Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  "I don't think that's gonna matter," she said. "I have a feeling they won't find anything physically wrong." She peered deep into Callum's eyes as though she thought she could see behind them. "Are you dizzy?" she asked him.

  He shook his head. "Except feeling like I just ran a marathon, I don't feel out of sorts."

  "Anything hurt?" she said.

  He shook his head.

  Sarah looked over her shoulder at me. "I'm not sure a hospital will help. What would we tell them?" She lay a calm hand on Gramp's shoulder. "Maybe some water?"

  Gramp nodded and left the room. She turned back to Callum immediately and I realized she wanted to get Gramp out of the room. "What do you remember?"

  Callum sent a long look my way. His gaze travelled from my mouth down to my hips and then rose again to linger on my neck. "Ayla," he said. "I was dreaming about Ayla. And then she was there. And she was in pain." He pursed his lips, thinking. "I don't remember much else. Just that pain. I wanted to help," he said. I noticed his fists had clenched side on the couch. "And I couldn't."

  I could hear the bald helplessness in his tone. I hung my head, wishing I hadn't looked like such a coward in front of him.

  "Now for you," Sarah said. She pointed at my jeans. "Unzip."

  "I will not," I said, whipping around so she couldn't look at me the way she was, as though she planned to pull my jeans down and inspect my still raw skin. I barely avoided her hands but she'd always been strong for a wiry little thing and she wrestled me onto the sofa and unzipped my jeans for me, just enough to peel the flap away from the skin of my hip. She sucked in her breath.

  "Ayla," she said as she exhaled. "Look."

  I knew what I'd see, but not the shape of it. A duplicate of the one on the third jar. The mark we couldn't translate.

  "Incubus, I guess," I said, meeting her blue-eyed gaze. She nodded and pointed at each container in their turn. "Virtue, Doppelgänger, Incubus."

  I felt ill. I didn't want to think about the incubus. Didn't want to remember its throat beneath my palms. It made me feel dirty and unclean. It made me feel like I needed to take a shower.

  Sarah crossed the room and laid her hand on the top of one of the earthen vessels.

  "Do you have any more brands you haven't told us about, Ayla?"

  "What makes you ask?"

  She shrugged and ran a finger down along the curve of its belly.

  "Because we found another one in the yard."

  CHAPTER 14:

  The fourth container looked much the same as the others, except its mark on the bottom was identical to the one on the scarab stamp Callum had taken from his assailant. To my eye, it looked like a bird with outstretched wings, its talons clutching a long frond. But then, I had just come eye-to-eye with one gargantuan bird straddling a guy I was crushing on so I might have biased my own vision.

  I knew without asking, they hadn't opened it. The seal and lashings were still intact.

  As I held it in my hands, I knew we would have to open it the same way as the others, under protective wardings. We couldn't take a chance now, not with everything that had happened. I also knew no one had the energy to do it right then. Gramp was slouched in his chair. And I knew Callum had lost far more energy than he wanted to let on. Sarah was looking from one to the other with worry coiled in her expression.

  I had no idea what I looked like, but I imagined it was about as attractive as a mad woman walking the streets behind a shopping cart.

  We needed to recuperate, and we all knew it. We sat for long moments not saying anything before Sarah quietly got up and went into the kitchen. No doubt she'd be rummaging around in the fridge, and my suspicions panned out when I heard the sound of cutlery and pots clanking together. Cocoa, I thought. Maybe even a platter of food. It wasn't a bad idea, actually. Eating would give us all time to process what had just happened.

  If I was lucky, no one would talk. I needed a break to be with my own thoughts, but I was too afraid to go up to my room. Not because I imagined the incubus would be there waiting but because I knew it wouldn't be. And I knew why. Every time I thought of those moments when I'd wrapped my hands around its throat and squeezed, I felt dirty. I felt like a murderer.

  I couldn't shake the feeling that what I'd done hadn't been in righteous anger, but in cold calculation. I couldn't bear to go up to my room and face that again. I didn't want to see the walls or imagine the incubus cowering in the corner as it watched for Azrael. I couldn't stand remembering the look of fear in his face, of hearing Azrael's voice behind telling me it wasn't time. That I'd let the anger take me until I had squeezed the life out of it.

  It just seemed so callous, and that wasn't me. I didn't want to remember that part of me.

  Worse, I didn't want to think that I was more callous than Azrael, who had wanted to offer the thing more time.

  I shook my hands out as though to rid them of the feel of its skin against my palms.

  Instead, I studied Gramp as he sat there staring at the opposite wall. He was a hero. I wondered if he knew that. In all my years with him, this was the first time I'd seen him so fiercely alive. He was a warrior, I realized. In his day, I imagined he had been robust and intimidating. While to me he had been just plain old Gramp all this time. I was proud of him. More even now than I'd been while he'd fought for his health in the hospital.

  Sarah, in her turn, had maintained a calm composure and done what she needed to do.

  I, on the other hand, had panicked. I was as ashamed of that as I was off killing the incubus.

  I stole a look at Callum as he sat next to me on the sofa, trying to tell myself he was going to be fine. His leg felt warm next to mine, and that had to be a good thing, didn't it? Normal?

  As real as the heat of his leg was against mine, everything else was surreal. Seeing Sarah come back into the room with a tray of mugs and chocolate cake, it seemed even more so.

  She placed the tray down on the coffee table and gave each one of us a sharp look.

  "I don't know about the rest of you," she said. "But if I don't put something into my mouth, I'm going to lose my mind."

  She plucked a mug from the tray and walked it over to Gramp. He took it but held it between both hands, not bothering to put it to his lips.

  She pressed the bottom of the mug gently. I imagined a look passed between the two of them because he lifted it slowly and put it to his mouth. His Adam's apple bobbed briefly and then he put the mug back down onto the side table next to his chair.

  "Better," Sarah said.

  She turned to face us with her arms crossed over her chest.

  "Now that everyone has some chocolate in them," she said. "Do you mind telling me what the hell that was?" She paced the room for several moments when I didn't answer and then she held her hand up as though to block any information that came her way.

  "Never mind," she said. "If that was the incubus, I just want to know how we're going to get rid of it."

  "It wasn't," I said, squirming on the sofa.

  I kept hearing Azrael telling me it wasn't time. And if it wasn't time, then what had I just done by getting rid of it prematurely?

  She halted and faced me. "Sweet Sacred blood. Then what in the name of Grindelwald was it?"

  I took a long breath. I didn't want to do this. Not right now.

  "I think it's the thing from the crypt," I said. I glanced up at her. "What we released when we killed the doppelgänger."

  I used the word we because I didn't want to sound accusing.

  "You mean what I loosed." Sara nodded sagely as she sank down into her chair and perched on the edge. "So how do you know?"

  "Azrael told me," I said but I couldn't look at her when she said it because all I could focus on was the look in Azrael's eyes when he'd admitted to me what remained was even worse than we could have feared. She had to throw a balled up piece of paper at me to get me to look at her, and even then I couldn't meet her gaze for long.

  "Azrael," she said, furro
wing her blonde brow. "You've seen him? When? When did he tell you this?"

  I plucked the paper from floor and balled it in my fist. Apparently, this action was enough to explain because she gasped.

  "He was here," she said, and I wasn't sure just how she had managed to work it out and it creeped me out a little. "He was here and you haven't said so. That must mean –"

  "It means the incubus won't be bothering us anymore."

  I hung my head. It hurt to say that. I felt nauseous and dizzy just imagining its skin beneath my palms. I'd killed it. Not that it didn't deserve it, but I killed it even knowing the time wasn't right for it. I hadn't done it out of self-defence. I hadn't done it out of fear. I had killed it intentionally. Out of vengeance. I shivered and crossed my arms over my chest.

  "It called me Nephilim," Callum said out of the blue. "That...bird woman. I remember that. She was sitting on my chest and I was feeling weak and cold and she called me that name. I don't remember much except watching you in pain and remembering that."

  There was a sort of vacant look in his eye as he spoke and I thought it might not be the right time to tell him what it meant. I didn't think he could take it. Not after what he'd just endured.

  "Nephilim means you have angel blood in you," Sarah said a little too casually. She didn't sound the least bit shocked and she didn't sugarcoat it. Pull the band aid right off. For good or bad, it was out there now. I watched as the expressions flitted across Callum's face: confusion, disbelief. Then that vacant stare again. I knew he wasn't processing it. I recognized in his body language exactly how I'd felt when Azrael had told me what I was.

  "Angel blood?" Callum said. "Kind of like quarter Cherokee or something? And this from a guy who's never set foot in a church except to put out a fire." He nudged me with his leg as though he thought he'd cracked a really good joke.

  No one laughed.

  "You're serious," he said.

  I nodded slowly, thinking that maybe the more time it took, the easier it would be for him to take the information in. Besides. Up until that point, he'd believed himself human. I knew how hard it was to have that sense of security and self-awareness torn away.

  "The whole time we thought it was an incubus attacking him, it wasn't," I said. "There was one here, yes, but it wasn't that same creature. Not by a long shot." I felt stupid. I should've made the connection.

  "You mean two awful things entered this house?" Gramp said. He shook his head and stared at the wall.

  "Azrael told me before that whatever we had let loose was something strong and something that wanted more power. It told me it would find it wherever it could. He said that your blood was a threat because it would be a lure." I spun around to face each one of them.

  "So that's why that thing is here," I said. "It isn't here to spirit Sarah away to face her family. It wants energy. First it-she'll come for Callum, then druid or necromancer or me. We can't let that happen. We have to stop it."

  Gramp scored me with his gaze.

  "How can we fight a thing like that?" he said. "I saw your pain. I saw how much that thing was hurting you –"

  "It wasn't the creature, Gramp," I admitted. It was something else. Each time I reap an entity, I get marked." I pulled my pant leg up to show him the original brand. I twisted my calf and watched his face as his gaze fell to the mark and I recounted again my time in the church, this time filling in the detail I had left out before. That after I had accidentally killed the fallen angel, I had been branded.

  Gramp swallowed when I was finished and then met my gaze again.

  "That looks like you were branded," he said quietly.

  Callum pushed himself to his feet without looking at me. His jaw was set in a rigid line that made his expression easy enough to read. He was angry. That much was clear. I felt like I should apologize but I had no idea what for.

  I sighed, spent and tired and uncertain.

  "So where does that leave us?" I said. "Can we reverse the spell? Fix it somehow? Make it like it was never here?"

  "Spells like that are very particular," Sarah said. "They take certain kinds of magic." She looked at Gramp for confirmation and he merely nodded. "In this case, we have four vessels each containing something very specific. We would have to know the intention of the spell as well as the ingredients and we haven't got that far."

  "But you said you thought it was a protection spell," I said.

  She shrugged. "Or a resurrection spell. I simply don't know any more than this is definitely Egyptian. Just look at the bottom of the vessel. That's pretty indicative of the origin and the Egyptians were big on resurrection. I can't guarantee that what these vessels aren't supposed to be doing is raise the creature we saw."

  I shook my head. "Can't be. Azrael was very explicit. That thing is here because of us. These containers are separate."

  "Then maybe we should split our efforts." Callum was pacing. "That vessel," he said, pointing to one of the jars on the counter. "It had a parchment in it. You said it was a spell."

  "I did," she said.

  "Maybe while we open the fourth one, you decipher what the spell is for. Decide once and for all whether it's resurrection or protection."

  She nodded. I could tell by her expression she was reluctant to be alone, but it couldn't be helped. We needed Gramp to open the other container and I wanted to be there when it happened.

  Sarah sighed heavily. "I certainly don't fancy spending another night waiting for something to attack, so sure. Let's do it."

  We left Sarah at the dining room table with a parchment spread in front of her and muttering to herself that she was certain it was about protection, but that she would do the work anyway if not just to prove it to us. She mumbled something about normal people not trusting magic and shooed us away with a flick of her hand. Gramp went directly to his protective circle with the vessel and placed it in the apex of the cross.

  It was almost overkill, and I think we all knew it. After all, nothing had happened when we'd opened the last ones, but we just didn't want to take the chance.

  Secretly, I believed we had nothing to fear from the jars. I wasn't sure why, but I felt as though they were the answer, not the enemy. Sarah, with her built-in paranoia after years of being on the run, couldn't help herself. Gramp was just for too wary of anything he thought would put me in danger.

  I felt Callum's hand slip into mine and his grip was firm rather than gentle. He was standing entirely too close and every time I tried to move away, uncomfortable and nervous, he pressed even closer. We waited with bated breath as Gramp went through the ritual of chanting and then slipping the lashings from the jug.

  When he extracted a small vial of oil and a single black feather, we all sagged with relief. Strange, but not offensive. I could live with that.

  "A feather," Callum said with a note of disappointment in his voice. "That's it?"

  "I know you wish it was more," Gramp said. "But you haven't been involved in otherworldly things for long. Nothing is ever simple." I thought he tried to smile at Callum, but Callum spun away on his heel and with a long look at me, headed back up the stairs. Gramp and I trooped behind, the vessel in hand.

  We ended up back in the same place we were before. Sitting across from each other in the living room with cups of cocoa. Sarah, of course, had a piece of pie. The scroll was lying in front of her on the coffee table. One foot was propped up on seat of the chair and she was giving each one of us an I told you so look.

  "Definitely protection," she said. I recognize some of the symbols." She picked up the feather from the table where Gramp had placed it next to the vial of oil and twirled it in her fingers, staring at it.

  "Four of them, just like Egyptian burial vessels. One with viscera. One with the deceased in need of protection. One with this Egyptian protection spell from the Book of the Dead." She eyed me with a look that dared me to question her. I just shook my head. What did I know about other languages, especially those of the dead? That was her specialty n
ot mine.

  She twirled the feather again, this time using the tip of it to write in the air. "And this. "The feather of truth and judgment."

  She made the sign of the cross as she ended on a note of triumph.

  Something niggled at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite place what it was. Something about feathers and crosses. I was thinking about images and language and how sometimes the two couldn't be interchangeable

  Sarah leaned forward to tilt the container onto its side, revealing the bottom and the mark stamped onto it.

  "And here," she said. "This bird is holding the feather of truth. All parts of an Egyptian style burial. Add to that the amulet, and you have all the elements of a protection spell meant to ward off the wicked one from stealing this thing's soul." She pulled her other foot up onto the seat of the chair and hugged her knees.

  "A little over-dramatic if you ask me," she said. "But it was two thousand years ago."

  She smiled crookedly.

  "Except it wasn't 2000 years ago," Gramp said, laying his hand on the side of the last container. "These have not been in the ground that long. These are more recent. And that makes all the difference."

  He pointed to the fourth jug. "That mark," he said, picking the scarab stamp from the table where Callum had left it. "It's the only one you guys didn't mention as part of Ayla's branding. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's pretty obvious to me that it's a bird holding onto a feather. Coincidence?" He looked at each one of us in turn, pinning us with his black-eyed gaze. "I think not."

  Sarah scratched her head and fluffed out her hair. "Maybe, but what's the connection? The most obvious has to be the answer."

  I was only vaguely hearing them. My mind was still stuck in the glue of thought that held a feather fast as though it was the last puzzle piece to an image so obvious I couldn't make it out because I was standing too close. I remembered another night when feathers featured predominantly in an event. Everything zoned out for a second.

  Then the piece fit in perfectly, and gave me the answer we needed.

  "It's one explanation," I said. "But it's not the right one."