“Tosser from dreamland,” Lark offered.
“The shimmer twat,” Henri said.
Everyone turned to look at him, standing there all straight-faced and serious.
And then Mai snort-laughed, which set me off giggling. The others joined in chuckling.
“What?” Henri said. “Did I do it wrong?”
“Nah, mate.” Kris placed a hand on Henri’s shoulder. “You nailed it.”
Emmett appeared in the lounge doorway. “Dinner is served.”
* * *
Research was hungry work. Books around the table. Not just any books but ancient, priceless texts. A librarian or historian would have a heart attack if they walked into the room right now and saw us, gravy and mash piled on plates with books beside them. I spooned food into my mouth while reading. It was lukewarm now, but still delicious. Emmett made a kickass roast. A much-needed meal.
Henri sat to my right, leaning back in his chair, flipping through a book at a speed that seemed impossible for him to read by. He’d already combed two massive texts this way.
Bres had pushed his plate to one side to make room for his book and sat hunched forward, forearms braced on the table, sexy frown in place while he scanned the pages.
Mai and Kris were opposite us, and Jay sat at the head of the table. Silence reigned, and the gurgle of the coffee maker was the only sound to interrupt our study.
Every page turned, every page that didn’t yield a clue, fed the agitation in my chest. Tick Tock.
Focus, Kat.
Abyss.
My gaze snagged on the word.
Abyss …
It tugged on a memory, a dreamlike memory.
Don’t fight it.
Abyss … No rest for me. No death for me. No rest for the Abyss.
I’d heard these thoughts. Heard them when the shimmer man had been trying to choke the life out of me. His thoughts.
“Abyss.” I sat up ramrod straight. “He called himself the Abyss.” I tapped the page in front of me. “There’s something here.”
“Read it out,” Jay said.
“And horrors were the currency of the primordial entity known as the Abyss, and his name became his prison.”
“Go on,” Bres prompted.
“That’s it.” I scanned the paragraph before. “It talks about the beginning and primordial gods, but it doesn’t give any names. It says the primordial gods spawned creation.”
“I should have guessed,” Kris said softly. He looked stunned.
“What is it?” Mai asked.
He shoved his chair back and stood. “I have to go, but I’ll be back.”
“Wait!” Mai grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”
“To get answers.”
* * *
“Where is he?” Mai paced the lounge.
Kris had been gone for an hour and a half, during which we’d continued to comb through the books looking for references to the Abyss. Was there more I was forgetting?
I’d called Luther, and he and the goyles were on it too. Hope fizzed in my chest. We had a direction, a proper clue, and we were finally making progress. Lark found a few sentences mentioning the Abyss, and Bres was reading up on primordial gods.
It was bitty, but we could hopefully put it together and get something concrete out of it.
“Where is he?” Mai said for the fifth time.
The doorbell rang, and Mai rushed out into the foyer.
Henri dropped his book and followed. “Mai, wait. Kris wouldn’t ring the bell.”
Shit.
I followed.
“Kat Justice.” The male voice said my name with desperation. “I’m looking for Kat, my granddaughter.”
Mai stepped back to reveal my gramps, snow-dusted and weary. He was pale and trembling. And then his knees buckled. Henri grabbed him before he could fall and swung him up into his arms.
“He’s freezing. He needs blood,” Henri said.
Emmett appeared with a silver tray sporting two blood bags.
Gramps groaned and opened his eyes. “Kat. You’re all right.”
Henri carried him through to the lounge and set him down on the sofa closest to the fireplace.
Gramps shivered and rubbed his hands together. Emmett placed the tray on the coffee table, and for a few minutes, there was silence while Gramps fed.
He was here. He was safe.
The relief was heady. “What happened? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
Gramps set down the empty blood bag. “I made the mistake of falling asleep.” His mouth twisted in distaste, and then he shook his head.
“But you woke up?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t easy.”
Like Luther. He’d fought it. “What about the carers? What about Mother’s body?”
“The carers are asleep.” He took a shuddering breath. “I buried your mother. I had to. If I’d left her like that, with everything as it is …”
“You know what’s happening?” Jay said.
“I had a memo on my phone along with several missed calls,” Gramps said with a wry smile. “Looks like the council turned tail and ran.”
He was right. They could have stayed. Could have found a way to stay awake like we had. But they’d packed up and run. The most powerful supernatural bloodlines, bloodlines claiming they had the right to rule us, had fled.
“What have you found out?” Gramps asked. “Do you know what the shimmer man is?”
“We’re getting there, Gramps.” I sat beside him. “Do you know anything about the primordial gods?”
He blinked in surprise. “Primordial gods? Born at the beginning of time and responsible for creating the cosmos. They’re a myth.”
“You mean like Nightbloods and moonkissed?” Henri drawled.
Yes, actually drawled.
Gramps’s brows shot up at the golem’s tone, but he didn’t comment on it. “You have a point. Maybe there is more to our supernatural legends and myths. Maybe we’ve been shortsighted. You think the shimmer man is a primordial?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
I opened my mouth to reply but snapped it closed again as the last person I expected to see strode into the room.
Chapter Eight
Max entered the lounge, trailed by Kris. Damn, we were getting some foot traffic today.
“Max?” Jay looked from Max to Kris questioningly. “Kris, what’s going on?”
What was the owner of Cryptic Gods doing here? I arched a what-the-fuck brow in Kris’s direction, but he just shrugged and lowered himself into his favorite seat by the window.
“Max, the floor is yours,” he said.
Max crossed his arms over his chest and stood feet shoulder-width apart. He looked bigger today, somehow. Maybe it was because he wasn’t wearing his usual bouncer threads. The black polo jumper and jeans he was wearing, although casual attire, somehow accentuated the weird charisma he radiated.
“I think I know what you’re up against … who you’re up against,” Max said, shooting Kris a sharp look. “But I’m not sure if what I know will help you. If this shimmer man is who I think he is, then we’re pretty fucked.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Humor us.”
He bared his teeth in a grimace, as if the topic was distasteful. “The Abyss is a place, not a person, although the two seem to be used interchangeably in ancient texts.” Max looked at me. “Kris said you spoke to this entity. That he called himself the Abyss?”
I nodded. “I think I was in his head, just for a moment.”
Max’s jaw flexed. “Not a pleasant place to be.”
“Who is he?” Henri asked.
“He has many names, but you’ll find accounts of him under the name Tartarus.”
Lark sat up straighter. “I know that one! That’s where the titans were imprisoned in Greek mythology.”
“Yes,” Max replied. “But the titans are merely a metaphor for the horrors that are
imprisoned there, and Tartarus, the entity you call the shimmer man, was the gatekeeper of the Abyss. The shittiest role, and to be honest, I’m surprised he held on to his sanity for as long as he did and—” He broke off with a frown. “Let me start from the beginning.” He pursed his lips for a moment as if gathering his thoughts. “Have you heard of the void?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
Max’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “The void technically spawned all of creation. It was the beginning of all creation. The place from which the first gods were born. From there, the primordial gods sought meaning for their existence, creating worlds and dimensions and populating them, and yes, there were mistakes. Horrific, evil creations that could not be killed, and so the Abyss was born. It was created from a primordial collective consciousness. A gatekeeper was appointed to watch over it. Tartarus was the unlucky one chosen to be sealed up forever with the horrors.”
“Why him?” Mai asked.
“He was the weakest of the gods at the time.”
“So, they picked on him?” Mai made a disgusted sound. “Primordial bullies.”
Max tucked in his chin. “Yes. They were. They left him to rot. But one of the gods … the one you may know as Gaia, took pity on him. Although she couldn’t free him from the Abyss, she snuck in and stole his heart. She believed that if he was heartless, then eternity in the Abyss would be easier to bear. Less painful for him.”
Something clicked at the back of my mind. “He’s searching for it …” I met Max’s gaze. “I was in his head, and I saw … I felt his desperation. He’s looking for something. Could it be …”
Max ran a hand over his face. “Yes, it could very well be.”
“Then we find this Gaia god and get her to give it back,” Henri said. “There must be a way to summon a primordial god.” He looked to Karishma.
Karishma held up a hand. “Whoa, until now, I didn’t even know primordial gods were real.”
None of us had, and yet as soon as Kris heard the term, he’d shot off and gone to Max. Realization bloomed in the back of my mind. “Max, what are you?”
That humorless smile again. “I’m one of them. One of the first. A primordial.”
I kinda wanted to take a sip of tea just to spit it all out in shock. Instead, I settled for gaping at him.
“And you knew,” Jay said to Kris, his gaze mildly accusing.
“Max and I have history. I knew what he was, but he asked me to vow not to reveal his secret. He wanted to live in anonymity.”
“Look,” Max said. “I’m nothing. Not anymore. My power is … What’s left of it is negligible. It’s the same with the other primordial gods. We created, and we procreated, and with each eon, our powers diminished.”
“So, why hide what you are?” Jay asked.
“For peace. To be left alone. You’d be surprised how attitudes and perceptions change when someone knows you’re a primordial. You’d be surprised how many enemies you can make over the span of eons. I’ve had several existences ruined because my identity was discovered. My power has diminished, and rather than be reminded of that, I choose to continue the remnants of my existence in anonymity.”
“But Tartarus’s power didn’t diminish …” Gramps said. “Because he was trapped in the Abyss. He retained his power.”
Oh, fuckity fuck. The weak primordial was now the most powerful.
“I don’t understand,” Mai said. “If this Tartarus is so powerful, how come he’s stuck in Somnium? Why can’t he just bust his way out?”
“Because there are laws to the universe,” Max said. “Laws all living things must adhere to, even primordial gods.”
“And this Gaia?” Mai asked. “What about her?”
“Gone,” Max said. “Her energy dissipated a long time ago. Earth was her final creation.”
“And we have no idea what she may have done with Tartarus’s heart?” Jay asked.
Max shook his head, his eyes dark pits of foreboding. “I’m sorry. If this shimmer man is Tartarus, and from what Kris told me, it sounds like he may be, then you’re only experiencing a tiny percentage of his power. Kris said Death tore a hole in the fabric of the Abyss and let the shimmer man out. It makes sense, as all the incarnations of Death are the progeny of Erebos, the primordial god who was the architect of the Abyss. But Tartarus is vast, a mass of energy that can’t be contained in one form, not even Morpheus’s godly form.”
Icy fingers skipped up my spine. “You’re telling us there’s more to come?”
Max nodded slowly. “I believe that the nick in the Abyss was only large enough for a tiny part of Tartarus to get free. That part is trapped in Somnium, and goodness knows what else may have escaped through that breach. But if Tartarus gets free, if he gets into this world, then he will siphon Gaia’s energy from this planet and use that energy to tear open the Abyss and be fully free. We can’t let that happen. No matter what the cost. This world isn’t the only world that would be in danger then. The time of primordial gods passed for a reason. If you allow Tartarus to be free, then you doom the universe because, without a heart, he will continue to destroy and wreak vengeance, not to mention all the horrors you’d be freeing.”
“You want us to sacrifice humanity?” I stared at Max in shock. “To let all the supernaturals and humans that he’s trapped die?”
“If that’s what it takes,” Max said. “You can’t let him go free.”
My head throbbed with all the information and consequences. “Then how do we stop him? How do we send him back to the Abyss?”
Max’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”
Great. Fucking great. “You had to go use up all your power, didn’t you?”
Max blinked in surprise.
“Urgh. Forget it. I just …” I stood and strode out of the room. I needed to walk. To think. To forget. To do something that didn’t involve books and reading and conjecture. Because I was the one thing, the one link that could unleash primordial hell onto the fucking universe.
Fuck being special.
* * *
Henri found me circling the maze ten minutes later, because like hell was I headed inside it without Killion there to lead me back out again. Henri laid his jacket over my shoulders in the old chivalry move.
“What is it with you, huh?” I glared up at him, channeling my anger into that one look.
“What?” He looked genuinely confused, almost as if he couldn’t read my mind.
Urgh. “You’ve been acting weird, okay.”
“You mean ungolem like?” His smile was hidden in shadows. “I’m not your golem anymore, Kat.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Do you? I’ve changed.”
I sighed. “Haven’t we all.”
“You should come inside.”
“For what? So we can take a pop quiz on how exactly Tartarus is gonna kick our asses. It’s pointless. We have nothing to fight him with. We either let him kill everyone on this planet, or I hand myself over, set him free, and he kills everyone in the universe on a vengeance spree. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
“Where’s your optimism?”
“Dead, okay. My optimism is dead. I strangled it to death with my bare hands.” I turned away from him and began crunching toward the house. “Fuck it. Fuck everything. I need to get drunk.”
“Or we could try and find out what happened to Tartarus’s heart.”
I slowed my pace. “That would be like looking for a needle in a vast haystack. I mean, Gaia could have stored it anywhere in the universe.”
He approached at a leisurely pace, his boots crunching in the crisp snow, but I kept my back to him.
“You really think she’d have left something so precious behind,” he said. “A primordial god’s heart seems like something you carry with you, and this was her last creation …”
I turned slowly to face him. “You think it’s still here, don’t you?”
“It has to be.”
And just like
that, he’d lit a match, and there was the flame, the itty-bitty flame of hope. “Damn you, Henri.” But there was a grin on my face. Because yes, this was something we could focus on. Something productive.
I threaded my arm through his and tugged him toward the house. “Thanks for coming after me.”
“Thank Bres for sucking at rock, paper, scissors.”
Fucking knights in shining armor. Got to love them.
“Your gramps has a lot of questions,” Henri said. “Jay filled him in on Tris, but that’s all.”
I needed to tell him about my meeting with Mother and Death … I needed to tell him I’d found my father.
We walked up the side of the house toward the amber light spilling out of the downstairs windows.
An ominous, rolling thunderous sound shook the air, and then the world flashed bright white, momentarily blinding me.
Dots danced in my vision as it cleared, and then a monolithic, hulking shape appeared in front of me.
Eight feet high and three feet wide with curved ivory tusks, thick, matted hair, and bloodshot eyes. The thing was a cross between a bull and a lion, and it was staring right at us. Its slanted wide nostrils flared with each breath that expelled mist into the air.
“Henri, are you seeing this?”
“Kat, do not move,” Henri said.
The thing lowered its head and raked the ground with a hoof in the classic I’m-about-to-charge-the-fuck-outta-you move.
“Maybe you need to tell it that.”
And then the creature charged.
Chapter Nine
The monster closed in on us, moving in a thudding, clomping way that suggested heavy weight, or maybe it was clumsy. Yeah, let’s hope it was clumsy because I was sans weapons. Yes, I had fangs, but there was no way I was biting that thing.
“Run!” I took my own advice, blurring up the side of the house, and was at the entrance when I realized that Henri wasn’t with me.
Damn him and his need to flex his golem muscles.
A thunderous crash shook the ground.
Figures spilled out of the house, cutting shadows across the amber light bathing the driveway.
Lay the Ghost: Nightwatch Series book 4 Page 6