by Kelly Gay
The stupid hellhound had given his life for me.
Hot tears streamed down my dirty face as I gathered him to me using my good arm and cried out in denial. In frustration. In hurt. At the injustice. Everything inside of me, I screamed out into the dawn as sunlight beamed bright and white over us, and as I shut my eyes tightly and prayed. The light behind my eyelids became white, almost painful. Almost as painful as my heart.
I wouldn’t lose him. Wouldn’t go home and tell my kid he was gone.
Goddammit!
I squeezed his big, hairless neck, burying my face in his sweaty muscle. And then I saw the patterns in my head. The patterns beneath Brim’s skin, the patterns like ancient script and molecular structure. I went deeper, seeing those patterns that had been severed, cut, destroyed. Too badly damaged to survive.
Oh, Brim. You stupid beast. And then I let my grief sink me into his patterns until the white behind my lids encompassed everything. And there was nothing else.
22
That voice sounded in my head again. That soothing female voice that I’d heard amid the panic and cries. That welcoming song that blew through me, and drew me, and fascinated me.
“Charlie? Detective, we have to move.”
I flinched, trying to get away from the wet assault on my face. The scent of blood and sweat and hound reached my nose. I cracked an eye open and lifted my head. My good arm was draped over Brim’s back. I’d collapsed over him. But his large head was turned, his nasty tongue licking my face and neck. My hand caressed his smooth stomach. The wounds were there, raw scars. Dried blood.
“How—”
I tried to shake some mental sense into my head as Brim got up and trotted off, sniffing the stones of the terrace. Pendaran, clothed and back in nymph form, smiled down at me. “I believe you healed him.”
My jaw dropped, and I gaped for a moment until the memories began to slowly flow back into my mind. Sinking into him, seeing his wounds, weaving them, putting them back together … That had been real?
“But … Where? Aaron?” I glanced beyond Pen to see that the hole in the darkness was now gone, cutting off the blinding sun from the city below and leaving us once more in darkness.
Pen’s hand slid under my arm, pulling me up. I swayed, my stomach rolling in on itself and sending bile to my throat. I swallowed it down. “Fuck,” I breathed out through the pain and nausea.
“The ring has been delivered. We need to get you off this terrace before—”
And then I heard it and understood. Fighting, coming from the stairwell and into the arboretum, the dangerous forest of glass and darkness. Hank and several of the Druid’s Kinfolk flooded onto the scene, pushed back by a swarm of jinn warriors.
Grigori Tennin did not intend to lose his prize.
I glanced at the sarcophagus. Llyran had failed. Tennin was another story. I shoved Pendaran away, demanding my body to regain its balance, but I crumpled to the ground instead. I opened my mouth to tell him to take the First One, but as soon as Grigori Tennin himself appeared, marching through the fighting, violet eyes gleaming and chest heaving like a murderous bull, Pendaran’s expression went deadly. He ran, leapt into the air, and shifted into dragon form.
Seeing those two heavyweights converge was like watching two land masses collide. Everyone stopped for a second.
Through the chaos, I saw Brimstone attacking and Hank caught against the wall fighting two female jinn warriors.
And I was spent. I had nothing to give.
Tennin grabbed Pen by the leg and swung him around, sending him into one of the steel supports that had held up the glass dome. It bent with a spinechilling whine. Hank had gotten one of the warrior’s short swords and shoved it through the belly of one of his opponents, then immediately deflected another. Pen roused, but wasn’t quick enough to evade the swift descent of Tennin’s vicious axe. It sliced through the Druid’s shoulder as the dragon swiped the jinn boss off his feet, gripped him in his talons, and then flung him toward the edge of the terrace.
Hank battled the other jinn. A kick to her jaw sent her spinning around, her back to him as he caught her, pulled her close, brought up his hands, and snapped her neck. She sank at his feet. His eyes lifted, met mine, and he started toward me.
But then his body jerked. He froze, eyes never leaving mine. And then he fell forward with an axe buried between his shoulder blades.
Behind him Grigori Tennin stalked forward, eyes glowing violet red and pinned on me.
Pendaran’s wings unfurled as he leapt high over the melee and came crashing down on Hank, his big black wings covering my partner from view, but not before I saw his jaws open and his white teeth come down on Hank’s neck. A scream welled in my chest, but before I could let it fly, the dragon’s head came up, and his jaws flung Hank’s voice-mod into the air.
And then the Druid King’s dragon eyes narrowed on Grigori as he came for me. Pendaran let out a furious roar, spun around, took six massive steps, and then lunged for Grigori. The impact sent them flying off the fifty-story building.
I crawled toward Hank, weaving between warriors and ducking weapons. I still couldn’t feel my arm, but knew I had to reach him. “Hank,” I cried, pulling myself to his body. He didn’t respond. Immediately I wrapped my good hand around the axe handle and pulled it out, flinging it behind me and noticing that Orin and Brim had moved closer, making a protective stance around us. I grabbed Hank’s shoulder and pulled him over. “Hank!” I tapped his cheek, noticing his neck and the deep, bloody gouges caused by Pendaran’s teeth. “Please, wake up! Hank!”
The jinn were pushing in; more of the nymphs surrounded us now, outnumbered by Tennin’s fierce warriors.
“Charlie?”
I swung my head around to see Hank’s eyes open. “Use your voice,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
I grabbed his shoulder and shook, though it barely moved him. “Goddammit, Hank! Use your voice and use it now!”
One hand lifted to his neck. Understanding dawned in his eyes, and it was like watching a superconductor draw energy to itself as he realized his power was his once again. His face went merciless, and his eyes went sapphire as he grabbed me, shoved me down, and sat up. Instinctively I covered my ears, knowing that he was about to unleash a word of power, something he had claimed once that I’d never hear in my lifetime. Hah. He should’ve known better.
The deep five-syllable boom that came out of Hank emerged with the force of a tidal wave that rattled my teeth, flattened everything in its path, shook the building, and—from the sound of glass breaking—popped several windows in the tower.
I waited until there was no sound but the city itself and the constant, heavy beat of my pulse.
When I lifted my head, it looked as though a bomb had gone off. Much of the dirt, glass, and debris had been wiped off the terrace and only some trees and stubborn plants remained. Jinn warriors and nymphs lay where they fell. Brim was next to me, on his side, but breathing normally.
“They’re not dead,” Hank said in nearly a whisper from behind me.
He was standing, stepping over the bodies, to pick up a dagger and shove it beneath the strap of his belt. It was gray and dark overhead. The wind whipped his bloody and torn clothes and his sweat-soaked hair stuck to his face. He dragged his fingers through it and then gazed out over the skyline.
Last one standing, I thought.
He offered me a hand and I took it, unsteady on my feet at first and my arm still burning and completely useless. “Why am I still conscious?”
“Because you were connected to me,” he said quietly. Too quietly. “You had hold of my hand.”
“What’s wrong with your voice? Are you hur—?” But the answer came to me even as he started to respond.
“I’m controlling my tone. We’re not very good at it. Can’t keep it up for long …”
The voice-mod was gone. There was nothing adjusting his natural tone. But I didn’t care. I was in too much pain to care. May
be even in too much pain to be affected much by Hank’s voice. And if not, then, so what? I’d be enamored with him to the point of forgetting I hurt so much. “Talk all you want,” I muttered as we picked our way over the bodies, heading toward the agate sarcophagus. “Maybe it’ll take the pain away. My arm hurts like hell.”
That was an understatement. It hurt everywhere, but my arm overshadowed everything else. It burned, pulsed in an angry, red, infected beat. I glanced down at it. From the tips of my fingers to my shoulder, my skin was pink from the burn and covered in faint blue script.
I approached the sarcophagus, eyes scanning the area. “Where is the sword?”
He turned. “What sword?”
“The one I used to kill Llyran.” I glanced over to a pile of ash coating a large pool of blood. “I believe that’s him.”
A soft whistle blew through Hank’s lips. “Uh, Madigan?”
“What?”
“Did you see what’s in the sarcophagus?”
“No. I just remember grabbing the sword and swinging.”
I joined him at the agate tomb, taking careful steps since my legs were bruised and stiff. At the edge, I braced myself, expecting to see some kind of dried-up remnant of a First One. And then I looked.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed.
Hank’s hand tightened on my elbow as I swayed. Flawless, porcelain skin. The most perfect face you could ever conceive. Small, straight nose, finely curved nostrils. Lips just as full as my own, but hers were wider and stained red. Black, arched brows. And thick black lashes fanned out against high cheekbones. Glossy black hair. Body wearing a thin linen gown, so simple and fine you could almost see right through it.
Her hands gripped the hilt of the sword, holding it between her small breasts as though I’d never taken it from her.
But what stunned us into silence, what made the breath whoosh out of my lungs and leave me forgetting to breathe again, were the black wings on which she lay.
Fucking wings.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I finally found my voice.
“That’s a …” Hank began and then stopped as though the idea was too ridiculous to mention.
But I knew. I knew her voice had whispered through my mind in the warehouse where she was kept, and was the source of the beautiful language I heard when I looked at Solomon’s ring and cried over Brim. “Yeah,” I said, swallowing, “I think that’s Ahkneri, the star … a First One.”
I let the weight of those words sink in.
“Shit.” Hank swiped his fingers through his hair. “Well, what the hell are we going to do with her?”
Wind gusted behind us, making me hold on to the edge of the sarcophagus as I pivoted to find Pendaran standing there in nymph form, bloodied and bruised, a huge gash in his shoulder. “We hide her,” he said, walking up to stand beside me and gazing down into the tomb with an unreadable expression. “Grigori cannot have her.”
“You didn’t kill him?” I asked.
“No, but it will be a while before he can start looking for her.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We can’t turn the body over to the ITF. If anyone knew she existed … No one can know. She’s proof that the myths are true. The Sons of Dawn won’t stop, they’ll keep coming, keep trying, keep killing innocent people to awaken her.”
Hank cursed. “Maybe we should destroy it.”
“No,” Pendaran said immediately.
Dizziness made me reach for the rim again to steady myself as the voice inside of my head cried, a distant lament that weaved through my mind and wrapped around my heart. No. Couldn’t destroy …
Flashes hit me then. Fast and sudden, stealing my vision until all I could see were ancient memories bursting in my mind. Sobbing. Painted temple. Columns that rose three stories high. Sun-baked landscape, and the flash of daylight on a river beyond. The dream-like image of this divine woman, on her knees, begging before the flowing white gown of another as tears of sorrow ran down her face. But it was her emotions—the grief, the heart torn into something that was no longer salvageable—that closed my throat and brought tears to the surface. What had happened to her?
“Hell,” I swore, throat thick. “We have to keep her safe.” I shook my head, trying to get the sense of her gratitude out of my mind.
“She’s dead, for all we know, Charlie,” Hank said.
“She’s not dead.” I bit the inside of my cheek, Llyran’s words echoing in my head. “You guys do know that she has the power to rid the city of darkness.”
For a moment no one spoke.
Then the Druid spoke up. “We’ll find another way. What’s forty square miles of darkness to an all-out war? I can live with it. Anyone can go outside of the city for sunlight …”
“Besides,” Hank said, “we’d have no idea what she’d do if she woke …”
“She wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Oh, what, are you channeling First Ones now?”
I gave him a sideways frown. “I realize the lunacy of what I’m about to say, but”—Deep breath, Charlie— “I’m going to take her home with me.”
Hank’s bark of disbelief made me wince. “You have lost your mind. I knew one day it would happen, I did, but this … This is pure, certifiable, only-Charlie-could-do-this insanity. You can’t take her home. It’s the first place Tennin will look.”
“I have another idea,” Pendaran said quietly.
Thirty minutes later, after the chief had been called to round up the jinn and bring Hank a new voice-mod, the nymphs were trickling back to the Grove, and Orin had turned the Old Lore over to Pendaran. Hank and I stood at the edge of Clara Meer Lake and watched the Druid King emerge from the depths, much like the first time we’d seen him only a few days earlier. Only this time he’d whispered the command to manifest clothes onto his tattooed body.
I stared at the water for a long time, my good hand resting on Brim’s back as he leaned against me, and my other cradled against my stomach, still uncertain about the decision to hide Ahkneri in the lake. “You sure she won’t get cold or wet or—”
“For the tenth time, I’m sure. It’s warm down there. That lid is a perfect seal. And she’s not submersed in the water, but in one of the largest caves within the lake. The agate, and the depth, plus the bedrock should be enough to mask her from even the most sensitive hunter.”
“Only the three of us know,” I said, looking at Pen and then Hank. “And it needs to stay that way.”
They both nodded. I returned to stare at the lake and the reflection of the cityscape on its surface, the lights twinkling and blinking in the soft ripples. Even the lights of Helios Tower shown atop the water.
“And you’ll return the Old Lore back to the Hall of Records once you’re done with it,” I said, repeating what we’d already agreed upon. Pendaran knew I was placing an enormous amount of trust in him. He’d placed his trust in me during the fight with Llyran, and I had to believe that he’d abide by his word.
“As soon as we study it. If there is a ritual that disperses darkness, we’ll copy it, and return the original to Elysia.”
“If you have any trouble with the script,” I said, with an ache starting in my chest, “you should talk to Aaron. He’s pretty good at that type of thing.”
23
The sun should be rising, I thought as I held the back door to my Tahoe open and snapped my fingers. Brimstone jumped onto the backseat, and I prayed to God he didn’t eat the upholstery while I was gone. Once he was taken care of, Hank and I made our way into Station One and down the flight of stairs leading to the med hold where wounded criminals were treated and detained.
Aaron was lying on a hospital bed, IV in his vein, monitors recording his heartbeat and pulse/oxygen levels. My sister raised her head from her forearm as the door clicked closed. “Hey,” she said in a drowsy voice, sitting straighter in the chair and rubbing her eyes. Her face was nearly as pale as Aaron’s and, as I drew closer, I couldn’t help but look for the signs of possessio
n.
“How’s Liz doing?” Hank stood at the foot of Aaron’s bed, his gaze on the nymph, but his question for Bryn.
“She’s doing okay. In the cafeteria chugging OJ. The ritual went perfectly. What’s wrong with your arm, Charlie?”
I glanced down at my arm, wishing I’d had on a long-sleeved shirt or a jacket. As it was now, anyone who paid a lick of attention might notice the pink skin and the faint blue script just beneath the surface as though my veins had redesigned themselves. They curved from my useless fingers all the way up my bicep and the round part of my shoulder, and the relentless, throbbing pain was almost enough to make me cry. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Some weird reaction to something during the fight maybe …” I pulled my gaze away and stared at the screen to Aaron’s heart monitor for a long moment. “And the ring?”
“Liz still has it. The spirits Llyran had trapped inside were released when she read the inscription. At least now they can rest. What happened to the sarcophagus?”
The question was innocent enough, but I had to wonder if it was her asking or someone else. All the outward signs appeared normal. She showed no signs of a typical Wraith or Revenant possession. And that’s what disconcerted me. If Llyran was to be believed, ash had made her a willing vessel, but for what? For whom? “We destroyed it,” I said, turning back to the monitor.
She responded with a soft “Oh.”
As I stood there I debated whether or not to tell her what I’d learned from Llyran, but I finally decided against it for the time being. She wanted to be here with Aaron and help right whatever wrong she’d done. Still … “I’m going to assign a guard for you,” I said, bracing for an outburst.
I expected outrage, claims that I was a bad sister for not trusting her or believing in her, but all she did was stare at Aaron for a long moment, her eyes large and sad, and then she nodded. “We can see an exorcist, too. Couldn’t hurt, right?” Her eyes lifted to mine and though her smile was twisted in sarcasm, tears shone in the copper depths.
