Knight's Curse

by Karen Duvall

  Aydin looked puzzled. “With telepathy. Isn’t that how you call Shui?”

  “Hell, no!” My mouth dropped open in amazement. “Why would I want to call a homicidal maniac?”

  “You need him every three days to lick your tattoo, same as I need Shojin.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless Gavin keeps you two apart on purpose.”

  I tromped up the stairs, once again frustrated over Gavin withholding information from me. “That’s the power he has over me, Aydin. I thought you knew that.”

  From behind me I heard, “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

  No one was more sorry about it than me. I was about to tell him that, when a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Holy crap. We really stepped in it this time.

  It was Gavin.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” I said to the man standing in the upstairs doorway. I tried to ignore the sweat beading on my forehead and covered my panic with insolence. “What are you doing here, Gavin?”

  I heard Aydin’s quick inhalation of breath, then silence. Oh, please don’t ghost out on me now. How would I explain the pile of discarded clothes in the basement? I hoped Gavin hadn’t heard our conversation. If he did, we were screwed.

  “I wondered what was taking you two so long,” Gavin said, his face void of expression. “My men called to inform me the Hummer was still in the shopping center’s parking lot. They said they’d seen you drive off in Quin’s car. What happened?”

  Since Quin was unaware of Aydin’s unique skill for possession and hypnotic suggestion, I’d have to skew the facts. “Quin insisted we take his car.” I wasn’t lying about that part.

  “He let you drive?”

  I shrugged. “He was certainly in no condition to.” Little did he know it wasn’t drugs that had made him that way.

  Gavin scowled. “Where was Aydin? He was told not to leave you alone.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “He ghosted out and hid in the backseat. Quin never even knew he was there.”

  Aydin appeared beside me, his expression smug. “Once our man passed out completely, we made a quick search, and—” He slipped his hand inside his jacket and withdrew the envelope. “We got what we came for.”

  Gavin’s thin lips tilted in a lopsided grin. “Excellent.” He reached for the envelope, but Aydin hesitated. Gavin narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  The Turk’s eyebrows lifted and he surrendered his treasure. “Nothing.”

  Frowning, Gavin peered down the stairs. “Is that where you found it?”

  Aydin looked unsure, and I knew why. He didn’t want Gavin snooping around Quin’s workshop because Geraldine’s hand was still down there. But we couldn’t stop him from searching. It was inevitable. I just prayed our hiding place wouldn’t be found.

  Gavin’s stare became a shrewd, scrutinizing glare. He locked his hands behind his back. “You’re both acting very strange. What’s going on?”

  A plan formed in my mind and I made a show of rolling my eyes. “Wow. This is embarrassing.” We couldn’t let Gavin’s suspicions get any worse. Our secrets about Geraldine and the knights had to remain undisclosed at all cost. If we were to incriminate ourselves, let it be for something less damning.

  As Gavin looked back and forth between us, I said, “Isn’t it obvious?” I could easily tell this lie because I wanted to believe it. I wanted to very much. I lowered my chin and gave Aydin a coy look through my lashes.

  “Oh?” Gavin looked at me blankly, then understanding arched his eyebrows practically to his hairline. “Oh!”

  Aydin appeared totally lost, so I winked at him and smiled. His lascivious grin was slow but meaningful, and he had me half believing he meant it. A flush washed over me from head to toe and I knew how red I would have looked if I hadn’t been standing in the shadows.

  “Well, that changes things now, doesn’t it?” Gavin asked, though I knew he didn’t expect an answer. He was assessing. All I cared was that he stop doubting us so that Aydin and I could devise a new plan for Quin’s escape. It would be much harder now. “I can’t have my thieves cavorting under the same roof, or any roof, for that matter. An intimate relationship could compromise your assignment. I need you both completely focused.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked, already dreading his answer.

  Gavin looked down his nose at me. “It means, Chalice, that you and Aydin are not to see each other anymore.”

  thirteen

  BECAUSE OF MY BRIGHT IDEA, IT HAD BEEN two days since I’d last seen Aydin. However, convincing Gavin that Aydin and I were an item actually did work to our benefit. It took the spotlight off our plan to spring Quin and our desire to break the bonds with our gargoyles. Or at least my desire to break free of Shui. Now that I thought about it, Aydin never said he wanted to rid himself of Shojin. He liked his monster.

  My heart hurt. Having Aydin taken from me left a hole that only he could fill. It pained me to think that our attraction was nothing more than the result of having the same curse. I felt too deeply for it to mean nothing. It did mean something, at least to me. Was it possible our connection might be the real thing after all?

  It helped that I wasn’t back in that awful room filled with portal paintings. If Gavin had put me in there, I’d have yanked every picture off the wall, stacked them like logs on the floor and set them all on fire. Instead I was given an ordinary room on the second floor. It had bars on the windows, but contained no artifacts, and was furnished with only a motel-style bed and nightstand. The television set was ancient, but at least it helped keep boredom at bay.

  Zee had taken away my Balisong blade with the help of two witches and a house elf that looked like a cross between a wood nymph and a Brownie. All three had to hold me down while Zee pried the knife from my hands. I managed to cut her palm when I’d actually meant to slice off her finger, but I was out of practice. She was out of patience and conked me a good one on the noggin. I woke up an hour later with one wicked headache.

  Now a prisoner of the Fatherhouse, my meals arrived on a tray and Gavin escorted me to his own room when I needed my fix from Shui. The old man hadn’t said more than a handful of words to me since the night Aydin and I stole the scrying mirror. Gavin was wound up tighter than a coil of barbed wire and just as prickly. I sensed he was planning something, and whatever it was involved me.

  I worried about Quin. My gut clenched when I considered the tactics Gavin might use to force Quin into summoning my dark-angel father. If he forced my sister knights into serving the Vyantara, there was a good chance he and his black-veil allies would gain enough power to tip the balance between darkness and light. A battle was on the horizon.

  Aydin had yet to visit me in my “cell.” You’d think he would secretly manage his way upstairs and into my room, but he hadn’t. That made me mad, and then I got mad at myself for caring. It just proved what I’d known all along. No one can be trusted, not even a so-called friend who, to be perfectly honest, I wanted as my lover.

  My chest tightened as I recalled everything the two of us had been through together. Though we hadn’t known each other long, he’d been a constant source of support and guidance, beginning with the night we first met. And he’d given me a priceless gift to treasure always: a photo of my dead mother. Aydin wouldn’t betray me. Something, or someone, was keeping him away.

  I refused to stay locked up a moment longer.

  I removed my contact lenses and both sets of filters from my ears and nose. Sniffing the air, I sought out Zee’s scent, a sickly sweet odor of rotting roses and stale sweat. I’d also scented other people as they roamed the hallway outside my door, and though I hadn’t seen them, I’d heard their voices.

  Zee was close, probably perched on the chair outside my door. She couldn’t stay there forever. I’d know as soon as she left her post. As for the lock on my door, I’d have to pick it open. Too bad I no longer had my Balisong or my case of picks.

  I stood beside the do
or, my unprotected ears tuned in to noises in the hall. I detected six separate heartbeats; one close, the others farther away, and from the muffled echo I guessed these people were behind closed doors. Zee’s heart had a lub-lub rhythm of lazy beats. She was a very unhealthy woman.

  I slid the butter knife I’d pilfered from last night’s dinner out of the back pocket of my jeans. The six heartbeats were still muffled, and Zee’s were gone completely. Gavin’s room was on this floor, but way on the other side of the building, so I didn’t worry about him hearing me. And I’d smell him if he came close. I slid the knife point into the keyhole and jiggled it until I heard the upper pins inside the lock lift from their housing. I yanked the door open, slipped out into the hall and pushed the door firmly but quietly shut behind me. I rushed for the stairs and sped down them as fast as my short legs would carry me, jerking my head around to look back every few steps. It took me less than thirty seconds to make it down two long flights, putting me one flight below the main level of the house.

  I was in the Fatherhouse basement now. A dark, colorless basement not much different from the one in Gavin’s Chicago mansion. And like Gavin’s place, this dank hole of rock and dirt was home to a lot of ghosts.

  I pressed my back against the wall and sidestepped to the first set of doors. I heard a voice. A familiar voice. Aydin!

  The door wasn’t locked, and I was so excited that I couldn’t stand staying outside a second longer. I grabbed the door latch and shouldered my way in. The room was blessedly dark enough for my naked eyes to see with crystal clarity.

  “Aydin! I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. Why haven’t you come to my—?”

  A large gargoyle twice the size of Shui stood beside Aydin, its batwings flaring out aggressively. Its blue-black head angled forward and a beakish mouth issued a roar my sensitive ears could have done without. Red eyes blazed within an angular face so similar to Chinese folkart that its primitive beauty mesmerized me. This must be Shojin.

  Aydin laid a reassuring hand on the creature’s head and told it to hush. “Close the door,” he told me, and I did. But I didn’t venture any farther into what looked like a cell despite its comfortable furnishings and brightly colored rugs. I sniffed. Wet feathers, damp fur, but none of the rotted-meat odor I associated with Shui. Shojin smelled like a domestic pet in need of a bath.

  “I thought all gargoyles looked alike,” I said while slipping all my sensory armor back into place. “He’s kind of pretty.”

  “I agree.” Aydin stroked Shojin’s head, but the creature continued to act hostile, glaring at me with red eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How did you get down here?”

  My feet still glued to the spot, I said, “The usual way. I picked the lock and escaped when Zee left her post. I was feeling cooped up so I decided to explore the house. I didn’t expect to find you here, especially not with that.”

  Shojin hissed.

  “You hurt his feelings.” Aydin was only half kidding. He focused on the gargoyle. “This is Chalice. I told you about her, remember?”

  The gargoyle still looked sinister, but he lightened up on the hissing. Less aggressive now, he began to sulk. I wondered if he sensed my affection for Aydin and was jealous.

  I wasn’t about to scratch him behind the ears and coo what a good boy he was. In spite of his sleek blue-black feathers and regal raptor head, he was still a monster. A big monster. I could see how he wouldn’t have much trouble flying with a human strapped in a harness to his back. I guessed his wing span to be at least twelve feet, and his chest was massive. Why did Shui look like a monkey and Shojin looked like something from a fairy tale instead of a nightmare?

  “I told you not all gargoyles are like Shui,” Aydin said, watching me watch his “pet.” “Their appearance is tied to the character they had as humans. Shui is ugly and vicious because that was his human psychotic self. Shojin, on the other hand—”

  “Does anyone know you’re in here?” I glanced toward the door, my nerves twitching. I’d been spared Gavin’s physical punishments since arriving in Denver and I wanted to keep it that way.

  “You couldn’t have picked a safer place to hide.” He sat down on a burgundy corduroy couch that was two decades out of style, but still in excellent condition. I guessed Aydin enjoyed sharing his hand-me-downs with his gargoyle and I wondered how much time he spent down here. There was even a television set in the corner. Did Shojin get cable, too?

  Aydin patted the space beside him. “I’m glad I was here when you found it.”

  “Why, because your monster would have eaten me if you hadn’t been?”

  He shook his head. “Shojin’s not violent.”

  “He’s not an assassin?”

  “Retired.”

  “Ah.” I kept my eye on the beast while rushing to the other side of the room to join Aydin on the couch. “He’s not an ugly monkey thing because…?”

  “Because he was once a prince who got stuck in a compromising situation. He used to be one of the good guys as a human.” He and his gargoyle shared a look. “At least that’s what he told me.”

  “Telepathically?”

  Aydin nodded. “According to the shaman who bonded us, Shojin was once Prince P’u Yi, older brother to Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty in China. His brother sold him to a group of sorcerers to prevent him from becoming emperor when their father died.”

  That group of sorcerers had obviously been the Vyantara. “When was this?”

  “610 AD.”

  And Shojin didn’t look a day over a thousand. “If I ever tried contacting Shui with my mind, I think my brain would blow up.” I glanced at the door again. “So why haven’t you tried coming to my room?”

  “Gavin said we couldn’t see each other anymore, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Who cares what he says? You could have made like a ghost and snuck in.”

  He shook his head. “The wards on the second floor are set to detect ghosts. Kind of like a mouse trap.”

  So even the Vyantara thought spirits of the dead were vermin. “But you’re not a real ghost.”

  “I am when I vanish.”

  Point taken. “I thought you and I were immune to curses and charms.”

  “Cursed and charmed objects, yes. But wards are different. So are most spells. In that case, we’re just as susceptible as anyone else.”

  “So if someone threw, say, a coin at me that was cursed to turn a person blue, it wouldn’t work.”

  “Correct.” He frowned and gave me a funny look. “Not that turning someone blue would be an especially effective curse.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It was just an example.”

  “Okay, then in comparison, if someone aimed a curse at you directly to turn blue—”

  “I’d turn blue.”

  “Exactly.”

  I wasn’t happy to hear this. “Does that mean we can’t protect ourselves from wards and spells?”

  “We can, but it would mean using white magic. Are you prepared to subject yourself to white magic?”

  I supposed so, but I shrugged instead of giving him an answer. “How’s Quin?” I asked, hoping he might know something about the angel whisperer since Gavin wasn’t talking. I knew Gavin would use me to help summon my father, and I assumed that would happen once Quin gave in.

  Aydin slumped back on the couch and rubbed his chin. I glanced at his T-shirt that said I Had a Handle on Life, But It Broke.

  His silence worried me. “Aydin, what’s going on with Quin?”

  “He’s been beaten.”

  I was afraid of that. My breathing hitched in alarm and I twisted around to face him. “How bad is it?”

  “He’s still breathing.” Aydin sighed and rubbed his forehead as if to soothe away a headache. “But he doesn’t look good. I don’t know how much more he can take.”

  Oh, no. I could only imagine his bruises, and it didn’t take much for me to empathize with him. I’d been where he is. I had experienced Gavin’s cruelty firsth
and. “You saw him?”

  “Only for a minute. I passed by the interrogation room when the door was open. Quin was strapped to a chair, his eyes wide open as if in a catatonic stupor. It was like he didn’t see me.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I could only speculate, but my theory made perfect sense to me. “If angels come to Quin, speak through him, couldn’t they just as easily control what he hears and says? His will may no longer be his own right now. I mean, consider what happened to Geraldine. She and Quin are alike in what they can do. Could she have prevented her execution by telling her interrogators what they wanted to hear? Had she had a choice? Does Quin?”

  Aydin’s jade-colored eyes lowered to stare at the woven rug beneath his feet. “It’s not the same.”

  I had to agree, but that wasn’t my point. “What I’m trying to say is that the host who channels information for an angel, or a demon for that matter, is expendable.”

  He glanced at me sharply. “Geraldine was a martyr.”

  “Was that her choice? Or the choice of the angels speaking through her? I don’t know as much about angels as you do, but I don’t believe ‘good’ angels mess with human lives. I think Geraldine was sacrificed. I think Quin is being sacrificed now.”

  “So you don’t think he has the power to speak for himself?”

  “No.” Which meant he’d die at the hands of his tormentor. Gavin would kill him if we didn’t act fast to intervene. “I can give Gavin what he wants. He wants my fallen-angel father.”

  Aydin’s eyes widened. “Not without Quin’s help.”

  I thought about the obsidian scrying mirror we’d taken from Quin’s workshop. There was residue of blood on the mirror. Some of it was Quin’s. The really old blood wasn’t completely human, and I was certain it belonged to an angel. “There was angel blood on the mirror we stole from Quin. That must be part of the ritual for evocation. I’m half angel. My blood should work, and we don’t need Quin’s cooperation to take some of his.”

  Aydin looked unconvinced. “Chalice, you don’t even know what the ritual is.”