The Soulless

by Kate Martin

  Tassos gasped in that same moment. “Death and godflesh, what has she done?”

  The shadows engulfed him, and he, too, was gone.

  — CHAPTER NINETEEN —

  All life came rushing back through the darkness like the strike of a match. Bri fumbled for some purchase, confused and uncertain about the shapes and images that surrounded him. Two violet orbs stared at him, accusing, and terrified, and in a flash of shadow they disappeared. The myst crept about the edges of his vision, sliding past and licking at his chilled skin. Oddly, he took comfort in its presence. It had been missing only a moment ago…and he had felt nothing but the icy hand of Death. Her weight had pressed on him the same as it had the night of the ritual, the night he had sold his soul to Carma. For more than a moment, he had thought she would finally take him.

  “Bri?”

  The myst was denied his touch, crouching in the corners of the room, out of reach. Hands gripped his arms, holding him with a familiar strength that helped solidify reality and bring the world into focus.

  “Alec.” Just the sound of his own voice was a comfort. “Your hands are freezing.”

  Alec settled on the edge of the bed. “You’re warm,” he said with relief.

  Why would a fever relieve Alec? Bri sat up, pleasantly surprised when Alec didn’t urge him to lie back down. “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No? Yes? I don’t know.” His memory was a jumble of images. The myst, and Death, and darkness, and horrified violet eyes. “Tell me.”

  There was an unusual pallor to Alec’s face, one Bri didn’t recognize. He knew well the worry lines, the frowns, the smiles that were real, and the ones that were meant to hide something. But this one was new. Alec appeared angry, afraid, maybe even sad. Bri couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t like it.

  “You went into the myst,” Alec began, yet Bri still could not read his face. “You were looking for the ritual you saw at the ball, so you could tell Dorothea the details. You said you saw it, but then you lost consciousness.”

  Alec was leaving things out. That much was obvious by the way he never quite looked him in the eye. It was enough. He remembered. “Dorothea. I need to speak to her. I have to tell her.”

  “She’s here.” With a slight nod, Alec gestured to the other side of the room.

  The old witch looked at Bri as though he were a pest she could either bother with swatting, or step on. Her greyed hair was down, her nightgown thinned in some places, and her hands bleeding and wrapped, but her eyes had never looked clearer. Sanity reigned at that moment; a rarity.

  Bri would make it work to his advantage. “Dorothea, I—”

  “Do you understand what happened tonight?” Her voice was as clear as her eyes.

  “I know what I saw.”

  “Do you know the danger of what you did? Of what he did?” She pointed a crooked finger at Alec.

  A lump in his throat threatened to make him lose his nerve, but Bri held tight. “I can describe the labrynths to you.”

  “You lost control tonight.”

  I never have much to begin with. He knew better than to say that out loud. “I got what I wanted.”

  “You stirred the air, the myst. You leaked power like some untrained witchling barely out of puberty.”

  “I am not a witch.”

  “You don’t know what you are.”

  “Do you?”

  “You brought Death down upon yourself tonight.”

  “Dorothea,” Alec spoke up.

  She ignored him. “You invited Death into your heart with your carelessness, and with Alec’s. He needs to learn when his help is not help, and you need to learn to stop relying on him.”

  Bri shook his head, resisting the impulse to look at Alec’s hand on his arm. “I went into the myst alone tonight. I didn’t expect anyone to help me.”

  “Bah. When you are stronger, I will throw you back inside the myst, and you will walk out alone and with no help.”

  “Fine.” He had heard her lectures before, had put up with them for the last two years. He knew when she was serious and when no amount of talking would spare him her harsh lessons. After what he had seen in the myst that night, what he was about to relive for the purposes of explaining the details to her, not much scared him. “Will you listen now? I’ll describe the labrynths, you can tell us what they do, and we can stop it.” And maybe then no one will die.

  Dorothea was quiet a long moment; long enough for Bri to start fidgeting and wondering if he had gone too far. He couldn’t remember ever speaking to her like that. She had always frightened him into complacency and silence. “Get dressed,” she said finally. “Meet me in my workshop. You,” she turned to Alec, “find Carma. She will want to know what we discover.”

  Without waiting for a response, Dorothea left. Picadilly followed her, exchanging a look with Alec that suggested the clarity in the old witch worried them both, as it did Bri.

  Alec, however, looked sick at the mere mention of Carma’s name.

  “I’m sorry,” Bri said, hoping to change the subject.

  The surprise on Alec’s face told him it had worked. “For what?”

  “It’s still fuzzy, and I know you won’t tell me, but I think I frightened you tonight. Maybe Dorothea is right, maybe I went too far.”

  Alec sighed and stood, offering Bri a hand up. “Worries for another time, kid.”

  “I just want to help.” He took the hand and got to his feet, swaying when the blood rushed from his head.

  Alec caught him by the elbow, steadying him. “I know.”

  The night brought silence, broken by periods of soft murmurings and short bouts of shouting. Dorothea’s workshop would not impress the untrained eye, but Alec knew better. She had turned the cellar of the house into a cool workplace where the sun and moonlight could not touch her crystals, potions, and bones. She had removed what wooden supports she could without bringing the manor down on herself, exposing the earth along the walls and floor, and creating an environment of cool, damp, life-filled air. Lamps lit the darkness with flickering light that cast moving shadows in every corner. Although she had shelves, many of her trinkets and supplies littered the floor. Books were stacked and piled high, some open, some without decent covers in their old age.

  Bri stood at the long table that occupied the center of the room, drawing with his fingers in the dust and sand that had been poured out, doing his best to describe the labrynths he had seen in the myst. Dorothea scribbled with quill and ink, her hands tightly bound so as to keep her blood from touching the lines and activating the spells. With a shake of Bri’s head, she tore the drawing in two, and when he nodded, she went quiet, studied the paper, then set it aside and began another.

  They had been working for hours, long enough that the sun now broke the horizon. Picadilly had grown bored and left, and Carma had appeared and disappeared a number of times. Only Alec had remained, sitting on the stairs leading down to the cellar, watching but never moving. Mary had brought him tea first, then later ale and the leftovers of a roasted chicken she had made for dinner for those who had not attended the ball. He was grateful for the food, and ate it, though absently. What mattered was that he had gotten Bri to eat.

  Fire warmed the air beside him, then dissolved into Carma. She had a streak of dark ash across her bronze cheek, and smelled of Hell.

  “Where have you been?” Alec asked.

  She shifted beside him, as though settling into her body, then brushed a lock of silver hair from her face, smearing the ash further. “You know where I’ve been.”

  “Why? You don’t want anyone to know you once again walk among the living. Why risk it?”

  “Tassos knew about me. He said people were talking. I wanted confirmation.”

  “And?” Alec was impatient.

  “My name is a whisper on everyone’s lips in Hell. I did not stay long, and I kept myself hidden, but I saw enough.”

  “What do you mean?”
>
  She faced him, her sapphire and gold eyes burning with emotion more dangerous than anger. “You did not tell me.”

  Alec dropped his head into his hands, rubbing at his aching and tired eyes. “Tell you what?”

  “That people suspected I had been done away with on purpose.”

  Was there any other way? “Did you think it hadn’t been?”

  “I entertained the thought that the stupid witch had gotten lucky.”

  He had no response. She knew better. Otherwise she wouldn’t have hidden herself for two years. “Dorothea and Bri seem to be onto something. They haven’t looked up in over a turn.”

  “Has he told you any more?”

  “Dorothea hasn’t let him. She wants his undivided attention.”

  Carma scoffed. “Witches. They make life far more complicated. I remember a time when there were no witches, only humans.”

  “And only seraph. Is it coincidence that the scribing race appeared not long after the first demons had ripped out their own hearts?”

  “We don’t speak of such things, Alec.”

  “Of course not. Why would we speak of the origin of your species? The heartless ones. What does it feel like, Carma, to go through life without that steady beat inside your chest?”

  “You’re being cruel, though I would tell you it is liberating. What is wrong with you tonight?”

  Alec leaned against the wall of the staircase and closed his eyes as the coolness of the earth seeped into his temple. “You should already know.”

  Quiet breathing was the only sound between them. Then she spoke. “Ah yes, it is that time of year, isn’t it?”

  Her tone caused a wave of irritation to run up and down his arms. “Don’t say it like that.”

  “The anniversary does not normally bother you so much,” she said as nonchalantly as if they were speaking of a coming summer rain. “But over the past two years, you have grown irritable. I suppose it is partially my fault, giving you Bri. But I wonder…does this not make it harder as well?”

  The jangle of a chain. Alec opened his eyes and saw light glinting off a piece of jewelry in her hands.

  He grabbed for it. She pulled it away.

  “Give it to me.”

  “I think I should like to look inside first.”

  Alec stared at his locket in her hands, his breathing suddenly as difficult as sucking in thick dirt. “When did you take that?”

  “Just recently. I noticed you with your hand in your pocket on a number of occasions and grew curious. Where did you find this?”

  “None of your business.” He gave her the same tone she had used on him earlier.

  It was not lost on her. “Missing for two thousand years, then suddenly back where it belongs? Honestly, Alec. It is suspicious.”

  “If you keep your past from me, then I can keep what little I still have from you.” He reached for the locket again.

  This time she didn’t fight him. The metal felt warm in his hands, as if it had been hot. Heat grew behind his palm and in his veins. “Did you take this into Hell?”

  “I wanted to see if it reacted. Did you really think nothing of it, Alec? The locket could be a trap.”

  “It’s not a trap. Just something that once belonged to her, and found its way back to me. You are always so suspicious of everything.”

  “It is why I am still alive.”

  Breathing carefully, edging the power out of his body, and with it as much of his anger as he could, Alec wrapped his fingers around the locket. “Don’t ever touch this again.”

  “She is dead, Alec. You are only torturing yourself.”

  “That’s my business.”

  Carma leaned back casually against the stairs. Angry as he was, Carma’s hair was silver starlight. He hadn’t stirred her one bit, which meant she had expected his reaction.

  Which made him all the more angry, and anger became a gateway for the power eager to fill the empty place of his soul. The heat began to spread.

  “Simply use caution, my love,” she said, using the endearment that reminded him of his place in her life. “The locket stayed quiet in Hell, but that does not mean some other enchantment is not present.”

  Gods, it was frustrating to give in to her logic, her concern—no matter how muddled. “It came from Dorothea. Don’t you think she would have noticed if there was something there?”

  “One would hope.”

  Sunlight streamed into the cellar stairway, warming Alec’s back and soothing his boiled blood. He wished he could stay angry, but that was the power talking. Cel-Eza, it would have been so easy to just give in and let the heat consume him.

  Carma laid a hand over his, her bronze skin almost the same tone as his own—almost human. The power slipped back and forth between their bodies as easily as water between two adjoining streams. As long as she touched him, it passed through him, never building to the breaking point, never settling in.

  He could have his anger this way, without risking the devastation of his self-control. But the taste didn’t change, and the addiction could still take hold.

  The locket grew warmer and warmer, until it nearly burned.

  “Alec?”

  Bri’s voice washed through the thick heat Alec had allowed to grow around him. It chased away every trace with the simple sound of innocence and youth. He had become so accustomed to setting aside everything for Bri, that with one word, everything changed.

  He shoved the locket in his pocket and took his hand from Carma. “Yes?”

  Bri stood in front of them, looking tired, but triumphant. It was an expression Alec would have done nearly anything to see on Bri’s face more often. “We’re finished.”

  “Well?” Carma said, her gaze fixed on where Dorothea still leaned over the table in the semi-darkness. “What did you learn?”

  “It will happen in a temple,” Bri said. “An old one. Somewhere near the mountains.”

  “And the labrynths?” Carma asked. “What of them?”

  “They are nothing I have ever seen before.” Dorothea stood upright, her fingers tracing the lines of whatever she had drawn. “But the pieces are not new. Someone has spent many years thinking of how to combine these lines and loops.”

  “And what do they mean?” Carma’s patience slipped away with each word.

  The old witch looked up for the first time, and Alec couldn’t determine if what he saw in her face was excitement or fear. “Symbols of death and life. Mixed together and crossed in perverse ways. They are barriers. Labrynths that will prevent a true death.”

  — CHAPTER TWENTY —

  Death had been calling him for what amounted to hours in the Mortal Realm. Tassos could not bring himself to answer. Certainly, a few poor souls were made to linger on the cusp of life and death a while longer, but they would survive, so to speak. Another reaper would pick up his slack.

  He could not get the image of those silver-brown eyes out of his mind.

  The tavern was noisy, hot, and crowded. Perfect for forgetting. Or trying to forget. The barmaid brought him another ale whenever his mug ran empty, and there was a pleasant-looking young man just across the room who smiled whenever Tassos glanced up. Both were welcome distractions, but not enough. It had been some time since he had hidden himself among the mortals. The clothes and guise of human appearance felt awkward, despite being nothing more than a glamour. He fidgeted in his seat, desperate to think of something—anything—other than what he had seen in that damned Carma’s house.

  Why he had tried to warn her, he would never know. That woman was notorious for getting herself into trouble, and for starting it.

  Stupid to become involved, really. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  And that boy.

  He had no idea what it meant, but he knew it was nothing good. Nothing good could ever, ever come of those silver-brown eyes. Experience told him that.

  He raised his mug to his lips for another long drink, telling himself that when it was gone, he would get up, wal
k to the other side of the tavern, and ask that young man his name. Or leave names out entirely.

  The sounds of the drunken humans became muffled and warped, as though drowned. The edges of the world began to cave in, folding over and over until all that was left was Tassos and his tiny table. He grasped for his own power, called for Death and her waves that he could ride to the nearest dying soul.

  He had felt this before. Only once. Once was enough.

  His escape eluded him. Not quick enough.

  The heat of Hell immediately caused him to sweat. Dreadfully familiar walls rose up where the tavern had once been, glass and stone forming an unforgettable combination. His human guise was stripped away, sending streaks of pain along his body. Although he felt better in his own skin, his heart—or what passed for a heart—turned to heavy stone and sat like a sick weight in his chest.

  Silver-brown eyes, wild with madness, stared at him.

  Thankfully, Tassos hadn’t been around forever for nothing. He stepped off the labrynth beneath his feet, and a shiver ran through him as the power released. “You can’t just summon me like that.”

  “Apparently I can.”

  “And I can convince Death she wants you early.”

  Kai snarled—something he had no doubt picked up from being raised by demons.

  “Not the wisest choice you would ever make, Tassos.” Lillianna glided into the room like moonlight, her silk dress the picture of beauty even here where everything was fire and brimstone. Literally.

  Tassos brushed his hair off his neck where it was beginning to stick. “Lovely as always, Lillianna. What do you want?”

  She swept towards him, like a storm that would eventually rip the countryside to pieces. Tassos did not want to be the countryside. “We need something.”

  “Oh, no. No. I already gave you what you wanted. Years ago. I’m done.” He began to reach for the threads of Death on which he traveled.

  In the space of a breath, Lillianna had her hand against his throat, and Death’s presence disappeared. The demon licked her lips thoughtfully. “Keep calling. I am hungry.”