by Lan Chan
The world around me froze as the enormous lion came into view. Max’s mane and the hairs along his spine were decorated in that weird pattern of colour that now branded him with Lex’s and my magic. Midnight blue and rich pink interspersed with the gold of his natural colouring. Unhurriedly, he paced into the centre of my field of vision. I swallowed, my hands cupping my mouth as I tried to squeeze my eyes shut to spare myself the pain. It never worked. Wide-eyed like I had surgical implements holding my eyelids open, all I could do was stand there as mist began to converge around Max.
He turned in one direction and then another, trying to find the source of the evil. His confusion, the uncertainty of fighting a foe he couldn’t see, punctured through me. With all my might, I tried to find the source of my voice. Pain burst around my lips as my fingers carved bloody trails into my skin when I tried to pry my mouth open. It was all in vain. Against the backdrop of darkened mist, a silver spine appeared as if held up by a wraith. It spun once mid-air and then stabbed Max right through the heart. And I was forced to watch, petrified as the muscles in his forearms twitched. Bile and spit foamed at his mouth, dripping and pooling along with the blood soaking the front of his chest. The life bled from him.
Panic wailed in my mind. It snapped my senses back into place, causing me to yank my hand back from Cordelia. My breath came in ragged waves, the dim of the candle-lit bar suddenly oppressive. I couldn’t breathe. Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“What the hell was that?” Andrei bit out. Turning towards him because of the incessant tug of his hand, I saw that all the colour had bleached from his already-pale face. “Was that what I think it was?”
Oh heck! He’d been touching me. Across the table, Eugenia was petting her sister’s hair. They’d been in physical contact as well. No! This couldn’t be happening. “Dee?” Eugenia pressed her hand against her sister’s ruddy cheeks. “Dee? Wake up.”
Eyes whiter than glacial snow, Cordelia’s chin lifted. She stared right at me, knowing but unseeing. Her ruby lips parted. I knew what she would say even before her mouth opened. I’d heard it three times now from three different diviners. I’d seen it a hundred times when I closed my eyes no matter how many sleep spells I dosed myself with.
“If you accept the mating link. He will die,” she said before she slumped over.
4
Eugenia caught her sister on the downward spiral. Her wide eyes were all for me. “You’ve established a mating link with him?”
The air was still too thin. Her innocuous question was a reflection of the accusations I threw at myself after every nightmare. You mated with him? Even when you knew it would kill him. Weak, stupid, selfish, Sophie. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
She surveyed me. “Why don’t you seem surprised by the premonition?”
I swallowed. “I’ve heard it before.”
Andrei wasn’t to be ignored. He let the knife clatter on the table. Where I had expected humour or eye-rolling, he pinched the bridge of his nose instead. “I’m assuming he has no idea, otherwise you’d never have gotten away from Seraphina.”
I waved the hand adorned with Gabriel’s Key in front of his face. “Excuse me! I can go wherever I want!”
He snorted. “As if! He’s an alpha shifter. If he had any inkling of a link, he’d have given up that desperate attempt to keep the Reserve in check to find you.”
On the night of the malachim attack, Durin had been hurt. From the snippet I’d managed to obtain while on the run, the clan alphas had also been affected. Now Max was temporary alpha of the Reserve and was fighting to hold it together for them all.
After the malachim attack, Seraphina’s forces had been stretched thin. The nature of the malachim meant that they were only subject to the limitations of the Nephilim. They were capable of teleporting and were only killable when corporeal. Both angel and demon blades could hurt them. And as Basil discovered, blood bound them to this dimension. To reduce the area of their patrols, all the supernatural cities had been knitted together for protection and to reduce the need for Nephilim resources.
Keeping the Reserve functioning would be taking up all of Max’s time. But I knew what Andrei said was true. If Max had any idea about the mating link, nothing else would matter. The link was a gift from the old gods of their dimension. A cosmic compulsion that went beyond instinct. I shuddered at the thought.
Cordelia startled into alertness. The way she blinked at me gave little reassurance. “I’m sorry,” she bleated. “I tried to glean the true meaning of the vision, but it’s shrouded. Almost like somebody has tampered with the Sight.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The words could not have been coated with more bitterness.
“Sure it doesn’t,” Andrei said, his expression suddenly soft. It made me want to curl into a ball and weep. Andrei Popescu felt sorry for me. Could I get any more pathetic?
Ever the optimist, Eugenia cleared her throat. “You know these shifters are nothing if not co-dependent. Look at the situation in the Reserve right now. Durin is hanging by a thread and it weakens Yolanda. Alastair Thompson has given his life-force to sustain Durin and it’s draining Shayla in return.” She glanced at me and scratched under her left eye. “There’s every possibility that the reason he dies is because you die.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, my voice thick with defeat. “I had thought of that.” Karma was the biggest bitch ever and I hated her with every fibre of my being.
I hadn’t known that I’d been balling my fists until the sharp pain of nails digging into my palms made me wince. Andrei blew out a breath. “You low witches don’t do things by half-measures, do you?”
The world blurred. “Aw, c’mon cupcake.” I swiped at my cheek, but the tears kept coming. “Shit,” Andrei spat. “Forgot which human I was talking to.”
My lower lip quivered. He placed his arm around my shoulders and shook me gently.
Sniffing, I locked my rage at the unfairness away with everything else. Because if I didn’t, there was no way I would be able to put one foot in front of the other. “I…please don’t tell anyone. He can never find out.”
“How are you doing with it?” Eugenia asked.
I sniffed. “Doing with what?”
She gave me a cheeky smile. “Don’t forget that Shayla Thompson was one of ours before she defected to the Reserve.”
No, I hadn’t forgotten. Suppression was the more accurate word. “Fine.”
“Right.” She pretended to inspect her nails. “So, no insomnia or urges to peel the skin off your own bones?”
“No.”
Her gaze flicked to the ragged skin around the cuticle of my nails. “Uh huh. You’re almost as good a liar as Alessia.”
“I’m not lying.” Not at all. I didn’t feel anything so passionate. Just a soul-sucking emptiness in the very depths of my being and a continuous oppressive weight on my chest making me feel as if nothing would ever be right again. So really, I was fine.
“How are you containing it?” Cordelia wanted to know. “By now he should have an inkling too.”
I bit the nail on my left thumb and mumbled something. “What?” Andrei and Cordelia asked at the same time. I repeated myself. Andrei swiped the hand away from my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For a second there, I thought you said a blood barrier.”
I blinked at them demurely. He practically threw my hand back at me. “What’s wrong with you? Is that why there’s a hint of necromantic magic clinging to you?” Ah, right. He was a creepy sniffer.
For once, I wasn’t content to be lectured. “You heard the portent. If we mate, he dies. I don’t think even death would stop Max from completing the mating. So there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Without warning, I got to my feet. Not bothering to thank them or to say goodbye, I lifted the hood of my jacket and barged through the tavern. A dull ache slid down my neck where my jaw was winched shut and I was grinding my teeth.
Basil had asked me the reason why I h
ad wanted to learn how to hold back an oppressive force using the strength of my blood. The lie I’d come up with hadn’t been remotely convincing. But I was a fugitive, and he couldn’t leave Betty to protect me, so in the end he had relented. That the barrier spells had been designed for necromancers to bind undead to them hadn’t escaped my attention. In fact, I’d been counting on it.
The black, life-warping energy of the undead was a direct counterbalance to the beating life of the mating link. If anyone were to check, all they would see was an aura of evil. It was quite fitting really. The whole of supernaturaldom thought I was the spawn of a mass murderer. I was just proving their assumption.
Andrei caught up to me just outside of the tavern door. Human indignation still didn’t beat out vampiric speed.
“Hey!” he said. “Wait up.”
When I lengthened my stride, he appeared at my side and grabbed my arm. “Stop manhandling me!” I said.
“Sophie!”
I rounded on him. “Yes?” I projected rage into my expression. What he saw seemed to give him pause.
“It’s not your fault–”
My anger dissipated as a wave of euphoria hit me. It was artificial and almost sickening in its purity. The tears I had shed earlier dried so quickly I almost stopped breathing. Andrei came to a dead stop beside me. The red ring around his eyes receded to a clear crystal blue that was visible against dawn’s early light. His mouth tipped up into an uneven smile. Like he had no idea why he was happy.
Everything that had been wrong a moment ago suddenly didn’t matter. All of the pulse points in my body – neck, fingertips, the soles of my feet – throbbed. Blood surged to my face.
That was when my heart jolted. A spiral of black motes twisted up into the open air. First, one right behind Andrei’s shoulder. Then another just around the corner near the bone merchant shop. A screech ripped the night air as the wards around the taverns and this section of the fens flared to life. Beautiful Angelical words carved by Nephilim scribes who had bled from their ears as they painstakingly etched each symbol. The thing was, only one non-celestial being in this dimension had the kind of power it took to make Angelical worthwhile. Had the malachim been demonic by origin, it might have made a difference. Instead, it was a simple warning system with a single message: Run!
“Teleport!” Andrei shouted at me as the smoke swirled and became corporeal. Grabbing Andrei’s arm, I made to teleport us away just as the malachim spread its blackened wings and blocked out the morning light. And then, the world was blotted out by a juvenile scream that had my stomach clenching.
Bodies came streaming out of the tavern and every other business in close proximity. Portals opened up all around me, closing as their creators leaped through. Clamping his hand on my shoulder, Andrei yelled at me. “Sophie! Teleport!”
But my head swivelled, desperately trying to filter out the onslaught of sound bombarding my ears so I could pinpoint the location of Kate’s scream. I’d heard her shouting so often while babysitting the kids in the Reserve that the tone had imprinted on me. This scream wasn’t one of rage or indignation. It was borne of pure, unfettered terror. Kate was a lynx. A small but still predatory shifter. Screaming was a shameful by-product of an undisciplined mind. It would take a lot to drag that unwanted reaction from her.
Throwing Gabriel’s Key at Andrei, I took off running through the streets of Ravenhall’s merchant district. It had a more civilised feel than the ramshackle warren of the black market but there were still scents and shops here that skirted the line of evil. Avoiding portals was like trying to manoeuvre between landmines. Uncaring where and who they swept up in their wake, whole sections of stores crumbled in on themselves as they were sucked into the interior of the portal being opened by every mage and sorceress in sight. The supernaturals who didn’t possess high magic took what they could get and jumped through the closest open portal, not caring where they ended up. The alternative was worth falling into a vat of slime or an unkempt dungeon.
Behind me, I heard Andrei swearing his head off before footsteps thundered after me. In my periphery, I caught the first malachim solidifying into a blackened body that reminded me so much of the towering grace of the seraphim that it made my heart stutter. Once upon a time, they had been beautiful. Now they were a shattered nightmare.
I broke free of the cobbled streets that weaved around the stores and out into a small, open clearing. Through a narrow alleyway on the other side of the clearing, the marshy, green grass of the fens turned to parched, yellow ground. Crap!
Every sector of the Reserve was built to resemble one of the shifter species’ natural ecosystems. The African savannah that stretched out before me should have been much farther away. Good sense demanded that I turn around right this second. Then again, if I had any sense at all, I’d be back in the hideout with Basil and Betty.
A tiny whimper dragged my attention to the clearing. Twelve enormous stone pillars rose up from the ground in a semi-circle around what appeared to be a white crystal slab sitting atop a boulder. A smear of something greyish brown stained the top of the slab. Dead grass ringed around the base of the stone pillar as though it had been poisoned. Blinking, it took me a second to register that it was a druidic stone circle. The slab must have been a sacrificial altar. Nice.
Surrounding the stone circle was a flickering of black fire that ate at the earth and caused everything living that it touched to wither and rot. The acrid stench of death blotted the air, making it difficult to take a breath without wanting to throw up. The tug of draining magic pulled at the seams inside me. Just behind me, Andrei groaned.
Of the many gifts the malachim supplied, the draining was the worst. Much like what happened to supernaturals in the Hell dimension, the malachim sucked the essence of anything living around them. Without high magic to escape, the shifters were caught dead in the water.
Kate was on her knees to the left of the altar. She squatted in a tight huddle with two shifter teenagers and–I breathed fire out my nostrils–Edward, who was clutching an unconscious figure. Around them, a dense fog of shadow rippled in the air. Had my heart not stopped beating the moment I heard Kate scream, it would have torn in two. Not even bothering to guess why they were so far out of their permitted roaming zone, I raced towards them just as the world began to rumble.
The kids shrieked as the fog ebbed towards them. It merged with a lick of black fire and morphed into the shadow of a humanoid figure.
“Dammit, Sophie!” Andrei grated.
“Go!” I hissed at him even as I took off running towards the ever-solidifying body of the first malachim.
Attention locked on the easy prey in front of it, the malachim paid me no heed. Part of it was the blood barrier and the shroud of necromantic energy that pulsed along with my heartbeat. It didn’t immediately recognise me as human. If it had, I would already be dead. Then again, I was running towards what was shaping up to be half a dozen malachim. Chances were I would be dead by the end of this anyway. It didn’t stop me from tracing the edge of the words of light that Basil had branded onto my wrists.
The familiar tug of blood magic tingled up my arms. Bright pink light saturated my palms as the pool of magic inside me swelled and thrust out. Past my fingertips, magic swarmed and shaped itself into two blood-red blades with wicked tips edged in pink. I flicked my wrist and they became solid weight in my hands.
Up ahead, the malachim solidified into their true forms. Eight-foot-tall remnants of angels. This time, Kate wasn’t the only shifter who screamed. Still, she forced herself up to her feet, her normally warm brown eyes ringed in red. Oh crap. If the kids went rogue now, we were all done for.
Andrei swore again.
The malachim lashed out with a smoky limb. All four conscious shifters flinched, but the slash of claws hit the protection circle I hastily drew around them. It was no less painful than having actual claws scraping across my skin. Biting the inside of my cheek did nothing to stop either the pain or the hiss
from coming. Little flecks of pink light sparked from the circle like embers. They fell onto the dead grass and smouldered before lighting tiny fires. While their companions cowered, Kate and Edward turned their heads in our direction. And that was when the malachim noticed I was there.
Their white eyes of pure celestial light pinpointed on me. It had the exact opposite effect compared to what it felt like to be regarded by the seraphim. Once upon a time, the malachim had been charged with protecting humanity. They knew our hopes and guarded us against our fears. One look and they saw right into the core of our souls. It stood to reason that in this twisted form, they would use our worst fears against us.
The malachim that had tried to swipe at the children blurred at the edges. A circle of midnight-blue hedge magic began to trace around the malachim as it transformed from a towering nightmare into a diminutive brunette with the most striking blue eyes this side of the dimension. My limbs became heavy with a sense of guilt. Deep inside me, the pool of kitchen magic bubbled up in rage and despair.
The malachim’s image dissipated, and in its place, Lex stood inside a protection circle. Her cheeks were ruddy with tears, her skin decorated with injuries weeping blood like she’d been enduring the lash of a thousand whips.
“This is your faul–” she began to say before something snapped in my mind. A compulsion that Andrei had set in motion months ago the moment we realised the malachim were capable of using our fears against us.
Without hesitation, I whipped the blade in my right hand at Fake Lex. The blade sailed through the air in a straight line. Any other weapon would have feathered through the misty form of the malachim like it wasn’t even there. But as the tip of the blade buried into Fake Lex’s ribs, the blood spell fired and dragged the malachim into this dimension. It gave a shuddering wail as it shrugged off the Fake Lex costume. Black wings materialised at its back. They unfurled into a shield that blocked out everything around it. At the same time that apprehension blossomed in my chest, my mouth gaped. Beautiful. As terrifying as they were, there was still a part of the malachim that was breathtaking.
