Unbound

by Amber Lynn Natusch

“Thank you for taking care of her in my absence,” I told Kierson. He gave me a sad smile, then stepped aside to let us by. The second my mother laid eyes on me, she hurried to get closer.

  “You’re really here,” she said, fussing over my windblown hair. “You came back.”

  “Of course, Mother. We only went to meet with Raze, remember? In fact, he has returned with us. He wanted to see you.”

  Her crazed stare darted to the Light One at my back, as though she had only just noticed Kaine’s and his presence.

  “Raze…do you know my daughter? Do you know Khara?”

  “We’ve only recently been acquainted,” he said with an empty smile that she took no notice of. “Celia, can we go inside to talk? I have some questions for you.”

  She looked at me, then Kaine, as though asking permission.

  “If you are up to the task, it is fine with me,” I said, taking her by the arm.

  “But only if you’re feeling well enough,” Kaine added.

  “Of course,” she said. Then the entire group headed back inside to where Casey and Pierson waited, both wearing tight expressions.

  I ushered her over to Oz’s bed and helped her sit on the edge. My brothers gave me one final look of concern before exiting.

  “I’ll bring her something to eat,” Kierson offered before closing the door behind him. The four of us hovered around my mother, not one of us knowing where to even begin. To say that she was deteriorating rapidly would have been an understatement of epic proportions. If Raze could not help us acquire the answers we needed to help her, I feared I would lose her almost as soon as I had found her.

  My mother looked up at all of us with those vacant eyes, and I felt the anger at what had been done to her boil up within me again. I had to step away and pace the room to get myself under control.

  “Raze…” she said with a note of surprise. “Why are you here?” I turned to see the confusion on her face. “Have you met my daughter, Khara?”

  The massive Light One sat down next to her on the bed and smiled again, not letting on that she had asked the same question only minutes earlier. “I have—she’s really something, Celia. But I’m more interested in talking about you right now, if that’s okay.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I want to ask you about the attack.”

  She closed her eyes and swayed where she sat. Oz caught her before she toppled over and eased her back against the pillow.

  “The attack…oh, yes. The one that led me back to my Khara…”

  “Yes. That one. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember much. Just that it was our kind that did it.”

  “Where was the injury, Celia? Can you show me?”

  She pulled up her borrowed black shirt to reveal unmarred skin. She drew her finger from below her navel up through her ribs, stopping just shy of her heart. Raze, watching intently, paled as he looked at the hand lingering near that vital organ. He looked back to me, and I nodded.

  “Do you remember those that betrayed you saying anything while they did it? Anything strange?”

  “No…”

  “What are you thinking?” Oz asked, breaking his silence.

  Raze smoothed my mother’s dark hair from her face, then got up and jerked his head toward the door. Kaine and Oz fell in behind him in a way that looked so natural that I could not help but be distracted for a moment by the thought of the three of them battling forces of evil together. Then my mother moaned, and my attention snapped back to the issue at hand.

  “We will be right back,” I told her as I drew the comforter around her. “If you need anything, just call for me.”

  I stepped into the narrow hall outside Oz’s room, where the three warriors waited.

  “You have suspicions,” I said to Raze.

  “I didn’t at first because of the holes in the story—the bits I hadn’t pulled together in the moment—but I do now.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Kaine asked, and I could not deny the worry in his tone.

  “I think they undid what was done to restore her to the Light,” he said as though it pained him.

  Kaine’s worried expression deepened. Oz cursed under his breath.

  “Her soul…” I said quietly, the thought spilling out unwittingly. The truth in his words hit fast and hard, leaving an ache in my stomach in its wake. That we had not considered this possibility was shameful and, worse still, a waste of precious time my mother did not have. “That is why they gutted her.” Anger flashed in the depths of Oz’s brown eyes. “That is what they were doing to her—why Deimos found her as he did. They were trying to undo what they did to restore her soul and bring her back to the Light…”

  Raze merely nodded. Oz swore again.

  “But she’d be dead by now if they’d succeeded in taking it,” Kaine said, the edge of desperation in his tone undermining his words.

  “I mean, Khara looked like shit five seconds after hers was nearly sucked away by the Soul Stealers,” Oz replied.

  “But they did not succeed,” I pointed out. “Perhaps the Light did not, either. Perhaps their failure is why she still exists, along with the aid of my healings.”

  “It’s possible,” Raze said, though his dubious tone said otherwise, “but it isn’t a permanent solution. Whether the soul was taken or damaged doesn’t matter. Without an intact one, she will one day fade.” His expression hardened. “No one can survive without one.”

  “You’re saying she is as she would have been when her soul was first taken,” Kaine said, realization weighing heavily on him. “Before she became Dark.”

  Raze nodded.

  “But,” I said, working through the problem as I spoke, “by that logic, all she needs is a new soul, correct?”

  “Not sure it’s quite that simple, new girl.”

  “It was when I saved you,” I countered. “Your soul was stolen, and I gave you the one I had taken from the Soul Stealer. You were restored within seconds.”

  “Oz is right,” Raze said. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?” I asked. I wielded that question like a weapon.

  “Because the magic that was used to restore her Light One status cannot be recreated.”

  “Magic can always be recreated,” Kaine argued, “under the right conditions.”

  “So we find someone who can recreate it,” Oz all but growled. His dissatisfaction with Raze’s words was plain in the set of his jaw and the bite in his tone.

  “Pierson is an expert in all magics,” I suggested.

  “Maybe your father knows something, too,” Kaine added.

  Oz’s expression darkened. “Which one?”

  Kaine met his glare. “Both. Either. I don’t care. I’ll seek out anyone who might be able to fix this.”

  “Perhaps if we understood how the Light Ones did what they did, that would help,” I said.

  Raze’s jaw flexed. “I was not there the day her Light status was restored.” Pain etched his expression, and I realized then just how much he cared for my mother. How much he respected her. How much he wanted to save her. “And as for those that broke the magic binding the soul within her—the ones that might have been able to help us—you killed them.”

  Hope fell heavy in my gut as the males around me began to argue. As they tossed out possibilities of how best to help my mother, I turned and faced her room, thinking through a plan of my own. A bond was broken. A soul was damaged or gone. Perhaps my healing did not work because the very thing necessary to sustain her could not be healed at all.

  Perhaps if I gave my mother a whole and healthy soul, that broken bond could be healed.

  “I know what to do,” I whispered aloud. Before any of them could respond, I threw open the bedroom door and stormed in, headed for my now-sleeping mother. I bent down toward her, prepared to breathe the soul of the goddess of the hunt into her to make her whole again, but strong hands caught my shoulders and pulled me back.


  “No, Khara,” Oz said in my ear. Seconds later, his hands were ripped away. I dared a glance behind me to find Kaine and Raze pinning Oz to the wall. His eyes flared with anger as he tried to pull free of the Dark and Light Ones holding him in place. “Khara,” he all but growled at me, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I must do something,” I argued, turning away.

  “Something that could get you killed,” he snapped at me. “The magic’s been tampered with. You don’t know what could happen in your effort to save her.”

  “But I do know what will happen if I do nothing.” Whether it was the bite or the determination in my voice, I could not be sure, but something in it silenced him for a moment, and I capitalized on it. Sitting next to my sleeping mother, I turned her face toward me. “Do your best to relax, Mother. It will be over soon.”

  I took a breath and slowly called Artemis up as I leaned my mother’s head back and parted her lips. Moving in painfully close, I exhaled the swirling darkness into her and closed her mouth. I watched with bated breath to see if what had happened to Oz the night of his change would soon take place; if she would jump off the bed, spread her newly tinted black wings, and say something Oz and Kaine would surely approve of.

  For a long moment, I wondered if my efforts had accomplished anything at all. But then she shot up to a sitting position, gasping and choking and sputtering for air.

  “Mother,” I yelled, frantically trying to help her. The others surrounded her as she turned blue and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Mother!”

  “Take it out, Khara!” Oz shouted at me, breaking through my panic.

  I did as he asked, inhaling sharply and drawing the former goddess back. The inky black cloud came when called and made its way inside me. The second it was gone, my mother collapsed back onto the bed. Her breathing was shallow and weak, and her skin was deathly pale. I sprawled my hands across her body and called forth my healing energy while the males around me argued and shouted at one another.

  She was sleeping again by the time I finished, but her color had returned and her breathing had normalized. I sat back with a loud exhale, then turned my attention to the trio of angels behind me.

  “That was reckless,” Oz said. The others released him, and he rushed to my side to loom above me like a dark cloud of rage and worry.

  “It was necessary,” I replied as I stood to meet his ire. “I had to try.”

  Brooding anger was all he gave in response.

  “We must find a way to fix what has been undone—to bind the soul that has been unbound or replace it with another—or her fate is clear,” Raze said, cutting through the tension between Oz and me. “If we don’t, she will not last much longer.”

  His sobering sentiment did its job, and I pulled my gaze from Oz to address the others.

  “Then we shall have to find someone who knows how. Soon.”

  7

  Raze headed downstairs with a sense of urgency. Kaine and Oz filed in behind, with me pulling up the rear. We found my brothers waiting in the living room, and we quickly briefed them on the severity of the situation. A plan soon fell into place.

  “I’m going to go to the Hallowed Gates and search the library for anything that could help,” Raze said. “I wasn’t a part of the crew who helped restore Celia, but there has to be something in the archives about it.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Kaine said, looking at Oz. “The search will go faster with our aid.”

  “And how will I explain your presence there to the others? Do you want them to know about Celia’s status?”

  “No, but you’re a smart guy, Raze,” Oz said, heading for the door. “You’ll figure something out.”

  “Pierson and I will get Trey to take us to the Underworld,” Casey said. “Hecate had a shit-ton of books in her room.”

  “Perhaps there will be something of use there,” Pierson added.

  “Kierson and I need to get back to patrolling. We had a bead on the errant souls wandering Detroit. We need to hunt them down,” Drew said, looking frustrated. “But I can think of a couple of beings who might know something that could help your mother. We’ll pay them a visit.”

  “And what am I to do?” I asked, sharing Drew’s frustration.

  “You need to stay here with your mother and heal her as often as necessary to buy us time,” Oz said grimly. His concern was plain in his furrowed brow and tense jaw. He was as worried about my mother as I was. “With an emphasis on the ‘stay here’ portion of that statement.”

  We stared at each other for a moment in a silent conversation of sorts; one where I asked what had happened to his ‘I go where she goes’ policy with a quirk of my brow, and he answered with ‘rules were made to be broken,’ punctuated by a folding of his arms across his chest.

  “Cass and the others are keeping watch, so there shouldn’t be any problems,” Drew said, drawing us from our wordless argument. He put his hand on my shoulder in a comforting gesture. “We’ll get this sorted out somehow, Khara. I promise.”

  I forced a smile at the sentiment, but he and I both knew it was a promise he could not keep.

  Raze and Kaine passed Oz to exit, followed by my brothers. Oz, however, lingered for a moment before walking toward me.

  “Drew’s right. We’ll find a solution to this.”

  I stared up at the determination in his eyes and wondered if that alone was enough to will his sentiment into being. But I knew better than that, and my chest grew tighter as I acknowledged the truth.

  “I cannot lose her, Oz. It would be such a cruel twist of fate—too cruel.”

  He clasped the back of my neck and pulled me close enough to press his forehead against mine. “I will not let that happen, and I think by now you’re well aware that I’m a stubborn motherfucker who gets what he wants—always. Hell, I don’t even die when I’m supposed to—”

  “Thanks to me.”

  “Yes, because we’re a team and we figure shit out. This won’t be any different.”

  I took a deep breath and pulled away from him. “Then perhaps you should get your ass to the Hallowed Gates before Raze changes his mind and locks you out.”

  His haughty smile spread. “He could try.”

  He turned and walked away without another word, leaving me alone with my fading mother, the looming threat of the fear god, and the reality that it was not just my mother who might disappear from existence at any moment. That her fate and mine might be the same in the end.

  Minutes turned to hours, and I slowly began to lose my mind. I could only check on my mother so many times before the task became little more than a reminder of how useless I felt. Anger began to boil, and I soon found myself in need of space and a cool night breeze to combat the fire inside me.

  I reached for the front door right before a familiar, ominous sensation pressed down upon me, hemming me into the Victorian. I felt Phobos before I saw him, which was undoubtedly his plan. To trap me. To take me once all the others were gone. But what he had not planned for was the army of dead warriors that protected our little piece of Detroit.

  The army that he could not corrupt and control.

  With that advantage tucked away safely in my mind, I stepped out onto the porch to find him staring at me from under the streetlamp on the far side of the once-grand street. Standing there in all his pale, white-haired glory, the god of fear stared at me, his head cocked to the side in contemplation.

  And all the while, my dead brothers stalked through the shadows.

  “You dare to come out alone,” he said, amusement in his voice that did not show in his expression.

  “I am never truly alone, Phobos.” The moment those words left my mouth, my brothers stepped out from the various yards and homes and hiding spots they had been tucked away in. “As you can now see.” The flawless white skin of his forehead crinkled in frustration as he assessed the warriors slowly surrounding him. “I do not believe you have had the pleasure of meeting my family—the res
t of them, that is. Allow me to introduce you to Ares’ other sons, the Patronus Ceteri brothers recently freed from the Elysian Fields.” His black eyes went wide with realization. “The ones whose minds you cannot hold.”

  “So clever you are,” he murmured, “just like my Eos.”

  “Your Eos is dead—by your hand, as the story goes—and I have no intention of taking her place.”

  “And yet you will.”

  My brothers stiffened at his words but made no moves. Instead, they awaited my command.

  “Tell me something, Phobos,” I said, descending the stairs, “how long do you think it will take me to learn how to eliminate you? You must know it is only a matter of time, do you not?”

  Low, rumbling laughter escaped him. “For all your similarities to my sister, I forget that you are not one and the same. She lacked your hubris—as you once did. Do I have your lover—the Dark One—to thank for that? Perhaps I will when next we meet.”

  His question was a well-honed blade, cutting right through my greatest weakness—the ones I cared for most.

  “You are avoiding my question.”

  “As you’re avoiding mine.”

  I walked up to the curb, Cass and Thomas coming to flank me.

  “What’s the plan?” the former whispered in my ear.

  “That depends entirely on him.”

  Phobos’ dark eyes flared with amusement. “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can I help force your hand, Khara? Because I do so love to watch you in action…” When I did not respond, he dared to step into the narrow street that divided us. “Tell me something. How did your mother fare?” An all-knowing smile graced his angular face. “Is she…back to normal?”

  “She will be soon,” I replied through clenched teeth.

  “Then you must have found her just in time.”

  “I did not; your brother Deimos did.”

  His gaze never faltered. “How very fortuitous that he happened upon her just in time…”

  Ice shot down my spine, but I forced a neutral expression and made my limbs loosen; a credit to my upbringing in the Underworld, to be sure. Because the subtext of Phobos’ words was as clear as him standing before me.