“Fee?” Keon called out.
“I’m here.”
And then the fog dropped, so it was a sea of churning smoke at ankle height. The cabin was gone, and so was the forest. Instead, I was surrounded by stone statues in various poses. The air was still as if holding its breath.
“Keon?” Where was he?
Fuck this place and its mind games.
I wove between the statues, hoping there weren’t any traps beneath the fog. The stone was moss-covered here and there, and the back of each statue was cracked and broken as if someone had taken a hammer to each one.
Limbo sucked, and I was so done with it. “Keon!”
A figure stepped out from behind a statue up ahead, and I sagged in relief. “Thank God. Keon, we need to find Uriel.” I walked toward him. “There has to be a way to get back to that cabin.”
Keon drew his daggers, eyes narrowing as he fell into a fighting stance.
“Keon?” My step faltered, and then he rushed toward me. It took a moment for my brain to comprehend that he was attacking me. “Keon, what the fuck.” I dove out of the way and rounded on him. “What are you—” Shit, I rolled to avoid him again.
“Die, beast!” he hissed, and lunged at me.
Fuck this place. My scythe bloomed to life, and I used the staff to block his assault and shove him back, but I caught a good look at his face; his eyes were glazed as if he was in a dream. Like a sleepwalker. Like someone who was seeing something that wasn’t there.
Shit. I needed to wake him up. My scythe winked out, and I punched his jaw. Pain jarred my arm and had me stumbling back.
Were his bones made of steel?
He moved fast, accelerating his attack, and it took everything I had to evade his slashes and blows.
“Keon, it’s me.”
Fuck he was relentless. I broke away from him, launched myself over the statues, and took flight, but he was in the air after me. I soared up and met an invisible barrier that knocked me back, slamming me into Keon. We both hit the ground together, and then I was pinned beneath him. His hand on my throat, dagger arching down toward my face. I grabbed a fistful of earth and threw it in his eyes.
He cursed and released me in favor of his eyes, and I twisted, flipping us both so he was under me. It was a matter of a split second and I had him pinned, his dagger hand immobilized, but it wouldn’t last. He was stronger than I was. I needed to wake him up, and a punch to the face hadn’t done it.
I slapped him.
He hissed at me, pulled his hand from his face, and went for my neck. Crap. I knocked his arm away, grabbed his chin, and kissed him hard.
He stilled beneath me, every muscle in his body tensing. I kept my mouth on his, lips pressed to his, and slowly released his dagger wrist. He didn’t move. Okay, this was good. I brought my hand to his cheek and laid my palm against it. A sigh rattled his chest, and his mouth softened beneath mine. Was it working?
“Keon?” I spoke against his mouth, maintaining contact. “It’s me. Fee. You awake now?”
His hand was on my hip, and then he was pulling me closer, and yes, yes, he was definitely awake and hard, very hard, and—
He pushed his hips up into me, rubbing against me.
My eyes rolled at the sensation. No. Shit. I needed to pull away, but his hand was on the back of my head, holding me immobile. His lips parted, and his tongue flicked out and dipped into my mouth.
My moan mingled with the steady vibration of his chest. My body clenched, thighs squeezing his hips reflexively as his flavor invaded my mouth. Cinnamon. He tasted positively edible. And I was kissing him, licking the inside of his mouth and sucking on his long thick tongue before the chill of reality seeped past the heat in my limbs to bring common sense back online.
I pulled away from him, sitting up to look down at his parted mouth and heavy-lidded eyes.
“I almost killed you,” he said.
“Yeah, but you didn’t.”
“You fought well.” He swept his tongue across his lips. “You kiss better.”
My cheeks heated, and I quickly scrambled off him. “I needed to wake you up.”
He stood in a fluid motion and adjusted his erection. “It worked.”
I looked away, cheeks hot. “We need to find Uriel.”
A light bloomed up ahead, and Keon and I exchanged glances.
“Could be another trap,” Keon said.
“What choice do we have?”
“I go first,” he said, and then he slipped ahead of me, tail swishing as he led the way into the light.
The gray cemetery of statues melted away as if they’d been a dream, and the light engulfed us. It spit us back out in the clearing with the cabin, the tree holding Uriel captive, and the man in rags.
He was standing on the ground by the porch steps now, his expression closed and unreadable. Wraiths made of silver smoke drifted out from the tree line to surround us, cutting off our exit.
I was tired and fed up, and anger rushed through me. “Why are you doing this? I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to save my world.”
“And you think this kind of power comes without a price?” He looked…frustrated. “You think that you can walk in here and just take what you want?”
I didn’t have time for his questions because I needed answers to mine. “Do you know where it is or not?”
“Oh, I have it. It’s mine to keep and mine to give.”
A guardian, maybe? “Tell me what I need to do to take it, please. No more games.”
He gave me a pitying smile, as if I’d already failed, as if he was done with this whole drama. Done with going through the motions. “To obtain the power, a sacrifice must be made,” he said.
“What kind of sacrifice?”
“A soul must burn.”
What? I turned to Keon for counsel. He took a step toward me, but then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he toppled forward. I caught him before he could hit the ground and lowered him carefully onto his side.
“What have you done to him?”
“Choose,” the man snapped. “A soul must burn for the power to be released. Pick quickly. Do it now. Which will you give me? Him?” He pointed at Keon. “Or him.” He pointed toward Uriel.
Keon was out cold, and Uriel remained tied to the tree, his chin resting on his chest, breath even as he slumbered. There would be no discussion. The choice was mine. The burden was mine.
How could I make this choice? “Why are you doing this? There has to be another way.”
His mouth turned down. “Choose one, or you all die.”
Is this what had happened to the Powers? They’d refused to make a choice, and so they’d all perished? Oh, God…The statues with the cracked backs…Were those the Powers? Someone had broken off the stone wings to disguise what they’d been. Would he turn us to stone too?
“Make your choice now,” he boomed.
My chest ached as the decision formed in my mind.
I rolled Keon onto his back. He was beautiful when asleep and unguarded. The harsh planes of his face softer somehow. I brushed his hair back from his face, reveling in the silken nature of the strands that slipped through my fingers. He’d kissed me, and I’d kissed him back, and it had felt…right.
“We would have been friends until the day you killed me. We may even have been more…I’m sorry, Keon. There is no other way.”
“You choose him?” the man asked.
“No.” I stood and walked over to Uriel. I cupped his face and lifted it so I could look at him, and a revelation bloomed in my heart, one I’d neglected to examine until now.
“I think…I think I would have loved you one day.” My eyes pricked, and I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Ah, you choose the celestial.”
I carefully released Uriel and turned to face the man, this guardian of the thing our worlds needed the most.
“No.”
He ground his teeth. “You must choose.�
�
The spirits closed in, and the air crackled with menace.
“Choose now,” he ordered. “Or I will take you all.”
What I was about to do might end another life, but then it might not. All I knew was that if I did anything else, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. There was only one choice.
“I choose me.”
The man stared at me for a long beat. “What did you say?”
“I said, I choose me. Take my soul and let the others go. Let them take the power to the Beyond, please. Just do it quick. Now.”
I fell to my knees and closed my eyes, blood thundering in my ears at the enormity of what I’d just done.
I pictured Azazel’s smile. Imagined Mal’s laughter and felt Grayson’s arms around me. Cora would be so pissed. I knew she would, but she’d understand eventually. Hot tears pricked my eyes, but I squeezed them tight.
I would not cry.
I was going to miss them all so fucking much, but this was the only way to keep them safe.
I swallowed the lump of twisted emotion in my throat. “Please. Just do it.”
There was a whoosh. His blade, no doubt, arcing toward my neck. My insides twisted, and terror grabbed me by the neck. I was about to die. I was about to—
My eyelids bloomed pink as if the world beyond my closed lids had lit up with bright light. Was it about to happen? Why was it taking so long?
“Open your eyes, child,” the man said.
“What?”
“You can look now.”
I stared up at the man. He was taller now, bulkier and no longer dressed in rags, but in a neat brown tunic and black pants. His dark hair was pulled back off his pleasant face, and his dark eyes were filled with tiny slivers of mercury.
“Seraphina Dawn, please stand.”
He held out his hand to me, and when I took it on autopilot, an overwhelming feeling of belonging rushed through me—the conviction that everything would be all right.
“What is going on? Who are you?”
“I am what you came for, and your choice has set me free.” He turned his hands over, and the veins glowed with inner light. “I am the first.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sit.”
Huh?
He pointed to my left, and there was a chair waiting for me. “How did you… Never mind.”
I sat down, and when I looked at him, he was also sitting, and there was a table between us laid with tea things. I looked over at Keon still passed out on the ground and then to Uriel asleep tied to the tree, and then at the spirits that hovered around us as if eager for story time.
The man smiled. “Don’t worry, your friends will be fine. Drink your tea.”
He handed me a cup. The tea was strong and sweet, just what I needed after the shock of almost dying. Shit, I was so confused, but I was alive, and this man was…He was the power, and my gut told me he was about to explain everything.
He watched me for a long beat before picking up his own cup and drinking. “I am one half of the divine,” he said finally. “The older twin. Although we may have looked alike, our ideals were very different. It’s why we disagreed so often, even as we worked together to create worlds. Our last disagreement resulted in my being incarcerated here, although back then, this was not Limbo, and the fallen hadn’t made this world their home.”
A twin? Another divine? “Your brother trapped you here?”
“Yes. I made it easy. I was…naïve. We quarreled about the nature of man even as we forged them. I believed in humanity’s ability for self-sacrifice while my brother thought them to be ruthless survivalists that would do whatever it took to live.”
I snorted. “Well, humans have done some pretty awful things to each other in the name of power and resources.”
He nodded, his eyes suddenly sad. “I know. My brother was right, but I’d created man in my image just as he had done so in his, and I was convinced of my philosophy. So much so that when he suggested a test, I agreed. I would allow myself to be bound to this place until a self-sacrificing soul found his or her way to me. He promised to send me souls, and he did for a while, but when given a choice, these souls chose to sacrifice another—a friend or a lover…Each chose to let the other burn. Each chose to save their own skin.”
The ancient souls around me moaned.
Oh, God. “These were the test subjects?”
The divine’s brother smiled wryly. “They have been trapped here for a long time. As the world around us changed and the fallen built their home here, the land was named Limbo. I’ve been bound and waiting. When the Powers came, I was sure I would be free. I realized my brother was gone and that the Beyond needed me. I was ready, but the Powers chose a sacrifice—not a volunteer, but a celestial chosen by ballot. An unwilling soul.”
“So, you turned them into statues?”
He sighed. “I was…upset.”
Okay. “And now? Now what? You’re free because I chose to die?”
“Yes!” He reached across the table and grabbed my hands in his. “You are what I envisioned, Seraphina. A soul worthy of saving.” His smile was beatific. “Because of your sacrifice, the world will continue to thrive.”
Is that what he thought? That there was so little love in the world. “There are others out there, you know? Mothers and fathers who would lay down their lives for their children. Lovers who would die for each other. Your brother sent you the souls he knew wouldn’t. He kept you here.”
A flash of anger crossed his face, and then he closed his eyes and breathed, letting it go. “I had suspected as much. My brother was…ruthless in his pursuit of what he desired.” He looked up at the sky. “I can feel it dying. The Beyond is in pain.”
“Then go. Save it.”
He reached out and touched my cheek. “I could take you with me. You could be a celestial of the highest order.”
The idea of being trapped in the Beyond, confined by their rules, having to associate with the pinched-faced Righteous, wasn’t appealing.
I smiled to soften my rejection. “This is my home, and now that I’ve saved yours, I need to focus on saving mine.”
“You know I cannot intervene. The laws of creation prohibit it. But if I could, I would.”
“Thank you.”
He stood and walked over to Uriel. “This one is mine,” he said. “I remember him, but he…He does not remember himself.”
“What do you mean?”
His smile was enigmatic. “The universe has a way of smoothing out wrinkles. In time all will be revealed.”
His body began to glow. “I hope to see you again one day, Seraphina Dawn.”
And then the world erupted in a blaze of light.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing staring at the stone arch that marked the entrance to Limbo. With Keon and Uriel on the ground either side of me.
He was gone.
It was over.
“What the hell just happened?” Keon sat up.
“My head.” Uriel pulled himself off the ground. “I was…There was music.”
“The spirits!” Keon leaped up. “We have to—”
“Go home.” I turned away from the arch. “We go home. It’s done. It’s over.”
A shadow blocked out the moon, and then a reaper landed a few meters in front of us. He was bloody, and his left wing was slightly torn. He limped over to us.
“Blade, I have a message.” He handed a piece of paper to Keon and then promptly keeled over, hitting the ground with a thud.
Keon scanned the scrap of paper and cursed.
“What? What is it?”
“It was a trap,” Keon said. “Luena tricked us. Mammon ordered her to tell us the location of the pick-up. It was an ambush.”
Oh, shit. “Azazel and Mal?”
“Mammon’s men have them. Their caravan is headed west.”
I locked gazes with Keon. “Then let’s go get them back.”
Chapter Fourteen
Az
azel
It was a fucking trap. How could we have been so stupid? The carriage rocks, drawn by clipped drake. The same drake that was parked outside the Den. I didn’t consider the possibility that Mammon’s spies might be in the Den with us. That this whole thing might be a plot.
I didn’t wonder why everything was going to plan. I was still high from my contact with my soulmate. I don’t blame her. This is on me. My mistake.
They attacked from the sky, drawing us into the air, and then more came by land, shooting arrows and picking us off out of the sky.
Too many of them.
Way too many for it not to have been pre-planned.
This had been an ambush, and now they had us.
My head is still fuzzy from the drugged darts that mute our abilities. The same drug they used on Conah all those weeks ago. Of course, Mammon would have it in good supply. He’ll need it to overcome Lilith’s army. Another factor to consider when we finally raid his hideout. This drug needs to be destroyed.
“How long before this shit wears off?” Mal asks from across the carriage.
He sits with his back to the wall, one leg up, arm braced on his knee. He looks relaxed, as if we’re voluntarily locked in a box and on a nice sojourn somewhere.
I don’t know how he does it.
“I don’t know. Could be hours.”
“And they’ll probably drug us before then.” He sighs as if being drugged is a mere inconvenience.
I grit my teeth and take a breath through my nose. I’m being unfair. This isn’t his fault, and this…this is just Mal dealing in the way Mal does.
“I don’t recognize any of the demons Mammon sent.”
“Grunts,” he says. “Faceless fucking grunts.”
“Well-trained grunts.”
They have the cadets, and Master Luena, the traitor, is in on this. I recall her smile as we were dragged, semi-conscious, to the carriage. She will die for this. I’ll make sure of it.
Mal caresses the wood. “It’s laced with obsidian,” he says. “Won’t be easy to get out of.”
“It will once we have access to our scythes.” Which might be never if they keep us drugged. I peer through a gap in the wood out at the dirt track and then up at the moon. “I think we’re headed east. They’ll need to stop soon to rest the drake.”
Reaper Unhinged (Deadside Reapers Book 6) Page 8
