The Soulless

by Kate Martin

  “No,” Alec said gently, working hard to not show his satisfaction that she’d brought up the subject he most wanted to broach. “No. I don’t.” With a gentleness to match his voice, he reached for the hand she had locked around his throat. “Carma, what happened to you? The last I saw of you, you claimed you had some business to take care of in Hell.”

  She allowed him to ease her fingers away from his neck. She looked away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I did.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Some caravan witch caught me by surprise. I walked straight into her labrynth.”

  That she would admit to it told Alec much about her state of mind. The Carma he knew, the Carma he was sure would return by the morning if not sooner, would never have so readily admitted to being caught off guard. “What did she do?”

  “The labrynth separated me from my body and tossed it into the Inbetween, while the rest of me became trapped in the myst. I only escaped because of those foolish caravan summoners and their faulty labrynth.” She looked at him. “Two hundred years, you said?”

  He shrugged. “One hundred and ninety-nine.”

  She drew away and turned her attention once again to that mottled painting. “And the other demons?”

  He kept the armchair between them. A feeble shield, but one that made him feel better. “Some starved without souls. Some retreated to Hell. Others are still here, and quite strong.”

  The question he knew she wanted to ask hung on the air. The question of a particular demon’s fate. Alec said nothing. He sure as hell wasn’t going to ask it for her.

  Carma kept silent as well.

  The silence went on for some time. Alec finally gave in and sat, unable to stand without fidgeting, or screaming at her, or any other number of things that would result in a fight. To further prevent himself from speaking, he ate.

  Another long moment passed, and she sat with him. “I want you to look after Bri,” she said.

  “Bri?”

  “The boy,” she said, as though it should have been obvious. Alec supposed it was a good sign she had learned the kid’s name.

  “Why me?”

  “I have things to do. I need to know what’s changed in two hundred years, and I need to look into a few whispers I heard while trapped in the myst. Don’t pretend you want nothing to do with him. We both know it would be a lie.”

  The memories rose again. A face so achingly familiar and far too young to be—He shoved the thoughts away. There was no point in arguing. “You said he was the last piece. What did you mean?”

  Carma waved him off. “Never you mind that. The rantings of a crazy person.”

  “So now you admit to your madness?”

  “Just look after the boy, Alec. Don’t make such a fuss. Think of him as a replacement for, oh, what was his name? Matt? Morg…?”

  “Marc.” Fire filled Alec’s veins. The armchair toppled over backwards when he stood. His rage called up the Hell power that was his by right, filling the void where his soul once was. “His name was Marc, and you have no right speaking of him. None.”

  He stormed out. He couldn’t look at her. He could barely breathe. The Hell power ran through him, and his fist scorched the wallpaper when he was finally alone in the hall, smoke curling around his fingers. Two millennia had done little to quell the pain, but he was usually more controlled than this. Alec told himself it was the shock of Carma’s return, of the circumstances of the evening, of her insensitive comment.

  Carefully, he counted in his native tongue, calming himself until he could drive out the addictive power of Hell. He didn’t want it, didn’t like it. It had taken him centuries to be able to go a day without that heat coursing through him. He wasn’t about to give in to the rush of it now.

  When he felt himself under control once again, he realized he’d walked the length of the hall, down into the other wing, right outside the door of the room where the boy slept. Even in the dark, peering in through the cracked door, Alec could see the demon’s mark that wound about the boy’s right forearm. It made him sick to his stomach.

  Carma was right, as wrong as she was. He would look after the boy. Not to replace, but in honor of.

  He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  — CHAPTER FOUR —

  The myst was the one constant in Bri’s life, and the one thing that separated him from everyone else.

  Bri knew no one else could see it. The first time he had described the swirling wisps of blue and silver to someone other than his mother, he’d been laughed at. The second time had earned him a concerning look. His mother had warned him not to talk about it, nor the things he saw, but when a stranger had touched him on the street and Bri had seen the man’s future—a terrible death that left Bri shaking and retching—she had clutched him close and ran.

  They had never really stopped running, living alone, away from even small towns.

  Then she’d died while traveling with the caravan, and the myst consumed Bri. His life became a nightmare of futures not his own, and the caravan leaders capitalized on their “fortune teller.” The people of the cities loved a spectacle.

  Then the caravaners had become obsessed with the idea of adding a demon to their show, but controlling such a creature required blood. Powerful blood. Bri’s blood. For a year they had bled him in pursuit of their goal, and finally they’d succeeded.

  The demon came, a voice in the myst, and Bri had been given a choice.

  Go with Death, or trade his soul and be free. Live.

  Bri chose life.

  For a moment, he thought he saw himself in the distance: a reflection in smooth glass, surrounded by the constant swirl of the mist. Then he felt the demon take hold, and everything else faded away.

  Dim sunlight and the patter of rain on a window pane were the first things he sensed. Bri turned his head, and twisted around in the soft sheets as his eyes struggled to open.

  The sunlight came in through a nearby window, lazing its way across a floor of polished wood. A plush armchair sat in the corner, and a desk of carved dark wood with a matching chair took up the far wall. A fireplace sat against another, the flames crackling despite it being summer. Bri shivered and his heart began to race. He fingered the soft sheets once again, his hands shaking harder with each stroke of the fine material.

  He shut his eyes and could hear the steady hum of the myst and its knowledge alongside his frantic pulse. The four bed posts around him loomed like four inescapable guards, their presence felt without even looking.

  This obviously wasn’t his room in the small wagon he and his mother had once inhabited together, where her things still hung on the walls. Anything of value Petrescu had sold, but Bri had managed to keep her favorite shawl and a woven tapestry that she’d been gifted by a grateful client when he was a baby.

  Bri tried to remember the last few hours, the past day, and came up empty. He had woken like this before, in a strange place, with no memory. Yet he was alone. He forced his eyes open, confirming that. A blessing? He’d never had many, but he couldn’t risk wasting time.

  His legs tangled in the sheets as he attempted to throw himself from the bed. He hit the floor hard, not catching himself in time to spare his chin. The shock sent sparks through his vision and he tasted blood. His arm ached where he’d been cut, as he scrambled onto shaky legs and made for the door.

  The hallway was darker than the room he had awoken in, windowless and decorated with a blood red carpet and darkly rendered paintings. Bri ran, his feet sinking into the plush carpet, and his stiff legs causing him to lurch uncontrollably. The hall seemed to never end, with closed doors on both sides, and more sinister paintings watching him. The myst, silver and blue, clawed at their edges, threatening to make them speak and move. Bri closed his eyes and ran blindly. But growing louder, yet never clearer, were the voices of the myst—the voices of the future.

  He slammed into something large and solid that made the voices go silent for a short moment befor
e he landed on his tailbone. Then they returned to their usual constant hum.

  A man towered over him. Tall, broad, wearing an expensive suit, with an unremarkable face. He had that cool, collected energy of a servant. Although the man’s mouth moved, Bri could not hear him over the beating of his heart and had no idea what he said. He dodged an offered hand, scrambled around the man’s legs, and bolted further down the hall.

  The voices chased him, still unintelligible. All around, he felt the pull of the myst offering him false escape. It hurt to breathe. A burning welled up inside him, making him shiver violently. He staggered and grabbed for the wall, and felt something cool and smooth beneath his fingers instead.

  The mirror offered Bri his reflection. Pale and bruised. There were new cuts along his arms, and scrapes along his jaw. Some had been wrapped in white gauze, spotting now with blood. One such wound had opened up, and began itching as the white bandage quickly turned red. Memories flooded against the future the myst always burdened him with; memories of the ritual and the other children. Their throats slashed…

  Feeling the bile of his empty stomach rise up, Bri leaned into the mirror, hand pressed against that of his reflection’s. The glass felt soothing and cool against his forehead. The myst crept closer, touching him, showing him things he didn’t want to see in his mind’s eye—cities burning, men attacked in the streets, families growing and living and dying. Its tendrils were familiar to him, his only constant companion in life, but then new lines appeared, swirling and weaving, forming a shape over his visions as well as his reflection.

  Bri knew the name for this. Labrynth. Magic.

  His reflection shifted, changing, yet still the same. The eyes darkened, the mouth pulled tight in a line of concentration.

  Then the hand of his reflection wrapped about his own, and that mouth shifted into a smile that made Bri’s fevered blood run cold.

  “Found you,” his reflection said.

  Bri screamed, tore himself away from the mirror, feeling the magic pop and break as he did so. Then he ran until the hallway ended and he had nowhere else to go.

  Alec was on his feet and running to the second floor of the manor the instant he heard Mary’s terrified call for him.

  He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the top just as she spun around to point at the end of the hall. There, the boy had curled up against the wall, his face hidden, his entire body shaking. Brannick joined them, approaching cautiously as Alec asked, “What happened?”

  Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. I came up to check on him and he was running like the very gates of Hell were at his heels.” Her voice trailed off as she turned to Brannick for help.

  The middle-aged butler just shook his head, never a man of many words.

  Alec sighed, then tried to give Mary a reassuring smile, but it felt flat. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “What if you need help?” Mary asked.

  Brannick took her by the elbow. “It’s probably best if no one is crowding the boy. Come.”

  He led her away. Alec waited until their footsteps had faded to a distant echo, ensuring privacy, before proceeding down the hall. He stopped just shy of the end, giving the boy space, and crouched down. A moment of silence passed as Alec wracked his brain to remember the boy’s name. “Bri?”

  The boy visibly flinched, pressing himself even tighter to the wall.

  Gods, this isn’t going to be easy. Damn you, Carma.

  Alec settled in, lowering one knee. “My name is Alec. I’m a—a friend of Carma’s.”

  The trembling in Bri’s body stilled for a breath, then returned. But the boy turned his head, peeking at Alec from behind the long bangs. “Carma?” Bri’s voice was small, shaky.

  “Do you remember anything?” Alec asked.

  “The myst.”

  “The myst?” Alec couldn’t help the rise in his voice, and he cursed himself for it the moment the boy flinched once again. The myst wasn’t something anyone could—no. Now was not the time. He filed that bit of information away for later. First things first. “Carma. She has long silver hair, blue and gold eyes. Can’t miss her.”

  “Oh.” Bri went quiet then, slowly lifting his right arm and stared at the vine that pulsed there, peeking out from beneath a bandage.

  “I made a deal,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Bri dropped his arm and looked all around as though seeing the hall for the first time. “Where am I?” He fisted his short hair and a small cry escaped his lips. “I didn’t—I can’t…”

  Alec took a chance and moved closer. “Bri, look at me. You’re safe here.”

  Bri didn’t seem to hear him. His head knocked back against the wall as his gaze finally fell on Alec’s outstretched hand. “Don’t touch me!”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  The boy just stared at him, utterly frozen.

  Alec sighed. “That’s what everyone says, isn’t it?” He let his hand fall back to his side, “I don’t know what I can do to convince you. Maybe…? No.” He sat completely on the floor, folding his legs underneath him, and felt the cool chill of the small blade he always kept at his back. It was worth a shot.

  Careful of each move he made, he reached around and pulled the blade free. “How about this?”

  Bri went deathly still again.

  Alec flipped the blade around in his hand, offering it to the boy hilt first. “Take it. If I do anything you don’t like you can gut me.” He meant it. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would be hell to heal.

  Bri breathed, slow and deep. He reached for the blade as though he expected it to jump out and bite him, but his small fingers curled around the hilt, and Alec relinquished his hold.

  “There. Better?”

  No answer. But then again, Alec hadn’t expected one. “It must be confusing, waking up in a strange place.”

  “I’m used to it.”

  By the way Bri stared at the carpet, the blade gripped tightly in both hands, awkwardly positioned between his body and Alec’s, Alec decided not to press. He went with the most mundane question available. “Are you feeling any better?” He could still see the flush of fever in the boy’s pale cheeks despite the dim light of the hall.

  “I’m sick again.”

  Again? “Yes. You’ve had a fever, and I don’t think it’s quite run its course yet.”

  “I need to get rid of it. It makes the visions worse.”

  “Visions? What visions?”

  The boy studied him a long moment, those silver-brown eyes searching for something Alec couldn’t begin to imagine. He had the sudden feeling that those eyes had seen far more than they should. “Do you really not know?”

  “Truly I don’t.”

  “Then why did you take me?”

  “I didn’t. Carma had me bring you here after you made your deal with her. To keep you safe.”

  Lifting his right arm, the boy traced that subtle vine with a finger. Alec noticed his eyes rolling a bit. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Bri said, struggling to stand.

  Alec was there in an instant, grabbing the boy by the elbow to steady him and keeping him from landing flat on his face. Bri flinched, the blade clattering to the floor, then went totally still. Worried, but thankful the boy hadn’t yet had much to eat, Alec braced himself for the heaving he was sure to come—and instead found himself on the receiving end of an intense, penetrating, and disbelieving stare.

  “You’re quiet,” Bri said.

  “I’m what?”

  “Quiet.” Everything about Bri suddenly changed. He grasped Alec’s bare arms, running his hands all the way up to where the rolled sleeves of his shirt ended. He grabbed, then held still, as though listening, then changed his grip and went still again. Alec let him, only daring to gently touch the boy’s face to get his attention after those frantic grasps began to weaken.

  “Bri? What do you mean? What’s quiet?”

  “You are. Everything is. I can’t hear anything. I don’t see anythi
ng. It’s all gone!” He slumped, knees giving out, and Alec scooped him up quickly. Bri reached out and laid both hands on Alec’s face. “How?”

  Alec headed back towards the boy’s room. The fever still burned through him; hallucinations were a possibility…“I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.”

  Bri sagged against him, his eyes fluttering shut as though fighting the instinct to sleep. “All I hear is me. It’s odd.”

  Nudging open the door, Alec got the boy quickly in bed, fixing the tumbled covers that looked to have been hastily pulled apart. “I think you should get some rest. We can figure this out later.”

  He had released the boy for only a moment, but apparently that was long enough. Bri sat up in bed, grabbing Alec by the wrist and pulling him back. “Don’t go.”

  “Don’t go?”

  That earlier fear that had changed to bold disbelief melted into shyness. “I—please. Stay? It comes back when you leave. And the fever it—it gives me nightmares.”

  Alec sat on the edge of the bed. “And when you touch me it goes away? Quiet?”

  The yes that answered him was a whisper.

  Carma and I are going to have a very long talk. Taking Bri’s hand, Alec turned around so he could lean against the headboard, giving the kid a nudge to move over a bit. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

  Curled tightly around their joined hands, Bri was already asleep.

  — CHAPTER FIVE —

  For the ninth time since she had ventured outside, Lillianna violently waved her arm to dispel the raging hellfire that tickled her heels. She had wanted nothing more than a pleasant walk under the orange sky through her garden of demon’s glove, fox tails, deathly nightshade, and assorted climbing ivies, but apparently that was too much to ask. The hot blue flames that jumped up from between each stone and pebble on the walk were indicators of the magic that raged both in Hell and in the Mortal Realm.

  Which brought her back inside, through the long stone halls that shimmered with the heat of Hell, and to the bright, all-glass room that stood alone at the eastern most edge of the manor.