by Kate Martin
“Too late.” An arm closed around Bri’s middle, lifting him and dragging him back towards the star. Bri struggled, fought to get free, but each time his hand or arm touched the elder hauling him away, the myst returned with the darkness.
Then the screaming began.
The elder dragged Bri to the center of the star, shoving him to a hard stone slab. He bound Bri’s wrist, stretched out his arms, and staked him to a nearby patch of earth with a tent spike. The stone beneath Bri bruised his knees, and the rope chafed, but no matter how hard he pulled, he could not free himself, even after the elder left him. The children were taken to each of the nine points, held by an elder as they thrashed or cried or both. Petrescu went to stand over Bri, but paid him no mind. He lifted his hands to the sky and spoke in a language Bri did not know. The storm cheered him on, thunder clapping, and lightning flashing. The nine elders mimicked the king, raising their knives to the sky, the orange light of the fires reflecting off the blades. Then the words stopped, and the King dropped his arms in one clear signal.
Bri stared at the redheaded girl directly in front of him, her green gaze less steady than before. The lightning made the knife blaze with color, and Bri heard himself scream, felt the pain in his own throat, as the elders dragged the blades across the throats of their victims in unison. Bri pressed his face into his bound arm, but even over the rain and the blood rushing past his ears, he heard their bodies thump against the ground.
Footsteps approached him, one of the elders no doubt, and Petrescu expressed his approval of their progress. Then he said, “Bleed him. Slowly.”
The myst crept closer, the tendrils like beckoning hands, offering salvation, or at least a reprieve. Bri refused. He hated the myst, hated that it showed him things he could never prevent.
Then he felt the bite of a knife.
Throughout the agony, the myst continued to call to him. His vision spun, the fires and their smoke taking on nightmarish shapes, the chanting of the elders and the King sounding like ominous growls in the night. Bri strained to breathe, the air too thick to enter his lungs.
The myst tendrils licked his hands, and the darkness blotted away all else. He knew, knew, the myst would be little better, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, and in a moment of weakness, he gave in. Death was coming either way. He reached out and accepted the myst’s touch.
And just like that, the Mortal Realm was gone.
The myst swirled around him, silver and blue—the colors of his nightmares. Only he wasn’t asleep, and nothing would be able to dispel the dark premonitions that forced their way into his mind.
Bri braced himself as the tendrils and wisps of the myst swirled by, taunting him, teasing him with their glimpses of the future. He’d seen the ocean once, and it had reminded him of the myst, rising and crashing. One particularly strong wave had knocked him down and he’d gone under for a moment—the myst was like that.
His entire short life had been nothing but dark visions, unheeded prophecies, and blood; it seemed fitting that his death would be no different. The King had gone too far this time. Bri could feel his life slipping away from his open wounds.
The myst’s tendrils pulled at him, sliding their visions through his mind. They loved an audience, and Bri was an easy target. Seeing their visions hurt, an ache that settled somewhere deep within his soul, and then spread outward to his bones. He saw death and bloody rituals, and held perfectly still, afraid to fight lest the myst linger longer.
The rainstorm raged on, even there. Thunder made the myst shudder, and lightning made it shine. In that chaos, a mirror rose from the floor of the myst, ornate and smooth. The myst curved and spun itself into a semblance of carvings, then washed away the mirror’s center in one smooth wave, leaving a perfect surface that reflected Bri’s image.
Or rather, something that was almost his image.
Bri stared at the boy, who stared back at him. The hair was the same auburn as his own, with the front almost too long. Bri envied his reflection’s cropped hair that barely reached his ears. His own hair fell into his eyes, long overdue for a trim and wash. The reflection wore no shirt, only finely made trousers, and his chest was the shape of someone well-fed, with the luxury of living indoors, out of the harsh, burning rays of the sun.
He lifted a hand towards the mirror, and the other familiar-yet-strange boy reached towards him. Was this who he could have been? Should have been? The myst was cruel to reveal such a thing now when he could feel his body, so far away, creeping steadily towards death.
His fingers brushed not cool glass, but warm flesh. Tip to tip, then palm to palm. Their hands matched up perfectly, but his reflection’s hand was stronger than his own. It felt different, full of power. A power that tugged and pulled, the same way it felt to touch another person and get thrown unwillingly into the myst.
Bri drew his hand away.
The face that so mirrored his own suddenly twisted with a cruel smile. The boy grabbed Bri’s wrist and pulled, yanking him past the barrier of the mirror with fierce strength until they were face-to-face.
“Found you,” the boy said in a dark voice.
The psychic pull from the other boy burned into him. Bri struggled, but the strength of the reflection held firm. Something deep within him stirred, like a piece of his soul trying to get free, to go to the other boy…
The mirror cracked, one single line, then another, like cracks in ice. The boy in the glass tensed, staring at the lines, following them with a panicked gaze. With his free hand he traced the cracks, fingers twitching and working against them, as if he could drive them back, smooth them away. “No,” he said. “No. Who’s doing this? No, no, NO!”
The mirror shattered with that last cry, and Bri pulled himself free, tumbling backwards. Shards of glass cascaded through the myst, reflecting the blue and silver wisps and clattering to the ground. The devastated scream of the other boy echoed from some far-off place. Heart pounding, Bri scrambled to his feet and ran recklessly into the myst.
The storm went still and quiet.
The pull from the mirror was gone, but a terrible, dark presence had risen up in its place. He knew that presence all too well. He had seen it in the myst. Felt it over his mother’s bedside all those years ago. Death.
“Have you seen your own death, little one?” a new voice said, a voice he had never before heard in the myst. It wasn’t Death. Death had no voice, only reapers.
Bri stumbled, the thicker fog licking at his back, threatening to swallow him. All around, the darkness swirled with images and stray emotions, poking, prodding, tearing through him without warning or permission.
An invisible vine caught his legs and sent him tumbling. The cold black fog rolled over him, hovering, pinning him.
“Death wants you, little one,” the voice said as Death crept closer. “Will you answer its call? Or mine?”
The fog descended, forcing its way into Bri. With each excruciating movement, the body he had left behind pulled on him. A body that burned, ached, and struggled to breathe.
Death dangled the possibility of freedom, of release, just out of reach.
“Will you answer? Or will you bargain with me?” the voice came again.
The vine around his leg slithered upwards against his skin, coiling around his waist, chest, and finally over his shoulder and down his arm towards his hand. Glowing green, with the tiniest of leaves, the vine pulsed with intelligence and life, and from it came the voice.
“I will protect you,” it said. “I will stop what you cannot stop on your own. You can have your revenge on whomever you choose. My strength will be yours. You want to help people? I can give you that strength. All you have to do is say yes.”
Far off, his body grew weaker. The pain became an echo, and Death crept closer to his heart.
He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to be lost within the visions forever with no escape either. He had only wanted to help, to use this horrid power to relieve someone else’s sufferi
ng, but any attempts had only ended in beatings and misery. His body had always betrayed him, made him frail and more vulnerable to the power that lived inside him, yet outside his control. But death? He wasn’t ready for that.
“All that would be in the past. I can give you a new life, a second chance, but you are running out of time.”
The offer had its appeal. But at what cost?
A light laughter filled his thoughts, feminine, and clearly belonging to the voice. “Once I have fulfilled my commitment to you, I ask only one thing. Your soul.”
Death’s power brushed against his heart, causing it to seize.
Bri responded in the last moment of thought available to him. “Yes.”
The myst rushed away, dispelled. He had returned to his battered body, with fires burning all around, heating the stone beneath him. He screamed, his vision became cloudy, his lips split and bled as he spoke that single word over and over again. “Yes.”
He heard the smile in the voice. “Deal.”
— CHAPTER THREE —
Just outside the city limits, on a piece of land far larger than one person had any business owning, sat the manor that had been Alec’s home for the better part of the last two hundred years. He and his few companions had to leave periodically, allowing a generation to pass before moving back. After all, immortal faces that never aged would raise suspicion, and people weren’t exactly knocking on demonic doors wanting contracts anymore.
It had been a long walk carrying the unconscious boy in his arms, herding his addled mistress to follow, yet Alec didn’t exactly feel a rush of relief when they finally stepped through the front door.
Mary, the housekeeper, came when he called for her. She was a usually pleasant woman, her body as soulless as Alec’s, but her sunny demeanor shifted the moment she laid eyes on the motley crew at her door.
“Gods preserve us, Alec, what happened?”
“Can you take the boy?” Alec said, shifting the child into her hold. Carma had wandered off, down the hall and away from the stairs to the second floor, where Alec wanted her.
“Of course.” Even though it had been centuries, Alec noted the ease with which she held a child. He also saw the panic creeping into her posture. “Is that Carma?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ll handle her, then come to check on the kid.” He had already started after her. It was a well-practiced task. “Where’s Dorothea?” he called back, almost as an afterthought. They might need the witch’s skills.
“She left,” Mary said, cradling the boy against her chest as if it hadn’t been centuries since she’d held a child. “Took nothing with her, just wandered out. I don’t expect to see her for a few days.”
Alec cursed. “Of course. Well, let me know if you need anything.”
“I’ve got him, Alec. Don’t worry about us.”
It took some doing, but he got Carma tucked away in her rooms. Her suite on the second floor had been kept impeccably clean, always ready should she return. Even still, it was odd to walk through that door after so long. The click of it shutting behind him was still so familiar, as was the sight of the demon standing within.
Barring, of course, her nudity and current drunkenness.
With a calming breath, Alec forged ahead. “Come on,” he said, taking her by the elbow and drawing her away from her favorite painting—a swirling barrage of color he had never quite understood—and towards the bath. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Carma pulled away and staggered onward, nearly walking straight into one of the gas lamps that had been affixed to the wall. “I can take care of myself, thank you.” Her toe caught the edge of the newly tiled floor and sent her sprawling.
“Of course you can,” he said.
Angry now, for Carma never got embarrassed, she sat up, tossing her hair back out of her face. “You changed the floor.”
“How nice of you to notice.”
“It’s too slippery.”
“Only for those drunk with the blood haze.”
“I am not drunk.”
“Mad then.”
She scrunched up her nose a bit. “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”
Alec leaned against the door frame. “Something similar.”
Silent for a long moment, Carma looked about, still sitting on one hip, looking much like the mermaid in the painting that hung above her large claw-footed bath. She was all human now; her skin a soft version of the hard bronze it became when she was in demon form, her hair now white silver, with none of the fiery red touching its ends. “Fetch Mary,” she said.
“Mrs. McCallahan is busy at the moment, with your boy.” He removed his coat and tossed it onto a nearby chair.
“Someone else then.”
“There is no one else.” He rolled up his sleeves.
“What have you done with my household?”
“It’s been two hundred years, Carma. Most of them died.”
“Then hire a new staff, Alec.”
“I didn’t see the need. I certainly don’t need a multitude of servants.”
“What of my other soulless? What have you done with them?”
“Those who were asleep remained that way, some fell into the sleep with you gone, and those who remained awake I told to go live their lives while we waited for you. Only Mrs. McCallahan, Brannick, and I are here in the house. And Dorothea, when she isn’t wandering off.”
Carma looked positively put out. Like a child told her toys had been given away. “Who left you to make decisions?”
“You did.”
She snorted. “Fine,” she said after a long, irritated moment. “You help me then.”
“What a novel idea.” He plucked her from the floor and deposited her on the bench beside the tub, removing the cushion first so she would not ruin it with blood. Turning on the water, he fixed the bath the way he remembered she liked it, or at least, his best approximation. After all, they had plumbing now. Carma, for her part, crawled across the floor to place her hand under the flowing faucet.
“What is this? Witchcraft?” She ran her long fingers along the pipes.
“No,” Alec said, amusement threatening to dampen his annoyance. “Just indoor plumbing. It’s new.”
“Fascinating.”
“I admit I thought so myself,” he said, ushering her in before the bath was half full.
Carma stretched out in the warm water, closing her eyes and scooping up water to run over her chest. Alec began the scrubbing with her feet.
“Come in with me,” she said, as he reached her knees.
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because you are covered in blood, and as appealing as that is to you, I don’t quite enjoy it.”
“Liar. You’re just angry with me for being gone so long.”
Perhaps a part of that was true, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit that to her. “Get cleaned up and rest.”
She shifted in the water, kneeling up until her face was only a breath away from Alec’s, their lips nearly touching. “Who is master here, Alec? You or me?”
She was too close again. A single pulse of power unleashed in the room, and Alec recognized it as his own soul. It made his head spin, his heart race. It had an intoxicating effect, and Alec had been sober for two hundred years. He could easily lose his ability to reason. It was much like the effect of a good, bloody kill on a demon. And if both of them ended up intoxicated…
Dropping the soap into the water, Alec stood. “Clean yourself up if that’s the way you want to be.” Walking away, he made a point of leaving a clean towel on the floor.
He heard the water slosh behind him. “Are you sure you want to say no? How long has it been, Alec?”
Arrogant, heartless, daughter of a—He spun on his heel to face her. “Not twenty four turns, actually. I do quite well for myself. It’s been rather freeing to have you gone.”
“Careful, Alec,” she said, her tone low, her eyes darkening. “Make me angry and
I could withhold my affections.”
“Wouldn’t that just be terrible. Sober up.” Before either of them could say anything else, he left the bath, closing the door tightly behind him.
An angry scream preceded something hitting the door on the other side.
Fire and brimstone. She is going to make me regret that.
But he needed her sober, needed her clearheaded enough to tell him what had happened to her, and what had happened in that field.
And why she wanted that boy so badly.
With Mrs. McCallahan busy, and Brannick, the butler, tending to other household matters now that their mistress had returned, Alec went down to the kitchen himself. They had no cook, tending to their own needs instead. Simplicity had ruled in Carma’s absence, and already Alec mourned its loss. He helped himself to some bread, cheese, and fruit, as well as a small bowl of broth from the pot heating over the fire. Once upstairs again, he passed the broth off to Mrs. McCallahan, who assured him the boy was resting peacefully. Trusting her judgment, Alec steeled his courage and went back to Carma’s suite.
All the power and command of an old and well-establish demon waited for him.
She was clean, dressed in a silk robe that tied with a thick belt and hugged all her curves. Her long silver hair hung loose and wet over her shoulders. There was no trace of the blood haze left in her sapphire and gold eyes.
She sobered up faster than he remembered. Or maybe the anger he saw blazing behind those twice-ringed eyes was the reason.
He’d had better plans.
Too late to turn back now. “Hungry?” he asked, as if he wasn’t facing down an agitated predator. He carried the food to her sitting area, laid it out on the table, then went to sit in one of the red spoon-backed armchairs.
He never reached the cushion.
Carma grabbed his throat. He felt the edge of the fireplace mantel pressing into his back and the heat of her breath on his face. “Don’t toy with me, Alec.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
“My patience is not vast. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped with no body for so long? To hear, and see, and think, but feel nothing?”
