Micah drawled, “I summoned the kristallos to nudge you both along, making sure it kept just enough out of camera range, knowing its connection to the Horn would lead you toward it. Injecting Tertian, the acolyte, and the temple guard with the synth—letting them rip themselves apart—was also to prompt you. Tertian, to give us an excuse to come to you for this investigation, and the others to keep pointing you toward the Horn. I targeted two people from the temple that were on duty the night Danika stole it.”
“And the bombing at the White Raven, with an image of the Horn on the crate? Another nudge?”
“Yes, and to raise suspicions that humans were behind everything. I planted bombs throughout the city, in places I thought you might go. When Athalar’s phone location pinged at the club, I knew the gods were helping me along. So I remotely detonated it.”
“I could have died.”
“Maybe. But I was willing to bet Athalar would shield you. And why not cause a little chaos, to stir more resentment between the humans and Vanir? It would only make it easier to convince others of the wisdom of my plan to end this conflict. Especially at a cost most would deem too high.”
Hunt’s head swam. No one in the room spoke.
Bryce slowed her retreat as she winced in pain, “And the apartment building? I thought it was Hunt, but it wasn’t, was it? It was you.”
“Yes. Your landlord’s request went to all of my triarii. And to me. I knew Danika had left nothing there. But by that time, Bryce Quinlan, I was enjoying watching you squirm. I knew Athalar’s plan to acquire the synth would soon be exposed—and I took a guess that you’d be willing to believe the worst of him. That he’d used the lightning in his veins to endanger innocent people. He’s a killer. I thought you might need a reminder. That it played into Athalar’s guilt was an unexpected boon.”
Hunt ignored the eyes that glanced his way. The fucking asshole had never planned to honor his bargain. If he’d solved the case, Micah would have killed him. Killed them both. He’d been played like a fucking fool.
Bryce asked, voice raw, “When did you start to think it was me?”
“That night it attacked Athalar in the garden. I realized only later that he’d probably come into contact with one of Danika’s personal items, which must have come into contact with the Horn.”
Hunt had touched Danika’s leather jacket that day. Gotten its scent on him.
“Once I got Athalar off the streets, I summoned the kristallos again—and it went right to you. The only thing that had changed was that you finally, finally took that amulet off. And then …” He chuckled. “I looked at Hunt Athalar’s photos of your time together. Including that one of your back. The tattoo you had inked there, days before Danika’s death, according to the list of Danika’s last locations Ruhn Danaan sent to you and Athalar—whose account is easily accessible to me.”
Bryce’s fingers curled into the carpet, as if she’d sprout claws. “How do you know the Horn will even work now that it’s in my back?”
“The Horn’s physical shape doesn’t matter. Whether it is fashioned as a horn or a necklace or a powder mixed with witch-ink, its power remains.”
Hunt silently swore. He and Bryce had never visited the tattoo parlor. Bryce had said she knew why Danika was there.
Micah went on, “Danika knew the Archesian amulet would hide you from any detection, magical or demonic. With that amulet, you were invisible to the kristallos, bred to hunt the Horn. I suspect she knew that Jesiba Roga has similar enchantments upon this gallery, and perhaps Danika placed some upon your apartments—your old one and the one she left to you—to make sure you would be even more veiled from it.”
Hunt scanned the gallery camera feeds from the street. Where the fuck was the Aux?
Bryce spat, “And you thought no one would figure this out? What about Briggs’s testimony?”
“Briggs is a raving fanatic who’d been caught by Danika before a planned bombing. No one would listen to his pleas of innocence.” Especially when his lawyer had been provided by Micah.
Bryce glanced up at the camera. As if checking that it was on.
Sabine whispered, “She’s been leading him along to get a full confession.”
Despite the terror tightening his body, pride flared through Hunt.
Micah smiled again. “So here we are.”
“You’re a piece of shit,” Bryce said.
But then Micah reached into his jacket pocket. Pulled out a needle. Full of clear liquid. “Calling me names isn’t going to stop me from using the Horn.”
Hunt’s breath sawed through his chest.
Micah advanced on her. “The Horn’s remnants are now embedded in your flesh. When I inject you with synth, the healing properties in it will target and fix whatever it finds to be broken. And the Horn will again be whole. Ready for me to learn if it works at last.”
“You’d risk opening a portal to another fucking world in the middle of Crescent City,” she spat, inching farther away, “just to learn if it works?”
“If I am correct, the benefits shall far outweigh any casualties,” Micah answered mildly as a bead of liquid gleamed on the syringe’s tip. “Too bad you will not survive the synth’s side effects in order to see for yourself.”
Bryce lunged for a book on a low-lying shelf along the stairs, but Micah halted her with a leash of wind.
Her face crumpled as the Archangel knelt over her. “No.”
This couldn’t happen; Hunt couldn’t let this happen.
But Bryce could do nothing, Hunt could do nothing, as Micah stabbed the needle into her thigh. Drained it to the hilt. She screamed, thrashing, but Micah stepped back.
His power must have lessened its hold on her, because she sagged to the carpeted steps.
The bastard glanced at the clock. Assessing how much time remained until she tore herself apart. And slowly, the wounds on her battered body began to seal. Her split lip healed fully—though the bone-deep gash in her thigh knit far more slowly.
Smiling, Micah reached for the tattoo on her exposed back. “Shall we?”
But Bryce moved again—and this time Micah’s power didn’t catch her before she grabbed a book from the shelf and clutched it tight.
Golden light erupted from the book, a bubble against which Micah’s hand bounced harmlessly off. He pushed. The bubble would not yield.
Thank the gods. If it could buy her just a few more minutes until help came … But what could an Aux pack do against an Archangel? Hunt strained against his invisible bonds. Scoured his memory for anything that could be done, anyone left in the fucking city who might help—
“Very well,” Micah said, that smile remaining as he again tested the golden barrier. “There are other ways to get you to yield.”
Bryce was shaking in her golden bubble. Hunt’s heart stopped as Micah strode down the mezzanine steps. Heading straight for where Syrinx cowered behind the couch. “No,” Bryce breathed. “No—”
The chimera thrashed, biting at the Archangel, who grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.
Bryce dropped the book. The golden bubble vanished. But when she tried to rise on her still-healing leg, it collapsed. Even the synth couldn’t heal fast enough for it to bear weight.
Micah just carried Syrinx along. Over to the tank.
“PLEASE,” Bryce screamed. Again, she tried to move. Again, again, again.
But Micah didn’t even falter as he opened the door to the small stairs that led to the top of the nøkk’s tank. Bryce’s screaming was unending.
Declan switched the feed over to a camera atop the tank—just as Micah flipped open the feeding hatch. And threw Syrinx into the water.
78
He couldn’t swim.
Syrinx couldn’t swim. He didn’t stand a chance of getting out, getting free of the nøkk—
From her angle below, Bryce could only glimpse the bottoms of Syrinx’s frantic, desperate legs as he struggled to stay at the surface. She dropped the book, the golden bubble r
upturing, and tried to rise to her feet.
Micah emerged from the door to the tank stairwell. His power hit her a moment later.
It flipped her, pinning her facedown on the carpeted stairs. Exposing her back to him.
She writhed, the ebbing pain in her leg secondary to the tingling numbness creeping through her blood. Syrinx was drowning, he was—
Micah loomed over her. She stretched her arm out—toward the shelf. Her tingling fingers brushed over the titles. On the Divine Number; The Walking Dead; The Book of Breathings; The Queen with Many Faces …
Syrinx was thrashing and thrashing, still fighting so hard—
And then Micah sent a blast of white-hot flame straight into her back. Into the Horn.
She screamed, even as the fire didn’t burn, but rather absorbed into the ink, raw power filling her, flame turning to ice and cracking through her blood like shifting glaciers.
The air in the room seemed to suck in on itself, tighter and tighter and tighter—
It blasted outward in a violent ripple. Bryce screamed, hoarfrost in her veins sizzling into burning agony. Upstairs, glass shattered. Then nothing.
Nothing. She shuddered on the ground, tingling ice and searing flame spasming through her.
Micah looked around. Waited.
Bryce could barely breathe, trembling as she waited for a portal to open, for some hole to another world to appear. But nothing occurred.
Disappointment flickered in Micah’s eyes before he said, “Interesting.”
The word told her enough: he’d try again. And again. It wouldn’t matter if she was alive or a pile of self-destructed pulp. Her body would still bear the Horn’s ink—the Horn itself. He’d lug around her corpse if he had to until he found a way to open a portal to another world.
She’d figured it out in the hours after the kristallos’s attack at the docks, when she’d seen herself in the mirror. And began to suspect that the tattoo on her back was not in any alphabet she knew because it was not an alphabet. Not one from Midgard. She’d looked again at all the locations Danika had visited that last week, and saw that only the tattoo shop had gone unchecked. Then she’d realized the amulet was gone, and she had been attacked. Just as Hunt had been attacked by the kristallos in the park—after he’d touched Danika’s jacket in the gallery. Touched Danika’s scent, full of the Horn.
Bryce strained, hauling herself against the invisible grip of Micah’s power. Her fingers brushed a dark purple book spine.
Syrinx, Syrinx, Syrinx—
“Maybe carving the Horn from you will be more effective,” Micah murmured. A knife hummed free from its sheath at his thigh. “This will hurt, I’m afraid.”
Bryce’s finger hooked on the lip of the book’s spine. Please.
It did not move. Micah knelt over her.
Please, she begged the book. Please.
It slid toward her fingers.
Bryce whipped the book from its shelf and splayed open its pages.
Greenish light blasted from it. Right into Micah’s chest.
It sent him rocketing back across the library, a clear shot to the open entry to the bathroom.
To where Lehabah waited in the shadows of the bathroom door, a small book in her own hands, whose pages she opened to unleash another blast of power against the door, propelling it shut.
The book’s power hissed over the bathroom door, sealing it tight. Locking the Archangel within.
Ruhn had not woken up this morning expecting to watch his sister die.
And his father … Ruhn’s father said nothing at the horror that unfolded.
For three heartbeats, Bryce lay on the steps as the last of her leg stitched itself together, while she stared at the shut bathroom door. It might have been funny, the idea of locking a near-god inside a bathroom, had it not been so fucking terrifying.
A strangled voice growled behind Ruhn, “Help her.”
Hunt. The muscles of his neck were bulging, fighting Sandriel’s grip on him. Indeed, Hunt’s eyes were on Sandriel as he snarled, “Help her.”
The metal bathroom door, even with the book’s power sealing it, wouldn’t hold Micah for long. Minutes, if that. And the synth in Bryce’s system … How long did she have until she turned herself into bloody ribbons?
Lehabah rushed over to Bryce just as Hunt again growled at Sandriel, “Go stop him.”
No matter that even at ungodly speeds, it would take Sandriel an hour to fly there. Thirty minutes by helicopter.
A choking sound filled the air as Sandriel clamped down on her power, silencing Hunt’s voice. “This is Micah’s territory. I do not have the authority to intervene in his business.”
Athalar still managed to get out, dark eyes blazing, “Fuck. You.”
All of Sandriel’s triarii fixed their lethal attention on Hunt. He didn’t seem to give a shit, though. Not as Bryce gasped to Lehabah, “Get the tank’s feeding dock running.”
The gaping wound in her thigh finally sealed shut thanks to the synth shooting through her blood. And then Bryce was up and running.
The bathroom door shuddered. She didn’t so much as look back as she sprinted, still limping, for the stairs to the tank. She grabbed a knife off the ground. Micah’s knife.
Ruhn had to remind himself to take a breath as Bryce hit the stairs, ripping a piece from her torn shirt, wrapping it around her thigh to bind the knife to her. A makeshift sheath.
Declan switched the feed to the small chamber atop the tank, the water sloshing through the grated floor. A three-foot square in the center opened into the gloom, the small platform on a chain anchored to the top of the tank. Lehabah floated at the controls. “It’s not attacking him,” the sprite wept. “Syrie’s just limp there, he’s dead—”
Bryce knelt, and began taking swift, deep breaths. Fast, fast, fast—
“What’s she doing?” Queen Hypaxia asked.
“She’s hyperventilating,” Tharion murmured back. “To get more air into her lungs.”
“Bryce,” Lehabah pleaded. “It’s a—”
But then Bryce sucked in one last, mighty breath, and plunged beneath the surface.
Into the nøkk’s lair. The feeding platform dropped with her, chain unraveling into the gloom, and as it raced past Bryce, she gripped the iron links, swimming down, down, down—
Bryce had no magic. No strength nor immortality to shield her. Not against the nøkk in the tank with her; not against the Archangel likely only a minute away from breaking through that bathroom door. Not against the synth that would destroy her if the rest didn’t.
His sister, his brash, wild sister—knew all that and still went to save her friend.
“It’s her Ordeal,” Flynn murmured. “This is her fucking Ordeal.”
79
The frigid water threatened to snatch the precious little breath from her lungs.
Bryce refused to think of the cold, of the lingering pain in her healed leg, of the two monsters in this library with her. One, at least, had been contained behind the bathroom door.
The other …
Bryce kept her focus upon Syrinx, refusing to let her terror take over, to let it rob her of breath as she reached the chimera’s limp body.
She would not accept this. Not for a moment.
Her lungs began burning, a growing tightness that she fought against as she bore Syrinx back toward the feeding platform, her lifeline out of the water, away from the nøkk. Her fingers latched into the chain links as the dock rose back toward the surface.
Lungs constricting, Bryce held Syrinx on the platform, letting it propel them up, up—
From the shadows of the rocks at the bottom, the nøkk burst forth. It was already smiling.
The nøkk knew she’d come for Syrinx. It had been watching her in the library for weeks now.
But the feeding platform broke the surface, Bryce with it, and she gasped down sweet, life-saving air as she heaved Syrinx over the edge and gasped to Lehabah, “Chest compressions—”
Clawed hands wrapped around her ankles, slicing her skin as they yanked her back. Her brow smashed into the metal rim of the platform before the cold water swallowed her once more.
Hunt couldn’t breathe as the nøkk slammed Bryce into the glass of the tank so hard it cracked.
The impact shook her from her stunned stupor, just as the nøkk snapped for her face.
She dodged left, but it still had its talons on her shoulders, cutting into her skin. She reached for the knife she’d tied to her thigh—
The nøkk grabbed the knife from her hands, tossing it into the watery gloom.
This was it. This was how she’d die. Not at Micah’s hand, not from the synth in her body, but by being ripped to shreds by the nøkk.
Hunt could do nothing, nothing, nothing as it again snapped for her face—
Bryce moved again. Lunging not for a hidden weapon, but another sort of attack.
She punched her right hand low into the nøkk’s abdomen—and dug inside the nearly invisible front fold. It happened so fast Hunt wasn’t sure what she’d done. Until she twisted her wrist, and the nøkk arched in pain.
Bubbles leaked from Bryce’s mouth as she wrenched its balls harder—
Every male in the pit flinched.
The nøkk let go, falling to the bottom. It was the opening Bryce needed. She drifted back against the cracked glass, braced her legs, and pushed.
It launched her into the open water. Blood from her head wound streamed in her wake, even as the synth healed the gash and prevented the blow from rendering her unconscious.
The platform dropped into the water again. Lehabah had sent it down. A final lifeline. Bryce dolphin-kicked for it, her arms pointed in front of her. Blood swirled with each undulating kick.
At the rocky bottom of the tank, the nøkk had recovered—and now bared its teeth up at the fleeing woman. Molten rage gleamed in its milky eyes.
“Swim, Bryce,” Tharion growled. “Don’t look back.”
The platform hit its lowest level. Bryce swam, her teeth gritted. The instinct to take a breath had to be horrendous.
Come on, Hunt prayed. Come on.
Bryce’s fingers wrapped around the bottom of the platform. Then the rim. The nøkk charged up from the depths, fury and death blazing in its monstrous face.
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Page 68
