Harem of Souls

by Emma Dawn

  He glared down at me and I glared back up at him.

  A groan spun me around to where they’d laid Kessler on a thin mat of moss. “I’m grateful. Even if he isn’t, Rose.”

  Ivan growled something under his breath and stalked away. “You didn’t save him.” He threw over his shoulder. “You only prolonged his pain.”

  I frowned and dropped to my knees. “He’s just pissy because my whip turned into snake.”

  Kessler smiled but his eyes remained closed. “No, he’s right. The bite of a grawk is infectious. You must leave me here. I’ll turn into one of them and then I’ll come after you too. I can feel the pull on me now. The hive is set to go after you. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  My heart clenched and horror rocked through me at the thought of the gentle werewolf becoming one of those monsters. I bit my lower lip and shook my head. “No, there has to be a way to fix this.”

  “There isn’t, Rosie.” Liam put a hand on my shoulder. “But you gave him time to say goodbye to us, which is more than we’ve ever gotten before with a fallen friend.”

  Kessler’s face was pale, and blood smeared his neck and chest. He reached up for me and I took his hand. With more strength than I thought he should have, he pulled me close to him and the other men backed away, giving us space. He drew me in until our cheeks pressed against each other, and his ear was against my lips and vice versa.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “Rose, you can change this all. Remember that connection we had? It’s greater than you and me. That ability to tap into the world. Use it.” He spoke as if I’d not just apologized for being the cause of his soon to be demise. I tried to pull up to look him in the eye but his hand tightened on my neck. “No, they don’t understand. The bite of a grawk is a terrible thing, but it connects my mind to the group of them. I see what is controlling them. This place, this limbo is not what it’s meant to be. The grawks are trapped. You can change that. You must change that.”

  His words got louder and louder and his hands on me kept on that incredible hold that I couldn’t break away from.

  “Little help!” I yelled as I fought with Kessler. His fingers dug into me, and I screamed as he held me close to him. The other men scrambled toward us.

  “Save me, Rose. Please,” Kessler said, his voice weak, his hands like bands of iron.

  He let me go, his hands slumping to either side of him and he lay back, his eyes rolling into his head as he began to shake and tremble.

  “Get her, get her out of here!” Ivan roared and then two sets of hands grabbed at me, pulled me to my feet and pushed me over the rough hewn rocks of the mountain. I tried to spin and turn, to see what the hell Ivan was doing. Because I had a very bad feeling it was going to be nothing I wanted to see, yet something I couldn’t turn away from.

  I caught a glimpse of him bending down to pick Kessler up . . .and then he had his friend over his head as he stood at the edge of the cliff.

  “No.” I shook my head frantically, but couldn’t make my body go in that direction. Kessler twitched and jerked and then a snarl rippled out of him as his body shimmered and his skin drifted into an ashen gray, as those green eyes faded to black holes that searched me out. Ivan let out a roar as he heaved his body over the precipice.

  There was no sound for what seemed like a long time and then the thud of a body dancing down the side of the mountain, over and over, as he tumbled away from us.

  “Keep up, we have to move,” Torq said. His one arm was around my waist, all but lifting my feet from the ground and the other was on my left hand. Mars was on my right side, holding that hand.

  “You did the right thing, Rose,” Mars said quietly, “even if Ivan won’t admit it. We would have lost him out there too if you hadn’t intervened. And we could not afford to lose them both.”

  My stomach rolled and I was sure I was going to be sick but I gritted my teeth and shoved what wanted to come up back down. I didn’t jerk out of their hands but I pushed them off so I was on my own two feet.

  “I’m not some delicate flower,” I said. “Roses have thorns too.”

  The two men looked at each other and then at me. “Duly noted,” Torq said.

  We were a couple hundred feet from the cliff now. Liam, Ivan, and Jessop gathered up the horses and were catching up fast. The image of Kessler being thrown over the cliff replayed in my head if I so much as blinked too long. I made myself look around and take in this new place down to the details, focusing on something else. The darkness had lightened a little, but it looked as though that had to do with the moon and not any rising of a sun.

  The landscape was mostly rock with a heavy amount of moss layered over it, here and there. No trees that I could see, just sharp jagged rock not softened by the weather. I reached out to a stone beside me that stood four feet tall and was particularly sharp. The edges were shiny, too, as though only recently split.

  “This looks . . . new.” I turned slowly, taking in the area again, thinking about what it could be. The more I looked, the more I realized we were in the bottom of a slight depression and all around us was something that looked like rays pointing out from the center. Like a blast site.

  “A couple of journey’s ago we had a powerful mage that was on her way home. Decided she didn’t want to go back to the land of the living. Blew herself up.” Liam put a hand on the same stone I did. “She took me brother with her, down into the bowels of this world.”

  I put my hand over his. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Do not be. This is our calling, the thing we do to make right the wrongs we did in the land of the living, I think.”

  “Keep moving,” Ivan growled as he came up behind us. “The horde of grawks are only slowed down by the mountain, you know that.”

  Liam gave him a sloppy salute. “You got it, boss-O.”

  I looked at the men around me, surprised by their demeanor. One of their own had just died, and Ivan had thrown his body off a cliff and they were all acting like nothing had happened. I put a hand on Liam’s arm. “Why aren’t you upset about Kessler?”

  His eyes of blue and green widened. “I am upset, Rosie. But I can’t stop now. We all must keep going. The only safe place from the grawks is either at the Chalice itself, or the castle, from where we’ve just come. In between there is no safety.”

  I frowned, thinking over what Vincent had said to me. “Let me get this straight, if we’d just stayed with Vincent, we could be safe right now?”

  “Yes and no,” Jessop chimed in. “I might have heard a little of what Vincent said.”

  The other men turned to him. Liam just snorted. “He says that like it was an accident.”

  I let a small smile flicker over my lips. “And what did you hear?”

  “That your father, Gavin, be looking for you,” Liam said. “Here in this world, the truly evil souls are bound to the grawks. The evil souls don’t draw them grawks like others do. The grawks are drawn to you because you are a good person, because your soul is clear. Which means they would have overrun the castle in an effort to get to you. Wherever you are, no one is safe.”

  Chapter Five

  Ain’t Nobody Got Time for This Shit

  No one was safe around me, that was the gist of what I was getting from what the men were telling me, and that wasn’t about to change. “Then why not just feed me to the grawks?” Not that I wanted to be fed to the zombie-like monsters currently rushing toward us as fast as their already dead limbs could carry them, but it was a question I needed answered if I was going to continue putting my trust in them. “Why not just toss me out and not bother to try and help me get to the chalice?”

  I looked each of them in the face, and each of them looked away until Ivan. He drew a slow breath. “We don’t know why Vincent would send you out here.”

  They didn’t know? Wait, then that meant, “So you suggested just tossing me to the grawks then?”

  “Isn’t that what you just
suggested?” he snarled. “Isn’t that the conclusion you’ve just come to?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I wanted it to actually happen!” I threw back at him. It was far too easy to imagine Ivan scooping me up and lifting me over his head, throwing me over the cliff the way he’d done to Kessler. “And you’re not even tore up about Kessler! So, don’t act like you’re surprised that I’m not surprised you’d throw me over the cliff edge too!” I might as well have punched him in the balls by his reaction.

  His face paled at an alarming rate and he stood there, staring at me as though he could kill me with his eyes alone. I straightened my shoulders and stared back, a part of me hating him. “Let’s get on with this. You’re a bunch of callous bastards from what I can see. Your friend dies, and you don’t even spare a moment to grieve—”

  Ivan grabbed me so fast I could do nothing but gasp. None of the other men interfered but Torq looked like he wanted to. Ivan’s hands wrapped around my upper arms and he lifted me so we were eye to eye. “There is no time to grieve him. Do not act like you care. You’re just another spoiled princess who gets the chance to go home on the backs of other’s lives and souls.”

  My jaw dropped open and he let me go. I hit the ground and one knee buckled, sending me to the side. I pushed up, ignoring the pain as it tugged at me. Tears threatened but I dashed them away in favor of some pretty pissed off woman anger.

  “I haven’t got time for this shit. I’m just glad I’m not one of your supposed friends. At least, I know where I stand with you.” I stomped forward, only limping slightly. The men pulled back from me as if I were contagious.

  Ivan and Jessop worked on getting a fire going, their backs to me. Damn it, I didn’t want to feel this hurt over these men. Over their stupid man pride and stupid man reasoning.

  I took a few steps and Torq caught my arm, his mouth dropping to my ear. “Easy, Rose. He’d as soon kill you as see you through this. Some of us are truly here for you. Please remember that.”

  I jerked out of his hand. “You’ve warned me of two of your party now.”

  “Because you deserve at least that.” Those amber eyes were liquid gold. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t want to like any of them, in that moment, so I turned from him and kept up the walking, working out the kink in my leg, but that took me further away from the cluster of them and the fire that flickered against the rocks and bits of snow. The more I walked, the angrier I got, the more my emotions ruled me the further I pushed from them all. I would go on my own if I had to. I was strong enough. I knew I was.

  “Stop.” Mars called to me as I hurried up the slope ahead of them. “Rose, stop!”

  I wasn’t going to listen to them. I’d get to the Chalice by myself if I had to. Any thought of the men being handsome or panty-tossing worthy had flown out the window with Kessler’s death. They were assholes, selfish, stupid, arrogant assholes who didn’t care about anyone. My thoughts raced as I pulled myself up handhold after handhold, climbing a chunk of rock that bit into my hands, elbows, and knees. Faster and faster I went. Distantly I could hear another set of feet and hands hurrying after me.

  I glanced back to see Mars only about ten feet behind me, his dark purple cloak swirling out around him like a flare, but there was no fire that I could see. I turned my back on him and grabbed a rock, yanking myself up a steeper section. Only the rock loosened and crumbled in my hand.

  I yelped as I swung out sideways, dangling from one hand. I could no longer see the other men, I couldn’t see the pathway we’d ridden along and the one we were on now no longer looked like the easy climb I thought.

  With a grunt, I swung myself back to the face of the rock and pinned myself there. What was happening? This made no sense. I looked over my shoulder again. The fire should be a perfect beacon. My only real thought was I would climb a little, find a place to sit and then go back down later. But down didn’t seem an option now. What the hell was going on?

  I waited for Mars to catch up to me. He was out of breath as he reached my side. “This is the first challenge, Rose. You have to let me help you through it.”

  I stared at him a moment, letting him see my irritation. “I’m hanging from the side of a mountain by my damn fingernails and you want to help me through it? How am I supposed to trust you?”

  He shocked me by flipping his hood back. Violet eyes the color of his cloak stared back at me, messy, dark blond hair fluttered in the wind whipping around us. “A storm is coming, Rose. I died in a storm. My job is to see you through this so you won’t die too. To show your worth.”

  “What the hell?” I spluttered. “How many times have you done this?”

  He shook his head. “We can talk about that later. But for now, I need you to follow me. I know the way to a cave.”

  Mars moved past me, climbing higher as the wind around us picked up. “Wait, is this cave like the place you died?”

  He paused and looked down at me. “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go there!” I yelled up at him. I forced myself to lean out, to see what I could see in terms of places we could take shelter. There was a flash of something far to my right, above me on the next ledge over. Like the shine of a piece of metal. “There, we can go there!”

  “No, you have to let me lead you—”

  “You can go to the cave you died in before.” I breathed the words out as I began my sideways climb toward the other ledge. “Or you can come with me and try something that might get us both out of here alive. A change of plans.”

  I kept looking down as I moved, not only for my foot holds but for the other men. Where were they?

  Mars really did have some explaining to do when we got to . . .wherever we were going. A hard, icy cold gust of wind slid between me and the rocks, as if it were trying to peel me away.

  I refused to let the fear in, as much as it climbed up and down my spine with the push of the wind. I glanced back only once to see Mars following me, his face grim, icicles hanging from the tips of his hair and eyelashes. My own hair had frozen too, the icy strands clinking against one another in the wind.

  “This is madness, insanity!” I yelled into the wind, letting my fear and anger fuel my limbs that were slowing down with fatigue and cold. “I’m pretty much already dead, but now I’m trucking through this bizarre world of monsters and a Chalice that is God only knows where. In a fucking ice storm of all things.” My fingers bit into the ledge I’d been aiming for all along. I scrabbled with my feet and pulled with my hands. A hand on my ass boosted me up, helping me onto the smooth flat surface. I spun around and reached for Mars as he wobbled where he was.

  His face was pale and his lips blue. Blue. Shit, this was getting real, fast. I reached for him as he began to fall backward, off the cliff, toward the rocks below.

  I lunged forward and grabbed the edges of his cloak around his face. “Hang on!”

  His arms hung limply by his side, and his feet slipped from the ledge they were on. Which meant, I was suddenly holding his entire weight.

  “Son of a bitch, wake up!” I screamed at him. My fingers ached already from the cold and now holding up a full grown—and good sized—man. I didn’t even have the strength to shake him.

  I began to slide forward, toward the edge, his weight pulling us both over. I fought to find a foothold with my toes. No, I could change this. I had to.

  I imagined a ledge underneath Mars, one that stuck out far enough that it would catch him as I let go. The earth beneath me rumbled, but I couldn’t see the ledge come out. I couldn’t see if it was under him or not.

  Faith, I needed to have faith that this strange ability to manipulate the world I was in was solid. That I could do it.

  Mars’s eyes flickered and those violet depths caught at me. “Let me go. You shouldn’t die for me.”

  “I’m not going to die, and neither are you,” I said. “But I am going to let you go. There’s a ledge below.”

  He closed his eyes and my grip gave wa
y. That moment—up until then—was the worst moment of my life. Seeing his tawny head drop away, and knowing if I was wrong, he’d just fallen into a fate worse than death. Would he become a grawk too? Would he end up chasing after me with a mindless hunger that would be ended only with my death?

  I slid forward on my belly, expecting the worst, and hoping for the best.

  He was sprawled on a ledge about eight feet down from the top, and just wide enough to hold his body.

  I whooped with excitement and then it hit me. We were far from out of the woods yet. I had to get his body up to the top. On my hands and knees, I surveyed what I was looking at. If I could make one ledge, why not a few more? Like steps. I moved a little to the right and then reached down about a foot and ran my hands over the flat vertical rock. Again, I imagined a ledge flowing outward, creating a nice wide step.

  Slowly, the ground rumbled and the rock slid out. I grinned, even while exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. I had to get him up here, I had to get us both out of the weather if we were going to survive this damn challenge.

  Over and over, I created a ledge and each time I had to rest and gain my breath back. By the time I reached Mars, I was sweating like I’d been running a marathon, and the sweat was cooling and making me shudder with each gust of wind. On my knees, I reached under his cloak and checked his pulse. There it was, but slow and his skin was cold to the touch. I put my hands on either side of his face and thought about him warming. Surely if I could manipulate the world around us, I could give him a little heat? There was a simple flow of energy from me to him, enough to take the edge off his body. I was panting hard though, the burst of energy I’d used had pretty much depleted my reserves.

  He groaned and pushed up to his hands and knees. “Rose? I was dying. Again.”

  “Not on my watch,” I said. “Come on, you need to help me a bit here.” I carefully helped him move forward to the first ledge up. I forced him to crawl up the steps I’d made and I followed behind, my body dragging with exhaustion.