Twelve Shades of Midnight:

by Liliana Hart

  “Never that.” He shook his head, shrugging off my surprise. “That, I must be told. You would be amazed, however, at the number of people who cannot help but share their worst nightmares aloud, as if begging for them to be unleashed in their midst. But do not evade the question.” He steepled graceful fingers beneath his chin. “What truths would you know, Sara Wilde?”

  “Are the young women from Kavala still in Las Vegas? Are they still alive?”

  “Too easy,” Kreios said. “But yes, and yes. Still, Armaeus has told you this already. He would not lure you to a city you despise only to show you corpses. And why do you despise Las Vegas, Sara?”

  “Where are they?”

  “The young women? You cannot help them until we land.” He narrowed his gaze at me. “But there are other questions you should be asking, and well you know it.”

  I felt the challenge in his words and knew the opportunity he presented. The opportunity, and also its unstated truth. What else has Armaeus been keeping from me? “Who else is on the council that I don’t know about?” I asked. “Are there actually the full twenty-one Major Arcana represented?”

  “Too safe.” Kreios dismissed the question, his lush lips turning down in a pout. “And our current number is far less than twenty-one, I assure you. The Fool and High Priestess are in the city now. I suspect you have met them. They are well in the public eye. The Empress and Emperor are present as well, but remain uncommitted to the war that Armaeus would wage. The rest—scattered. Some of the positions remain unfilled. And the houses are all in ruins.”

  I lifted my brows. “Houses?”

  “The minor houses that have always served the council.” He waved casually. “Swords, coins, wands, cups. They have not been mobilized since the reign of Charlemagne, though. No need, really. The world’s use of magic has risen and fallen as one with the tides of money and power.” He shrugged. “It might do so again, without our intercession, despite the current threat.”

  “Is SANCTUS really all that powerful?”

  “A year ago, I would have said no. But we have gotten lax, it would appear. We have seen, too long, solely what we want to see. It is why there are so few of us to even hold the line as it is. Or to dance over it, from time to time.” His gaze flickered back to my face. “And speaking of the dance, that’s not all you want to know, is it?” he prompted me. “I can see it in your face, hear it in your blood.”

  I grimaced. “My blood.”

  “It sings to me,” he said, leaning close. “And it tells me you have much to learn, that you are on the precipice of knowledge, on the verge of slipping over, never to return.” His smile deepened, drawing me into his spell with his eyes, his voice, his words. “So tell me, Sara Wilde. What truths do you truly yearn to know?”

  Chapter Eight

  Kreios’s chuckle brought me back to my senses, and I stiffened. How long had I just been sitting there, staring at him? Enthralled like a rabbit by the wolf? “Quit that,” I muttered, wishing there was more scotch in my glass. I felt like I could down the whole bottle.

  “You should never resist your desires, Sara,” Kreios purred, and in my hand, my glass was suddenly more than half-filled with the glittering dark liquid.

  I swirled it, the aroma of the aged spirits rising around me. “And this is real,” I said flatly. “I could drink this, and it would affect me as much as any drink would. The flames burning those men—those were real too.”

  He shrugged. “Did they seem real to you? Does the scotch taste real?”

  I tilted the glass and took a sip, savoring the familiar burn once more. “Yes. But that’s not what I asked.”

  “What is reality?” Kreios stood and stretched luxuriously, sweeping his hand around the space. I was drawn by the movement of his hand, watching it like it was the pendulum at the end of a hypnotist’s chain. “Is this airplane that Armaeus so generously provided us real?” he asked, strolling a few steps toward the bar before turning to me. “Is the air we breathe and the skin we inhabit real? Am I real?”

  “Any of me?” A second voice sounded, and my gaze jerked back to Kreios’s chair. Sitting there was a second Kreios, his smile wry as he took in my startled glance. “Armaeus really has fallen short on your training, it appears. I could assist you with that.”

  “It’s all illusion,” I said, swiveling my gaze from one of him to the other. “Which one is—”

  “Which one would you like to be real?”

  I nearly dropped my drink as the words fanned across my ear, lips grazing along my neck. A third Kreios had taken up residence in the chair beside me, and now he leaned into my space as I sat rigidly, his laughter setting whorls of sensation skittering down my skin. “The entire point of an illusion is for you to see what you most want to see, what your mind can allow you to see. And taste.” Kreios part three reached over and slipped the glass of scotch out of my fingers, taking a slow drink before letting his fingers go lax, the glass and scotch dropping out of his hand. Reflexively, I grabbed for it, even as it winked out of existence, and he caught up my hand in his strong, warm grasp, pulling it to his mouth. “And touch,” he murmured.

  I stared at him as he pressed his lips against my fingertips, the responding reaction deep in the center of my being swift and absolute. Desperate heat seemed to pool within me, flooding me with need. “This is an illusion,” I tried again, though my voice was shaky to my own ears.

  “If you wish it to be,” he said, and his grip on my hand firmed. With a ruthless yank, he pulled me over the short distance between our chairs, then turned and thrust me away, half hurling me backward across the room. I hit the carpeted floor with a cry, my head cracking the surface hard enough that I saw stars. I heard the attendant’s concerned voice, and then the sound of a slamming door as my vision swam back into focus. I caught my breath, scrambling backward across the floor, needing to move—

  A weight several times more than that of a normal man suddenly fell on me, and I gasped in sharp, bewildered pain as my eyes blinked open, my lungs crushed for another second as my body was spread-eagled flat onto the floor. Kreios hovered above me, his legs locked on mine, his hands pinning my wrists to the floor as he grinned down at me. “I thought this would make you more comfortable.”

  “Get off me!” I squirmed and immediately realized the problem with that idea, as the position of our bodies left no doubt as to the level of Kreios’s interest in our game, illusion or no.

  He laughed at my newfound awareness of him, then slowly, deliberately, ground into me, forcing my body to react in a way that could only be described as a betrayal. “You fight so hard,” he mused, his gaze dropping to my heaving torso, rigid against his assault. “This Tyet you wear, what is it you think it can do for you? Simply forestall the inevitable?”

  “You are an illusion,” I gritted out, my words ending on a moan as Kreios shifted forward again, dropping over me to take my mouth in a hard, searching kiss. His tongue thrust between my lips, tasting, demanding—and my body felt like it was going to go up in fire, the heat so intense in my core that I desperately feared he’d cast away my clothes as easily as Armaeus had done, and then we would be positioned body against body, need against need, with nothing between us except my own fraying control.

  “I think you like this illusion,” Kreios said, his words tight and almost angry as he shifted his mouth up next to my ear. “I think you have yourself, yourself and your abilities, so locked up inside a cell of your own making that you are afraid to truly feel. Afraid to truly own the gifts you were brought into this world to share. And even more,” he said, drawing his tongue along my chin as I twisted my head away and stretched back from him, trying—impossibly—to escape. He found my lips again anyway, branding them with another kiss. When he finally lifted his head, his words sent an entirely different wave of panic across me. “I think you like the way I make you feel, trapped in my—”

  “No!” Summoning an energy from the depths of my being, I cracked my head up against K
reios’s forehead, the shock of the movement forcing him to loosen his iron grasp on my hands. Forming my fingers into a bent battering ram, I punched out toward his throat, catching him just enough as he fell back to earn me a snarl. I used the additional space now between us to curl my legs up tightly into my body, kicking out at his midsection to propel myself away.

  It worked. I flipped over onto my hands and knees, and for a heart-thundering second, I was free, army-crawling across the floor, pulling myself to my feet—

  And then a body crashed into mine again, flattening me once more to the floor, grinding my face into the sumptuous carpet, Kreios’s chest against my shoulder blades, his legs heavy on the back of my thighs, his groin—

  My eyes crossed as he pressed into me. “Better?” he murmured, though I wasn’t quite up to speech for a long, shuddering breath.

  “I told you no,” I spit out when I could talk again, and the Devil’s laugh drifted down over my ears.

  “You denied liking the way I made you feel, Sara Wilde. That is a far different thing than telling me to stop making you feel that way.” He drifted a kiss over my hair. “Something for you to remember.”

  And with that, he stripped himself off my body. Anger exploding through me, I rolled up to my feet, whirling around to fend off another attack.

  Kreios regarded me with amusement from his chair, his drink still in his hand. Mine sat waiting for me next to my chair, its level indicating that I’d had a few healthy swigs, no more.

  “An illusion,” I managed shakily, straightening my clothes. Not a stitch had come off my body. Even my Tyet had remained firmly in place, not even reacting cold or hot to the Devil’s assault. “That…was all an illusion.”

  Kreios shrugged. “Did it feel like an illusion?”

  I gingerly touched my jaw where it had been shoved against the carpeted floor, wincing as my fingers connected with the abraded skin. “But—”

  “Come here,” he said, his voice seeming to echo in my bones. Ignoring him, I walked over to the bar where the Glenmorangie still sat, and pulled another crystal tumbler from the rack. Kreios’s laughter was rich and full behind me.

  “You see, you can choose that which you prefer to take as real, versus what you choose to see as illusion. Which makes me wonder why you allow yourself to live with the illusions you do.”

  I turned and scowled at him. “I’m aware of the council’s abilities of manipulation, Kreios. And I appreciate the reminder. But don’t treat me like a fool.”

  “Then stop acting like one.” Just like that, Kreios was in front of me again, his impossibly beautiful eyes staring down at me, his lush lips bare inches from mine, sending my body into another spasm of need. “You, more than most in this world, have the ability to see beyond your fears, your desires. To recognize them merely as tools that serve to unlock a greater truth. You should learn to trust yourself.”

  “I can’t trust myself!” I shoved him away from me, and he fell back easily, which only served to piss me off more. “You of all people should know that. I can’t—”

  “Ah-ah-ah,” He raised a finger, the danger shimmering between us almost like a living thing. “Have a care with sharing your fears, sweet Sara. Remember, I cannot know them without your tacit permission.”

  I broke off, staring at him, my heart thundering, the entire history of my horrible choices parading in front of my eyes, mocking me for ever having trusted myself. “Then what can you see?” I asked carefully.

  “I can see a woman so powerful that she blocks what she cannot endure,” Kreios said. I shifted my gaze to him, and his mouth teased into a smile. “Imagine that. All the horrors now dancing in your mind are held back from me as if they never happened. Imagine, if these are the things you see, what you have forgotten. How deep must your terror be for something to just”—he fluttered long, elegant fingers—“disappear?”

  I frowned at him, confused, then understanding dawned. “You mean with Armaeus. The fact that parts of…our time together, I can no longer remember.”

  “I do not blame you, of course. As tedious as the Magician is when standing upright, he must be an absolute trial in bed.”

  Heat scored along my cheeks, but I managed to regard Kreios with a more or less steady gaze. “And you know why I blocked those memories, I take it?”

  “Of course. I know your innermost needs and desires, Sara.” He grinned. “And this blockage was born of those, not of any true fear. So yes, I know why you did it.” He took another step toward me, leaning down. I was too busy wrapping my brain around his words to fully take in his movements—his arms reaching out to gather me close, his body fitting itself to mine, his head bending down, his mouth nuzzling against my lips, setting a thousand fires aflame along every trailing filament of my nervous system. “Would you like me to tell you?” he asked, tasting me, teasing me, his hands sliding down my back. “Would you like to tell me why your need with Armaeus is so great that you must shutter it from your very memories?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, no. Not gonna happen,” I said, my voice solid and sure. I could go another six or seven lifetimes without dipping my toe back into that murky water.

  Kreios drew back, his eyes bright with delight, his grin unabashed.

  “Excellent. Then I shall look forward to our next dance, Sara Wilde.” And he dissolved in front of me, leaving me alone in the room—except for the form of Aleksander Kreios far across the cabin, sprawled out on his chair in deep, snoring slumber, a contented expression on his face.

  “Asshat,” I muttered.

  His lips quirked up in a smile.

  Chapter Nine

  The sun poured in mercilessly from all sides when I finally stirred, disoriented, only to realize I was still in my chair, the unit cranked all the way back.

  “I was wondering if you’d ever awaken,” Kreios drawled. He looked freshly showered, his suit changed to a linen shirt, open at the collar down to his chest, paired with buttery-looking khakis. On his feet, he wore sandals, and it took great fortitude for me not to stare. Even the man’s feet were beautiful. “Yes, well,” he said, though I hadn’t spoken. “I tried to get you to share my cabin or even avail yourself of your own. But you were quite insistent about remaining where you slept. But I have spoken to Armaeus,” he said, holding up a phone I didn’t recognize. “He is awaiting us both at that god-awful fortress of his.”

  “As opposed to where? I don’t suppose you just take out a suite at the Bellagio when you’re in Vegas?”

  “Why?” He grinned at me. “Are you considering paying me a visit?”

  I rolled my eyes. One of the many charms of the Arcanan Council was their digs, I had to admit. The first time I’d seen them, I’d been caught completely off guard. I’d just rounded the Strip at the turn of the Venetian Hotel, steamed I’d even agreed to come to Crazytown in the first place. Then I’d looked up and had almost been run over by the horde of chain-smoking senior citizens, raucous college guys, and giggling bachelorette parties the city seemed to aspirate with every rum-soaked breath.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the Arcanan’s shadow realm, though. Hidden just beyond of the typical tourist’s sightline, an entire candy land of enormous gleaming casinos soared above the boulevard, each one larger than the last. A stone fortress crested above Caesar’s Palace, bleak and imposing as a mighty medieval castle. A glittering nightclub surmounted with the word SCANDAL in brilliant neon overlaid the Flamingo as a glittering skyscraper of glass, complete with a lighting effect that made it seem like fire was crawling up the side of the building. Then there was the massive castle billowing majestically over and around the Bellagio, a fairy tale palace wrought in pure rose marble and shimmering leaded glass. Above Paris shot a sheer black column in perfect counterpoint to the White Tower that had suddenly erupted beside me, rising above Treasure Island, both of them stark and cold.

  And there in the far distance, topping Luxor Casino’s pyramid and glowering sphinx, was an extraordinary
gothic fortress of steel and stone, glass and fire.

  Somehow, I’d known that that was where Armaeus lived, but at first, none of the others made sense.

  “Scandal,” I said now. “That’s your place, isn’t it?” I held up a hand to stop his reply. “So who took care of it while you were on your little forced sabbatical?”

  Kreios quirked an irritated glance at me, but once more I felt like I’d displayed my ignorance, that this was information I should have known. Would have known, if Armaeus didn’t constantly play his cards so close to the vest. Fortunately, the sudden chunk of the descending wheels of the aircraft cut off conversation, and the plane touched down a few minutes later, the private airstrip one I’d come to know well enough in the past few months. We emerged from the jet only to be knocked almost level by the oppressive Nevada heat, which had to be soaring into the nineties with the sun still high in the sky. A limo rested just off the runway, with a familiar figure standing beside it, holding a little white placard. As if there could possibly be anyone else arriving at this location at this time.

  I grinned despite myself as Nikki Dawes saluted smartly, looking stunning in a complete chauffeur’s uniform, complete with a snap cap, tight-fitting black jacket that barely contained her ample breasts, a pencil skirt that made the most of her mile-long legs, and towering, size-thirteen platform pumps. No hosiery touched her well-muscled calves, but the concession was a practical one—this was Vegas in May, after all. And besides, she had amazing legs.

  Kreios trotted easily down the stairway behind me, admiring the scenery as well. “Armaeus is improving in his taste in drivers.”

  I smirked. “That’s right, you two haven’t met, have you? She came on the scene after your incarceration.”

  “Your continual reminders do you no favors, Sara.”

  “And one day I might possibly care.”

  I’d gotten Nikki on as a driver and general gopher for the council once she’d hooked me up with the Tyet, since I’d quickly realized I needed all the friends I could get in Oz. At first she hadn’t been able to see the more elaborate elements of the Arcanan’s world, since it didn’t technically exist in this plane. But she was an advanced psychic in her own right, and it didn’t take her long to catch on. Now, as we approached her, her eyes widened under her heavy mascara, her masculine face blanking with unfeigned awe. “I really, really like the souvenirs you bring home to me, babe,” she said in her marginally feminine voice. Then she smiled widely at Kreios as she clasped her hands behind her back, tucking her placard out of sight to give him unrestricted access to the full glorious view of her. “To the Strip, sir? And where have you been all my life?”