by Smith, HD
“Stay quiet until the room clears,” I warned Ronin before closing my eyes and stepping outside my body. I thought of the museum, of the time when I was looking for the quads’ blood last summer, and snapped a line to that location. With little effort, Ronin and I slipped into the past. I held us in the in-between while I watched my past self double over in pain. The past me didn’t know it yet, but Raven had just woken up from being knocked unconscious and had taken Thanos back under her thrall, pulling him away from me and causing the pain in my heart that almost knocked me unconscious. A minute later, Mab arrived, which was when everything really went sideways. I waited, unable to do anything to help my past self as Mab picked the other me up and threw me out of the room.
As soon as Mab was gone, I materialized with Ronin.
“I see now why she likes you, lass.”
“Fuck you, Ronin.”
He chuckled.
Ignoring him, I went to the cabinet and said, “The quads.”
Like before, it seemed to take forever, but I eventually heard the clinking of glass. I opened the door and found the twelve vials. Mace’s vial was empty and broken. Cinnamon’s and the twins’ vials were not full; they were as I’d left them. The four pink vials were still intact. I picked up the empty one, which I assumed was mine—and maybe the only one I’d be allowed to remove from the museum. Of course, I was also returning after the curator was dead, so if luck were on my side at all, I’d make it out with Harry’s blood.
Jayne’s vial hummed when I touched it. I knew The Boss and Mab’s would cause their marks under the skin on my forearms to react. I compared each of the other vials against both marks. Only one vial caused no reaction: Harry’s. I opened my empty vial first and set the stopper to the side. Harry’s blood poured easily into the waiting crystal. I tried to remember exactly how much I’d seen in the vial before Mab pushed Harry’s blood into me. I didn’t want to take too much. When I had enough, I returned Harry’s vial to the shelf with the others.
“Return,” I said and watched as the vials disappeared.
Ronin stepped up behind me. “The museum may not let you take the blood,” he said.
“The curator’s dead and this is my vial, so let’s hope you’re wrong.”
I grabbed his arm and returned us to my warded office. I was relieved when I felt the vial still clutched in my hand. I had some of Harry’s blood—that was all that mattered.
“You should have taken more,” Ronin said.
“More would have been noticed. I’m not completely sure Mab didn’t notice before. The only plus is she’d have no way to know who took it or when they took it. So I’m not going to worry about it.”
He nodded, as if agreeing with my reasoning.
“Okay, I’ve got the blood. Now what?”
“If you drop the shield, I’ll take us where we need to go.” Ronin held out his hand, but I didn’t immediately take it. “After you have Harry’s blood,” he said, “your debt to me will be worth something. For that reason alone, you should trust me.”
I considered the faint line that had formed between us to mark our deal. He was right: it would be worth more once I had my powers back. I took his hand and dropped the wards.
We disappeared and reappeared outside a small tattoo shop in Underworld. I wasn’t familiar with this part of town, but just like everywhere else, more than one business was closed or deserted. I briefly wondered why this place was still open. I could tell from the outside that it wasn’t new, which was a trademark of X’s establishments. The bricks were all worn with age and the writing on the glass door was thin and weathered by time. It read Salvation Ink—For Life.
I stretched out my senses to get a lay of the land. Scanning the shop, I was surprised to discover everyone inside was almost exclusively druid. I clutched the vial containing Harry’s blood in my hand. I shoved it in my front jeans pocket, and took a step back, shaking my head.
“I can’t go in there,” I said.
Ronin laid his hand on my back, stopping me. “He isn’t going to care whose blood it is, lass.”
“There are too many druids in there, and I don’t exactly have the best track record with them.” Johnny and his boys, the Underworld’s corrupt mob-like police force, were all druids, and I’d had more than my share of run-ins with them. “I don’t like druids any more than they like me.”
Ronin tightened his veil around us and pulled me toward the door. “Don’t worry, they won’t sense us.”
A few of the druids looked up when they saw the door open and close. One nervous-looking guy with dark brown hair got up and left. The others just sat there as if doors opened by themselves all the time, which they probably did.
Ronin led me to the back of the shop. The name Raal Alexander came to mind when I a saw the dangerously handsome half-demon, half-druid sitting hunched over the arm of a full-blooded druid I recognized. Raal, pronounced like Paul with an R, was bald and shirtless, showing off perfectly-inked skin with enough intricate detail to make you dizzy.
I glared at Ronin.
“What?” he asked. “I told you they can’t sense us, lass. Only you have that skill, remember?”
I raised my eyebrows and whispered, “And they can’t hear us either?”
“Not unless I want them to.”
“But in the restaurant you covered my mouth and said—”
He chuckled. “I just wanted you to be quiet, lass.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” Pointing at the man getting inked with a mermaid tattoo by Raal, I said, “That’s Frankie, one of Johnny’s boys.”
Ronin shrugged.
I placed my hand over my pocket. “I’m carrying Harry’s blood, so forgive me for being a bit paranoid.”
Brushing off my concern, he said, “Shush now, lass. I’ve business to attend.”
A shimmer rippled across the veil.
Ronin cleared his throat. “I’m here to collect.”
Raal stopped what he was doing. Frankie looked around, confused.
“Out now,” Raal said in a clipped British accent. “The shop’s closed.”
“Shit, man,” Frankie whined, looking down at the half-finished mermaid curled around his forearm. “I can’t walk around like this.”
Raal growled and his demon half flashed across his eyes, turning them red for a split second and making Frankie flinch.
“I said we’re closed.” He grabbed Frankie’s arm, covering most of the half-finished tattoo. Mumbling something I didn’t catch, he squeezed Frankie’s arm and the druid started screaming. As I watched, the tattoo faded away, reappearing for an instant on Raal’s already covered skin. Another quick chant and the half-finished mermaid reduced down to the size of a pinkie nail and settled in among Raal’s other tattoos as if it had always been there.
Frankie jumped up from the chair when Raal released him. Frankie rubbed his arm, which was raw where the tattoo had been. “Fuck you, Ra.” He grabbed his coat from a hook by the door as he flew past Ronin and me. He yelled for someone to move as he stormed through the shop and slammed the door on his way out.
We followed Raal into the front room. “Everyone out. Shop’s closed,” he yelled.
There were a few grumbles, but chairs scraped the floor as everyone cleared out. Raal flipped the sign and locked the door before turning to face the room.
Ronin unveiled us. Raal gave me a cursory glance before returning his gaze to Ronin. “You here to collect?”
Ronin nodded.
“What do you want?”
Ronin glanced down at me. “The lass needs to be spiked.”
Raal turned his attention back to me. Pointing at my sweater, he motioned for me to remove it. I snapped my fingers, one of the few tricks I could still manage, and the outer part of my twin set disappeared. He raised one of his eyebrows, but he didn’t comment on the ability.
Circling me, he appraised my bare arms as if I were a blank canvas. “This will square us, mate?”
Ronin nodded. “Aye, it will.�
��
Stopping in front of me, Raal grabbed both of my hands. With a click of his tongue and a mumbled chant, a warm sensation covered me. “Show,” he said, and the glow of a thorny vine snaked up my left arm. It twisted around until I felt it disappear under my shirt. A few moments later, the same glow, but a different non-thorny vine, wound down and around my right arm, disappearing under his other hand. He took a deep breath and his eyes glowed a faint amber.
A tingling sensation crawled along each of my palms. He turned my hands up and I saw a tulip on my right palm and a rose on my left before the design disappeared.
Gasping, Raal released my hands and stepped back. “Who are you?”
“Not important,” Ronin answered before I could speak. “A debt is owed. You will pay. Or,” Ronin threatened, looking around the shop, “Salvation Ink goes back on the list.”
Raal narrowed his eyes at Ronin. “This keeps me off the list permanently?”
“Aye, it will.”
Tightening his jaw, Raal turned his gaze back to me. “How much blood do you have?”
I pulled out the vial and handed it to him. I wasn’t sure how this worked, but I was hoping there wouldn’t be enough to do the entire design. I didn’t want to walk out of here with a full sleeve of vines running over each arm. I glanced at Ronin, about to ask, when Raal opened the vial and knocked it back like a shot of whiskey.
“What the hell…” I gasped as Raal clamped his hands around both my forearms.
His chant was jumbled, but a few words like “shape,” rang out as the vines from my design grew out of his own tattoos, covering his arms as they had mine just a minute ago. I screamed out in pain when he uttered, “metamorphose” and blood-colored vines etched across my skin, disappearing from Raal in the process.
Ronin’s name for this was accurate. The process felt as if Raal was driving spikes into my flesh.
Raal’s eyes grew wide as Harry’s blood mixed with mine and flared a fiery red all along the design. My body seized and jerked as the vines met at the base of my neck. Cursing, Raal attempted to pull away, but he couldn’t stop. He had to finish. I grabbed hold of his arms, drawing blood as my nails dug in.
“Finish it,” I yelled.
His eyes flashed crimson as a chill surged through me and settled the ink. I released him. He dropped to one knee as the ebb and flow of power coursing through my body flared, and then everything went black.
Chapter 10
“You can’t leave her here,” Raal’s voice broke into the darkness. “I won’t be responsible for her.”
“She’ll—” Ronin said.
“Screw you, man. She’s the fucking Fall Queen and you brought her here—with his blood. Fuck me, I’m a dead man.”
“She isn’t going to do anything to you or this shop. She’s going to wake up with a bitch of a headache and leave.”
Ronin was right: my head was pounding. I stepped outside of my body.
Raal was pacing, nervously running his hands over his bald pate. “What, after she levels Underworld?”
Ronin stood there with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. His phone buzzed and he checked the time. “I have to go. And quit worrying about the lass going supernova, she knows how to handle it.
Raal barked out a laugh. “No one knows how to handle that kind of power. I can feel it building.”
The energy at my core wasn’t as bright as it had been last summer, but I could see it twisting and turning back in on itself—contained, as I’d trained my body last summer—so I wasn’t sure what Raal was sensing. The vines he tattooed on my skin pulsed with life. As I watched, a tiny sliver of energy rippled through the design. A second later, another sliver snaked its way up my arm. Tracing the pulse back to my hands, it appeared that the blood coating my nails was somehow being absorbed into my palms.
That couldn’t be good.
At least the vines weren’t visible to the naked eye. Of course, that didn’t mean the big three wouldn’t see the power as it coiled within. With a force of will, I mentally tried to dampen the power. I was stronger than I’d been in weeks, but I didn’t want anyone else to sense the change. There had to be a way to hide it.
“Oh fuck,” Raal said, backing away. “That bitch is about to wake up—I can feel it. You’ve screwed me, Hunter. I’m taking this to the big man. I should have told him weeks ago what X’s boys have been up to. I won’t be responsible for this shit.”
A red flash ran across Ronin’s aura. His eyes went glassy and he lunged forward without hesitation. Raal didn’t have time to react before Ronin snapped his neck. Dumbfounded, I stood in the in-between with my mouth agape. Before I could open my eyes to confront Ronin, he disappeared, leaving Raal’s dead body to crumple to the floor.
My eyes shot open and my presence returned to my body. I stared into the shocked, lifeless gaze of the man who’d just spiked me with Harry’s blood, the man whose neck was now bent at an impossible angle.
“Shit,” I cursed.
Getting to my feet, heart racing, I quickly put distance between me and Raal’s body. I couldn’t sense any life, although considering he was threatening to go see the big man, which was probably Harry, I wasn’t sure I would have healed him if I could.
I took a few calming breaths to settle down, then dropped to my knees as if someone was pulling the new power out from under me. I blinked and the visible overlay that let me see energy, thresholds, and magical wards blazed bright. Raal’s body was glowing as the tattoos on his skin flared to life. I watched in horror as the vines on my arms began to bleed into a stream of energy that creeped back toward Raal. The flow of power reawakened the vines on Raal’s skin as they had originally appeared before he transferred them to me, as if the power was returning to the source now that Raal was dead.
I wondered if this was because of proximity or if anyone he’d ever done this to would be feeling the pull. As I considered this, a thin trail of energy snaked in from under the door, answering my question. His base magic was somehow pulling everything back to him.
The power at my core rippled, fighting the drain. The slivers of energy that I’d appeared to absorb earlier from Raal’s own blood were pulsing toward the brightness at the center of my being. I couldn’t let any of the power go or I’d never be able to take Ronin to see Leland Kane—not to mention that I’d most likely never get another sample of Harry’s blood to try this again, and the weak Fall Queen that I’d become would die easily at the hands of the next contender.
Remembering the way my body had reacted the first time Mab juiced me—before I had any control—and seeing how Raal’s magic seemed to want to join mine, I let loose the reigns, hoping this wasn’t the biggest mistake of all time, and pulled hard on all the power around me.
Just like it had in the museum last summer, my newly powerful presence wanted everything, but unlike the museum, which had power oozing from its pores, the only source of power here was the dead man in front of me. Instantly, the flow of power out of me reversed: the vine tattoo that had been manifesting on Raal’s skin drained away and returned to me.
But it didn’t stop there.
All the tattoos on his arms started fading. The first to go was the mermaid he’d been putting on Frankie when we arrived. There was power in every one of the marks, power so faint in some that they wouldn’t have been noticed individually, but together, the stream of energy blossomed into an electric charge so strong that it almost knocked me on my butt. My sight saw the final flow of power as it trickled in through the door, through Raal’s body, and onto my skin—putting the ghost image of each tattoo in place as it had been on his form. I was lit up like the illustrated man at the carnival and glowing so bright I must have looked like a pure ball of white light to anyone that could see it.
Raal’s body sunk in on itself as the final spark of his magic left, and he disintegrated into dust before my eyes. My core roiled with hunger at the loss.
I. Wanted. More.
A pulse
from within beckoned to the world around me. It instinctively pulled on every source of magic in the vicinity and I didn’t want to stop it—so it was maybe a good thing that someone clocked me on the back of the head.
~#~
It had been a while since I woke up in unfamiliar surroundings, but if I wasn’t mistaken, this place had the smell of druids all over it—and pickled olives in a stale, dusty atmosphere that made me want to sneeze.
The power at my core roiled, wanting me to pull in more energy, but thankfully my ability to loop it back on itself was keeping it at bay.
I thought back to everything that had happened at the shop with Raal. I wasn’t completely sure why Ronin felt the need to kill him, but something about how it happened and that odd red aura just didn’t feel right. Then he disappeared, I was hit on the back of the head, and I was brought here—wherever here was. It had to be connected, but why would he help me and then set me up? Plus, if I were dead or captured, how would I be able to repay the favor I owed him?
Without opening my eyes, I stepped outside my body. Even though the smell of pickled olives was prevalent, I wasn’t in the storeroom of a restaurant this time. I’d been left in an office off the main floor of a large warehouse. The big room, which I could see through large windows overlooking the main floor, was about the size of a football field. The ceilings stretched up half that height in the industrial structure, showing exposed metal beams and concrete columns. I popped around the interior. There was a large rolling door at the far end, with enough clearance for an eighteen-wheeler to pass through. Three truck beds were parked off to the side, with one truck cab waiting to be hitched. At least fifteen people were working and a few others were milling around. The workers—all druids—were loading pallets of merchandise onto each truck. Were these guys connected to the mob? Were they Johnny’s boys? If so, maybe Ronin wasn’t the reason I was here. Frankie could have come back with some of his crew to teach Raal a lesson and found me instead. I needed more information about where I was.
As I’d done before in the fourth realm, I imagined my presence going up through the top of the warehouse, high enough to look down on the area like a map. Unlike a regular map, there were no markings other than the brown dots of druids. The warehouse itself was perched on a high cliff jutting out over the Silver Sea, which meant the large rolling door didn’t lead to land. It had to be a portal, but to where?
