by Eva Chase
My gaze settled on a couple at the edge of the crowd, and my instincts tingled uneasily. They weren't chattering happily, just standing there rather stiffly with their eyes fixed on the crowd. They were looking across the mountainside rather than down toward the dimming sun.
What—or who—were they watching for? What was about to happen here? I couldn't think of any crime it would make sense to commit at this specific moment in the middle of this event.
My phone chimed in my pocket. I glanced up without checking it, my gaze finding Sherlock across the way with no trouble thanks to his height. He was cutting through the crowd with all the intensity of a homing missile.
I managed to follow his gaze to a guy in a baseball cap and polo shirt standing higher up the slope. A guy with enough bulk to fill out that shirt with muscle and a strong tanned jaw beneath the cap’s shade. Moran.
My attention skittered across the crowd around him with a lurch of my heart. If he was here, then Jemma almost certainly was. Probably close. But with the sunlight dwindling even more as the moon drifted across it, it was getting harder to make out faces at a distance.
I set off to join Sherlock. He might need backup.
John clearly had the same idea. His bright hair glinted in the lingering sunlight just ahead of me. Then he froze, his head snapping toward a thick spear of rock that thrust up from the earth just below the mountain’s peak.
A woman was scrambling up the side of the rock. The wind tossed black hair across her face, and it was so dark now I might not have been able to make out much of her features anyway, but seeing that slim frame move with such strength and speed, I knew it was Jemma just as John must have.
She swayed for a second as her right leg bowed, and a pang of concern shot through my chest. Whatever injuries she’d had before, she hadn’t completely recovered.
What the hell was she doing?
I started forward again, and several other figures made a beeline toward her through the crowd at the same time, including the couple I’d seen staring on the fringes. Apprehension prickled down my spine. One of the figures, closer to her than I was, sped up to a run with the flash of something metal in his hand. He raised his weapon as he charged at Jemma.
Moran leapt out of the crowd and tackled the attacker to the ground. “We’ve got to help her,” he shouted. “They’ll try to kill her.”
We. He was speaking to us. He’d either seen us here or assumed we’d make it.
I didn’t have time to think about that. John had hustled ahead of me to the base of the stone. He whacked his walking stick into the gut of a woman who was jumping after Jemma. Jemma was just reaching for the peak of the rock, her face pale and stiff with controlled pain.
As I hurried toward the stone, my gut wrenched between two opposing instincts. She was wounded and under attack yet unwilling to back down, and part of me longed to protect that determined, defiant spirit. But we had no idea about her plans here, who these people were, or what she intended. What if they had a good reason to try to stop her?
I couldn’t let my emotions rule my mind yet again.
One thing I was sure of: I had to at least help my friends. John was springing at another guy who’d run at the looming stone. Bash lunged around to punch someone in the face. Sherlock had grabbed a man by the collar. I hustled the rest of the way to John’s side, even though he didn’t look as if he needed a whole lot of assistance at the moment.
Just as I reached him, a strangled squeak reached my ears. My gaze jerked around.
A man stalking toward me had a furry lump clutched in his hand. A mouse, I realized with a jab of queasiness. He’d crushed it in his grasp. He raised its mangled body toward the sky, blood streaking down his forearm. “For the shrouded folk!”
An invisible force that felt more solid than the wind whipped past me. Streaks of gauzy light that couldn’t have come from the nearly covered sun slashed through the air around the rock. And a woman several paces away came to an abrupt halt and raised a pistol toward Jemma.
Resolve hardened in my chest. Whatever Jemma had done, whatever she was doing now, these people were worse than her. I’d never tackled an evil like this. I didn’t understand the cult we’d uncovered in Croatia, but these were clearly the same brand of lunatics. If only in this one conflict, Jemma’s side was the only side I wanted to be on.
I threw myself at the woman with the gun, wincing as her first shot split the air. She managed to pull the trigger a second time just as I barreled into her. I shoved her to the ground, and the shot went wild. With a kick, I sent the gun spinning from her hand.
The sightseers around us were shrieking and shoving away from us now, scattering across the lower slope. Everyone except the deranged cultists. The man who’d crushed the mouse dove for the gun, and I threw myself at him. As I shouldered him to the side and snatched up the pistol, a billow of filmy light blasted into me, knocking the breath from my lungs. I crashed onto the ground on my back.
I started up at the wavering form descending on me, and a rush of cold arrived with the fall of an even deeper darkness. The eclipse was full.
Jemma stood at the top of the stone, stabbing a curved silver knife toward the sky. She yanked at something on her leg—the gold cuff—and its pieces clattered onto the rock beneath her feet.
Several of those strange billows of light, fainter now despite the darkness around us, converged on Jemma. The one over me whipped around to follow them. I blinked hard, trying to wrap my head around what I was seeing. When I squinted at them, they looked almost like—like ghosts, for fuck’s sake. Like that creepy form that had appeared over Jemma in the park back in—
Oh. Ice formed around my stomach. What if that hadn’t been a projection from some source we’d never determined. What if… that had been an actual creature, appearing and moving by some will of its own, like the patches of hazy light flying toward Jemma were giving every appearance of being?
I didn’t believe in ghosts. Since I was ten, I’d rolled my eyes at my gran leaving milk out for the “wee folk.” But I couldn’t deny that something very real and not of the world I knew had appeared in front of me.
Jemma slashed the curved knife across her arm. I shoved myself back onto my feet, swallowing back queasiness at the sight of blood streaking over her pale skin. I wanted to run to her, to wrench the blade from her hands, but at the same moment the filmy beings that had been racing toward her flinched back.
Her voice rang out, strained but clear. “I claim this pain; I claim this blood!” Light flared around her, silhouetting her slim form, brighter than the things that circled her. A quivering energy radiated from her perch and washed over my skin. It warbled in my ears so loudly I lost the next few things she said.
Jemma tossed off her wig. The unnatural light burned even sharper around her pinned-up red hair. My stomach lurched as she brought the knife to the back of her neck.
What the fuck?
I couldn’t help stepping forward, my hands opening and closing, grasping for something to do but not knowing what. As crazy as this situation looked, as unnerving as Jemma’s actions were, her voice and her stance spoke of total control.
She knew what she was doing, and I sure as hell didn’t.
I couldn’t see the back of her neck, but I could tell she’d dug in the blade from the way her jaw clenched. “I give myself freely to myself,” she called out. “I accept Jemma Moriarty’s claim.”
I didn’t know what that meant either, but it must have been enough to accomplish her ends. She dropped the knife into her purse.
Daylight glimmered brighter over the mountainside as the moon edged away from the sun. Jemma’s glow faded, and the gauzy patches around her shimmered a touch brighter.
They whipped toward her in an instant. She bent down—and a force with a flicker of light rammed into her, sending her tumbling over the side of the stone. Like the wallop that had thrown Sherlock on the mountain near Split.
I ran to her as she hit the grou
nd, her arm braced protectively around her head. Sherlock, John, and Moran dashed over too. Glowing streaks seared the air around her, and she flinched, jabbing out with her hand as if fighting against something.
Another flash of light punched me in the chest. I reeled back for a second and then sprang at her.
The air around Jemma had turned frigid enough to bite into my skin. Her head lolled to the side, a welt from a blow I hadn’t seen forming across her forehead.
“We have to get her out of here,” Moran said, dropping next to her across from me. “She’ll be safe in the town. Those things won’t follow us there. Cover me!”
He hauled her up, slinging her quickly but carefully over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing, and launched himself down the slope. The three of us raced after him, Sherlock’s expression tight, John wide-eyed and pale.
A shimmering streak battered me to the side, but I shoved back to block it from getting at Moran and Jemma. John flailed his walking stick, the wood reverberating as it struck or was struck by something none of us could see beyond a glimmering patch of air.
My heart pounded hard and heavy in my chest. Another blow smacked me across the face. I swore and jabbed out my elbow instinctively, light sparking around the filmy surface I hit.
Then we were stumbling into the midst of the sightseers who’d congregated at the edge of the town. Shouts carried after us, but Moran kept hurtling onward with Jemma, and the three of us charged after him.
The air didn’t attack me again. The wavering light effects faded away. But my pulse kept thudding and my skin kept crawling as we hustled through the streets.
I didn’t know what we’d tangled with on that mountaintop, but clearly the world contained villains more terrifying than I’d ever imagined could exist. And the woman now crumpled on Bash’s shoulder not only knew but had dared to stand up to them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jemma
I woke up on a soft bed in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight streamed through a wide window, lighting up the pale yellow walls and white furniture. A warm breeze rippled the curtain. A distant jangle of music carried with it, much more perky than I felt.
“Mori!” Bash had been sitting in a wicker chair on the other side of the bed. He leapt up and rested his hands on the sheet next to me, his eyes intent. From the dark smudges under them, he hadn’t gotten much sleep. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
I shifted against the mattress, taking stock. A dull ache spread across my forehead. I touched the spot and found it bandaged. My arm was bandaged too—pads and swaths of gauze wrapped around my wrist and elbow where I’d sliced myself open with the shrouded dagger.
“I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse,” I said. Tentatively, I pushed myself into a sitting position. My shoulder and my hip throbbed. The gold cuff no longer weighed on my thigh, but the muscle there felt tender. I lifted the sheet, eased up the skirt of my dress, and winced. Purple bruises mottled the skin from knee to hipbone.
But I’d take that over turning translucent any day.
I turned back to Bash. “Where are we? What happened after the eclipse?” I had a blurry memory of falling, flares of light and pain and voices shouting around me, but I couldn’t piece together more than that.
“Your monsters took a good stab at getting you, but we were faster,” Bash said. “You were banged up pretty bad, though. The good doctor did what he could for you, and I managed to arrange a private flight pretty quick. I figured the sooner we put distance between those things and the last place they found you, the better.” He motioned to the window. “Rio de Janeiro. Not too far a hop but big and busy enough for us to go unnoticed.”
“Good choice,” I said. “It’s only—that was all yesterday?”
He nodded. From the quality of the sunlight, I’d guess it was early afternoon now. I hadn’t even been out for a whole twenty-four hours. Our Chilean adventure definitely could have gone a lot worse.
“John should probably take another look at you now that you’re awake,” Bash said. Apparently he’d gotten on a first name basis with at least one of the trio while I’d been unconscious. “Do you mind if I go get him?”
“If it’ll make you feel better.” I waved him off.
He went to the bedroom door and leaned out. “Hey, doc, your patient is awake.”
John came striding in a few seconds later, and Sherlock and Garrett trailed behind him. It was kind of amusing seeing someone other than Sherlock taking the lead for once. The other two stood awkwardly near the end of the bed while John sat on the edge beside me.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s good to have you back with us.”
“It’s good to be back, considering I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it through the eclipse alive.” I raised my bandaged arm. “You do neat work.”
He laughed, but concern still shone in his hazel eyes. “I haven’t completely lost my touch. Can you move all right? Is your vision clear?”
“Everything feels pretty normal, just achy here and there. I think I’m through the worst. I wouldn’t mind a painkiller if we’ve got any around. Not the heavy stuff, just to take the edge off.”
Bash tossed over a bottle of over-the-counter pills and went to get me a glass of water. I gulped a couple down and turned my attention to the two men still standing vigil at the end of the bed.
“Can I assume that since we’re in an apartment and not a prison hospital that you’re not here to arrest me for something or other?”
Garrett shot Bash a wary look, maybe in recognition that even if they’d wanted to, they’d have had a tough time taking me into custody under my hitman’s watch. Sherlock tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers, studying me with his incisive gaze.
“I have no grounds on which to arrest you at the moment, Miss Moriarty,” he said. “But I was rather hoping you could provide some illumination on the events during the eclipse. What exactly did you accomplish there, for example?”
“And what the hell were those things that were trying to stop you?” Garrett put in.
John hadn’t told them the extra details I’d shared with him about the cult, then, even now that they’d seen plenty of evidence. I couldn’t blame him for leaving that task to me—they’d have thought he was crazy.
An urge to lie coiled around my chest. My hands balled on top of the sheet. But what could I tell them that would sound any less crazy than the truth? What would it hurt for them to know?
These men had turned up and fought in my battle alongside me without any need to. They might very well have saved my life twice over now.
I wet my lips and looked at Sherlock. “Are you sure you’re going to believe what I tell you? I think you know I’m not going to say it was an elaborate electronic light show. If you’re only going to scoff, I’d rather skip that.”
He shifted his weight, his mouth twisting into something between a smile and a grimace. “I was present for everything that happened. I can admit that the phenomena I observed cannot be explained by any scientific means I’m aware of. It may pain me to consider a less grounded explanation, but I can hardly call myself an objective observer of facts if I refuse the most fitting account simply because I find it difficult to accept.”
Spoken like only Sherlock would. The fact that he was even willing to entertain the idea of something supernatural sent a flutter of affection through me for the proud, brilliant man in front of me. I had discovered many things I hadn’t expected about myself in the last several weeks. Perhaps he hadn’t come through that time unchanged either.
“I don’t understand exactly what they are either.” I leaned back on my hands as I chose my words. “There are beings with powers most people would call magic. They like our world—they like our sun. Left to their own devices, they can only create illusions, making themselves or other things visible but not really affecting anything. But if they can find people willing to worship them, to feed them with pain and blood, that gives them enough energy to
have an impact on our world.”
Garrett looked ill. “That’s why the mutilated animals—the boy—all the things we found in the commune…”
I nodded. “Some of that might have been the fiends themselves, enjoying themselves after they’d been let loose. Their tastes tend toward the violent. But yes. Wherever they can find people who get off on being near creatures that much more powerful, they’ve fostered their cult of worship. We call them the shrouded folk. I grew up in one of their communes. I was still tied to them even after I escaped, but that ritual with the dagger means they have no more claim on me.”
“Are you done with them?” John asked.
A laugh sputtered out of me. “Hardly. They—they killed my sister. They would have torn me apart and enjoyed it. And the people in the cult, like my parents, might as well be monsters too, considering the lengths they’re willing to go to in service of those things. Now that I can take them on freely, I’m going to destroy every commune there is by whatever means necessary until there’s no one left giving reverence. Until the fiends can’t touch anyone here ever again.”
The men around me were silent for a long moment. Garrett drew in a breath.
“These ‘fiends’—they’re what you meant,” he said. “Before you took off on us in Split, you said there were worse things in the world than you.”
The corner of my mouth quirked up. “Yes. So, I wouldn’t ask you to stick your necks out again. I don’t plan on setting up any schemes that would conflict with your work. I just hope you’ll agree that letting me go to deal with these fiends is in everyone’s best interests—not just ours, but every human being out there.” I motioned to the world beyond the walls.
Garrett looked at the floor and then back at me. A fierceness had come over his expression. “What if we want to stick our necks out? I got into this line of work to make the world better. If those things are out there, killing and warping people to their wills… I don’t know how I can manage it around the job once I have to go back—”
