Unbound

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  With that thought in mind, I smiled and brushed a stray lock of hair from her pale face. The movement disturbed her, and her hand clamped around mine. Her body relaxed with the contact, and her tight features softened.

  “I will stay with you,” I whispered to her before I rested my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “Everything will be all right. I will make it so.”

  Murmurings and bickering and the sounds of a tormented soul pulled me from my fitful slumber. I sat awake in the bed, the rise and fall of my mother’s chest beside me the only other movement in the room. I searched the darkness for the quiet voices, finding nothing but black and silence before me.

  Yet the noise in my mind remained.

  With my eyes closed, I did all I could to home in on it—to distinguish something intelligible from the garbled words. The longer I focused, the clearer it all became; and the more ominous.

  I recognized the soft female voice echoing through my head. It was my mother’s.

  “Go away,” she said, her words a harsh warning.

  “I will stay because I must. You know this.” The voice that replied was also female, though very different from my mother’s. It was then that I realized what had happened. I was in her mind, as Phobos had been in mine. I searched the endless black for a sign of her—or of what she was seeing. The memory or dream she was living.

  But all I found was a stretch of midnight that went on indefinitely.

  “You are not fit to stop him,” the mysterious woman continued. “Not fit to lead.”

  “He cannot have her,” my mother hissed, “and neither can you. Ozereus will make sure of it. Kaine, too.”

  “Your warriors are no good to you in this fight, Celia, and you know it. You cannot win—it’s only a matter of time.”

  Silence befell them, and I scarcely dared to breathe as I waited to learn more. To say that the tone of their conversation was dire would have been an understatement, and I could not help but think that I had been drawn into her mind for a reason. That there was something there to learn. To use. But without the ability to see who this woman bold enough to challenge my mother was, and no context of when and where to apply, it was a random memory, at best; at worst, an ominous omen regarding me.

  “We shall see.” My mother’s voice grew in strength and determination. “Go. Now!”

  I strained harder than ever to move closer to her, to find her in that stillness. And then it happened: she felt me. Heard me. Knew that she was not alone in her mind.

  Then it all unraveled.

  “Get out,” she snarled, and I could feel her searching the vast abyss for me. “Get. Out.”

  “Celia,” I whispered, hoping to calm her. “Mother…”

  Something blacker than black shot out in the darkness and grabbed me. It yanked me back as my mother’s attention snapped to me. A light in the shadows of her mind crept toward me like something emerging from deep below the sea. A face slowly neared, its delicate female features coming into focus. But before it could, her mouth shot open and her face contorted, and she let loose a scream that shook me to the core.

  I felt my mind disengage with a snap, and I fell from the bed as though I had been thrown off. Somehow, my landing did not wake her, but when I checked on her, I could see that the pallor of her skin had worsened, as had the dew on her forehead. Neither were good signs.

  Scrambling to her side, I quickly put my hands on her chest and did what I could to heal her again, then rushed out of the room. I walked right into Oz in the hallway, where he lingered, eyes blazing white, about to storm in. I shut the door behind me. His body was rigid and his patience waning as I tried to find the words to explain what had just happened. What I had heard but could not see.

  “We need to figure out what is wrong with my mother,” I finally said as I pushed him back. Much to my surprise, he relented his position without a fight and followed me as I headed down the hall.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  I looked back to find his eyes dimmed enough for me to see the dark concern in their depths. “Gonna have to do better than that, new girl.”

  I stopped by the stairs and prepared myself for the explanation that would surely become an argument. “I was just in her dream,” I said. “She was arguing with someone—she mentioned you and Kaine by name.”

  Oz followed me down into the living room and, eventually, the basement.

  “Arguing? With who?”

  “With whom,” I corrected, earning me a scowl, “and I do not know the answer. It was another female voice I heard. It was strange and unfamiliar.”

  “Well, that narrows it down…”

  “Perhaps I can pull the memory from her, as Muses does.” The idea had merit, but Oz’s black wings twitched behind him, his discomfort with my plan plain.

  “She’s fragile right now,” he countered. “Can she handle you intentionally rooting around in her mind?”

  “If she does not fight me, I believe she can. Remember, I am not Muses. I would not do this for enjoyment. I would do it to help her.” The press of his lips told me he was not convinced. “Whoever this woman is—or was—she spoke of Celia’s inability to stop someone. Her inability to lead.”

  Oz’s brow furrowed with thought. “If it was a distorted memory or fragment, it could have been one of too many people to count.”

  “I understand that, but there is a reason I ended up in her mind tonight. She knows something that relates to what is happening to her. I can feel it. We must learn what.” I pulled a black sweater over my head to chase away the chill of what had just happened and sat down on the bed.

  “You need some rest,” Oz said, looming over me. He reached past and pulled the blankets back, then looked at me expectantly. “Get in.”

  “You truly are a bossy beast.”

  “And you’re exhausted. You can bitch at me until you fall asleep, if that makes you feel better—”

  “It does.”

  His expression soured as he waited for me to ease back toward the metal head rail. Once I was situated, he crawled across me to settle in at my back. The warmth of his skin seeped through the soft knit around me, and I felt the tension melt from my shoulders. But even Oz could not chase away the bad omen that was the dream I had shared with my mother. And as I slept, I played those events over and over again to no avail, until I awoke hours later in a cold sweat.

  The sound of muffled footsteps bled through the basement door, and it flew open to reveal Cass, his slightly translucent body hovering on the landing, his expression grim.

  “You need to come outside right now,” he said. “We have a situation.”

  4

  Without a word, Oz and I were in motion, running through the house as though lives depended on it. And with the threat of Phobos always looming, that was entirely possible.

  We filed out the front door, where the ‘situation’, as Cass had called it, was waiting for me. Kaine stood on the front lawn, his obsidian wings stretched wide in a defensive posture as my dead brothers circled him, hemming him in. Beside him, protected by his massive wings, stood my very awake mother, her eyes wide with fear and confusion—until they met mine.

  “Khara!” she gasped before she collapsed into Kaine’s arms. “Thank the Hallowed Gates you’re all right.”

  “I am fine, Mother,” I replied, confusion and worry trickling through my veins. “It is you that concerns me.” She pulled away just enough to look at me. “What are you doing outside?”

  “I found her out here,” Kaine said with a growl. “She must have been sleepwalking—or flying. I didn’t hear or see her leave.”

  “We were able to keep her from wandering off,” Cass added, “but she seems disoriented, Khara. She was muttering and wincing and frantic. It wasn’t until Kaine came outside that she calmed down.”

  “She was being tormented in her dreams,” I replied. I turned to her and asked the
question I knew I must, but feared might break her. She was weak and failing, and unless I could figure out why, it appeared her fate was sealed. “Mother, what do you remember of your dream tonight?”

  Her relief gave way to confusion. “What a strange question—”

  “I need to know, Mother. Would you permit me to use the power of my muse brother to find out, if remembering it is too taxing for you to do on your own?”

  Her brow furrowed, but she nodded in agreement.

  “What are you going to do to her?” Kaine asked, as though he feared I would harm her.

  “I believe you are familiar with this trick already,” I said, shooting him a wary eye. “Question me again and I will not hesitate to employ it on you again.”

  The Dark One bristled, but he kept his mouth shut as I proceeded.

  “Do what you must, Khara,” my mother said. “I trust you.”

  I placed my hands on the sides of her head and took a deep breath. “Tell me of your dreams this night.”

  “I…I don’t remember,” she replied. Her voice strained with focus, and I knew she was not being intentionally evasive, as Persephone had once been with Muses. She wanted to answer my question, but she could not.

  “Who was the woman?” I pressed, pushing my brother’s gift harder. “Who was the other voice?”

  Her body began to tremble, but I held fast.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must know, for I heard it myself,” I said gently. “I need to know who it was and what she meant when she said you are not fit to stop him—that you cannot win.”

  She shook her head, slowly at first. But with every passing second, it grew in speed and ferocity, as though she could rattle the answer from her mind by force.

  “I don’t know,” she said over and over again, until a hand clamped down on my shoulder, drawing my attention.

  “Something’s wrong,” Oz said. “Let her go.”

  “I will not harm her—”

  “Khara,” Oz said with a touch more force. “Let her go.”

  “Ozereus—”

  “I think I know what’s happening,” he said, staring at my mother with pity in his warm brown eyes. “Sidebar, new girl.”

  He pulled me by the elbow back into the house, leaving my mother, my fallen brothers, and Kaine on the lawn, thoroughly perplexed by what had just happened. Once the door was closed, he turned to me and leaned in so close that his lips were at my ear.

  “Do you remember what I told you after I saw Raze when your mother was still missing—the observation he made?”

  It took but a minute for recollection to settle in. Raze, the Light One whom Oz had turned to when my mother was missing, had told him that she had been acting strangely before she had disappeared. I dared to pull away and see the expression on Oz’s face.

  It was far from comforting.

  “Combine that with what Kaine said when he arrived, and we’re left with one of two things going on. It’s possible that she could have no recollection of conversations she had when she was Dark because she sacrificed those memories when her Light status was restored. The ‘him’ the mysterious voice referred to could easily have been Ares.”

  I mulled over his theory and nodded. “And the other option?”

  His expression darkened. “Your mother doesn’t know who she was talking to because she wasn’t talking to anyone else.”

  My features scrunched. “I know what I heard, Oz. There were clearly two distinct voices in her mind.”

  He cocked his head at me, silently willing me to put the pieces together. When I did not, he continued.

  “Maybe you heard two voices—but not two people. Maybe that’s why she can’t answer your question—because there wasn’t anyone else. Just her.”

  Realization landed heavy on my shoulders and weighed me down.

  “You think she is going mad?”

  “There are consequences for messing with what she messed with. Maybe this is one.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head as I stormed toward the door. Oz stepped in my way and held his ground.

  “For once in my life, I’m not saying something bad just to be a dick. It makes sense. You just don’t want to see it.”

  He was right. I did not.

  “If that is what is happening,” I said, emphasizing the first word, “then we must find a way to stop it, because somewhere in that potential madness are answers. Answers we need.”

  He leaned closer. “How do you know?”

  I shrugged. “I can feel it.”

  He laughed. “What, are you an empath now? Because that would be irony at its fucking finest.”

  “No,” I replied, pushing him aside, “but I do not believe I was pulled into her mind for no reason.” I wrenched the door open to find my mother standing on the front step, staring at me with beseeching eyes. “Something is going on here, Oz. And I, for one, plan to find out just what that is.”

  “So what’s our move?”

  I contemplated his question for a moment.

  “You said that not all the Light Ones were at the Hallowed Gates when we went to war there—that Raze was absent.”

  “Yeah…”

  “You and I are going to find him,” I said. “I want to hear what he has to say about this.”

  Oz cursed under his breath but did not argue, which spoke to his concern for my mother’s state. He followed me out, his body tense with unspoken worry. I had no doubt that this meeting would be contentious at best.

  We had slaughtered the Light Ones only a day prior. For that, there would be consequences. But my mother’s life was worth facing the wrath of one who had betrayed her. And if he did not prove useful, he would meet the same fate as his brethren.

  5

  We turned to leave and found Kaine lurking nearby, looking particularly determined.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, as though the matter were not up for discussion.

  “No. You’re not,” Oz scoffed. He looked truly offended at the thought.

  “I don’t trust you enough to do this without me.”

  “Last I checked,” Oz replied, “Raze fucking hates you even more than he hates me, or at least that was true before we took out the Light Ones. Either way, your presence can only make this worse.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Kaine said, blocking the way.

  “Why do you think you have any say in this?” I asked. “You are here, in my home, because we permit it. You are without your army and, therefore, your leverage over me. I would remember that when you open your mouth again, lest you find a ball of fire flying at it to silence you.”

  To Kaine’s credit, he did not back down. Instead, he leaned forward, his cruelly beautiful face twisted into a snarl. “And you would be wise to remember that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain at the moment.”

  “You could lose my mother,” I pointed out. “Finding me has been one of her greatest joys. I do not think she would take it well if you were to try to harm me…”

  His jaw clenched and the muscles in his face feathered from the force. “I will be going because this has to do with your mother. For her sake, you should agree.”

  “Will it get this show on the road?” Oz asked, sounding every bit as annoyed as he looked. Kaine just glared at him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Oz stalked toward the front door and shoved Kaine out of the way. I followed behind him with Kaine at my heels. The others still stood in the front yard, the tension as thick as could be.

  “We’re going out,” he announced, “and we’re taking this asshole with us.” He needlessly jerked his thumb toward Kaine for effect.

  My mother’s expression tensed. “It saddens me to see you two like this.” Her eyes darted back and forth between the Dark Ones. “You were such a great team, along with Raze. The three of you were fearsome—”

  “Well, shit’s changed,” Oz said, flexing his wing, “as you know. Now, are you good here with this ragtag crew?�
� My brothers bristled, and Oz laughed. “You’re so predictable—it’s like you’ll never learn.”

  “We’ll keep her safe,” Cass vowed.

  “Be sure that you do,” Oz cautioned.

  Thomas, the youngest of the fallen, walked over to my mother and gestured toward the house. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed.

  “I don’t understand why she hasn’t healed permanently,” Kaine muttered under his breath. “She should have recovered by now.”

  “Perhaps Raze will know something about that,” I bit out. “Until then, remember that we are tolerating your presence and nothing more.”

  “She means shut the fuck up and do as we say,” Oz added for clarification. “Now, let’s go.” He stalked across the front yard as he pulled out his phone and sent a text. “Guess we’ll see if this works.”

  “Will he answer?”

  “I’m sure he will. How he’ll answer is what remains to be seen.” Oz’s screen lit up, and he read the message. “He wants to know where to meet.”

  “I do not want him near here,” I said. “The Tenth Circle is too crowded and conspicuous.”

  “Heidelberg Project it is, then,” Oz said as he typed in his response. “We should go now. We want to get there first…just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” I asked.

  “Just in case he’s less than happy to see us.”

  “What is this place?” Kaine asked as he looked around at the bizarre neighborhood that, by then, felt like an extension of our own. So much had happened there since I had arrived in Detroit. It was hard not to consider it home in a morbid way.

  “It is the backdrop to chaos,” I replied.

  “And occasionally something else,” Oz said with a smirk.

  “Perhaps we can finish what we started that night if this goes better than I expect it will.”

  Kaine looked beyond Oz and me at the barrage of macabre homes. His eyes lingered on the one with plastic doll parts affixed to the exterior, and he frowned.