.
“What happened to her?”
If it was an accident, if it was a repeat of the teenager and the parents were looking for a miracle, then I could beg off. It wouldn’t be easy, but neither was walking into that hospital.
“She went in with a fever, fell into a coma, and hasn’t woken up. They have her on life support at the moment.”
“Do they know why?” I asked the question almost desperately, torn between wanting to help a little girl caught in the twilight realms between life and death and the serious need not to go into that place.
“No. She had the flu and was dehydrated, which is why she was originally admitted. The doctors have run every test imaginable and have come up with nothing.” Mom hesitated. “Please, Ris. Her mother is a longtime client.”
My mom knew precisely which buttons to push. I loved her to death, but god, there were some days I wished I could simply ignore her.
“Which hospital is she in?”
“The Children’s.”
I blew out a breath. “I’ll head there now.”
“You can’t. Not until eight,” Mom said heavily. “They’re not allowing anyone but family outside of visiting hours.”
Great. Two hours to wait. Two hours to dread what I was being asked to do.
“Okay. But no more for a while after this. Please?”
“Deal.” There was no pleasure in her voice. No victory. She might push my buttons to get what she wanted, but she also knew how much these trips took out of me. “C
ome back home afterward and I’ll make you breakfast.”
“I can’t.” I scrubbed my eyes and resisted the sudden impulse to yawn. “I’ve been working at the restaurant all night and I really need some sleep. Send me the details about her parents and the ward number, and I’ll give you a buzz once I’ve been to see her.”
“Good. Are you still up for our lunch on Thursday?”
I smiled. Thursday lunch had been something of a ritual for my entire life. My mom and Aunt Riley—who wasn’t really an aunt, but a good friend of Mom’s who’d taken me under her wing and basically spoiled me rotten since birth—had been meeting at the same restaurant for over twenty-five years. They had, in fact, recently purchased it to prevent it from being torn down to make way for apartments. Almost nothing got in the way of their ritual—and certainly not a multimillion-dollar investment company.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good. See you then. Love you.”
I smiled and said, “But not as much as I love you.”
The words had become something of a ritual at the end of our phone calls, but I never took them for granted. I’d seen far too many people over the years trying to get in contact with the departed just so they could say the words they’d never said in life.
I hit the end button then shoved the phone back into my pocket. As I did so, it began to chime the song “Witchy Woman”—an indicator that Mom had already sent the requested information via text. Obviously, she’d had it ready to go. I shook my head and didn’t bother looking at it. I needed to wash the grime of work away and get some sustenance in my belly before I faced dealing with that little girl in the hospital.
Two hours later, I arrived at the hospital. I parked in the nearby underground lot, then checked Mom’s text, grabbing the ward number and the parents’ names before heading inside.
It hit me in the foyer.
The dead, the dying, and the diseased created a veil of misery and pain that permeated not only the air but the very foundations of the building. It felt like a ton of bricks as it settled across my shoulders, and it was a weight that made my back hunch, my knees buckle, and my breath stutter to a momentary halt.