by SM Reine
“What would the others do with administrator access to the servers?” Seth asked.
“I told you that I want them for business,” Lucifer said. “Deirdre will want to find criminals and rain swift justice on their heads. Total chaos. The angels, though…”
“They don’t want justice, I take it,” Seth said.
“Any information worth knowing has passed through the darknet,” he said in a low voice. “Some say that there are undiscovered planes parallel to the Middle and Nether Worlds. One of those planes is ethereal.”
Seth frowned. “Then why don’t the angels nest there?”
“The ethereal plane is supposedly inhabited. Not by people, but by a weapon. A very powerful weapon, which the gods hid during Genesis. There’s been speculation about it on the forums. If anyone knows how to get there, it would have been discussed in private messages, which server administrators could read.”
“When were you going to tell me you wanted that information?”
“Never, because I don’t want it,” Lucifer said. “A weapon the gods want to hide isn’t worth having. The first Genesis was bad enough.” He sucked air between his fangs, making a face as though he tasted something sour. Blood stained his teeth. “What I wouldn’t give for a chance to talk to those bastards.”
Seth clenched his jaw. “What is the weapon?”
“I’ve no clue. I don’t want to know. That’s why you want me to have the servers though—and why you’ll want to keep the angels far, far away.”
Lucifer’s vampire aide returned with the USB drive.
Seth closed his fist around it. “If I get this to the servers, I’m going to delete any information I find about that weapon.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “That’s fine. For all I care, you can do it while I’m draining the last of the blood from your ageless body.”
The door to Rock Bottom swung open.
Daylight spilled over the bar, and the responding shouts weren’t mere protests from vampires who didn’t like the sun. There were shrieks. Cries of pain. And panic.
Tables crashed onto their sides. Chairs slid. Bodies thumped into each other.
A fight.
Lucifer sighed as he stood, smoothing his hands over his oil-slick hair. “Gentlemen?”
His vampires sitting at the surrounding tables stood, too. “I’ll kick them out,” said a man with the physical stature of an elephant and the same sickly coloring as Lucifer.
It quickly became obvious that it was no ordinary bar fight, though. Even preternaturals didn’t devolve so quickly into blood spilled and lives ended.
The perfume of death cloyed. Seth’s mouth was watering, heart beating faster, mind whirling.
People are dying.
Lucifer’s murder of vampires swarmed the site of the fighting and Seth drifted past them, silent, unseen, untouched. Everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion to him. He was the shadow of the shadow, drawn by his yearning toward oblivion.
The death was coming from an unexpected place. Not from humans—typically the most vulnerable population in a bar—but from the shifters who had been playing billiards while downing a bottle of pixie vodka.
The humans were the ones doing the killing.
What Seth saw by the pool tables was so strange that his mind was slow to process it, even as his instincts wanted him to move closer, immerse himself in it.
Flaming runes ringed that section of the bar. They set fire to the walls with inky-sticky smoke and crawled over the flesh of humans. Mortals. Their eyes had gone stark black. Their faces were vacant of sentience.
Demon-possessed.
It took two or three of them crouched over each shifter to kill. Even with the hell-bent drives of someone possessed, which stripped away the normal limits of human strength, they were nothing individually in comparison to a shifter. It took teams to perform a single murder. But murder they did, and it was particularly brutal in the result.
Seth’s vision swam from each torn throat to the severed limbs and the puddles of sticky black blood.
“My God,” he breathed.
The fact that he had a voice to come from his mortal body was a reminder that he was still a man, even if he were a man eaten from the inside out by immense power.
It shocked him back to reality.
Murder. People were murdering, driven by demons from the Nether Worlds who couldn’t physically break onto Earth.
It was Arawn again. He’d followed Seth out of Sheol.
The front door slammed open to reveal harsh daylight as other patrons fled Rock Bottom. This time, when Seth heard the protesting shrieks in response, the tenor of it was completely different.
They weren’t complaining because it hurt their eyes. The demons were complaining because the sunlight burned them, incapable of surviving in the warmth of the sun that their master so longed to bask in. Possessing humans gave them strength to slaughter. But it gave them Arawn’s weaknesses, too.
Seth’s guns were drawn in a heartbeat. The one he kept in an underarm holster, and the one he kept in his boot.
He moved into the ring of flaming runes.
The possessed were innocent, so he didn’t shoot to kill. He shot to disable. With his medical knowledge and perfect accuracy, he struck thighs without hitting the femoral, necks without hitting the air passage or the jugular, hands without breaking any bones.
Unfortunately, when the people fell, they didn’t stay down. But they did fall. It gave their victims time to scramble away.
Lucifer was at Seth’s shoulder.
“They’re dying,” the vampire murmured, his voice silken promise. “It’s too late to save them. They’re already soulless. Can’t you feel the emptiness?”
That didn’t stop Seth from sweeping in to stop the violence. Despite a decade as a doctor, he was still a werewolf hunter at his core.
He pinned down possessed ones thrashing with bloody wounds. He pushed victims away. He shouted to the crowd, “Run! Leave the door open, but run!”
And when they obeyed him, they left Rock Bottom flooded with sunlight from outside.
Where the harsh rays directly contacted possessed flesh, there was smoke. Screaming. Pain.
Seth seized the nearest of the possessed mortals and slammed her into the floor. “Who’s your master?”
She smiled through the pain. Her body bucked under him, agonized, but still she smiled. “You know who I am.” Her voice was deep, masculine.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Arawn?” Seth asked. “Don’t you realize what burning up all these souls are going to do?”
“They’ll give me the strength to go after your girlfriend’s wedding,” Arawn said through the woman.
Anger surged in Seth. “Whatever grudge you’ve got against me for screwing up your plans in the Nether Worlds… God, don’t take it out on her. Take it out on me.”
“Hurting them is the second-best way to take it out on you since I haven’t reached Marion. Yet.” The woman’s eyes blanked under him. He felt the instant that her body died. Arawn’s demon vanished from her, and she went limp.
The deaths spread through Rock Bottom like a wave. It struck those nearest to Seth first, and then those beyond the billiard tables next, and then those nearest the walls.
Every single mortal who had been in the bar was dead instantaneously. Even when Arawn vacated them, his presence hung like a dark cloud over Rock Bottom.
Seth struggled to his feet, burning with hatred at his core.
So many deaths. So many people succumbing to a casual sweep of Arawn’s hand.
The demon’s disembodied voice whispered through Rock Bottom.
Their souls will feed me, he said.
Seth gawked as smoky wisps lifted from the bodies of the dead. Not all of the souls had been scraped out of those mortal vessels during the possession. Some lingered.
And he wanted them.
Seth had never taken a soul before. The only time he’d taken blood had bee
n from Marion’s throat when she’d been dying, and that terrible act had been committed out of mind, out of body, when he’d been struggling to rescue her spirit.
Yet it was easy to visualize gathering all those souls, all those humans, and walking them to death. He could spare them from the balefire in the Pit of Souls. He could save every last one of them.
“Do it,” Lucifer urged, eyes bright with hunger, blood staining his lips rose-crimson. “Take their souls.”
All Seth could bring himself to say was, “No.”
Arawn’s shadow descended.
The demon inhaled the souls, and they were gone.
12
Nori called Marion using their statuettes while she was poring over maps in her bedroom. “The Onyx Queen wants you.” Nori’s voice seemed to come directly out of the tiny white soapstone figure.
“Now isn’t the best time.” Marion flicked the statuette so that it fell over on her desk. “I’m busy.”
“It’s for the counseling.”
Marion swore internally. She’d forgotten about the pre-wedding counseling she’d agreed to share with Konig. It was sidhe tradition for the parents of those to be married to instruct their adult children in the ways of marriage. Since Marion had one dead parent and one who didn’t wish to be in touch, the responsibility fell on Rage and Violet alone.
If given the choice, Marion would have preferred to be eaten by Hounds again rather than talk marriage with her in-laws.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, stuffing the statuette into her pocket.
Marion shoved the maps of Niflheimr into one of her drawers. She had been searching for empty spots where secret passages could be hidden. Finding the darknet servers for Seth was more important than the counseling, but not as urgent.
All decorations that had yet to find purpose were collected in Violet’s chambers, as though the wedding had vomited all over the expansive in-law quarters. Konig sat among a field of enchanted red flowers, looking as annoyed as Marion felt.
“I hope your days have been going better than mine,” Konig muttered. They hadn’t gotten a chance to speak about what had happened during Marion’s visit to Earth. In fact, the only talk they’d shared was about Marion’s flat butt and Charity Ballard.
She wiggled onto the narrow strip of couch beside him. “Not unless you think that Arawn murdering people all over Earth to prepare his assault against our wedding is ‘better.’”
“Oh, is that what he’s up to? Good thing we’re here dealing with petty formalities instead of preparing for battle with a demon, then.”
“An army needs a unified front.” Violet breezed into the room. She was dressed in her idea of casual, which meant a few less pearls in her hair, though she was still draped in enough jewels to buy a small country. She descended onto the couch opposite Konig.
“Are we waiting for Rage?” Marion asked.
“He can’t come today,” Violet said. “I’ve done the traditional counseling for many a parentless couple, though. I’ll have no trouble talking the two of you through this on my own.”
“This is stupid, Mother,” Konig said. “You can’t call something tradition when we’ve been doing it for less than a generation.”
“How are traditions forged?” Violet asked. “Where do they come from?”
“Decades of practice, doing what our foremothers did.”
“We don’t have foremothers. Until Genesis, our breed didn’t exist. We’d been eradicated.” Violet dug her fingernails into the soft billows of her skirt. “By the angels.”
Marion ducked her head, unable to meet Violet’s eyes. “By my father, Metaraon.” The first Voice of God, whose machinations had ultimately led to the shattering of the entire world.
Violet’s response was unexpectedly tender, though the blankness of her eyes made her look cruel, even when she spoke gently. “Don’t feel guilty. You’re not responsible for what he did—only what you do. You’re shouldering your role in the healing. It’s fitting that this union should happen at this time.” Her words went sharp. “But not until you’ve been counseled.”
“If it was that important, my dad would be here,” Konig said.
“Rage is where he needs to be,” Violet said. “Tell me what marriage means to both of you. Konig first, darling.”
He clutched Marion’s hand, squeezing her knuckles with the irritation he couldn’t take out on his mother. “It’s an alliance.”
“Marion?”
“I agree with Konig,” Marion said. “It’s a lifelong alliance, joining our might into a single unit.” Konig and Marion had never agreed on anything with more confidence than that.
“You do realize that Konig will benefit from this more than you, don’t you?” Violet asked. “The line of succession is matrilineal. If Rage and I had produced a daughter, she’d be next in line for the throne. As it stands, Konig will never rule unless he marries a woman.”
“I didn’t know there was a line of succession at all. Why didn’t anyone get Niflheimr?”
“The queen had no female relatives to receive control,” Violet said. “She and her husband never produced children at all.”
Marion gave Konig a sideways look. He would never rule unless he married. That was probably something she’d known before losing her memories, but it came as a surprise now.
He was too busy looking sullen to notice Marion’s expression.
“Nevertheless, our alliance benefits both of us equally,” Marion finally said. “I can’t hold Niflheimr at all without a sidhe to take over the Winter Court’s magic.”
“You’ll have to live alongside one another for the rest of your mortal lives, and that requires a much sturdier foundation than merely united goals. The sidhe’s veins flow with love and sex, irreversibly intertwined. Did you know that, Marion?”
She was startled—and a little embarrassed—to be singled out by the queen in this. So her response was more honest than she’d have planned if given time to consider it. “You have orgies with total strangers.”
“Not all love is that of husband and wife,” Violet said. “There is love of friends, love of body, love of life. It’s all equal. Sidhe must marry for love too.”
“Says the woman who’s screwed virtually every faerie in her court,” Konig said.
“With your father’s consent and often his participation.”
“How much of this counseling is going to involve TMI about sex lives?” Marion asked.
Konig and Violet gave her identical blank looks.
To them, there was nothing TMI about sexual affairs. Even if the people discussing it were related by blood.
“Never mind,” Marion said.
“What do you want out of this marriage?” Violet asked her. “We already know about the alliance, so please think about your emotional needs, and your long-term personal goals.”
Marion hadn’t given very much thought to anything beyond survival. She spoke slowly while her mind struggled to produce a satisfactory answer. “I think…I want…someone who will take care of me?”
Konig laughed. “Take care of you? You’re the last person in the world who needs anyone to care for you, princess.”
“I suppose.” It didn’t seem like a fair question. Knowing what she’d want from marriage was too advanced for a relationship that felt barely weeks old.
“I want a beautiful woman who will be my mental, physical, and political match,” Konig said without hesitation. He’d had much more time to contemplate the relationship. “I want a marriage for the history books.”
“I already know what you want,” Violet said. “I’m speaking to your bride.”
Marion gazed at Konig’s perfect face, his tousled hair, the shards of his purple eyes. They were certainly well matched in beauty, the two of them. For every woman who couldn’t breathe at the sight of Konig, there was a man who would lose his footing at a mere glimpse of Marion.
That didn’t matter to her.
“I can give myself
anything I want,” Marion said. “I can get money or power of all persuasions. I can fight my own enemies. I can run this palace. Were I to spend my entire life alone, I would be fine. On the other hand, relief from the unrelenting pressure is something nobody can give me except you. Just to feel as though I’m not always in control—to be cared for, and sometimes permitted not to be responsible for everything—would be priceless.”
Konig laughed again, and each chuckle felt like a needle in her heart. “Marion, princess, you’re the Voice of God. You don’t get a break. That’s not what you’re here for.”
“I’d like the feeling, though. Perhaps it makes me a poor feminist, wanting a man to be in charge…”
Violet leaned forward to pat her hand. “The most radical feminist act is for a woman to be true to herself.”
“Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head about any of that,” Konig said. “I’ve no trouble being in charge of everything. I know your limitations better than you do.”
“I don’t have limitations,” Marion said. “I can do anything.”
“Listen to what you’re saying. You’re contradicting yourself left and right.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “Are we done here? Have we fulfilled our traditional responsibility to marital counseling now that we’ve talked about our feelings? Because there are more constructive uses of my time.”
“We should talk about the physical elements of marriage,” Violet said.
Marion swung from feeling put-off by Konig’s abruptness to agreeing with him passionately. Talking about the “physical elements” must have meant sex, and that was absolutely not something she would discuss in that company.
She stood. Konig did too. Violet watched them with empty eyes and an unreadable expression.
“Party starts tonight.” Konig swatted Marion’s butt. “Get yourself pretty. We need to make a good show.”
He was gone before Marion could say a word.
“My son’s not the most sensitive, but he’s illustrated one important thing for a queen and wife to know,” Violet said. “They need us to look strong, even when we’re not. We’re the ones who run the kingdom. The house. The children eventually. And we have to do it while pretending that they’re the ones in charge.” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s okay to feel weak, as long as you don’t act weak. It’s a performance that never ends.”
