by Jenn Stark
“True, but he has changed fundamentally. That change will have to be reversed and soon—there are dangers to remaining mortal that go beyond simple aging, particularly for someone with Armaeus’s past. But for now, he is mortal, and therefore, he cannot harm the essential part of you that he threatened before.”
My head was spinning. “You’re not being clear. Why, specifically, is he…”
“I think, once again, you are asking the wrong question, Sara Wilde.” Kreios’s gaze was intent on me, his smile lazy. “Instead of asking why, you should be asking what. As in, what will you do with this window of opportunity, now that you have it? Since you are finally allowed the possibility of connection with the one man you’ve never been able to have but have secretly yearned for despite your mind’s fears. What will you do?”
I blinked at him. “Wait. Are you telling me to jump him?”
“Me? I would never suggest that.” He waved off the idea. “But if you did, I suspect you would both find it highly…educational. And you know how much I prefer education over ignorance.” He shifted his hand toward me, halting my words. “Before you ask, Armaeus knows your barriers have dropped. It’s given him an access heretofore unprecedented, and he is equally unsure of how to proceed, which is a fascinating development in and of itself. His indecision is a feature of his mortality that he hasn’t quite acknowledged yet, but its timing is unfortunate. You might simply need to act first.”
“Act…first.” I scowled. “So you are telling me to jump him.”
“My role is simply to point out that which is already uppermost in your mind.” Kreios leaned back in his chair. “What you choose to do with it is your own business. But I would not wait too long, Sara Wilde. Eventually, Armaeus must restore his immortality. His place in the Council depends on it, and it’s a requirement for some of the magic that he taps. When he does regain his immortal state, it is quite likely that your fear will return, primal and irrational though it may seem to you.”
“So this is my only chance.” That seemed more of a challenge than I was willing to face. I narrowed my eyes at him. “He’s never turned mortal before?”
“Of course he has,” Kreios said. “I believe the last time was in the seventeen hundreds.”
I stared at him. “You’re making that up.”
“One thing I never need to do, in point of fact. The truth is vastly more entertaining.”
“Yeah? Well, tell me this, then. Why don’t I, um, react to you the same way I react to Armaeus? You’re both immortal. You’re both on the Council. So what’s up with that?”
Kreios’s eyes glittered. He leaned forward again, and I steeled myself not to lean back. The man was sex on a train, but my need for information outweighed my instincts that he was way out of my league in every possible measure.
“What you want to know is how I can stoke a reaction in you with a look, a smile, a touch…yet you are not afraid?” He lifted his hand and softly traced it down the side of my face. My body immediately responded. It was very efficient like that. A thrill of awareness skittered down my skin and along my nerve endings, pooling into my belly with nervous anticipation. My breath came faster, my hands grew warm. I kept my jaw from dropping open, but it was a near thing.
Kreios had moved off his chair while I was swimming through all my reactions. Now he was on his knees, in front of me, his body levered toward me, trapping me in the chair. But I didn’t panic, and he saw that I didn’t panic. This was different. He was proving his point.
Kreios dipped his head until his mouth was right at my ear. His whisper floated across the sensitized skin, and I couldn’t stop my body trembling as he spoke. “And how can your body innately sense that there are oceans of pleasure for us to know, an entire cosmos of sensual experiences for us to explore that are only a whisper away—and yet you do not fear me? This is what you wish to understand?”
“Yes.” I gripped the armrests of the chair, but I could no longer look at him, no longer look at anything but the softly waving leaves of the tropic fern beyond the cabana. My heart pounded, my knees shook, and a deep wellspring of need curled inside me, waiting to strike.
Kreios chuckled, moving down the length of my chin, his lips barely grazing my face as he spoke. “Because there is no fear within you, is there, Sara Wilde? Panic, yes.” His gaze found mine, trapped it. “And you would do well to panic. Uncertainty. Your mind full of questions you crave the answers to.” His mouth was positioned in front of mine. I couldn’t help it, my lips parted. I could see the fire leap behind Kreios’s indolent stare, and then he inched forward to close off the space between us. I shivered as his lips connected with mine, but he didn’t press further, only spoke. “Yet you do not fear my touch, not in the way you fear Armaeus. You want to know why.”
“Yes,” I managed, and Kreios’s magnificent body stiffened in response to the word. Laughter rumbled deep in his chest, and he edged back, his gaze heavy on me once more.
“I suspect you already know the answer to this question as well.”
I stared at his lips, but the light frisson of attraction between us had suddenly taken on a darker twist. A twist that had nothing to do with Kreios, and everything to do with the Magician. “Humor me.”
“It is because I cannot harm you, Sara Wilde. Our psychic abilities, magic, whatever you wish to call it—our essential natures do not conflict. Yours and the Magician’s do. Not as oil and water, but flint and stone. The fire you stoke between you is impossible to resist, and it could well kill you both—if not everyone around you.”
His eyes glittered, and I stared at him, unsure of what he was seeing in his mind’s eye, but it wasn’t me, I was fairly certain. It was something beyond me, something that filled him with an expression that almost approached awe. Awe and a hard edge of excitement that I instinctively knew in any other being would be fear. “It is a most dangerous game,” he murmured, his lips curling into an appreciative smile.
“And if he’s mortal, none of that bad stuff will happen?”
“Who’s to say any of it is bad?” A moment later, Kreios seemed to come back to himself. He blinked at me, truly seeing me once more. “But you are correct. While Armaeus is mortal, the pieces are not all present, the game cannot be played.”
He pulled back farther, and I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“As long as he’s mortal, then you can explore the path you are meant to walk together without the deep and terrible danger that you instinctively fear looming large between you. That is not to say that there will not be danger still. But it cannot destroy you, not permanently. You would do well to take advantage of the reprieve.”
“Or, you know, run the other way screaming,” I said, grimacing as I considered Kreios’s words. “It seems like the risk of total global destruction would be a good reason to call things off.”
He regarded me with amusement. “We both know that you cannot resist the fire.”
I stood. “You don’t know me nearly as much as you think you do, Kreios.”
He inclined his head and settled back in his own chair. “A circumstance I look forward to remedying. Soon.” He turned toward the open windows of the room and waved to me. “But you are needed elsewhere now. It is best that you go.”
“Right.” I drew in a short breath, suddenly feeling that the idyll between us was broken. It seemed too short, too rushed, but there was nothing for it. The demons had already been in Vegas for twelve hours. In another twelve, the children would be dead. “This is all going to work out, isn’t it?” I asked faintly, staring at the flashing lights of the city.
Kreios’s gaze was on me, and I could sense his eyes gleaming with that far-off knowing of truths better left undiscovered.
“Probably not,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-four
No sooner had I left the Devil’s domain than I was confronted with another choice. Turn left to Armaeus, which was where I really should be when I attempted the jump again
, or turn right to Blue. Both options filled me with dread, and apparently, both could kill me. It was already starting out to be a great night.
I turned right.
The walk to Dixie’s was longer than I expected, but the night was unexpectedly cool. Actually, that wasn’t it. It was midsummer in Vegas and the evenings were balmy, yet the heat simply didn’t faze me. It could be sunstroke, potentially, or it could be the side effect from having had my insides blasted out by the djinn. Either way, I didn’t think I’d look at a hot sunny day the same way ever again. And when winter came…
When I finally reached Blue’s studio, the OPEN sign was flashing neon again, despite the late hour. I pushed in the door, only to see Jimmy sitting behind the counter, the surface spread with tracing paper. Lines of text in beautiful calligraphy spilled across the page, and I blinked at them, then looked at the small man with renewed appreciation.
“You did that?”
“Freak-show client, but he pays well.” Jimmy shrugged. “Comes in every few months to get a new section of his personal manifesto inked onto his body. This is for the rib cage.”
“That’s…a lot of text for the rib cage.”
He nodded. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch. But, that’s part of the experience of the tattoo. The pain mixed with the creation of something lasting, something true.”
“What’s the language?” I asked, leaning closer.
“Sumerian, he says. I had a sample sent for review when he first came in, though.” He snorted. “My guy says it looks like a legit language, but it ain’t Sumerian. Blue wouldn’t work on the guy, so she hasn’t weighed in on the matter. Sometimes, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt us.” He stood up and admired his work, and, though no sound came from the back room, he nodded to me. “She’s ready for you. Said to tell you there’s not much time, that you needed to get ready.”
I frowned. “Ready for what specifically? The jump?”
He bent forward again. “She’ll explain it. But remember.” He tapped the vellum he was working on. “The more it hurts, the truer it is.”
I questioned the wisdom of trusting someone named Jimmy Shadow to provide me with the insights of the universe, but headed back to see Blue anyway. As I walked, I tried shearing off sections of my thoughts into tidy compartments. Nothing the Devil said about Armaeus mattered. Nothing about Nikki and the trauma she’d suffered with the demons mattered. Nothing about me and my hang-ups mattered. What mattered were the children stuck on the other side of the veil. Getting them back. Making them whole.
Blue was in her familiar chair in the stark room. She’d given up even the pretense of the bookshelves and simply sat there, needle gun in hand.
I frowned at her. “What’s that for? I’ve already got the symbol for the Syx’s domain.”
“You do.” She nodded. “And you came back almost incinerated. I’ll add a way for the path to be made clearer.”
“Why didn’t you do that before, then?” A sudden thought struck me. “Oh, geez. Did I fail some sort of test? Did you give me the advanced jumper ink and I need the remedial version?” I didn’t know why that upset me so much, but it did. “I honestly didn’t realize those kids weren’t actual kids. I should have, even in suspended animation; they should have looked more dead or something. But I didn’t.”
She smiled, and I realized how different the expression was on her than on Kreios or Armaeus. Blue’s smile conveyed no humor or even affection, more a shared understanding of the way things were.
“You didn’t fail any test, Sara. If anything, you succeeded beyond what you should have. Multiple possession doesn’t generally go too well for the human side of the equation.” She waved the needle, and I tried not to blanch. “This will simply give you more of a path to follow, should the way become difficult. A beacon in the darkness, if you will. You’re jumping again awfully soon after the first time, and too soon after Atlantis as well. It’s a lot.”
“Jimmy said I was running out of time.” I shucked my hoodie, then slid into the chair and held out my arm, angling it so the curving symbol was facing up.
“You are. Viktor can’t afford for the djinn to be returned through the portal. He’ll force them to take human hosts before he’ll let that happen. And the magic that’s currently present in the city will help him do that.”
I frowned at her, then hissed as the needle bit into my skin. “Help him how.”
“The magic is idle, unfocused. The Council refuses to choose sides, and the djinn want to remain here, so the momentum is swinging in their direction.”
“Viktor’s part of the Council, though. He’s clearly choosing a side.”
“Not technically. You brought the djinn to earth. He’s given them access to the magic coursing through the city, but only thanks to the efforts of Danae and her coven. Viktor may be coordinating the results, but he’s not the one swinging the bat. Mortals are.”
“You people can seriously sleep at night with that kind of logic driving you?”
Another smile, this one showing the glint of humor. “You have a long time to get used to it.”
A searing flash of pain almost blinded me. “I thought this was supposed to get easier over time,” I muttered.
“It’ll never get easier. But for any creation to matter, it—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m all about true.” I gritted my teeth as she stabbed me again, and my eyes watered. By the time she finally sat back, I was breathing shallowly and my tank top was damp with sweat. I expected Blue to smirk at my reaction, but she merely gazed at me, her eyes level.
“Does it hurt for everyone you do that to?” I asked.
“I don’t do it often, and certainly not so many times in the same week. But these are unusual times, and you are an unusual jumper.” She turned to begin cleaning her instrument. “I’d recommend not jumping again anytime soon after this, however. You’ll need to regain your strength.”
“I’ll be sure to clear my dance card.”
Jimmy walked in then with a gauze bandage, which he pressed over my arm. I frowned at him. “What’s that for? It isn’t bleeding.”
“It might start.” He pointed to the hoodie I’d slung over the chair. “Wear that. Keep your sleeves down. You don’t want to draw attention to the ink.”
I widened my eyes. “Why not?”
“Because Viktor might chop off your arm if he believes it’s helping you return the djinn to their place behind the veil,” Blue said bluntly. “Or he might chop it off to study the symbol at his leisure.”
I stared at her. “You’re not joking.”
“He was only barely human before he ascended the Council.” She shrugged. “His time as Emperor has not improved his restraint. Hide the ink. And this time, focus on taking weapons with you. They will help you when you decide to do what you will do.”
“I…okay.” I decided not to ask Blue for clarification. I didn’t think I’d like the answer. And having a weapon on hand really did seem like a good idea, if I was going back to rescue the children.
Blue waited until I stood, then watched with keen eyes as Jimmy helped me resettle my hoodie, carefully drawing it down over the tattoo. As it had the last time, the spot had stopped hurting the moment she’d taken away the needle gun, but I remained a little woozy. Jimmy stuck by my side as we moved to the front chamber, and I blew out a long breath, gathering my energy to face what was coming next.
I squinted through the window and frowned. “Why are all the cars here?”
Blue folded her arms and leaned up against the counter. “The Council is about balance, but balance takes many forms. To some, it is negating either side’s advantage, putting all players at the same base level. To others, the level is not important, as long as the sides are roughly equivalent. I tend to favor the latter.”
“Which means…”
“Consider it a matter of evening the odds.” She nodded to the cars outside. “They’re waiting for you in the chapel. If you move quickly, Viktor won�
��t know you’ve made the jump until after you get back. The weapons are waiting there too.”
“Weapons?”
“Armaeus sent the rest along. He wants you to take anything you can this time.”
I blew out a breath, but before I could speak, Blue continued.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said. “You don’t need to compartmentalize everything away to focus solely on the crisis at hand. You need to use all that’s going on in your world to contribute to what you must achieve. Any pain, sorrow, joy, excitement—emotion of any kind helps your cause. Become more honest, discard your masks, and you become infinitely more powerful. Remember that.”
I nodded, unsure how to respond to a pregame pep talk from Death. An infinite number of nervous quips sprang to mind and I stuffed them down. Instead, I turned and walked outside in the lit-up parking lot.
The cars lined up in front of Dixie’s bore a hodgepodge of license plates. Some showed the dust of a long road trip, some were obviously rentals. One was Brody’s. I crossed the wide strip of asphalt, feeling its latent heat radiate upward. I frowned that I even noticed the detail. Had Blue reset my internal thermometer as well? Probably a good thing, unless I was going to get cooked again. Being oblivious to becoming a self-contained fire pit was the only thing this next jump had going for it, and now that too seemed lost.
I walked into the cool chapel and was struck by…the silence. I might as well have been at a funeral home, and I strode up the hallway with increasing concern. There were people here, definitely people. I could hear their hushed voices in the main chapel. But why were they here, and what did Blue mean by evening the odds?
I wheeled around the corner, and stopped.
“What are they doing here?” I asked, or tried to ask. My voice dried up in my throat as I saw the faces in the bright chapel lights—older now, so much older, as if not ten years had passed but twenty-five. These were the parents of the children, and three sets of them I knew. Three sets I didn’t. They didn’t see me across the crowded room. They were talking to Dixie, who was holding court with Brody, both of them serious and achingly considerate. I blinked, trying to make sense of it, when one of the women looked over at me. Her careworn face was ineffably older, yet I would remember those eyes for the rest of my life.
