Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3)

by D. N. Erikson

  I finally understood, as the ground shook above us. He meant for him.

  I ducked beneath the sizzling bars and reached out to grab the weapons. Galleron held them firmly, looking me in the eye. “You will protect her.”

  “Ruby?” I yanked on the shotgun, but he didn’t let go. “She can handle herself.”

  “All the same.” His eyes were filled with a quiet melancholy. “You promise.”

  Everyone had heard about the code, apparently. It must’ve been painted in the airspace above my goddamn head. “I promise.”

  “The Weald is collapsing,” Galleron said, as if relaying a piece of news about inclement weather. “We must hurry.”

  Didn’t have to tell me twice.

  The world above might have changed, but I was damn sure about one thing.

  However bad it got, the Weald was a hundred times worse.

  38

  I found that Galleron had kindly reloaded the shotgun during my brief incarceration, thus confirming my suspicions. It had been Galleron who had shepherded Ruby out of the Weald the first time. And now, for true love—or whatever other reason—he was doing the same for me, so that she’d have someone to watch her back.

  And who said chivalry was dead?

  A nearby tree burst into flame as I sprinted behind the centurions’ leader, heading away from the guard towers and deep into the forest. Galleron hadn’t been mistaken about there being no third time: his men had quickly turned on us, finally sensing the shift in their commander’s allegiance.

  Another volley of flaming arrows slammed down at our heels, and I heard a pained mewing. My shoulder felt wet. Glancing over, but not stopping, I saw a trickle of blood drip down my arm. But I felt no pain.

  Then I realized that it was Alfred who had taken the shot. The Sphinx’s weight slumped into my shoulder as I ran, trying to keep up with the fleet-footed centurion. An arrow burst out of Galleron’s drawn bow, pinning a vamp to a tree. He whirled around without stopping, drawing his sword to impale another.

  “Guess I’m not going to see the sun…” Alfred’s reedy voice was thinner than normal.

  I didn’t have any words of encouragement to offer. My mortal senses were poorly tuned to the supernatural. I felt the forest move, slight gusts moving past me as I ran. Like the daystriders were taunting me.

  Storm clouds of arrows continued falling from the sky, Galleron deftly handling his attackers. I hadn’t been wrong; his skills were a cut above Ruby’s. But the stacked odds were wearing him down. Blood streaked his shoulders and he breathed heavily.

  As for me, I hadn’t fired a shot.

  I caught up with him as we crossed the road.

  “Which way should—”

  A daystrider slammed against my bruised ribs, knocking the rest of the words out of my mouth. Alfred flew to the ground. I heard the arrow snap as he bounced into the chalky meal. Or maybe that was my ribs. I certainly hit the ground hard enough to break a couple bones.

  Wheezing, I blocked a swipe from my attacker. But that was only because he wasn’t trying very hard.

  Vision coming back online—albeit covered in swimming black dots—I recognized Blaise. Up close and personal, I could see the faint blue veins pulsing beneath his skin. His slicked-back undercut was askew, half the hair dangling over his feral, sunken eyes. Fangs, easily an inch and a half long, snapped out from his lips.

  Instead of gashing my throat, his hands plunged around my neck, squeezing tight.

  “You were too late, Kalos.” His own neck bulged, the sunken eyes filled with a strange mixture of hatred and pity. “Why were you late?”

  “I—I…” That was all I could manage.

  “There will be nothing left,” Blaise said. “She will leave nothing behind.”

  The corners of my vision began darkening from lack of oxygen. Gagging, I made a weak effort to grab the fallen shotgun. Blaise’s hand moved too quickly to see, stopping my attempt.

  “You’re human.” He sounded disappointed. My head was on fire, and thoughts weren’t exactly forming coherently. But I swore it wasn’t from the lack of challenge. The memory of the daystriders in the meat packing plant bubbled to the surface.

  Their aura was off. Corrupted. As if…

  “You can fight it,” I said, the words coming out in a rasp. “You can fight him.”

  “Magic does not work that way, mortal.” His sunken eyes flared, and I recognized the signal from my personal travels. Our conversation was over.

  Bracing for impact, I instead let out a retching gasp as an arrow plunged through Blaise’s shoulder. He howled in feral pain, tumbling off as the flaming pitch burned his undead skin. On hand and knee, I clambered for the shotgun, firing off an errant shot in his direction.

  I couldn’t tell if I got him.

  Out of my mind, I stumbled to Alfred. I could see now that the arrow had plunged right through his gut. A minor pang of pity came over me and my inability to fulfill my promise. But he was also a lying asshole, so there wasn’t time for too many tears.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I found Blaise already gone, leaving nothing behind but a slick blood trail. The war drum procession loomed closer, the centurions still focused on their mission as the realm disintegrated. I jumped out of the way of a cracking tree, its thin trunk landing in the middle of the path with a hollow thud.

  “Your girlfriend…” Alfred muttered, his voice weak.

  I knelt down. “What about Nadia?”

  “I make deals.”

  “I know.” I looked up, seeing Galleron emerge from the forest. His look told me it was time to go.

  “The Marksmen…they’re keeping her on Main Street. But it’s all pretend…”

  “Where?”

  “Main Street…” Alfred’s shifty eyes rolled into the back of his head. I shook him once, but he didn’t wake up.

  The aroma of burning pitch got me moving. Arrows again whistled at my heels as I leapt the fallen tree and joined Galleron.

  “Keep your promise.” His armor hung off one of his shoulders. His right forearm was gashed all the way to the bone, an arrowhead lodged in his calf. Despite his wounds, he displayed nothing but a slight grimace as he handed me a compass. “For emergencies.”

  I looked down at the pewter object. Instead of the usual bearings, its face was inscribed with dozens of strange symbols that I couldn’t read. The arrow, however, remained steady, pointing to one in particular.

  “I have imbued it with some of my intuition,” he said, as if reading my thoughts.

  I nodded and offered him my hand. Before he could shake it, a blur came from the trees. An injured Blaise, coming to finish the job. Galleron stepped in front of me, sword drawn. I heard skin slice open and a mighty howl.

  Blaise limped off, and I aimed the gun, firing two shots. The recoil made it impossible to control, and he was still too fast for me to catch. He disappeared, howls, war cries and quakes roaring in terrible unison.

  Threat averted, I said, “He’s gone.”

  But no answer came from Galleron. And as I turned around, I saw why. His throat was cut open, his breaths shallow. Despite this, his gaze locked onto mine, eyes tinged with blue. The message was clear.

  I gave him a silent thank you and then dashed off into the trees, praying that the world I returned to would not resemble this.

  39

  I didn’t crawl out of the mountain cave so much as find myself being forcefully ejected. Stumbling onto a ledge, lungs burning from the dead run, I took in the view. It’d been a few hours, but Texas still seemed the same.

  Blue skies, red deserts and endless plains.

  It felt good to be home.

  Galleron’s pewter compass slipped from fingers, clattering as it hit the ground. I heard a noise behind me, and I rolled over, ready to fire. But instead of a centurion or a daystrider
, all I found was a rock wall.

  Guess that exit was one-time use only. For emergencies indeed.

  The sun’s glare made my eyes water. I tried to calculate the amount of time I’d spent down in the Weald. We’d arrived on the mountaintop in the morning. It felt like afternoon. Maybe it’d been a few minutes.

  My pockets began buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. I pulled out the cell phones, wondering why they were ringing at once. But no one was calling then; the devices were simply pulling down delayed messages from a distant tower.

  I watched as the dates spun by on-screen like a flip book. January. February. March.

  All the way to June.

  I ran the math. I’d been down there for about half a day. Which translated to six months of topside time.

  “Shit!” My yell carried across the endless canyon.

  The sound of footsteps made me regret my outburst. I scrambled to my feet, gripping the shotgun tightly. A woman walked up the trail below, paying my gun no heed.

  “You know I’ve come out here every day for weeks looking for you,” the woman said. “You couldn’t have escaped faster?”

  I pumped the shotgun and said, “Who the hell are you?”

  She swept her black, tangled hair from her eyes and gave me a nonplussed look. “Well shit, Ruby wasn’t kidding. You’re ordinary as they come.”

  “Bold words for someone not holding a gun.”

  Her experienced eyes shrugged off the toothless threat. “Then shoot me, asshole. At least I won’t be bored any more.”

  “Sorry I’m such a burden.”

  “Well the girl thinks you’re worth something, so I’m here.” The woman turned around, not bothering to introduce herself. “You can stay up there if you want. But it gets damn cold at night, let me tell you.”

  After a few seconds, it became quite apparent that this wasn’t a bluff. I scrounged on the ground for the pewter compass, stuffed it in my pocket and took one last glance of the cave.

  No centurions. That was fine by me.

  Ribs groaning in protest and lungs still burning, I hurried after her. We made our way down the gentle trail. At the bottom, I could see the cave where I’d emerged wasn’t all that high off the ground. A few hundred yards in the distance, I saw the outline of my Porsche, coated in dust.

  “You should ask those questions before they eat you up.”

  “What the hell are you doing with my car?”

  “There you go.” But she didn’t offer anything in the way of answers. “You know, I’m not sure this was worth my time. Although getting that gun back should be helpful.”

  “So glad I could play delivery boy.”

  “And the knight?”

  “What fucking knight?” Agonia and the Weald had both been filled with many things, but knights were in short supply. “Galleron?”

  “And here I thought you were slow.”

  “Dead.”

  She didn’t reply for a little. Finally she said, “Shame. Ruby really liked that one.”

  “He gave me this.” I fished into my pocket and pulled out the compass. Much to my surprise, its arrow didn’t spin around uselessly. Instead, it focused on one of the symbols, tightly locked in.

  My mind played back the final events in the Weald.

  Galleron hadn’t imbued this with some of his intuition, but almost all of it. That was how Blaise had gotten the jump on him. The ultimate sacrifice.

  Even the woman was impressed, because she stopped moving and said, “A Realmpiece.”

  Her hand came out, beckoning for the compass. I held it tightly. “Who are you?”

  “We really don’t have time for this.”

  “Make time.”

  The woman sighed, brushing her unkempt black hair out of her eyes. When the full focus of her gaze settled on me, I understood from the feeling rushing through me that she was a Seer. Not quite a Realmfarer in terms of intuition, but far more effective than even the average creature of essence. In addition, where Realmfarers tended toward the nomadic, Seers built out vast networks of contacts, making them envoys to all corners of the supernatural.

  “You understand, now?”

  I tried to guess her age, but it was impossible. She looked neither old nor young, centuries of experience writ across her lineless face. Despite her short stature, her posture exuded confidence.

  And impatience.

  “You’re the friend Ruby called in the car.” It was only, what, twelve hours ago to me? I was still having trouble coming to grips with the fact that six months had passed.

  “I’m her boss,” the woman said. She sighed and said, “Fine. The name’s Pearl.”

  “Pearl and Ruby.”

  “We planned it that way because it’d look pretty on our business cards,” Pearl said. “Anything else?”

  “One more thing,” I said, walking ahead.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m driving.”

  Hey, it’d been six months.

  I was at least entitled to that.

  40

  Pearl caught me up on the key events during my sabbatical. Ruby and Argos had returned three months ago with Inonda teetering on the brink of chaos. Although the daystriders had vacated the town to chase after us in other realms, Marrack’s other creatures had been busy.

  And with little in their way aside from the Order, the town had tipped further toward anarchy. Isabella and Marrack had remained in the shadows, allowing their underlings to create havoc. But the Order had mysteriously gone silent about a week ago.

  And the Conclave had taken advantage, infiltrating every corner of the town.

  It wasn’t just isolated to Inonda, either: there were reports from around the Four Points and beyond of disappearances. Having any relationship to essence for attractive women in their twenties and early thirties seemed to be dangerous.

  “How many vessel candidates are we talking?”

  “Hard to say,” Pearl replied, wind whipping through her unruly hair. “Over a hundred.”

  “A hundred?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  No. But sooner or later, the odds were going to tilt in Marrack’s favor through sheer volume. They might have already, for all I knew.

  “And Ruby?”

  “She’s survived worse than this.” But somehow the words rung hollow, filled with empty bluster. Which struck me as frightening, because from the little I knew about Pearl, there was one thing I’d definitely ascertained: she was a straight shooter.

  “Check these for me, would you?” I dug the cell phones out of my pocket and tossed them in Pearl’s lap.

  “Do I look like your assistant?”

  “You don’t look busy.”

  She ran through them as I drove. This particular portal hadn’t been as far away as the one we’d used to enter, but it was still two hours south of Inonda. Most of the missed calls and messages were harmless.

  Gunnar was pleased, at some point, about the Realmfarer rumors dying away. Although he seemed confused about where I’d gone. Too bad Ruby hadn’t told me about the time-dilation thing until we were out of cell range, standing next to the cellar to misery.

  The next phone—the burner—told a different story. Pearl played back seething messages from Dylan Redmond, who was furious about my sudden disappearance. The final voicemail, from a week before, came from Dolly Faye herself.

  I rolled up the window so I could hear the crackly recording.

  “These were not the terms we agreed upon, Kalos.” There was distinct whimpering in the background. “Six months, I believe you would agree, is being more than patient.”

  Footsteps.

  “But it seems certain, now, that you have broken your promises.” Tapping of something against the ground. A knife? Boot? The fidelity offered no answers. “Which lea
ves us no choice but to remain true to our word.”

  I recognized Nadia’s voice yelling no, no, no as someone dragged a chair across concrete. Recalling Alfred’s dying words about Main Street, I listened for any auditory clues. But none were present.

  “Say goodbye, Miss Santos.”

  “You bitch—”

  There was a slap, and Dolly Faye said, “That’s no way to treat someone who has housed and fed you free of charge for many months.” Footsteps retreating, across the room. “Today’s generation. So insolent and unthankful. We’ll fix that, I suppose.”

  A guttural whirring noise rumbled in the background. Chainsaw, maybe. The growl came closer to the speaker, overloading it with distortion.

  “Last words, Miss Santos.” Dolly had to yell to be heard over the machine’s throaty chug.

  “You’re dead.”

  There was a scream, but it wasn’t Nadia’s. The call burst into static, sharp enough to bother my ears. I winced, wondering if that was all.

  Through the crackle, I heard someone pick up the phone.

  Then Nadia said, “You should’ve come, Kalos.” A pause that felt like a year. Then she said, “Because now I’ll come for you.”

  The phone collided with the ground, the recording mercifully beeping to indicate the voicemail was finished.

  “So,” I said after a long silence in the car, “I guess we know where the Order of the Marksmen went.”

  Pearl’s brow was furrowed in concentration. After a moment, she held the phone up to her ear, replaying the entire message. I cringed, hearing the faint threat from Nadia again. It didn’t sound like the woman I knew.

  Then again, that woman had disappeared after the Blood Frost four months—no, ten—ago.

  Essence can corrupt anyone. If Ziva had been telling me the truth, Nadia was a darker elf than anyone had anticipated.

  Pearl listened to the voicemail four times before finally placing the phone down on the dashboard.

  It rattled as the car zoomed along the empty two-lane highway.