by Jenn Stark
Another realization came to me as my senses slowly bounced back online. My clothes were in tatters, with long rents in my leggings, and angry blisters beneath. I stank of charred leather too. And when I glanced up to the room around me, I didn’t look for the Council members’ faces, I looked at Nikki’s.
It was frozen in horror.
“Not good?” Before she could respond, the pain swamped me like a tidal wave. Every bone and organ in my body seemed to explode outward, radiating agony, then to pull all that misery back tight, compressing it into a ball. Fire, slashing, blade and bone all crashed together in my mind, and I realized why I’d felt so…spiny when I’d first come out of the trance.
There had been things sticking out of me.
Knives. Arrows. Stars. And one long spear.
I blacked out.
Chapter Seventeen
What seemed a millennia later, Armaeus’s warm voice brushed over me, solid and comforting. “You’re doing well, Miss Wilde. Don’t rush it.”
I was lost in an enormous pile of soft pillows and blankets, as I somehow knew I would be. Memories leaked through my comfort barrier, and I stiffened, my breath catching at the pain. “Do not remember,” he soothed. “Not yet. Drift.”
That was an idea I could get behind, particularly as I felt the bed dip, the weight of Armaeus’s body running the length of mine and beyond. His heat radiated over me in a soothing arc, and I groaned, willing myself back to sleep but knowing it wouldn’t come. With him so close, my breathing regulated, though, and his soft touch against my cheek felt good and right.
It also felt like I still had skin on my face. Which seemed an important consideration.
“What happened to me?” I managed. My voice was raspy, but my teeth were intact, along with my tongue. I couldn’t quite bring myself to open my eyes, but that meant I had eyelids. Things were improving all the time. “Did I…did I catch on fire?”
“Your reentry from Atlantis was much faster than your exit, and the transfer through the dimensional veil did not go as smoothly. Simon and Eshe are trying to figure out why.”
“It seemed a little rocky.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward and drifted a kiss along my temple. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t want to resist it. Where the Magician’s lips touched my body, everything felt whole again. My headache eased, my eyes rested more easily behind their lids, my cheeks felt smooth, their skin unbroken. “You carried back weapons as we directed.”
“Um…they were stuck into me.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Until we pulled them free. But the mission was a success.” He moved his mouth down to my chin, and the mini vortex of healing expanded again, a cool wash of relief against the roof of my mouth, my throat easing its constriction. I shifted my hands beneath the blankets, and my fingers flexed easily. My arms as well.
Then my legs.
I opened one eye. I saw the Magician in duplicate, my third eye fluttering to life with him so close. He fairly glowed with power, surrounding me in a cocoon of magic.
“You’ve been at this awhile, haven’t you?” I murmured.
“You were far more injured than we first realized,” he said without apology. “And injured in ways not consistent with astral travel as Eshe has directed it over the centuries.”
“Well, you know. Atlantis.” I sighed and let my eyes slip closed again as he levered his body over mine, dropping a light kiss on each of my brows.
“That certainly accounts for some of it,” he agreed. “But your clothes and skin were torn. You looked like you’d been in a fight.”
Um, yeah. “I thought Simon recorded all that.”
“He recorded everything you saw and reported on until you reached the dome. At that point, we lost all contact with you. When you emerged from the dome, we could hear you, but your words were mainly a distress signal after that, and nothing transferred to the scouting device.” He paused. “What did you see? What happened to you?”
I considered responding, I really did. But I was…so tired. Besides, this was Armaeus, and he’d been over the ground of my brain before. The idea of him plumbing my deepest, darkest secrets didn’t appeal, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak of what I’d seen. Far easier to let him see it for himself.
He must have sensed the moment my mental barriers gave way, laying open my mind for him. When his lips brushed mine, the electric jolt ripped through me, threatening to fry my already abused nerves.
Armaeus spoke words I couldn’t follow as I watched the tumble of images stream through my mind once more, a visitor to my own brain. The beauty within the dome, the light following from the center oculus. The whistling winds that had so unnerved me. The weapons and the golden scales. With another breathed word, he slowed the passage of images as I picked up the scales, turning them over in my hands. He saw what I had seen, the imprinted image of Justice on my palm, so similar and yet different from the original Tarot deck. He played my shifting hands over and over again, me weighing the weight of the scales, hefting the weapons. Me turning back toward the door, becoming entangled in the chain trailing from the scales. Me hauling the golden artifact with me, some sort of treasure-hunting Quasimodo, hunched beneath my stolen spoils.
When I breached the outer courtyard once more, the images sped up again. I watched in growing fear as the armies of light and dark amassed around me, hurling spears and weapons as I ducked and ran.
“You could have warned me about those guys,” I murmured against his lips.
He was silent above me, his mouth barely touching mine.
“You there?” I prompted.
“Shhh.”
The images sped more quickly then, as if Armaeus realized that his time for brain exploration was rapidly nearing an end. He stopped abruptly, though, when I was surrounded by a circle of angels and demons—and they knelt.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “That threw me too.”
The rest rushed by in a blur. He didn’t comment as the angels and demons stood once more, didn’t murmur any surprise as their weapons were placed in my hands. He didn’t comment, and I contented myself with watching a rerun of my life in fast-forward. The gift of weapons, Armaeus asking me to say the words, me saying them, and then the attack. The angels and demons converged on me until an explosion of white-hot light propelled me from the scene, and then there was only darkness.
He reran that piece a second time, then a third.
“You asked for help,” he murmured at last.
I shifted away from him to look at his face. His eyes were the color of black gold again, as if an infusion of dye had somehow slipped into his irises without permission. But those strange eyes held me fast. “I told you to say the word. I needed a vocalization. You said ‘help.’” He tilted his head. “Then they attacked you.”
“That’s pretty much how I remember it, yeah.” I moved my arm out from beneath the cocoon of blankets and studied it. A new web of fine white lines danced down the length of it, the scarring from the attack. “They seemed on my side, then suddenly, they weren’t.” I shrugged. “Of course, I was able to leave Atlantis, so maybe they did it on purpose. Maybe the full threat of their attack was what was needed for me to break free. God knows it didn’t feel like it was going to happen on its own.”
“They weren’t speaking English to you, but a language that has not been spoken on Earth for millennia.”
“And yet you know every language ever born, so spill. What were they saying?”
He hesitated. “Did you show them the card you had etched into your hand?”
I turned the offending hand and let my gaze drift over its now-clean surface. “Sort of a souped-up Justice card, but not the whole thing.” I frowned. “Where’s the deck?”
“Focus would be appreciated. Did you show them your hand?”
“Fine,” I snapped. “I honestly can’t remember. I think so, at least the two at the end who gave me the weapons. But I was running at them with a set of broken scales, so if those cards
are from Atlantis, then they could have recognized me from that. Minus the flowing robes and outstretched hand holding a whatever.”
“She holds a sword.” Armaeus was studying me in his favorite pose, that of the earnest professor bent on discovering the mysteries of the universe from his prize bug. “You were brandishing weapons as well as the scales.”
“Yeah, well, everything felt a lot lighter there.” I pushed myself up on one elbow as I remembered. “I was a lot lighter. I could climb more easily, run faster, jump higher. There was…flying too.” My eyes widened. “Those angels and demons—I hadn’t thought about that. They weren’t actually flying, they were jumping.”
“That holds with the ancient records, those that remain.” Armaeus seemed lost in thought. “But to recognize you…”
“I make a fierce Justice, I guess.” I considered that. “Is there a Justice currently on the Council?”
“There is not. Similar to Death, it is a card that is an abstraction and yet can be embodied by a mortal, but only Death has made the leap down to the Council.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘down’? You guys are the junior league?”
“Your attempts at defining the Council are, as always, entertaining. And wrong.” Armaeus seemed to come back to himself, and he leveled the full impact of his gaze against me. “You’re feeling better?”
“I’m good,” I said. I looked around the room. It had no windows, and I suddenly felt claustrophobic. “Where’s everyone else, anyway?”
“Kreios offered to take Nikki home,” Armaeus said, pointedly ignoring my lifted brows. “Eshe and Simon are studying the weapons you came back with, including the blade stuck in your shoulder.”
“Ouch.” I reached up and rubbed my shoulder, though it no longer registered pain. “I seem to be making a habit of that.”
“A full night has passed since you returned, and most of the morning as well. It is nearing noon.”
“Noon! That can’t be possible.” That made me sit upright. Armaeus obligingly rolled away from me, and I realized he’d been fully clothed this whole time. “Viktor is waiting on me to go fetch the children, Armaeus. If I’ve disappeared for a whole day…”
“He knows what you’ve been doing. I’ve kept Detective Rooks apprised of your progress, though not your side effects. The detective seems unreasonably distracted by any injury to you.”
“Noted,” I said wryly. It was good to know someone cared. “What do you mean, Viktor knows?”
Armaeus’s words were noncommittal. “He seems aware of your travel and is demanding to be advised of where you went, and why. We have advised him that you traveled in seclusion.”
I frowned. “He can’t think I went to wherever the stolen children are. I have no idea where that is.”
“I do not know what he thinks. He’s demanding a meeting.”
I grimaced. “You guys should go into corporate. No one loves meetings as much as you do.”
“You’ll be happy to know he wants you to attend as well.” Armaeus regarded me. “He’s expressing remorse over the kidnapping.”
“Right. He’s got about as much remorse in him as a lizard does. ” I flexed my fingers. “I tell you what. You guys meet, I’ll go get more intel. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
Armaeus hesitated. “You’ve shuttered your mind from me again.”
I shrugged. “I gave you what you needed, right?” Without waiting for an answer, I rolled out of bed, dragging a sheet with me as I padded over to get my clothes. I scowled down at the pile. “These are new.”
“I think you’ll agree that wearing your ripped and burned clothing would cause comment, even in Las Vegas.”
“Fair enough.” I picked up the trousers and light, long-sleeved shirt. Everything felt like it was made out of spun silk. “What is this, mithril?” I waved them at him. “I would have been fine with the same brands I had.”
He shrugged. “Indulge me.”
I got it then and put the clothes on without comment, totally playing it cool. I’d be losing these clothes the moment I hit the Strip, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. The likelihood that he’d infused tracking devices all the way down to my underwear was way too much of a chance I was not willing to take.
By the time I returned to the bedroom, Armaeus was gone. My phone and wallet remained, and I sighed. I was going to miss the wallet, but I couldn’t risk it. Maybe I’d give it to Dixie for safekeeping until I found a way to strip it free of bugs. Or maybe I’d go buy another five-dollar wallet. Decisions.
But that wasn’t all Armaeus had left behind. I lifted the set of large throwing stars, which seemed unreasonably light, even though we weren’t on Atlantis anymore. They were wrapped in a heavy cloth. A small padded shoulder pack rested beside them, sized exactly to carry the lethal blades. I smiled. He knew what I planned to do. And he wasn’t going to stop me.
Not five minutes later, I walked out into the sunshine, ready for my date with Death.
Chapter Eighteen
I could smell the burned skin when I walked into Darkworks Ink, and I winced in half-remembered pain. My Atlantis key gleamed from my wrist, none the worse for wear. I’d expected it to be destroyed in the triumphant return, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea that it remained. Its presence meant that, technically, I could go back. Back to the strange mix of angels and demons who’d reacted so strangely to me, back to the mysteries that Atlantis held close.
Jimmy Shadow was hanging out at the front counter, and he grinned at me from his stool as I hefted the pack onto the surface, opening the flap to display the blades inside. “Nice stars.”
“Gift from a friend,” I said. “Hold ’em for me?”
“Yep.” He nodded. “Blue said you’d be by. She’s working a big project, though. Said you could wait for her in room three or hang out up here.”
“I’ll hang here.” Room three was where I’d received my first key, the faux tattoo parlor that masked a setup that would make a horror movie director salivate. I could avoid checking that out again for as long as possible.
I took a seat on one of the stools in front of the counter, positioned at a large book of flash tattoos. The pages were open to seafaring nymphs and anchors, waves and whales. Sharks and dolphins lined the right-hand page. “You get a lot of requests for dolphins?”
“You wouldn’t believe how much.” Jimmy’s smile showed his weathered teeth. Coffee and cigarettes had worn down his body the same way the Colorado River had carved the Grand Canyon. “Blue doesn’t handle those so much anymore, but it’s a gateway for a lot of people, so we do our share.”
“Gateway—meaning they come back for additional ink?”
“Some of them. For others, it’s a literal gateway, the piece they need to access their deeper selves. We’re always up for helping that process out, especially if it gets a low-level Connected to a point of accepting their abilities and moving forward.”
I nodded. “When did you know you were a Connected?”
He shrugged. “First time I could do this.” The pages in front of me riffled and then blew to the side, taking me deeper into the book, where I saw dozens of wave images and every type of sailing craft. “Stupid trick, really, but it was cool and different, and it kind of freaked me out. I was maybe seven at the time.”
Seven years old. The same age the children had been when Viktor had taken them. How aware had their parents been of their gifts, I wondered? How many of them realized their children had psychic abilities? “Your parents handle it okay?”
“If by okay you mean I was stuck in support groups and therapy, yeah. They did okay.” He smiled. “I learned pretty quick to hide it. Wasn’t until I got my first tat that I felt like I could start owning who I was. So I get it, man. I get the need to make that kind of a statement.” He pointed to the book. “Even if it’s a statement of a bunch of daisies and bluebirds. It’s all in what helps the client.”
“You
ever get a request for something you won’t do?”
He shook his head. “Ultimately, it’s the client’s call, but there are designs Blue flat-out won’t do, and I can’t say I blame her.” At my raised eyebrows, he waved a hand. “RIP designs—death memorials, that kind of thing. Not Death itself—she’ll make that image all day long, every day. But when people want to ink the images of their lost loved ones, she balks.”
I considered that. “There’s a lot of those images out there.”
“They’re everywhere. Doesn’t make it right, though.” He looked weary, then, thinking about it. “People get all up in arms about the biblical injunctions against tattoos, but scripture is pretty clear on this point. Whether or not the Bible is against any sort of tattoo, full stop, for sure any mark to honor or recall the soul of a dead man is not cool.” He shook his head. “The worst is when pastors come in for ink to remember a loved one. That’s not a conversation you ever want to have.”
This conversation was having its desired effect, though. I felt myself relaxing, loosening up, the work of Armaeus to repair the damage caused by the Astral Travel Train Wreck settling into my bones with Jimmy’s soft cadence. He nodded as if he knew what I was doing, but amiably kept talking.
The door bells jingled, and Nikki strode in, dressed in combat boots, camouflage cargo pants, and tight black tank top, her hair back in a ponytail. She spotted me and cut her forward movement short. “Armaeus thought you’d be here.” She eyed my clothes. “And he thought you’d ditch the outfit he gave you too. Gotta give the guy props for trying, though.”
“I guess.” I bounced my heel on the foot rung of the stool, eyeing her as she settled in, her back against one of the few bits of wall that weren’t covered with flash art. “You my babysitter?”
“Nope, I’m your friend. Hey, Jimmy, you got any coffee in this joint?” Nikki prattled on while I blinked hard, shifting my head down and away to hide my face. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of Nikki as my friend, but to hear it out loud gave the words a weight and grace I wasn’t expecting. And it was possible that I was ever so slightly fragile at the moment. So there was that.
