The Soulless

by Kate Martin

  “I like this plan,” Tassos said, making his way across the dead labrynth to Dorothea. “Here, give her to me. I know the perfect place. I had to take a child from a young couple just this morning. She will be well taken care of with them. The boy can go too. I’ll alter his memories so he doesn’t remember all this.” He took the infant, cooing at her and tickling her toes, she cooed back and smiled.

  “You cannot change The Plan!”

  “Gabriel!” Tassos spun around, turning on the general as though she were a troublesome child. “Enough has been done tonight. The Plan is irrevocably altered and will need adjusting regardless of where we bring the children. You are an agent of Haven, give this tiny soul some peace and go home. You are wounded, most of your soldiers are wounded. Carma did what you could not. Your presence here only made things worse. Lillianna needed your heart, you know. If she had gotten it, I don’t think there would have been any stopping her. Regardless, you have a victory that I am sure you will lay undeserved claim to. Go home.” He went to the boy, still unconscious on the ground, and lifted him easily beside the infant, then disappeared with that telling pop on the air.

  A long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between them all. One of the seraph who had been assisting Gabriel approached her and asked simply, “What are your orders?”

  Gabriel studied the scene, finally settling gaze on Carma. With a sigh, the tension in her shoulders slumped away and she waved a weary hand. “Get the wounded home.”

  No one questioned the command. All around, the injured were lifted from the ground and hoisted into the air by those who could still fly. A bright opening appeared in the sky, and gradually, each of the seraph exited the Mortal Realm. When the two at Gabriel’s side attempted to take her by the arms to assist in her ascent, she pulled away. “Wait,” she said and limped closer to Carma. “Olin. What did he say to you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “He turned on Lillianna. Why?”

  “If I knew the answer,” Carma said, leaning in close, “I still wouldn’t tell you.”

  Gabriel looked about to begin a screaming match with Carma, but stopped short, her gaze fixed just over the demon’s shoulder.

  Alec followed her line of sight, and upon seeing the boy standing there, just beyond the nine-pointed star, his clothes torn and bloodied, Alec cast out every bit of Hell’s power from his body and ran towards him. “Bri.”

  “Alec.” Bri’s steps were shaky and his eyes seemed hazy. “What happened?”

  “What happened?” Closer now, Alec could see the split lip, the bruises forming on his face, and the blood spattered over his neck. “What happened to you? Are you all right?” He searched Bri for broken bones and other injuries.

  Bri endured his inspection with minimal resistance. “I’m all right. I think. Kai is gone. What about Lillianna?”

  “Dead,” Alec said once satisfied that Bri was in one piece. “Turned to ash. She won’t be back. What do you mean Kai is gone?”

  “Another demon took him”

  “Another demon—Olin.” He didn’t care for explanations as much as he did the fact that Bri was standing in front of him, battered, but relatively unharmed.

  He heard the crunch of burned grass and the soft clang of armor just before the hand reached out towards Bri’s face. Grabbing Bri, Alec placed himself between them before Gabriel could touch him.

  The seraph seemed unfazed by his interference, staring as though she had seen a ghost. “It’s you. You’re the one.”

  Neither Alec nor Bri responded.

  It was Carma’s voice that called over the vast space. “Solider! Your general has had her heart nearly ripped from her chest this evening, I think she may be delirious. You know protocol. Get her out of here.”

  Though the command received a dubious look from the tallest of the two remaining seraph, it also resulted in their immediate action. Gabriel continued to stare at Bri in obvious disbelief. It wasn’t until her soldiers had taken her by the arms that she struggled and spoke again. “No. Wait! You don’t understand. It’s him! The boy! We can’t leave him!”

  She was paid no mind, and with her broken wing, she could do little to fight once they had her airborne. When they slipped through the opening in the sky, the general still shouting orders that were ignored, the brightness closed up behind them.

  Alec forced himself to loosen his grip on Bri, who stepped around to stand at his side. “She knew me?”

  “The seraph have hunted you for years, you know that,” Alec said.

  “She knows who I am now.”

  Carma waved their concerns away. “A problem for another time. Let’s go home. I am positively famished. Dorothea,” she turned to the old witch, “your labyrinths worked. Well done.”

  “How kind of you to notice.” Dorothea sounded unimpressed by the praise. “Count yourself lucky you have such an accomplished witch at your disposal. And remember I could unmake you if I wanted to.”

  Carma arched an eyebrow. “Now, let’s not get carried away.”

  Dorothea smiled.

  Alec sighed. He’d fallen in with a strange lot. “You sure you’re okay, kid?” he asked Bri, not caring if Dorothea and Carma started some weird battle for superiority, but deeply caring if Bri needed anything.

  “Mostly,” Bri said. “It will probably take a lifetime to process it all though. Or I could just repress it.” He offered Alec a wry smile.

  “Maybe Carma’s right. Maybe you read too much.”

  — CHAPTER FORTY —

  Due to Bri’s inability to pass through Hell, they had to take the long way home. A week later, when they all finally dragged their feet over the threshold of Lostley House Manor, each of them, to a one, collapsed into their own beds and slept for a day.

  Bri awoke to moonlight and the nightsongs of birds. He rubbed his bleary eyes and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. The myst drifted close, but he batted it away. Kai’s labrynths were long gone, but he had gleaned a small bit of insight from his time within them. If he let the tendrils slip through his fingers, they would do so quickly and somewhat quietly. It worked only when the myst was sparse—not thick and unavoidable like in crowded cities—but it was something.

  He had spent most of the journey home thinking. Thinking about his brother, and thinking about everything Kai had said. He had waking nightmares of Kai’s childhood, of a small boy flying around a sunlit field, only to be violently wrenched from the sky and cast to the ground.

  Seraph power. Seraph wings.

  Who said our mother was human?

  Tricky, clever girl.

  He thought he knew where he could get answers. Risking the conversation while traveling had seemed foolish, so he had bit his tongue and waited. Now he didn’t see the point in waiting any longer.

  Putting on his slippers and dressing gown, Bri crept silently from his room, pausing at the top of the stairs just long enough to make sure no one, especially Alec, had heard him. He then slipped downstairs and out the backdoor, padding lightly across the lawn until he reached the entrance to Dorothea’s basement workshop. Warm light glowed within, and Bri tugged open the old, warped door, entering without asking permission.

  “Dorothea?” He announced himself before taking the last of the steps, for fear she would spin some protective labrynth that would leave him sprawled in the grass fifty yards away.

  The clink and clatter of vials and jars answered him first, then that unmistakable huff of annoyance. “What do you want?”

  As good an invitation as he was going to get, Bri stepped off the stairs and approached the table where she stood, illuminated by a circle of candles and a single oil lamp. Mason jars and oddly shaped bottles littered the table, some full, others not, more than a few steaming and bubbling. “I have something to ask you,” Bri said, wary of her potions, but comforted by the lack of lines scribed into the wood.

  Dorothea’s hair had fallen free of its pins, obscuring her face, and tangling
around her shoulders. She, however, seemed unfettered by the mess, her hands steady as they mixed a blue substance with a red, and her eyes clear as she watched the shapes in the smoke that rose from the combination of the two.

  “Did you hear me?” Bri said when given no response. He’d had days to make up his mind about this, to steel his nerves. She didn’t frighten him. He wanted his answers. He deserved them.

  “Bah.” The old witch waved a hand at him, dumping a black crystalline powder into a bowl of white paste. “Yes. Ask, ask.”

  “You knew my parents.”

  “That is not a question.”

  “Confirm it.”

  “Told you as much already.”

  Yes, when I was too injured and sick to really notice. “My father, what was he?”

  Dorothea circled the table, dragging her finger along the edge, slick with the now black and white paste she had created. “Your father was a witch. Good witch. Strong, young, powerful. His death was a great loss to us. I’d trained him for a time.” Her voice softened with those last words.

  Bri was rooted in place, watching her face for unspoken answers. “Why did you never tell me?”

  Only halfway around the table, Dorothea stopped, spun a quick curl with her finger, then retraced her earlier steps. “Why does it matter? It makes no difference to you. You are not a witch.”

  “Of course it matters. He was my father. Knowing about him, it would—”

  “Would what?” Dorothea looked at him for the first time, grey eyes showing none of the haze of age. She was clear, focused, and there would be no misunderstandings. “It was not knowledge of him you needed all these years. Knowledge of yourself. Your power is your own, not his. Knowing would have done nothing but sent you down the wrong paths.”

  “So, what? You were protecting me?”

  “Teaching you.”

  “And what about now? Will you tell me about him now?”

  “If you wish.” She reached into the bowl again, and threw a handful of the paste on the table. “But I do not think your father is why you are here.”

  Bri felt a slight tremble in his hands, and so he tucked them deep within the pockets of his dressing gown. The words were almost hard to say. “You called my mother a fool. You’ve muttered ‘clever girl,’ ‘tricky girl.’ Were you speaking of her?”

  One hand in the paste, Dorothea smeared it over the table, somehow avoiding the candles and lamp without knocking them. “Your father was a fool, too. He never should have agreed. He should have stayed away from her. I told him to stay away.”

  “Why?”

  She worked without pause. “Because of what she was. Theirs was a dangerous union. Forbidden.”

  “Kai is a witch. I can see the myst.”

  “Statements of fact. Not questions.”

  “Kai has scars on his back.”

  The witch continued to scrawl along the table, her movements sweeping and quick. “Also not a question.”

  “He said he had wings. That our father removed them.”

  “Another fool move.” She slipped around the table, forcing Bri to take a step back, her hand never stopping in its calculated actions.

  Bri drew himself up onto a step-stool that sat by the far wall, guaranteeing himself to be out of her way if she came by again. It also gave him a better view of the table. His trembling increased, and so he wrapped his arms around himself, pinning his hands against his sides. “What was she?”

  Once again on the far side of the table, Dorothea stopped, flicked the last bit of paste from her hand, and looked directly at him. “You already know.”

  Bri stared at the shape she had painted on the table in white and black swirls, each side a perfect mirror image of the other, sweeping upwards with feathery delicacy. “I want to hear you say it. I want to know it’s not another of Kai’s lies.”

  Dorothea leaned over the table, the image there both illuminated and cast in shadow by the candles that sat at its core, her hands splayed by the tips of the painting that Bri couldn’t face and still breathe.

  Two great white wings, shadowed and detailed.

  “Seraph. Fallen.”

  — CHAPTER FORTY-ONE —

  Bri stared out the window of the third floor library, pulling at his collar that still seemed too tight despite Mrs. McCallahan’s assurance that it was proper and in keeping with the latest fashions.

  Fashion be damned. He preferred comfortable clothes, and full dress attire was anything but comfortable. The tailored shirt and jacket were made worse by the ocean of people he could see in the large garden down below. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with this party. Nothing. Not the night blooming flowers, not the scattered lantern lights, not the array of food and drink. Nothing. Most of all, he wanted nothing to do with all the people.

  A knock on the door preceded its opening. “Knew I’d find you up here.”

  “I can’t go down there, Alec.”

  “You have to.”

  Catching sight of his own reflection in the window, Bri brushed aside a lock of hair that fell awkwardly across his forehead. It had grown far too long. He should have let someone cut it before tonight, before his gaze could linger and he had the chance to notice any number of other things about himself, he turned and pointed an accusing finger at Alec. “You should have talked her out of this.”

  Alec shrugged, his shoulders rising easily in the unbuttoned jacket that covered his partially open white shirt. “I tried. You know I did.”

  “What is that? What are you wearing?”

  His question clearly baffled Alec, who looked down at himself. “What? I thought it looked good.”

  “It looks comfortable! Why do you get to wear that, and I have to wear this?”

  Alec laughed, still leaning casually against the door frame. “I dress myself. And it’s not my party.”

  Bri’s cheeks flushed. “It’s not my party either.”

  “Sure it is. Let’s go.” Alec turned down the hall.

  Bri took up after him, despite not really wanting to go. “It’s not. It’s Carma’s party.”

  “Which she is throwing in honor of your sixteenth birthday, which makes it yours.”

  His birthday. Kai’s birthday. He wondered what had become of his brother. It kept him up at night. Alec had reminded him that he couldn’t save everyone, that not everyone was worth saving…but Bri still wasn’t sure he believed that. “What kind of person throws a gigantic party, inviting nearly the entire city, for someone who can’t be around people?”

  “A demon. One with an insatiable hunger for attention and good silverware.” He started down the first set of stairs.

  “I’m not going out there.” Bri realized his words were weakened by his descent of the stairs.

  “Make an appearance. Let a few people smile at you and congratulate you, then you can go back to hiding inside the house.”

  “Dorothea doesn’t have to go.”

  “Dorothea would embarrass us, frighten the poor city folk, then be burned at the stake.”

  It had been a weak argument. “This isn’t fair.”

  “Oh yes, horribly unfair to dedicate an entire night of good music and good food to you.” Alec didn’t so much as look back as he sauntered down the hall and to the last flight of stairs.

  Bri was rather insulted in Alec’s absolute certainty that he was still following. Yet, he didn’t stop or even hang back. If he had to be at the party, he would be better off at Alec’s side than anywhere else.

  When he reached the first floor, he checked his gloves, pulling on them until the fabric bit into the soft flesh between his fingers. Already he could hear the steady beat of the musicians, and the constant chatter of the guests. They had largely avoided crowds and trips to town in the weeks since Lillianna’s ritual. Bri had struggled to regain what Kai’s labrynths had given him, that controlled ease that had made him feel almost normal, but nothing had worked. If anything, the myst seemed to torment him even more. Alec insisted it was
just his frustration, not actually a loss of the minimal command he had gained, but Bri didn’t see the difference. Why Carma would suddenly decide to host a party given everything that had happened, he didn’t know.

  All right, she had said that though the burnings had lessened with Lillianna’s influence gone, they needed to remain vigilant; and not being social pariahs was part of that. The party would put the mortals at ease and assure them that no one in the Dusombré household was a demon or soulless. Somehow. Had the pamphlet said something about demons hating parties?

  Lies, lies, and more lies. It was a skill Bri had never been very good at. It also seemed a flimsy story. All anyone had to do was demand they show their arms, though it would have been terribly rude, and Bri still didn’t understand all the ins and outs of polite society.

  Alec held the garden door open for him, waiting. Making sure to express his displeasure as clearly as he could without saying anything, Bri stepped through and out into the early summer night. Immediately, the myst crowded close and Bri gave himself a headache pushing it away.

  “Alec, I’ve had enough—” He turned just in time to see Alec whisked away into the crowd by some girl in a red dress. Of course. Well, fine, that works for me. He grabbed the handle of the door he had just come through and pushed.

  Nothing. Locked. Damn him. No choice but to face the crowd. There were other doors.

  Doors he never made it to. Bri was certain an entire turn had passed before he finally broke free of the doting older women, and the friendly slaps on the back from the younger men closer to his own age. All but gasping for breath and fighting a headache that threatened to steal his sight, Bri sagged with relief when he reached the edge of the party, finding a spot where few people wandered about and where he could take more than a few steps without bumping into someone. When he looked back to ascertain his bearings, his heart dropped to his shoes.

  The manor was as far away as could be. The flood of people had pushed him into the back yard, and now stood between him and blissful isolation. Sitting on a bench between two tall hedges, closing his eyes and setting his aching head in his hands, he entertained different thoughts of how to best make Alec feel endlessly guilty for deserting him.