Lightbringer (Silverlight Book 4)

by Laken Cane

  “Poor bastard,” one of the cops muttered, as Al slid his blade through the zip ties around the wolf’s wrists. The second he was free, the dazed prisoner turned away from us, hunched over, and began to attempt to remove the silver.

  He never said a word, but once, his breath hissed from between his lips and he groaned. Then the spike hit the pavement and he shifted, his howls drifting behind him as he loped away.

  “Poor bastard,” the cop repeated.

  Crawford stared grimly toward the silent motel.

  “What are we going to do, Mayor?” one of the cops asked.

  Frank shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I would suggest you go in and arrest them all, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t end well for any of you.”

  “Yeah,” one of them said. “I don’t think that’s an option.”

  Then they turned, as one, to look at me, Leo, Shane, and Al.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “We’re working on it.”

  But I didn’t see a way to kill Darkness.

  And though I didn’t say it, I was reasonably certain the only way we’d see the last of Mikhail Safin would be when he decided it was time for him to go.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CRAZY

  Across the lot, one of the fallen executioners groaned.

  Leo growled, curled his hands into fists, and went for the injured human—as did I. We both wanted him. But I needed him.

  “Sorry, Leo,” I said. I stood over the human and stared up at the half-giant. “You can have him if I can have you. I have to feed.”

  He wavered. His feeling of responsibility to me was vast. But in the end, he turned around and let me have the human.

  I felt them watching me—my people, the cops, and the executioners—as I leaned forward, grabbed the suffering human, and yanked him into the air. Even with my injuries and hunger, it was as though the fully grown man weighed next to nothing.

  I tore his throat out with my teeth, drank down his blood—I’d never tasted anything like Leo’s blood and I wanted to own the hell out of that magical red liquid—but human blood was almost as good. Just in an entirely different way.

  So very good.

  And I drained the son of a bitch.

  When I was finished, even as he began to stir and reanimate as a rifter, I ripped his head off and flung it at the motel. One of the windows shattered and an executioner screamed a curse as the head of his friend landed at his feet.

  I giggled and wiped my mouth, then turned to find Crawford staring at me with such horror that I wanted immediately to burst into tears.

  The blood of the human filled me with everything—joy, life, energy, and emotion. I was like a pregnant woman with my hormones all over the place.

  The others—cops and supernats alike—looked everywhere but at me, and for a second I was overcome with shame, loneliness, and a tiny bit of the same horror that wafted from Crawford.

  But in the end, Shane came to stand with me, and though he didn’t touch me, he stood beside me, crossed his arms, and glared out at the world on my behalf.

  And just that quickly, my emotions swung to joy.

  Being nearly ripped apart and then feeding from a human could make a girl a little crazy. Even a vampire girl.

  Finally, we went home.

  Back at the way station, I cleaned up as fast as I could, then went in search of some answers.

  Amias hadn’t appeared, nor had Rhys, and Angus was still in the Deluge with his child. The other children had been moved to the tunnels, and I could only hope they’d be safe there.

  The swamp had no cell service and no landlines, so I couldn’t contact Angus. I’d go to Willow-Wisp to speak with the elder, and if Angus hadn’t returned by then, I’d go to the Deluge.

  I also needed to speak with Himself, but I had no idea how to contact him. Angus sometimes called him—or he had, before Nadine’s unfortunate end. I doubted Himself carried a phone. He really did need an assistant.

  As I left the way station, I spotted Leo. He stood at the edge of the yard, his arms crossed, staring silently into the distance.

  “Leo.” I touched his arm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He looked down at me, his face pale and drawn, his eyes bloodshot. “It’s a bad time, Trinity.”

  I nodded. If he’d have been one of the other men, I’d have wrapped my arms around him. “What can I do?” I asked, and kept my hands to myself.

  “Angus.” Then he stopped, swallowed hard, and tried again. “It was in his eyes. When I carried that little girl into the house, he…” He couldn’t say the words.

  “No, Leo,” I told him. “If Angus thought you had anything to do with hurting Derry, he’d have torn you apart on the spot.”

  I knew Angus. If he’d had so much as a single doubt, he would have painted the walls with Leo’s blood.

  Leo shook his head, but said nothing more.

  He absolutely believed Angus thought he’d hurt the girl.

  Nothing I could say would reassure him. Angus would have to do that.

  “We need to kill Safin,” he said, staring once again into the distance.

  “Kill him with your power.”

  “I tried. When he had you in the air, attached to that whip, I sent my power at him. It killed one of his men on the way, but when it got to him, it simply stopped. Like it hit a brick wall. I can’t kill him.”

  “Leo.” I hesitated. “Why didn’t you—”

  “Why didn’t I put my hands on him? I’m a half-giant. Huge. Dangerous. Strong.” He looked at me.

  I nodded, half-ashamed without knowing why.

  “He has some sort of protection. None of us can touch him. We all tried. Crawford tried to shoot him. Nothing can touch the man. It’s like he’s not really there.”

  “Of course he can be touched,” I said. “I touched him. He had to run, in the end, because he was so injured. I would have killed him.” I thumped my chest like an angry chimpanzee. “I touched the hell out of that motherfucker.”

  “No, Trinity. You didn’t. Silverlight did.” His devastated gaze drifted to my sword. “Silverlight will kill him. I believe she’s the only one who can. But there’s also a chance he might win. He might kill her.” He watched me, waiting. “Or take her.”

  I recoiled, I couldn’t help it. He was right.

  He was right.

  If I took Silverlight back to Darkness, he and his freaky snake whip might actually get the best of her. Might kill her. I didn’t want to send her into that. I didn’t want to risk her.

  Still, I would. Of course I would.

  But my fingers itched to soothe the strips of raw flesh that had yet to completely heal, and I wanted to run Silverlight far away from the man who might be able to kill her.

  Worse, the man who might be able to take her. To possess her.

  What if he took her and she turned on me? She’d turned on the demon who’d owned her before me. What if Darkness took her and told her to hurt me?

  I pressed my fingers into my stomach, unable, almost, to bear the thought.

  She was mine. Mine.

  And I could not lose her.

  “As soon as you recover,” Leo said. “We can’t wait for him to come to us, and we can’t wait for him to hurt another child.”

  And he turned back to stare once more into the distance, at something only he could see.

  It broke my heart to watch him suffer, but I didn’t know how to help him. I’d refused to let myself really think about Derry. About what she’d gone through. Her fear, her pain…

  Shit.

  “Leo.” I gripped his forearm, needing to feel something besides the blackness of Derry’s nightmare. “Do you want to go to the swamp with me to check on her?”

  He shook his head. “Angus wouldn’t want me there. Not yet.” He dropped his stare to where my fingers lay against his arm, then averted his eyes quickly, guiltily, even, as though he were taking a sneak peek into a woman’s bedroom window.

/>   I rubbed my thumb over his skin, softly. “I wanted to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking care of me. For watching my back. For always making sure I’m okay.”

  “You saved my life.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “It’s the least I can do.”

  I slid my hand up his arm and over his broad chest, not even a little ashamed that I wanted him so much that I would try to seduce him, that I would make him mine because I needed his blood.

  It wasn’t like I’d hurt him.

  His entire body tightened and I honestly couldn’t read what was in his eyes when he stared down at me.

  “Come here,” I said.

  He hesitated.

  He resisted.

  “Leo,” I said. “Have you never—”

  “I’m not a virgin, Trinity,” he said, dryly, but with a hint of something I couldn’t quite grasp. “I’ve taken women to my bed. I had to pay for every single one of them, but I’ve had sex.”

  I didn’t move my hands. They lay there on his chest, wrong and awkward, but I couldn’t take them away.

  He continued on when I stayed silent and motionless. “I’ve never had what you might call a real relationship. I’ve never had love. I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

  “Leo…you could.”

  He shook his head. “Look at me.” There was no bitterness in his eyes, just calm acceptance.

  “I am. And I’m seeing you.” If I’d been taller, or he’d been shorter, I would have kissed him. “I see you, and I want you.” I moved my hands then, not up, but down. “I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine. Let me take you.”

  His voice became a husky murmur. “You can break me, Trinity. I’m asking you not to do that.” But he didn’t grab my wrists, didn’t stop me from inching my fingers down his huge, hard body.

  “Let me take you,” I whispered.

  He lowered his gaze to my lips. “I’m not sure you can take me.”

  And in his voice was pride. Pride, heat, and the desire to let me in. To let me love him.

  But larger than the need was the fear that I would crush him.

  “I know it’s my blood,” he said, and finally, he grabbed my wrists, right before my fingers touched a stiffening part of him that might have killed me had I been human. He was a half-giant. There was nothing small about him.

  I looked, gasped, and my stare flew back to his. Maybe he was a little amused.

  Mostly, he was just sad.

  He knew. He knew about his blood. He knew what it’d done to me.

  Leo had been hurt enough.

  “It’s not just your blood,” I said.

  I’d have to prove it to him. Somehow.

  He trusted me with his life—he didn’t quite trust me with his heart.

  And I didn’t blame him a bit.

  I left him there with his thoughts and his unbroken heart and strode into Willow-Wisp. I searched for the elder for an hour before finally giving up. He wasn’t in the graveyard.

  Or if he was, he wasn’t showing himself to me.

  I stood in the center of Willow-Wisp and closed my eyes, silently calling for Amias. In the midst of all the other horror, his absence was, somehow, the darkest. The hardest for me to handle.

  He simply wasn’t there.

  And Rhys was probably flying over Hong Kong, hoping rumors of his sightings would reach the ears of the executioners and they’d rush out of Red Valley and begin to chase the dragon in another country.

  I hoped for that, as well.

  But I knew better than to believe it.

  When I opened my eyes, Amias wasn’t there, nor was Rhys, but the King of Everything stood silent and still before me, waiting.

  I rushed toward him and would have grabbed his bony shoulders but at the last second, I thought better of it. “Tell me everything,” I cried, instead. “Where is the master? Where is the dragon? Can I kill Darkness? What do I do?”

  I only realized at that moment how utterly out of my depth I was. How utterly afraid I’d do the wrong thing and get everybody killed.

  There was sympathy in his eyes, eyes almost buried in the wrinkled folds of his face. “I cannot tell you that, child.”

  “Cannot?” I asked, confused. “You don’t know?”

  “I know only that we must control what we can control. The rest is left to fate and is not ours to decide.”

  I stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

  He sighed. “I am afraid it means that I cannot aid you at this time.”

  “You don’t know?” I asked, again. “Are you saying you don’t know?”

  He relented, slightly. “You’ve already done something very important. Your victory over the executioner has ensured that an army of humans will not fall upon Bay Town—but his resolve will not weaken. He will have the dragon. He must.” He lifted his chin. “Therefore we must turn our efforts toward protecting the dragon. That, we can do.”

  “We can?”

  “We must.”

  Safin’s determination went beyond doing a job for his employers. “Why does he want to kill the dragon so badly?” I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer. Himself danced around the truth like it was fire that would burn him if he got too close.

  He surprised me. “For power. He has been ordered to kill the dragon—but he wants to be the dragon.” He peered at me. “You saw what was inside him.”

  I gave an involuntary shiver. “He’s not human.”

  “And there is nothing he wants more than power. All power. It is the only thing that motivates him. The only reason he lives.”

  And finally, I understood. “It’s why he’s so strong. Everything he has he’s stolen from other supernaturals.” I pressed my fingers against the sudden pain in my chest. “He wants to consume the dragon. He has the ability to…” I swallowed hard and looked away, remembering Nadine. “To absorb power.”

  He nodded. “And either way, the dragon will be dead. We must not allow that to happen. We must not.”

  “Then help me,” I said. “I can’t kill him on my own.”

  “You are the only one who can.” His voice was bland, but his eyes blazed. “You carry the sword, and he cannot absorb her.” He looked pointedly at Silverlight. “You bring the light. And you must banish the darkness.”

  “But he can take her,” I said. “He can use her.”

  He said nothing, just watched me.

  “Can’t he?” I asked, desperate for him to say no, no, child, he can’t take your sword.

  “You must not allow him to,” he said.

  “I need Amias,” I whispered. “Where is the master? Please, tell me that.”

  But he could not.

  Or would not.

  I curled my hands into fists and God knows what I would have done at that moment if the long-absent visitors, the path walkers, the lost, wandering spirits, hadn’t decided at that exact moment to finally come knocking at the way station door.

  I had forgotten what it was like to have them in my head, screaming for help. And by the time I lowered my hands from my ears and looked, Himself was gone.

  I was on my own. And as soon as I tended the visitor, Silverlight and I would go after Darkness.

  He was the only thing I knew how to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  CROSSOVER

  Jin was so excited his hands shook. He kicked a chair away from the table and practically shoved me into it. “They’re here,” he said, as though I might not somehow be aware of that.

  I pressed my fingertips against my temples, trying to stop the discordant sounds inside my head. And abruptly, the noise was gone.

  I opened the walls between the way station and the path, between my world and the visitor’s, and I brought the wanderer inside.

  Disoriented, he stumbled back a few steps, but he didn’t fall. “What the fuck is this?” he said. “More tricks?”

  “Hello,” I said. “Have a—”

  “This isn’t my w
orld.” He darted his stare around the room, as though he could see the entire world through the kitchen walls. “Place doesn’t smell the same.”

  “Please,” I said. “Sit. I’ll explain.”

  He didn’t sit, though, just stared at me from eyes that had seen a lot of really, really bad things. I wanted to flinch from the look in those eyes, because beneath the coldness was a sorrow so huge I was afraid it would engulf me.

  His body—whether borrowed or his I couldn’t have said—was whipcord lean and scarred, and his dirty hair, maybe a dark blond, though I couldn’t really tell with the dust of his path covering it, snaked over his shoulders and down his chest.

  “I’m the caretaker,” I said, when he remained standing. “I’m here to help you find your way home.”

  His eyes widened then, and he strode to me, and before I could react, he’d grabbed my shoulders and yanked me to my feet. “You can send me home?”

  Shit. His desperation was overwhelming. I could have broken his hold easily, but as my fingers pressed gently against his chest, I felt something.

  “You’re not human,” I realized. He was the first nonhuman that had come off the path—during my time as the caretaker, anyway—and I wasn’t sure what that meant. “What are you?”

  He squeezed my arms, impatient. “That doesn’t matter. I’ve been on that fucking path for…” He shook his head. “Forever. I need to go home. Can you get me there?”

  I couldn’t keep looking into his eyes as I crushed him. “You died,” I told him. “You wouldn’t be on the path if you hadn’t died. I can help you find the path to your…your paradise. But you cannot stay in this world. You—”

  “You’re dead,” Jin said, gleefully.

  I glanced over the stranger’s shoulder to where Jin lingered, his fascinated gaze on our visitor.

  “I didn’t die,” the man said, irritated. “I went through the portal, got on the path, and somehow, I got off here. I keep getting the wrong fucking world.” He shook me a little. “You’ll put me on the right path?”

  There was no arguing with him. “Yes, I can put you on the right path. I just need to find it.” I patted his chest. “I need you to sit down and take my hands.”

  “Yeah,” he said, then almost reluctantly, as though he thought I might make a run for it if he released me, he let me go and took a seat at the table. He stared incomprehensibly at the tray of food Jin had placed there, then grabbed the water and chugged it down like a man who’d been thirsty for a long, long time.