Soul Hook (Devany Miller Book 5) (Devany Miller Series)

by Jen Ponce

  “She killed my brother. Ripped out his heart. It was good,” she said, unsure about the expression on his face. “He was evil.” She didn’t say more, wouldn’t say more. She hated thinking about him and what he’d done to her. She wasn’t going to tell this man anything about it. He was a stranger. “Do you take people on board your ship? Passengers? Travelers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you live in the skies? I heard you don’t ever touch the ground on your side of the world.”

  “We do live in the skies and we’ve kept away from the ground for as long as I remember. But we’ve also found out a secret. It isn’t as dangerous as we’d always been told. There’s Wild magic there, uncontrolled magic like there is in the Wilds here. My people build cities in the sky to keep away from it. The witches built magical walls to keep it out. I don’t know why people are so scared, though. It’s beautiful.”

  There was awe in his voice, a certain kind of reverence that some people reserved for the sacred. “You like it because it’s like you, huh?”

  His startled glance told her he hadn’t really thought about it that way. The Wild magic had changed her brother. Broken him, though that was only because Leon hadn’t accepted it, had fought it and been corrupted by it as a result. Her new friend Mal had been corrupted without his consent. Perhaps that was why her brother had been evil and this man … not? Maybe? Because one fought it and one had no choice.

  She would have to ponder that later when she had a moment of solitude. “How do you think we’ll get revenge on this Originator who killed her?”

  Mal shook his head. “Blood magic, surely. Group magic. Both are powerful. Combined? I can’t imagine it won’t have some effect on this man who killed her.”

  “Not man. Don’t make the mistake of thinking of them as Wydling or witch.”

  He looked amused. “Does that mean I’m not a man?”

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said honestly. “Not a witch, not a Wydling, not one of them … but perhaps more like them than either of those others.”

  “What about Devany?”

  She heard the casual curiosity in his voice. The answer meant something to him, and so Sharps took her time replying. “You were put together from a thousand different broken windows. My brother was one window, broken into a thousand pieces and put together wrong. Devany was a house that already had windows, and she just added more.”

  “That’s an apt description. Sorry about your brother.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m sorry he was broken. It’s not something that’s easy to recover from. And if I am pieces of many different things, how can I ever hope to fix myself?”

  Sharps hated the sadness in his voice, but she understood it. “Who says you need to be fixed? Aren’t you here? Aren’t you in love?”

  He didn’t answer her and that was all right. Who was she to tell him if he was broken or not?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tytan dipped a vessel into the Akashic waters, remembering the last time he’d visited with Devany. He’d forced her to help him collect the blood of murder victims. She’d cried and he’d made her do it anyway. A simple task, but it had hurt her. It hadn’t mattered then, and he wasn’t sure why it mattered now.

  His soul was gone. She was gone.

  He capped the vessel and handed it to Kroshtuka. The Slip didn’t affect the hyena, Tytan didn’t know why, and supposed it was good it didn’t. “How did her children take it?”

  “I haven’t told them.”

  They turned back toward Vasili’s, Tytan not inclined to hook them, not yet.

  “Lizzie said she hasn’t seen her in the Dreamscape. I haven’t seen her. If she isn’t there …”

  Tytan shut his eyes for a moment. “She’s gone.”

  The hyena man shrugged. “All I know is she’s not there.”

  The world spun sideways for a moment and when it righted itself, the hyena man had a grip on his arm to keep him from tipping over. “She’s gone.” It wasn’t possible. That road, believing she somehow made it, somehow beat death, that road led to insanity. He knew it even if the hyena man didn’t. “When this is all over, you tell those kids what happened to their mother. That she died exactly how she always lived—by putting others ahead of herself.”

  “Guilt is a heavy burden to bear,” he said and Tytan wanted to lay him out. The growl stilled him. “I am not prey, Skriven. You’d do well to remember that. You would do well to remember I never kept her from you, even though I know how close you are. Don’t think I am weak because of it.”

  Oh, he didn’t think Kroshtuka was weak. In the face of an Originator with terrible power, the man was unafraid. Perhaps that had something to do with him being in love with an Originator. He’d gotten used to the fire that could burn him to ash. “Duly noted.”

  “I want to visit this fleshcrawler pool.”

  “How? I mean, unless you have gills, you aren’t lasting long down there, even if the fleshies don’t decide hyena is on the menu.”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  It sounded so much like something Devany would say and it annoyed him. “We do this first. Gaius gets what he’s owed. Then I will drop you into that pool myself and watch you flounder.”

  Kroshtuka laughed and slapped Tytan on the back. “It sounds like a date.”

  He snorted.

  They got back to Vasili’s and had to weave through the crowd to find the cross Skriven. Elizabeta was berating him and he was letting her do it, hands tucked under his armpits, tentacles subdued. He could almost believe Vasili was in love … if he didn’t know the Skriven better than that. “Akashic waters.”

  “Which won’t do any good if Vasili keeps mixing up gorsap and killie berries.” Elizabeta took the vessel and sat it on the table with a sharp snap. “Get these people out of here. People and creatures. We need to work in peace.” She gestured to the big brass bowl on the table filled with dark liquid. “We have their blood. Let them go somewhere else and pray we don’t need more than that.”

  So, perhaps Vasili had met his match. Tytan did as ordered, not willing to get into a shouting match with the woman. He wasn’t in the mood and she wasn’t Devany.

  “Lizzie said she hasn’t seen her in the Dreamscape. I haven’t seen her. If she isn’t there …”

  Tytan hooked to his manse, unwilling to listen to the hyena man’s voice echo in his head. He wasn’t sure where he could go to escape that noise, but then he realized where he wanted to be and hooked there, leaving the chaos of the Slip behind.

  The house looked the same. Leaves were turning color and spiraling to the ground so that the sidewalk was covered with the crunchy things. Woodsmoke curled in the air. Tytan stood across the street and watched the clone move past windows, aching for her smile, for her laugh. What a pitiful thing he was. An Originator, pining for something he could never have. Ravana had made Devany for him and that had never been enough to win her. He was the monster that Frankenstein made and Devany the bride who would never have him.

  What would she do, this fake Devany, if he appeared out of the blue in her house? Would she take it in stride—she had met him before, after all—or would she do something predictably human and scream? He was almost tempted to find out but decided his time would be better spent planning Gaius’ downfall.

  He would just stay there a few minutes longer. Just to look.

  Gaius squatted at the edge of the fleshcrawler pool, his fingers dangling in the water like a dare. He’d caught one of the fleshcrawlers he didn’t know how long ago, had caught it and ate it bite by delicious bite. They hadn’t gotten close enough for him to snatch again, but oh how he wished he could eat another. They were tough and stringy, but their bodies were suffused with Source and that made them delectable. Were he a lesser creature, he might have drooled.

  “Come to Hipster Grandpa,” he said, then laughed, a high whisper of a sound that bounced along the walls. T
hat’s what she had called him. She who was now dead.

  He shook his head, the sudden static there making his ears ring.

  What had happened to her? Why wasn’t she here? Why wasn’t he sliding through her belly and into the Source? Where had she flown, the pretty little bird?

  It all got caught in his head, all the secondsminuteshoursdaysweeksyearscenturieseons. Past, present, future. Tangled webs, tangled strings, tangled lives all wrapped up and intertwined with his. A thousand upon a million memories and he alone to sort them all. Pick, pick, pick at the web. Pluck it and hope the answer falls from it on hairy black legs. A millennia or three, a second or two. Here today and, “Gone tomorrow.”

  Dangle, dangle, dangle.

  When people came, Gaius could focus. They anchored him in time. When they left, his memories scattered like rats from a sinking ship, drowning in an ocean of his thoughts.

  He needed to focus. This was important but the bits floated away on red balloons. “They all float down here,” he whispered, plucking that string to find a book he’d once read that made his heart fill with manic glee. What had it been, that monster? A human construct, a thing that ate fear. Gaius did not eat fear but oh, he loved the smell of it.

  Where had his pretty little bird gone?

  He needed to focus. The black line he never plucked, the one that screamed from the darkness and shot through his belly, that one was vibrating, and he knew it was important he attend it, but he didn’t know why. Didn’t know why and the pain of it rattled around in his head, bowling over the other thoughts, scattering them like rats …

  Wait.

  He’d thought that already, hadn’t he? The rats thing. An ocean of thoughts. A pretty little bird.

  “Gaius.”

  Everything snapped into focus and he turned to grin at Baow standing at the edge of his prison. “Come to set me free?”

  The Originator had long ago given himself up to the world, preferring a static existence to the life of hedonism, blood, and despair in which Gaius had reveled. Baow had always been a stick in the mud. He just became the living embodiment of it when he’d formed himself into a tree.

  “I’m come to see if it was true.”

  “That I killed her?” Gaius pulled his fingers free of the pool and wiped them on his shoulder. “Did I?”

  “There was a reason we all wanted you here,” Baow said, instead of answering. “You’re connected to everything that has ever happened or ever will. A dark hole in the center of all that knowledge.”

  “I want ice cream when I’m free,” Gaius said. “Ice cream made from the fat of the fleshcrawler. I think it would be divine.” Behind him, he heard the splash of water. They were stirring down there. Why?

  “We helped Ravana put you down here. All of us. Do you understand what that means?”

  He could find their souls. He could destroy the Slip. He could eat them, too. “You’re all fools and cowards.” He scuffed his toe over the runes on the floor, runes he’d been drawing since he’d first plucked the string that led to his becoming a god, the string that pierced through Ravana and Tytan and Devany. It had been simple, but the dumb bitch had mucked it all up, they both had, with their friendship and love and all those disgusting things humans cared about that he hadn’t taken into account.

  They had wanted each other and still denied themselves. Why? Why?

  “You were always mad, Gaius, but I do believe you’ve been thrust over the edge.”

  “Go on with you, Baow. I don’t need your sanctimonious noise here. I must find the strand to pluck that will lead me to my godhood. Do you understand? Get out!”

  Silence once more. Gaius went back to the water to fish, went back to the web to hunt, went inside his head to search for the thing that was causing him unease. Something wasn’t right but he couldn’t put a finger on it, couldn’t find the strand to pluck to find the answers.

  She had done this, the one with the needling voice and tedious loyalty. If she had just given in she wouldn’t be dead, wouldn’t be digesting in fleshcrawler stomachs.

  He would have to do it another way … but there was no other way, not with Ravana’s children gone. His children …

  His children.

  He stared up at the opening to his prison. He hadn’t been successful in creating a Tytan and Devany of his own, but he had created the Rend and he had children that might still be loyal yet, if he could call them from their hidey-holes. They could go back, pluck what he needed from time past and bring her to him, bring the other one to him and this time he would make them, even if he had to tie them up and do it the hard way.

  He didn’t have access to his magic—Ravana’s cage prevented him from touching it. The runes were different, though. They drew upon the magic that was imbued in the wards. If he could write out his orders on a stone and drop it into the fleshcrawler pool … Gaius drove his fist into the wall. Bits of stone, some big, some small, tumbled to the floor. He picked up the biggest and sat to write the spell that would summon his children. When he finished, he walked to the pool’s edge and tossed it in. The splash made him smile and he stood for a long, long moment while the bit of stone with his message fell through the water. He knew the moment it passed beyond Ravana’s wards—he could no longer hear the runes sing.

  Vasili stood at the entrance to the Rend, a book open in his hands. He read from the text and glanced periodically from it to the gaping black hole in front of him. There was something here that was eluding him, some truth he couldn’t quite grasp. He knew this, like any puzzle he’d ever encountered, was solvable. He just needed time to solve it. Peace. Quiet.

  “Get anything yet?”

  He blew out a puff of black smoke in irritation. “I’m trying to think.”

  “I’m being encouraging.” A gentle touch on his shoulder and then Elizabeta moved away.

  “No, what you’re being is distracting.” Her laugh made his guts do strange flips. She was the most contrary, perplexing human he’d ever met, and he didn’t know what to make of her. “Riddles take time to unknot.”

  Her form was lithesome—for a human. He usually preferred gelatinous Skriven. The consistency of their flesh was cold, slimy, and malleable, an experience that Vasili found infinitely pleasurable. Now? Now he wondered how it would feel to have Elizabeta’s firm, dry skin slide against his.

  “You’re thinking dirty thoughts again, aren’t you?”

  He directed his attention back to the book, but his tentacles were all reaching for her. Damned things were such tale-tellers. Good thing most people didn’t study him close enough to know what giveaways they were to his emotions. “I’m thinking about this hole in the Slip. Magic is leaking into it. Not a lot, but enough that the Originators are needing more souls to stay fed. Do you know what would happen if this got bigger?”

  She held out a flower to him, a yellow inkle. The meaning of such a gift was not lost on Vasili but surely a mere human woman didn’t understand what she was proposing. “Life as we know it would perish?”

  Vasili studied her, saw the neutral expression she wore, and realized this creature knew exactly what the meaning of a gift of yellow inkle flower meant. The minx. “If I take that, I’ll be in your service for a period of seven years.”

  She widened her eyes. “Really? I had no idea.” She didn’t drop her hand or move away, just continued to hold it out to him. Expectant.

  Seven years was nothing to a Skriven. It was a joke, really, this flower, this gift, this pact made by Skriven who had nothing better to do with their lives. “Why should I want to serve you for so long?”

  “So long? We both know it’s but a wink to you.”

  Before he could answer, the ground jerked beneath them, nearly knocking them both over. All around them, the earth mounded up, cracking, shuddering. A hand burst free from one hump, then another, and soon all manner of Skriven lay at their feet.

  Vasili shut the book and cradled it to his chest. “We need to get out of here now.” He took
Elizabeta’s hand to jump them back to his hovel.

  Fingers grasped his leg. His power drained from him like piss from a dick.

  The Skriven who had stolen it, growled, “Where is he?”

  There was no pretending he didn’t know who the Skriven was talking about. “In Ravana’s tower. Devany’s tower.” He cursed. “Tytan’s tower.”

  It rose to its feet, grey skin glowing with blue fire just under its surface. Elizabeta, half-hiding behind Vasili, gasped. “A fae.”

  The thing turned its not-so-benevolent gaze on her. “I was once called just so, in the long ago. And perhaps I will be called that again, after I rescue my master from his prison.”

  Vasili opened his mouth to speak and fire vomited out of it. He fell to his knees and gagged and gagged, molten liquid pouring to the grass and blackening it. He wanted to tell Elizabeta to run, to escape, to not die, but he couldn’t speak for the flames.

  The Skriven reached out a hand and plucked the flower from Elizabeta’s grip. Almost as suddenly as he did, the flames in Vasili’s mouth burned themselves out. An uneasy silence fell over them, the other Skriven still half-in, half-out of their graves frozen in place. “What is this sorcery?”

  Elizabeta tried to speak but croaked and had to clear her throat before she was able to get the words out. “You are in service to me for seven years.”

  The look on the Skriven’s face was priceless and Vasili wheezed an ash-cloud laugh. “You, my dear sweet Elizabeta, are worth your weight in gold.”

  “What am I going to do with a fae for a servant?”

  He dropped an arm around her shoulders as Gaius’ Skriven struggled to come to terms with the enormity of his actions. “We’ll figure out a use or to for him. I know just where to start.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tytan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You just left the rest of them there.”

  “Well, it’s not like I could pick them up and bring them here, now is it?” Vasili made a ‘ta-da’ motion with his hands, widening them to encompass the glowering creature before them. “Gaius’ spawn. And he’s Elizabeta’s for the ordering around.”