I jerked upright, pushing out of the chair while I reached for the knife that should have been hanging at my side but was nowhere to be found. I had left it in the car last night so that I wouldn’t upset Mira when I went in to initially speak to her. A short bald man with a potbelly stood before me in a rumpled white button-up shirt and wrinkled slacks. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his trousers and he shook his head at me as the corners of his mouth curled into a wicked grin. He didn’t look particularly threatening. In fact, he looked downright pathetic with his patchy day’s growth on his jaw and bleary, red-rimmed eyes. But he was also standing in the home of one of the most powerful nightwalkers within the region and neither Mira nor I had heard him enter.
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?” I demanded, wishing I could back up a step, but the backs of my legs were already against the chair I had been sitting in. The living room was crowded with comfortable furniture, making this a poor choice of locations for a fight.
“I’m here to see you, Danaus,” he announced. “Surely you’ve been expecting me.”
“I have no idea who you are.” As I spoke, I sent my powers out from my body with the intent of scanning him.
“But you do!” He took a step closer. “We spoke last night.”
My brow furrowed. Last night, I met with Barrett, Gregor, and Nate. I distinctly remembered what each man looked like. I could recall the nightwalkers I had seen in the Dark Room. I had never seen this man before.
“No,” I said at last after racking my brain.
“We spoke in the park after the Fire Starter left you,” he said. A column of white mist flowered out of the man to his left and reformed into a slightly translucent image of the naturi I had seen last night. At the same time, the bald man blinked and looked slowly around as if he were coming out of a trance. The creature gave a hollow-sounding chuckle before flowing back into the man.
“Now you remember me,” the man snickered, his brown eyes once again lit by a grim red light. “I’m sorry it has taken so long for us to have these moments together, but I have to admit that it’s taken me a number of years to accumulate enough energy to push back into this world. I mean, prior to the few pathetic souls I’ve encountered in this wretched city, the last human I spoke to was your lovely mother.”
“No,” I whispered. I tried to take a step backward but hit the chair behind me and partially fell into it. I caught myself on the arm of the chair with my right hand.
“That’s right,” the man said. “Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about.” He pointed at me and a burst of energy hit my left shoulder, knocking me into the chair. I watched as the creature slid over and settled on the sofa across from me. He sighed as he settled back against the cushions and placed his right foot on his left knee.
“Bori,” I growled.
“Ahh…I didn’t think we’d really need to state the obvious, but yes. Or rather, I’m a bori that is temporarily inhabiting this rather undesirable body, but then one does not complain about one’s mode of transportation when one is desperate.” The man folded his hands over his large stomach and smiled at me. “I am rather proud of how you’ve turned out. I’ve always considered myself your godfather of sorts, watching over you from a distance.”
“You’re the one that made the deal with my mother,” I snarled as my too-slow brain finally started to function. He was the one that had held me damned in the afterlife. Pushing off the arms of the chair, I launched myself at the man, ready to wrap my hands around his meaty neck and choke the life out of him. I didn’t think it would succeed in killing the bori, but then I wasn’t thinking any longer. I just wanted the creature that had ruined my life to be gone from this earth permanently.
The bori simply chuckled as he raised his hand again. Another burst of energy hit me square in the chest, knocking me back into the chair.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you really must stay seated,” he said. “We’re not done talking. Besides, you can’t kill me. We bori cannot be destroyed.”
I didn’t believe him. Anything that lived could be killed, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it with my bare hands, considering that it seemed to be nothing more than a white mist. I also couldn’t kill it with my powers, as I had already proven last night. If anything, I needed Mira, but then bori had the ability to control nightwalkers, as I had seen in Spain. I was trapped and there didn’t seem to be any escape for me or the rest of Savannah.
“It really is a shame that you have to see me this way,” Gaizka continued when I finally crossed my arms over my chest and appeared as if I was willing to remain seated in the chair and listen to his speech. “For your mother, I appeared as a strong Roman warrior. Almost god-like in stature. She really seemed impressed with me.”
“In a body like that, why wouldn’t she agree to give away the soul of her unborn child?” I snidely replied, barely able to unclench my teeth so I could speak.
The creature across from me threw back his head and laughed deeply. “Your dear mother was so set in her desire for revenge, nothing could have deterred her from her course. I could have appeared as an old crone and she would have still sold you to me. Or at the very least tried to.”
“So in exchange for a little power, you got my soul,” I sneered.
“You make it sound as if you got the short end of the stick in this deal,” Gaizka said, slamming his right foot down on the floor. The bori wearing the large man shot across the room with more speed than I thought possible and grabbed me around the throat. His beefy hands crushed my windpipe, cutting off all air for a second before he threw me across the room. I slammed into a picture hanging on one wall, the glass splintering before my body and the picture crashed to the floor.
“I gave you amazing strength and powers. I extended your life more than a hundredfold. You’re a god among men! And through all these years I’ve asked for nothing from you,” Gaizka shouted.
“I never asked for any of this!” I shouted back at him, pushing to my knees. “I never wanted to be an outcast among humanity, to feel as if my very soul were damned to hell because my mother made a deal with a monster.”
The creature again darted across the short distance that separated us. He kicked me in the ribs, breaking two as I fell back against the wall with a heavy grunt. “It was a gift,” he bit out. “But we all know there’s a price for everything in this world. It’s time to pay the piper, as the saying goes.”
“I don’t owe you anything!” I snarled as my thoughts rose above the pain that beat at me. This thing was faster than any nightwalker I had encountered. I could try to use my power, but it would mean killing another innocent human being, and even then I wouldn’t be rid of Gaizka’s presence. It would still be in the house with me, able to finally crush me if it decided I wasn’t worth the effort any longer.
“You owe me for the life you’ve lived!” he screamed. This time the back of his fist crashed into my jaw, snapping my head around before I could dodge the blow. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t have enough magical skill to defeat him.
“What do you want?” I growled, rubbing my jaw as I sat against the wall. Glass crunched against my back from the broken picture that was behind me.
“Like the naturi, I want out of my gilded cage,” he said, flashing an evil grin at me that was reminiscent of the one I had seen on the face of the fake naturi.
“You are out,” I snapped, motioning with my right hand toward the human body that he now inhabited.
“No, this is just temporary,” he said, his smile fading into a frown. “I’m nearly out of the energy you and that wonderful nightwalker have sent my way. I need more, a lot more, if I’m going to permanently break free of my bonds and reenter this world.”
“Why would I ever send you more energy?” I demanded.
“Because you can’t help yourself,” he replied with a wide grin. “You’ve done it on numerous occasions already and I have no doubt that you’
ll do it again.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, shaking my head at his nonsense. I had never sent him any kind of energy. I would never willingly do such a thing.
“Come now, my boy,” Gaizka chuckled. “You’ve been so helpful ever since you fashioned an alliance with the Fire Starter. I’ll admit that creature has got me more than a little stumped as to her origin, but in the end it doesn’t matter. You and she are the perfect match. I had always wondered how you would be able to finally help me, but you’ve found a way!”
“I’ve never helped you!” I shouted, resisting the urge to push to my feet. The bori seemed content to keep me on the floor at his feet.
“But you have,” he whispered. Leaning down, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and jerked my head back so that I was forced to look him in the eye. I could now smell the horrid scent of rotting flesh that hung on him like a cologne. The bori inside of the human was slowly killing him, and he wouldn’t be able to inhabit his current body for much longer.
“Whenever you combine your power with the nightwalker and kill naturi, you’re sending their souls directly to me,” he whispered in my ear before releasing my hair. “You’re feeding me with the sweetest power that you could possibly find. I’m feasting off my enemy and they are extending my own powers.”
I sat dumbfounded, staring straight ahead as he returned to his seat on the sofa, chuckling. In London, Mira and I had combined our powers for the first time and annihilated the horde of naturi that had come to destroy us. We thought we had destroyed their souls, but we had been wrong. Because of my link to this bori, we had sent the energy directly to Gaizka to feed off of. He had found a way to escape from his prison using the energy we had been sending him.
And then everything seemed to finally fit into place. “You killed Abigail Bradford,” I murmured. I blinked a couple times, my gaze finally focusing on the bori that sat across from me. “You killed her, attempting to frame the naturi. You have been torturing Mira with images of Nerian. You’ve been pushing us to go after the naturi and wipe them out so that we’ll send the energy to you.”
“You’ve always been such a bright boy,” Gaizka proudly crowed. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually, but I had to take a chance on the idea that you’d follow the breadcrumbs back to the naturi. Unfortunately, with the addition of that little girl, you’ve been led astray from the path that I’ve laid out for you. And I’m about out of time.”
“I won’t help you,” I snapped, but he waved me off, ignoring my statement.
“I thank you for all your help, but you’re not done just quite yet,” Gaizka taunted. “You see, I’m running a bit low and I would really like to remain here. It’s a nice place to stay and with the rest of my brethren still locked away, Earth is distinctly less crowded.”
Horror filled my frame, tightening my muscles. A bori running loose in the world, able to feed off the billions of souls that filled the landscape with no other bori to compete with would quickly become a god. One would have no way of stopping it. “I won’t help you,” I repeated.
“I don’t believe you’re going to have a choice in this matter,” Gaizka said, leaning forward on the sofa so that he could rest his forearms on his knees. “I will give you one last night to make some arrangements with the nightwalker. That will give you enough time to locate and destroy some naturi for me. If you fail to do that, tomorrow night I will stand on River Street and kill every human I see. But first, I will hunt down and slowly kill that little girl that you have so sweetly promised to protect.”
“You can’t!” I shouted, coming off the floor. This time, he didn’t push me back down, but rose so that he was looking up at me from bloodshot eyes.
“I can and I will,” he threatened, clenching his teeth. “Abigail Bradford was just a taste of what I am capable of. If I have to return to my cage, then I will destroy half of this city before I go. The nightwalkers will be exposed to the world. There will be no more hiding. They will become hunted by every creature on the face of the Earth. With that much bloodshed, you and the nightwalker will have no choice but to use your unique ability in order to survive. And then I will return regardless of your wishes. Do it my way, and the only ones hurt are the naturi.”
“We won’t do it,” I said stubbornly. Mira and I wouldn’t willingly help this creature that was potentially an even greater threat than the naturi could dream of being.
“You forget, you will have no choice but to help me. Your only choice lies in whether you will do it the hard way or the easy way. Think about it, Danaus, and then abide by my wishes. Kill the naturi. It will be easier for everyone.”
Gaizka then exited the body of the bald man. He hovered in the air as a column of thick white mist before finally dissipating. The man blinked again and swayed on his feet as he shook his head to clear it from the fog that enveloped his thoughts.
“Where am I?” he said in a low, scratchy voice that was the polar opposite from the smooth, easy tones Gaizka had spoken in.
“You’re in hell,” I muttered, letting my eyes fall shut. We were all in the lower regions of hell.
TWENTY-NINE
I hesitated outside of the town house, my hand on the doorknob, wondering how I was going to tell Mira that we were not only faced with a bori, but that it also planned to destroy her home and expose her. And in truth, I wasn’t sure how we could actually succeed in destroying this enemy. I couldn’t use my powers against it and I doubted Mira’s fire would make much of an impact on a creature that seemed to be pure spirit. Sure, we could destroy the body that it inhabited, but what would stop it from grabbing another human?
Before he passed out at Mira’s house, the man who had been briefly possessed spoke of encountering an angel with enormous white shining wings. Somehow the bori had convinced him that an angel needed access to his soul, which probably gave Gaizka access to the man’s body for possession. I delivered the bald man to the nearest hospital prior to driving to the town house. From his gray pallor and trembling, I didn’t think his odds of surviving the night were that good.
With a sigh, I opened the door and stepped into the house. Lily’s laughter hit me first as it drifted down the hall from the living room. I followed the sound to find the teenager looking over Mira’s shoulder as the nightwalker sat on the sofa holding something between both of her hands.
Lily turned at the sound of my footsteps, flashing me a broad smile. “Danaus!” she cried as she hooked a stray length of brown hair behind her left ear. “Look at what Mira bought me!”
Taking a step closer, I peered over Mira’s shoulder to find her holding a small electronic device with a flashing movie screen. “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a PSP,” Lily said in a voice that clearly indicated that I should have recognized such a thing. “It’s a handheld gaming system,” she continued when I just looked blankly at her.
“Danaus prefers to live in the Dark Ages,” Mira coldly said, as she turned off the device and handed it back to Lily.
“I have a cell phone,” I countered.
“Yeah, but do you know how to use it?” Mira glanced over her shoulder at me, one corner of her mouth turning higher in a smirk. She had me there and we both knew it. James had had to program all the necessary phone numbers into the phone and teach me how to use its most basic functions. Technology and I didn’t always get along.
“Mira should have used her money to buy you some new clothes instead of toys,” I criticized, trying to redirect the conversation away from me.
“But she did! Look!” Lily commanded. She took a step away from the sofa and threw out her arms before spinning around in place. She had on a pair of worn-looking jeans and a faded T-shirt over a black turtleneck sweater.
“They don’t look new.”
Lily gave a little snort.
“It’s the style now,” Mira informed me. “It’s called distressed.”
“Sounds like a rip-off to me,” I muttered. Mira simply shrugged her
shoulders as if to say “What did it matter?” And in truth, it didn’t. Lily was happy.
“I only had time to pick up a couple outfits,” Mira said. “I thought we could go shopping tonight for some more clothes and essentials.”
It was a peace offering. Between the distinct pallor to her cheeks and the fact that she had shopped for Lily, I knew the nightwalker had not hunted tonight. She had turned her focus to Lily, using the child as a way of distracting herself from the pain I had caused. I wasn’t sure if she had actually forgiven me, but she was at least willing to call a truce.
At that moment, nothing sounded more appealing than trailing after Mira and Lily as they went on an intense shopping expedition, where we would encounter nothing more stressful than choosing between which pair of shoes to buy. No naturi. No bori. No coven and no Ryan. We could even stop and have a cozy dinner together at a restaurant. A normal night. A normal life.
“We can’t tonight,” I said, tearing my eyes from Lily’s disappointed expression to Mira’s look of concern. “Mira and I have some things that we need to take care of.”
“It’s that thing, isn’t it?” Lily demanded, clutching her small gaming system to her chest as if I were threatening to take it away from her. “The monster I saw that killed that girl.”
“Lily, would you please go upstairs and play with your new…PSP?” I asked. “I would like to speak to Mira.”
“Hey, I saw this bastard first!” she said, raising her voice. “I should be involved in this. You can’t push me out.”
“Watch your language,” I calmly replied, not allowing myself to be swayed by her outburst. Lily had spent most of her life on the streets. She had experienced enough horrible things in her short existence. She didn’t need to be exposed to our world any more than she already had.
“No! I’m not going anywhere.”
Mira rose from the sofa in the boneless fashion that seemed to be unique to nightwalkers. She turned around and stared down at the teenager coldly. “Lily, go upstairs,” she said in a low, even voice. For a moment, I thought Mira was using her ability to control the girl’s mind, but Lily soon proved me wrong.
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