From the Earth to the Shadows

by Amanda Hocking

  “What the hell is going on out there?” he asked.

  He leaned against the front window, so close his massive ram horns nearly touched it, and stared up at the nightmare sky. His expression looked grimmer than I had ever seen it. There was a grave stoicism hardening the rest of his normally open features.

  “It’s not blood,” Oona said as she wiped herself off with an old rag. “But I don’t know what it is or why it’s happening.”

  “Everything’s so strange lately.” Jude turned to face me and ran a hand through his dark hair. “And not just the batshit weather. My dad randomly skipped town on Saturday, and I haven’t heard from him since. And he’s not the only one. When I went to Carpe Noctem last night, half the regulars were gone.”

  “Where’d they go?” I asked.

  He shrugged, playing it off, but worry darkened his eyes. “Nobody tells us Cambions much of anything.” Then he looked back out the window. “But whatever is coming, Malin, you gotta be careful.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Oona stood behind me, watching me pack up my messenger bag, before declaring that she had to get me something. The moment she disappeared into her bedroom, a knock at the front door interrupted my preparations.

  Bowie sat on the couch beside my bag, anxiously sniffing it, but he leapt off at the sound of the knock, before taking refuge underneath the couch. He’d been extra jumpy since I got back from Caana City, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was gone or because he sensed danger in the air.

  When I answered the door, I discovered Asher, and my heart skipped a beat. He’d been looking over his shoulder when I opened the door, absently scratching at the stubble that darkened his jaw, and he turned back to me with an unconvincing smile. He wore jeans today that were snug in a wonderful way, and he wore a black T-shirt under his distressed jacket.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, but then it hit me, and my shoulders sagged. “You can’t talk me out of going to meet Azarias.”

  “Of course not,” he said instantly. “I’m going to go with you.”

  I glanced over at the clock on the wall, which said it was ten past noon. By my best calculation (or, more accurately, the calculation of my GPS app) it would take me thirty-seven minutes to get to Sup D’yavola. I didn’t have time to argue.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if I meant it.

  Last night I’d called Asher, not meaning to tell him much of anything at all, but as soon as I’d heard his voice on the phone—deep but soft, slightly husky, and so utterly calm—it had all come out.

  There was something about him that made me not only willing to share my deepest fears and most shameful secrets, but actually unable to stop myself. I had this irresistible urge to pour my heart out to him, to lay myself bare before him, to have him see me, really see me, because I knew that if I did, he would still tell me it would be okay. That nothing in the darkest part of my soul could scare him away from me.

  “Malin.” His voice was barely above a whisper but it was forceful and unapologetic.

  He reached out then, taking my hand in his. As soon as he touched me—his warm skin rough against mine—I realized exactly what it was.

  He was my ocean. In the calm, he was endless and beautiful, able to wrap me up, taking away all my pain and fear until I was weightless in his arms. In anger, he was relentless and unfathomable, an unstoppable force that would not move for anything.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said and stepped back, slipping my hand away from him but allowing him to step inside my apartment. “But I don’t want to overwhelm him or scare him off.”

  “Overwhelm him?” he asked once I’d closed the door behind him. “This guy alleges to have dated your mother. If she didn’t overwhelm him, nothing will.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Besides, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bring one other person with you.” He stepped closer to me, putting a hand on my waist so I wouldn’t move away. “Let me go with you. Let me help.”

  Despite both Oona’s and Asher’s obvious concerns, I felt pretty good about meeting Azarias, all things considered. Not only would we be meeting in a public place, I was bringing along plenty of weaponry to be safe: my asp, my sword Sigrún, industrial-grade pepper spray, as well as a machete that I’d taken from Marlow’s place yesterday.

  I had left most of Marlow’s stuff at her apartment—including the Valkyrie swords, which I locked back up in her safe since I had nowhere secure to store them—but the rather fierce-looking machete had seemed too useful to leave behind.

  Besides the machete, the only other thing I had taken from Marlow’s had been the burner phone. We had waited out the red rain—which the news claimed was nothing more than a freak acid rain storm—then we stopped at Dillinger’s Corner Market & Apothecary to pick up a charger (which they didn’t sell anymore, but thankfully Oona’s boss, Mr. Dillinger, kept a box of outdated chargers in his office in case of emergency) on the off chance that Azarias tried to contact me again.

  But he hadn’t, and our attempts at finding him online had been futile. There were over fifteen hundred people named Azarias in the metro area alone. That meant I was going into this meeting relatively blind, so all my weapons were only a small consolation.

  But I would always do what I had to do, whether I liked it or not.

  “Okay,” I relented, deciding that he was right. Or at least close enough to it.

  I expected him to smile, to look relieved or happy, but for a brief moment his expression actually hardened. It was like a shadow had passed over him, and I saw darkness flicker across his eyes.

  Before I could ask him about that, Oona came rushing out of her bedroom. He lowered his gaze and moved away from me, walking toward the kitchen and the large window with its view of the flashing billboards and overcast skies.

  “Here.” Oona held out a small bag made of a burlap-like raffia, and when she dropped it in the palm of my hand it felt like it was filled with sand and pudding. “It’s kuepuka mchanga, which should help you escape if you need it.”

  “Thanks, but I’m meeting him for lunch at a public place,” I reminded her, but that only caused her to roll her eyes.

  “Yeah, in the Aizsaule District. There’s no reason not to take extra precautions.”

  “So, how do I use this?” I asked as I held up the bag of strange sand Oona had given me.

  “Kuepuka mchanga is super-easy to use. You take a handful of it and throw it up in the air, like you’re tossing confetti, and it makes an opaque plume of smoke that lingers for a few minutes, so you have a chance to escape,” Oona explained. “Assuming you need to escape.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled at her, then added the tiny bag to the rest of my stuff.

  “At least you’re not going alone now,” Oona said. Her arms were folded across her chest as she turned her attention to Asher. “Thanks for talking some sense into her.”

  “What?” He looked back over his shoulder at her, his brow pinched in confusion, and his eyes had a strange fog over them, like a man just waking from a dream.

  “You’re going with Malin.” She glanced back at me. “It’s the sensible thing to do.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded rather vigorously and put his hand on the back of a kitchen chair. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

  “Ash? Are you okay?” I asked, as if it weren’t obvious that he was not okay.

  In the brief seconds I’d been talking with Oona his skin had paled considerably, and I could see beads of sweat forming on his temples. His eyes darted everywhere around the room, and he leaned heavily on the kitchen chair, as if he couldn’t support his own weight anymore.

  He looked up at me, his eyes wide and startled, and in a shaky voice he said, “Malin.”

  His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and Asher collapsed to the floor, toppling the chair over as he fell, and he landed hard on the concrete floor as tremors took over his body.

  FIFTY-FIVE

&nb
sp; “Asher!” I knelt beside him as his body jerked and thrashed on the floor.

  “He’s having a seizure.” Oona’s voice was behind me, sounding shockingly calm.

  “What do I do?” I shouted, practically screaming, really, as if that could help, and when I looked back at Oona, she was gone.

  So it was only me in the kitchen, tentatively reaching out for Asher’s flailing body. I put my hand on his chest in a vain attempt to comfort him. I didn’t hold him down—I just let him writhe as terrified tears stung my eyes.

  Oona came rushing back in, pushing the chair out of the way so she could kneel on the other side of him. It felt like an eternity that she’d been gone as I watched the man I loved contort and spasm, but it probably had been only a few seconds.

  “I’m gonna need your help.” She put her hand on his forehead, gently holding his head in place.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  She held up a small vial of inky black liquid. “I need to get three drops of this in his eye.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “Medicine and magic,” she replied quickly. “It’ll stop the seizures so we can figure out what the hell is going on.”

  I trusted Oona, and watching Asher thrash on the floor wasn’t going to help him any, so I did what she told me. She commanded me to hold his eye open, and with careful, trembling fingers I lifted up the eyelid. His eyes were still rolled to the back of his head, and the black drops of liquid turned the whites completely black.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Oona sat back on her knees, her expression grim as she stared down at Asher. “We wait.”

  I held my breath, slowly counting down the seconds, until finally his body relaxed. He lay slack on the floor, unmoving, and then he breathed in deeply, and relief washed over me in a violent wave.

  “What happened?” he asked groggily, barely opening his eyes to look up at me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you had a seizure,” Oona clarified. She still knelt beside him and took his hand. “Can you squeeze my hand?” He must’ve, because she looked relieved when she said, “Good.”

  “I don’t understand…” He trailed off as he stared up at the ceiling. “My head is killing me.”

  “I have something for that,” Oona offered, and then turned her attention to me. “If you want to go meet him on time, you have to go.”

  I swallowed down the fear and panic. “I can’t. I can’t leave Asher.”

  “I’ll be with him,” she insisted. “And you don’t know if you’ll get a chance to see Azarias again.”

  “You’re going to meet him for lunch,” Asher realized, and he looked over at me. “You have to go, Malin.”

  “Asher—”

  “You’re trying to figure out if the world is ending. That’s more important than me or you,” he said simply. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  He was right, and I hated it. I wanted to stay with him, more than anything I wanted to be sure that he was all right, but I couldn’t.

  I leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. “You have to be okay.”

  “So do you,” he said with a faint smile. “Go. And be safe.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  The Aizsaule District was always darker than the rest of the city, even in the early afternoon. The cloud-covered sky was dark enough that the streetlamps were already on as I pulled into the parking lot. Sup D’yavola was a little corner diner, one that looked like it could’ve been on any corner of the city, except here broken windows were boarded up and covered in graffiti and symbols I didn’t recognize.

  I had managed to get here a few minutes early, thanks to my panic-induced speeding, so I decided to text Oona before I went in.

  How’s Asher? I wrote.

  A few seconds later her speedy reply came. Seems okay so far. How is AZ?

  Just going in to meet him. Call me if Asher gets bad again, I texted back.

  Will do. Stay safe.

  Satisfied that Asher was still alive and kicking, I put my phone away and went into the diner. A sign by the door—wedged between a cigarette machine and a prophylactic dispenser—said to wait to be seated, so that’s what I did.

  The place wasn’t dirty, exactly, but it was worn and old. Faded linoleum on the floor, cracked vinyl in the booths, and water spots on the ceiling. Pictures covered every inch of the walls, mostly in black-and-white. All of them featured rather famous immortals and celebrities, and several even had prominent members of the anti-Riksdag group, the Kurnugia Society.

  It was relatively dead here, only a few patrons seated around the dimly let restaurant. Most of the clientele weren’t exactly humanoid in appearance, except for one man. He sat near the front window—the one with an intact glass pane—but he was looking toward the kitchen, most likely scanning for the waitress.

  His dark blond hair was greasy and long, falling below his shoulders, and he had a few rugged braids starting at his temples to keep his locks out of his face. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a patch of hair on his firm chest. He had an aquiline nose and a pronounced chin, almost pointed, but as he leaned back in the booth I could see that he had his own bad-boy appeal to him.

  He was definitely Marlow’s type.

  As I walked toward the booth, he finally looked back at me, and as soon as he saw me, he smiled.

  “You look like her,” he said as he motioned for me to sit down across from him.

  “I don’t, but thanks,” I replied flatly.

  He looked past me, at a waitress walking toward us, and held up his fingers in a V. “Two shots of vodka. The good stuff that you hide behind the bar.” Then he looked over at me. “Anything for you?”

  “Water is fine.” I didn’t need the alcohol clouding me up today.

  “Do you want to order now?” the waitress asked in a bored tone.

  Without checking with me, Azarias said, “I’ll have the Okroshka with the žaltys sausage.”

  “I don’t know what you have,” I said when the waitress turned to me.

  “It’s all soups. Nothing else. They’re on the board.” She pointed behind her to a handwritten menu scrawled on a board behind the register.

  “Um … Rassolnik,” I decided, since it was the only soup I’d had before.

  “Good choice,” Azarias told me, and once the waitress had gone, he leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “Malin, right?”

  “Should we do proper introductions?” I suggested coolly. “I’m Malin Krigare, daughter of Marlow, student at Ravenswood Academy. And you are?”

  His smile deepened. “I’m Azarias Göll, former lover of Marlow, and general jack of all trades. And I couldn’t help but notice that you failed to mention your job title. Are you still in training, or are you a full-blown Valkyrie yet?”

  His tone was almost taunting when he said “Valkyrie,” speaking loud enough that others might be able to overhear, and that kind of thing could cause a lot of trouble for me in a neighborhood like Aizsaule.

  I remained unfazed by his attempts to fluster or threaten me—I didn’t know which he was going for—and replied impassively, “You’re not immortal. Cambion?”

  He laughed and leaned back. “My mother was a siren.”

  “A Cambion and Valkyrie make for strange bedfellows,” I pointed out.

  My friendship with Jude Locklear was definitely an exception among immortals and their children, and it spoke more to Jude’s character than it did anything. Most beings didn’t want to be friends with somebody who might someday kill their parents.

  Before he could reply, the waitress appeared with a tray and roughly set down the shots and large bowls of soup. Azarias’s bowl looked less like soup and more like a heaping salad of diced boiled eggs, scallions, potatoes, and fleshy pink chunks of snake, all covered in a brown kvas broth.

  He leaned over, breathing in his soup, but I didn’t know how he could smell it over the scent of fermented cabbage that
permeated the restaurant. Once the waitress had left us alone to enjoy our meal, Azarias tossed his head back and slammed the two shots of vodka without a chaser, causing his face to twist in a grimace.

  “Well, then. Shall we get to it?” he asked. “What is it that you want to know?”

  “What exactly were you doing with my mother?” I asked pointedly.

  “You don’t know? You look old enough to understand what it is that a man and woman do together,” he said with an exaggerated wink that made my skin crawl.

  “How did you meet her?”

  “How do any two people find each other in this crazy mixed-up world of ours? Luck and serendipity,” he said, and when I rolled my eyes, he elaborated. “We met at a bar. But what is it that you’re hoping to find out? What do you want me to illuminate for you?”

  “Are you sad that she’s dead?” I asked, and he looked caught off guard.

  “I’m not happy,” he said at length. “I had a certain fondness for Marlow. But I’m also not one to get particularly attached to anyone.”

  “Why did she keep you secret?”

  “You tell me,” he countered. “You knew her better than I did. But she seemed to be the type that really guarded her privacy.”

  “I just don’t understand why you were with her,” I said, breaking down my argument in the simplest terms as he shoveled spoonfuls of the Okroshka into his mouth.

  “Wow.” He gulped down his food and arched an eyebrow. “Do you really think so little of your mother that she can’t possibly have any qualities that anyone would find attractive?”

  I knew she was attractive, beautiful even, but her personality was usually enough to drive any wannabe Lothario away. A cold-hearted fighter with an alcohol problem did not a good girlfriend make.

  “Not enough for it to be worth the risk,” I said.

  “What risk?” he asked, but he didn’t deny it.

  “You asked to meet in Aizsaule, so I can only assume that you live and work here, which means that you’re involved with the more unsavory immortals.” I gestured vaguely around to the neighborhood. “Most of them would sooner die than date a Valkyrie, and many would be happy to kill you because of it.”