by Cecy Robson
“Ryker.”
Ryker shoots out his hand, his scythe at the ready in his grip. “Steady, Olivia.”
The death hound peels back his lips from his razor-sharp fangs. Drool streams down his filthy mouth when he snarls. He can already taste my flesh.
The hound rakes his claws along the glass, trying to force his way in.
Blood drains from my face, and my stomach gives a nauseating lurch. I cover my mouth certain I’ll be sick.
The hound tips back his head, his maw stretching. The howl he releases rattles the row of windows and alerts his pack. Hundreds of his kin respond in a chorus of famished yelps. They want me and now they know where I am.
“Ryker, they’re coming.”
“I know,” he says.
My knees buckle and I collapse, terror clenching my throat. We can’t fight an army of Cù-Sìth!
The hound’s red eyes flare, seeing right through me to where my heart barreles against my ribcage. He’s readying to crash through the window and kill me. There’s doubt in my mind. Instead, the massive beast pushes away from the glass and soars toward the sky, merging with the advancing cluster of dark clouds drawing nearer.
Through the inky blackness, I make out the blurred outlines of the Cù-Sìth, the largest of all in the lead. Cathasach.
His fangs snap in anticipation, inciting his pack as they advance with blinding speed.
Furious howls slice at my ears. I can’t move. Fear reducing me to a frightened rabbit, cowering in a glen.
I barely catch sight of Ryker prowling forward. He slams the base of his scythe to the floor. “Chosaint di!”
Protect her.
Ryker is reinforcing his wards.
Mounds of matted beasts collide into the wall of glass, piling forward until the entire view is blocked with writhing bodies. Some jerk their heads, confused as to where to go. Still more shove the weaker away, the pain from their impact feeding their fury. They turn on each other, clawing and biting into their kin and snaking their heavy forms through the heap.
My hairs stand on end as the hounds divide into smaller, brawling groups until the disorientation of Ryker’s ward scatters them in wayward directions.
Ryker pants, streams of sweat gliding down his temples. The boost to the wards drained him. Still, his concern remains on me. “Don’t be afraid.”
I take in how much keeping them back must have cost him. “Are you all right.”
“I’m fine,” he says. “I’m more concerned about you.” He frowns. “You’re shaking.”
I’m sure he expected more from me. I glance down, trying to compose myself. “They almost found me. If your defenses are so formidable, how did they manage.”
“They know you’re close, Olivia. They just don’t know where.” He frowns when I don’t appear convinced. “The first hound couldn’t sense you,” he reminds me.
“Then why the need for that?” I motion to his scythe. “And for the extra magic?”
With a snap of his wrist, his scythe vanishes. “I needed to strengthen the wards. I suspected there were many, but not this many.”
The tip of my tongue glides along the back of my teeth. I don’t want to articulate what I’ve guessed all along. It comes out anyway. It needs to. “We’re not enough. Are we?”
Ryker lowers himself on the floor beside me and slips his arm around my shoulders. “We don’t need to be many, beag tuar ceatha. We only need to fight smart.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the window. “Did you see them? They’re nothing more than mindless beasts.”
“Mindless beasts with fangs and claws plenty capable of killing me.”
“Only if given the chance. I don’t plan to give them that chance. Do you?”
“That’s not the plan.” I look up at him. “How will we kill them without a direct standoff?”
Ryker rubs his jaw, giving my question the time it deserves. “Cathasach is pivotal to their power and strength. So long as an Alpha leads them, they’re impossible to annihilate. We must figure out a way to face him alone. If we can kill him, we’ll have a small window of time when the others become mortal and before another alpha takes his place.”
I regard him as if he’s nuts since, well, right now he sounds it. “There were more than a hundred, Ryker. Mortal or not, we can’t kill that many alone.”
“You’re right,” he agrees. “We’ll need our allies to help us. In their mortal form, the Cù-Sìth are easier to kill. Dragon fire alone can eliminate them.”
Hope straightens my spine. “Okay. Let’s say we manage to kill Cathasach. How long do we have until the others battle it out for top dog?”
Ryker doesn’t answer.
“A week?” I guess.
Silence.
“A day?” I press.
Still nothing.
“Don’t tell me we have less than a day to kill a hundred death hounds!”
“We may have an hour,” he tells me.
“May have an hour? You’re telling me we could potentially have less than that?” That’s when hope waves buh-bye.
I stand and pace, ready to give up my Death Seeker crown. Ryker leans back on his palms. “Olivia, the fall of an Alpha is a good thing.”
“Yeah. For a full five minutes.”
“Have you ever watched nature shows?” he asks. “Those involving wolves?”
My steps halt. “Sure,” I say, wondering where he’s going with this. “I like wolves.”
“Then you’ve seen how an Alpha earns his place. It’s a vicious brawl, often to the death. Chaos reigns as does confusion. Those who fight must stay focused to survive.”
“And those watching are distracted,” I say.
“Precisely.”
He rises and leads me back to the couch. Thunder announces its presence in the distance as rain speckles gently against the glass. I sit rather clumsily. My muscles throb. Yet my pain is secondary to my lingering fear. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” he asks.
“Keep all this faith going?” I lean into him, tucking my legs beneath me.
“I have to,” he says. “You remain my only means to find my peace.”
I shrink away. “Please don’t.”
Ryker stays with his back against the couch, his stance relaxed considering what he alluded to. “Olivia, I’m tired of walking this earth less than a Fae, and even less of a man. Regardless of what you see, I’m barely more than a shell, the soul housed within miniscule at best.”
Tears blur my vision. I blink them away, allowing them to roll down my cheeks. “But I like what I see.” I wrap my arms around his. “And I like who you are.”
Ryker lowers his head. “I don’t.”
“Why don’t you?” I ask.
He glares at me. “How can you ask such a question?”
Ryker is all sorts of scary when he glares. Except here I am, offering a smile. “I want to know. You’re a good person. I never realized since I was too busy judging you, but you are.”
“I’m the Scottish version of the Grim Reaper,” he says slowly, as if I hadn’t picked up on that little tidbit before.
I nod. “Yeah, you are.”
“I eat souls.”
I point. “Only the bad ones,” I remind him.
“I am Death.”
I shrug with one shoulder. “We all have our things.”
He narrows his icy baby blues. “There’s something wrong with you.”
I sigh. “You’ve mentioned that.” I adjust my weight and lean my head against his shoulder, curling my arms tighter around his. Part of me is afraid to let him go. The other part seeks comfort only he can provide.
I remain very much terrified beyond reason. Especially given Ryker’s low down on what happens when we kill Cathasach. The alpha’s death isn’t the end to the Cù-Sìth. It’s a small opportunity we can use to our advantage, if we can kill Cathasach in the first place.
The weight of everything that could go wrong threatens to crack my skull. I don’t
want to focus on our ever-mounting troubles, nor do I want to think about me. So, I ask Ryker maybe something I shouldn’t. “Did your family cross through?”
I don’t just welcome the distraction Ryker’s saga will grant me. I want to know more about him. This dude is willing to die for me—and I don’t even know his favorite color! I need to know him more and take in what remains of his soul.
The light rain sprinkling the window drums a little harder. I wait patiently for him to answer, allowing the beat of the gentle sound to ease my stress. It takes Ryker a long time. It doesn’t matter. He’s worth the wait.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “Everything was lost to me when I became the Ankou. If any of my clan still lives, I’m likely nothing more than a distant memory.”
“How did you die?” Well, aren’t I just on a roll?
“Do you really want to know?” he asks.
“Yes. But you don’t have to tell me.”
His response comes without hesitation. Maybe he needed to tell me as much as I needed to hear it. “I was hunting alone. I didn’t need the game,” he says, remembering. “I needed a distraction.”
“From your womanly woes?” I guess. I smile when his upper arm tenses against my cheek. “You did, didn’t you?”
“How did you know?” he asks.
“It’s always about womanly woes. We have that effect.” I snuggle closer, his body generously warming my chilled skin. “You were saying?”
He chuckles. It doesn’t last, his humor quickly fading. “I came upon another form of Death prowling through my land. He was on his way to claim an aging and sickly leprechaun. I didn’t realize what he was. I merely envied the beautiful stallion he rode despite my fine steed.” He breathes deeply. “In my youth and arrogance, I challenged him to a hunt.”
I groan. This wasn’t good. “What were the terms?”
He pauses and I can picture him mentally kicking himself. “The first to return to the spot where we met with a white stag would win. The winner could have anything of his choosing.”
“You wanted his horse,” I guess.
“Yes. And he wanted my soul. He agreed and I believed him the fool for it. I knew my land and knew where herds of white stags gathered. I returned to our meeting point less than half an hour later with the largest and grandest buck I’d ever killed. He was a beautiful creature, his pelt was so white, it glowed.”
Not so beautiful Ryker wanted to spare him. I don’t remind him. It’s clear how much he regrets what he did in his tone. “Death was already there waiting, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Perched on a mound of white stags.”
“Oh,” I say.
Ryker stares up at his magnificent ceiling. I doubt he really sees it. “I was fated to marry a woman I didn’t love or want to bed. Before that day, I thought my future was a fate worse than death. What a fool I was, Olivia.”
I sit up and gently turn his face toward mine. “You didn’t make the right choice, Ryker. That doesn’t mean you deserved what happened.” I search his stone-cold face. It reveals nothing, just the barest glimpse of his torment. “You need to forgive yourself. It’s clear you haven’t.”
“I wish I could. I left my family without a male heir to continue our legacy, and an innocent maiden without a groom.”
“Did you try to approach them while you still remained in Fae?” Thunder cries out in the distance, flickering the lights. My grip tightens around him.
Ryker tries to smile. “It’s not the Cù-Sìth,” he assures me. “It’s just a storm triggered by their massive presence and magic.” His small smile weakens. “There are rules I must follow as the Ankou. Most are ingrained within me. Some I’ve discovered accidently. When the first year of sentence came and went without reprieve, I sought out my mother. I wanted to hear her voice and apologize for leaving her the way I did. The moment I approached her, her heart began to slow. She didn’t see me, and I was several yards away, yet I almost killed her.”
“Whoa.”
“My actions were foolish,” he says. “I should have known better. But my loneliness was more than I could bear. I just . . . longed to feel normal.”
“Did you ever manage to feel like yourself?”
“No.” His sullen features keep me in place. “I’ve been lost since I gambled with Death. When I crossed into earth’s realm, I wandered for decades, trying to find a place in this world to exist. I studied cultures and people, folklore and magic, religion and what most held as truth. A few years ago, something in me stirred, leading me in a direction I questioned more than once. I attended law school, initially dismissing my desire as a need to acclimate better among humans.”
“Did you like it?”
He angles his chin. “Like what?”
“Law school at Harvard?” I grin when the edges of his lips curve.
“Nowhere in this world will you find a larger group of arrogant, blood-thirsty sharks than at Harvard.” He smirks. “I fit right in.”
Something slams into the door, rattling the metal. We leap to our feet, our bodies rigid. “What was that?” I ask.
Again, something strikes. This time harder.
Ryker’s fists clench and he practically growls. “It can’t be,” he says.
The door shakes again. “What can’t be?”
“Ryker?”
“Ryker?”
“My wards are failing,” he says.
“What?”
He shoots me a hard stare. “The hounds should not have returned this soon unless . . .”
He doesn’t have to finish his thought. “Unless there are too many for the wards to shield us against,” I answer for him.
Ryker cracks his wrist. A dagger with a skull at its hilt appears in his palm. “Take this.”
“What is it?”
“My dagger of death.”
I gape at the giant black thing with a blade the size of my head. “Dagger of death? Is this a joke?”
He clenches his teeth as something slams into the door. “Just take it.”
Ryker prowls toward the door, catching the scythe that appears from thin air. With a snap of his free hand, another dagger manifests in his grip. I pad behind him, clutching my weapon against my heart and trying to call forth my power. “Can’t you just teleport us out?”
“No. If only a few have found their way through, we might be able to kill them before they alert the others. It will give me time to reinforce the wards.”
“What happens if we can’t kill them?”
Ryker ignores my question. “Don’t engage them directly,” he orders. “Point the dagger and extend your power through the tip.”
“It’s not as long as the whip,” I choke out.
His voice lowers. “It doesn’t have to be. Slash, point, and jab, as far away as you can. Your magic will do the rest.”
The next bang makes me jump. My breath catches. We’re in serious trouble.
“Stay behind me,” Ryker mashes out. “If something happens to me, or if I’m taken, shut the door. The wards should hold long enough for you to phone Jane. She’ll pull you somewhere safe.”
I nod until I realize what he’s saying. “What? No. I’m not leaving you!”
“Olivia.”
Another crash.
My voice lowers and I scowl, feeling the fire within me catch and intensify. My hands surge with pink magic and so does my blade. “If you think I’ll cower while the Cù-Sìth make you their bitch, you’re out of your scythe-wielding mind.”
“You are insufferable!”
“And you sell seashells by the seashore,” I fire back. “Dagger of death? Really? Is that the best you can do?”
“Bite your tongue and focus.”
The next jolt against the heavy metal is the loudest of all. The wards around the frame hum, sending streams of azure light to crawl along the walls and ceiling like thickening branches. Ryker clasps the handle with the hand holding the dagger. “On the count of three. Ready?”
�
��Yes.” My hand clutches the hilt, my entire body sizzling with magic. I wouldn’t let these monsters take Ryker. No way.
“One.” His grip tightens.
“Two.”
He bends his knees.
“Three.”
Ryker flings the door open, his scythe raised, his battle cry riling mine.
I grit my teeth and scream, ramming my blade forward.
Hot pink energy shoots from the tip and across the hall, spewing like a busted hydrant and showering the steel elevator in bright light.
The teenager in a backwards baseball cap standing in front of us, his arms filled with boxes of take-out, shrieks with the force of a thousand pre-pubescent boys. He drops the contents of the box and staggers backward.
Ryker and I lower our weapons and withdraw our collective power, my face on fire as a wet spot spreads along the groin of the delivery boy’s jeans. I reach out a hand, stumbling over an apology.
Delivery Boy doesn’t want to hear it.
With crazy hormonal speed, he bolts. Ryker and I stick our heads out, watching the poor bastard jetting toward the emergency exit and screaming as if pursued by Vanessa.
My hand clasps over my mouth as I look wide-eyed up at Ryker.
“My wards did hold,” he mutters. He glances down at me and then back in the direction where the delivery boy disappeared. “I’ll call in a tip.”
“You do that,” I mumble.
Chapter Nineteen
We ate the food. It wasn’t as pretty following the tumble to the floor, but the containers held it tight and the yummy flavor remained.
I’m munching on my last piece of pie when Ryker appears from his bedroom with his cell phone pressed against his ear.
“Yes. Thank you. And please extend our apologies to the young man.” He disconnects and takes a seat on the barstool beside me.
I lower my fork. “Did you tell the kid’s boss that we mistook him for the evil leader of the hounds of death, who we deemed ready to rip our souls from our bodies, and that perhaps next time, the kid should knock politely instead of rudely banging on the door with his foot?”
“No. I told him that it was a prank meant for a friend we were expecting.”
“That works, too,” I agree. I sip on my wine. The alcohol, and the humiliation of the experience, heats my cheeks. “He accused us of snorting cocaine, didn’t he?”
