“The Fae and malakim might hate each other, but they have a lot of bullshit in common.”
Bryce hummed her agreement. “My cycle started when I was a few weeks shy of thirteen. And my mom had this … I don’t know. Crisis? This sudden fear that she’d shut me off from a part of my heritage. She got in touch with my biological father. Two weeks later, the documents showed up, declaring me a full civitas. It came with a catch, though: I had to claim Sky and Breath as my House. I refused, but my mom actually insisted I do it. She saw it as some kind of … protection. I don’t know. Apparently, she was convinced enough of his intention to protect me that she asked if he wanted to meet me. For the first time. And I eventually cooled down enough from the whole House allegiance thing to realize I wanted to meet him, too.”
Hunt read her beat of silence. “It didn’t go well.”
“No. That visit was the first time I met Ruhn, too. I came here—stayed in FiRo for the summer. I met the Autumn King.” The lie was easy. “Met my father, too,” she added. “In the initial few days, the visit wasn’t as bad as my mother had feared. I liked what I saw. Even if some of the other Fae children whispered that I was a half-breed, I knew what I was. I’ve never not been proud of it—being human, I mean. And I knew my father had invited me, so he at least wanted me there. I didn’t mind what others thought. Until the Oracle.”
He winced. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“It was catastrophic.” She swallowed against the memory. “When the Oracle looked into her smoke, she screamed. Clawed at her eyes.” There was no point hiding it. The event had been known in some circles. “I heard later that she went blind for a week.”
“Holy shit.”
Bryce laughed to herself. “Apparently, my future is that bad.”
Hunt didn’t smile. “What happened?”
“I returned to the petitioners’ antechamber. All you could hear was the Oracle screaming and cursing me—the acolytes rushed in.”
“I meant with your father.”
“He called me a worthless disgrace, stormed out of the temple’s VIP exit so no one could know who he was to me, and by the time I caught up, he’d taken the car and left. When I got back to his house, I found my bags on the curb.”
“Asshole. Danaan had nothing to say about him kicking his cousin to the curb?”
“The king forbade Ruhn to interfere.” She examined her nails. “Believe me, Ruhn tried to fight. But the king bound him. So I got a cab to the train station. Ruhn managed to shove money for the fares into my hand.”
“Your mom must have gone ballistic.”
“She did.” Bryce paused a moment and then said, “Seems like the Oracle’s still pissed.”
He threw her a half smile. “I’d consider it a badge of honor.”
Bryce, despite herself, smiled back. “You’re probably the only one who thinks that.” His eyes lingered on her face again, and she knew it had nothing to do with what the Oracle had said.
Bryce cleared her throat. “Find anything?”
Catching her request to drop the subject, Hunt pivoted the laptop toward her. “I’ve been looking at this ancient shit for days—and this is all I’ve found.”
The terra-cotta vase dated back nearly fifteen thousand years. After Prince Pelias by about a century, but the kristallos hadn’t yet faded from common memory. She read the brief catalog copy and said, “It’s at a gallery in Mirsia.” Which put it a sea and two thousand miles beyond that from Lunathion. She pulled the computer to her and clicked on the thumbnail. “But these photos should be enough.”
“I might have been born before computers, Quinlan, but I do know how to use them.”
“I’m just trying to spare you from further ruining your badass image as the Umbra Mortis. We can’t have word getting out that you’re a computer nerd.”
“Thanks for your concern.” His eyes met hers, the corner of his mouth kicking up.
Her toes might have curled in her heels. Slightly.
Bryce straightened. “All right. Tell me what I’m looking at.”
“A good sign.” Hunt pointed at the image, rendered in black paint against the burnt orange of the terra-cotta, of the kristallos demon roaring as a sword was driven through its head by a helmeted male warrior.
She leaned toward the screen. “How so?”
“That the kristallos can be killed the old-fashioned way. As far as I can tell, there’s no magic or special artifact being used to kill it here. Just plain brute force.”
Her gut tightened. “This vase could be an artistic interpretation. That thing killed Danika and the Pack of Devils, and knocked Micah on his ass, too. And you mean to tell me some ancient warrior killed it with just a sword through the head?”
Though Lehabah’s show kept playing, Bryce knew the sprite was listening to every word.
Hunt said, “Maybe the kristallos had the element of surprise on its side that night.”
She tried and failed to block out the red pulped piles, the spray of blood on the walls, the way her entire body had seemed to plummet downward even while standing still as she stared at what was left of her friends. “Or maybe this is just a bullshit rendering by an artist who heard an embellished song around a fire and did their own take on it.” She began tapping her foot under the table, as if it’d somehow calm her staccato heartbeat.
He held her stare, his black eyes stark and honest. “All right.” She waited for him to push, to pry, but Hunt slid the computer back to his side of the table. He squinted. “That’s odd. It says the vase is originally from Parthos.” He angled his head. “I thought Parthos was a myth. A human fairy tale.”
“Because humans were no better than rock-banging animals until the Asteri arrived?”
“Tell me you don’t believe that conspiracy crap about an ancient library in the heart of a pre-existing human civilization?” When she didn’t answer, Hunt challenged, “If something like that did exist, where’s the evidence?”
Bryce zipped her amulet along its chain and nodded toward the image on the screen.
“This vase was made by a nymph,” he said. “Not some mythical, enlightened human.”
“Maybe Parthos hadn’t been wiped off the map entirely at that point.”
Hunt looked at her from under lowered brows. “Really, Quinlan?” When she again didn’t answer, he jerked his chin at her digital tablet. “Where are you with the data about Danika’s locations?”
Hunt’s phone buzzed before she could reply, but Bryce said, reeling herself back together as that image of the slain kristallos bled with what had been done to Danika, what had been left of her, “I’m still ruling out the things that were likely unconnected, but … Really, the only outlier here is the fact that Danika was on sentry duty at Luna’s Temple. She was sometimes stationed in the general area, but never specifically at the temple itself. And somehow, days before she died, she got put on watch there? And data shows her being right there when the Horn was stolen. The acolyte was also there that night. It’s all got to tie together somehow.”
Hunt set down his phone. “Maybe Philip Briggs will enlighten us tonight.”
Her head snapped up. “Tonight?”
Lehabah completely stopped watching her show at that.
“Just got the message from Viktoria. They transferred him from Adrestia. We’re meeting him in an hour in a holding cell under the Comitium.” He surveyed the data spread before them. “He’s going to be difficult.”
“I know.”
He leaned back in the chair. “He’s not going to have nice things to say about Danika. You sure you can handle hearing his kind of venom?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? Because that vase just set you off, and I doubt coming face-to-face with this guy is going to be any easier.”
The walls began swelling around her. “Get out.” Her words cut between them. “Just because we’re working together doesn’t mean you’re entitled to push into my personal matters.”
&nb
sp; Hunt merely looked her over. Saw all of that. But he said roughly, “I want to head to the Comitium in twenty. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Bryce trailed Hunt out, making sure he didn’t touch any of the books and that they didn’t grab for him, then shut the door before he’d fully walked onto the street beyond.
She sank against the iron until she sat on the carpet, and braced her forearms on her knees.
They were gone—all of them. Thanks to that demon depicted on an ancient vase. They were gone, and there would be no more wolves in her life. No more hanging out in the apartment. No more drunken, stupid dancing on street corners, or blasting music at three in the morning until their neighbors threatened to call the 33rd.
No friends who would say I love you and mean it. Syrinx and Lele came creeping in, the chimera curling up beneath her bent legs, the sprite lying belly-down on Bryce’s forearm.
“Don’t blame Athie. I think he wants to be our friend.”
“I don’t give a shit what Hunt Athalar wants.”
“June is busy with ballet, and Fury is as good as gone. Maybe it’s time for more friends, BB. You seem sad again. Like you were two winters ago. Fine one minute, then not fine the next. You don’t dance, you don’t hang out with anyone, you don’t—”
“Leave it, Lehabah.”
“Hunt is nice. And Prince Ruhn is nice. But Danika was never nice to me. Always biting and snarling. Or she ignored me.”
“Watch it.”
The sprite crawled off her arm and floated in front of her, arms wrapping across her round belly. “You can be cold as a Reaper, Bryce.” Then she was gone, whizzing off to stop a thick leather-bound tome from crawling its way up the stairs.
Bryce blew out a long breath, trying to piece the hole in her chest together.
Twenty minutes, Hunt had said. She had twenty minutes before going to question Briggs. Twenty minutes to get her shit together. Or at least pretend she had.
35
The fluorescent wands of firstlight hummed through the white-paneled, pristine corridor far beneath the Comitium. Hunt was a storm of black and gray against the shining white tiles, his steps unfaltering as he aimed for one of the sealed metal doors at the end of the long hall.
A step behind him, Bryce simply watched Hunt move—the way he cut through the world, the way the guards in the entry room hadn’t so much as checked his ID before waving them through.
She hadn’t realized that this place existed beneath the five shining towers of the Comitium. That they had cells. Interrogation rooms.
The one she’d been in the night Danika had died had been five blocks from here. A facility governed by protocols. But this place … She tried not to think about what this place was for. What laws stopped applying once one crossed over the threshold.
The lack of any scent except bleach suggested it was scrubbed down often. The drains she noted every few feet suggested—
She didn’t want to know what the drains suggested.
They reached a room without windows, and Hunt laid a palm against the circular metal lock to its left. A hum and hiss, and he shouldered open the door, peering inside before nodding to her.
The firstlights above droned like hornets. What would her own firstlight go toward, small mote that it would be? With Hunt, the explosion of energy-filled light that had probably erupted from him when he’d made the Drop had likely gone toward fueling an entire city.
She sometimes wondered about it: whose firstlight was powering her phone, or the stereo, or her coffee machine.
And now was not the time to think about random shit, she chided herself as she followed Hunt into the cell and beheld the pale-skinned man sitting there.
Two seats had been set before the metal table in the center of the room—where Briggs’s shackles were currently chained. His white jumpsuit was pristine, but—
Bryce beheld the state of his gaunt, hollow face and willed herself not to flinch. His dark hair was buzzed close to his scalp, and though not a bruise or scratch marred his skin, his deep blue eyes … empty and hopeless.
Briggs said nothing as she and Hunt claimed the seats across the table. Cameras blinked red lights in every corner, and she had no doubt someone was listening in a control room a few doors down.
“We won’t take much of your time,” Hunt said, as if noting those haunted eyes as well.
“Time is all I have now, angel. And being here is better than being … there.”
There, where they kept him in Adrestia Prison. Where they did the things to him that resulted in those broken, awful eyes.
Bryce could feel Hunt silently urging her to ask the first of their questions, and she took a breath, bracing herself to fill this humming, too-small room with her voice.
But Briggs asked, “What month is it? What’s today’s date?”
Horror coiled in her gut. This man had wanted to kill people, she reminded herself. Even if it seemed he hadn’t killed Danika, he had planned to kill plenty of others, to ignite a larger-scale war between the human and Vanir. To overthrow the Asteri. It was why he remained behind bars.
“It’s the twelfth of April,” Hunt said, his voice low, “in the year 15035.”
“It’s only been two years?”
Bryce swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. “We came to ask you about some things related to two years ago. As well as some recent events.”
Briggs looked at her then. Really looked. “Why?”
Hunt leaned back, a silent indication that this was now her show to run. “The White Raven nightclub was bombed a few days ago. Considering that it was one of your prime targets a few years ago, evidence points toward Keres being active again.”
“And you think I’m behind it?” A bitter smile curved the angular, harsh face. Hunt tensed. “I don’t know what year it is, girl. And you think I’m somehow able to make outside contact?”
“What about your followers?” Hunt said carefully. “Would they have done it in your name?”
“Why bother?” Briggs reclined in his chair. “I failed them. I failed our people.” He nodded toward Bryce. “And failed people like you—the undesirables.”
“You never represented me,” Bryce said quietly. “I abhor what you tried to do.”
Briggs laughed, a broken rasp. “When the Vanir tell you you’re not good enough for any job because of your human blood, when males like this asshole next to you just see you as a piece of ass to be fucked and then discarded, when you see your mother—it is a human mother for you, isn’t it? It always is—being treated like trash … You’ll find those self-righteous feelings fading real fast.”
She refused to reply. To think about the times she’d seen her mother ignored or sneered at—
Hunt said, “So you’re saying you’re not behind this bombing.”
“Again,” Briggs said, tugging on his shackles, “the only people I see on a daily basis are the ones who take me apart like a cadaver, and then stitch me up again before nightfall, their medwitches smoothing everything away.”
Her stomach churned. Even Hunt’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“Your followers wouldn’t have considered bombing the nightclub in revenge?”
Briggs demanded, “Against who?”
“Us. For investigating Danika Fendyr’s murder and looking for Luna’s Horn.”
Briggs’s blue eyes shuttered. “So the assholes in the 33rd finally realized I didn’t kill her.”
“You haven’t been officially cleared of anything,” Hunt said roughly.
Briggs shook his head, staring at the wall to his left. “I don’t know anything about Luna’s Horn, and I’m sure as shit no Keres soldier did either, but I liked Danika Fendyr. Even when she busted me, I liked her.”
Hunt stared at the gaunt, haunted man—a shell of the powerfully built adult he’d been two years ago. What they were doing to him in that prison … Fucking Hel.
Hunt could take a few guesses about the manner of torture. The memories of it
being inflicted upon him still dragged him from sleep.
Bryce was blinking at Briggs. “What do you mean, you liked her?”
Briggs smiled, savoring Quinlan’s surprise. “She circled me and my agents for weeks. She even met with me twice. Told me to stop my plans—or else she’d have to bring me in. Well, that was the first time. The second time she warned me that she had enough evidence against me that she had to bring me in, but I could get off easy if I admitted to my plotting and ended it then and there. I didn’t listen then, either. That third time … She brought her pack, and that was that.”
Hunt reined in his emotions, setting his features into neutrality.
“Danika went easy on you?” Bryce’s face had drained of color. It took a surprising amount of effort not to touch her hand.
“She tried to.” Briggs ran gnarled fingers down his pristine jumpsuit. “For a Vanir, she was fair. I don’t think she necessarily disagreed with us. With my methods, yes, but I thought she might have been a sympathizer.” He surveyed Bryce again with a starkness that had Hunt’s hackles rising.
Hunt suppressed a growl at the term. “Your followers knew this?”
“Yes. I think she even let some of them get away that night.”
Hunt blew out a breath. “That is a big fucking claim to make against an Aux leader.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she? Who cares?”
Bryce flinched. Enough so that Hunt didn’t hold back his growl this time.
“Danika wasn’t a rebel sympathizer,” Bryce hissed.
Briggs looked down his nose at her. “Not yet, maybe,” he agreed, “but Danika could have been starting down that path. Maybe she saw how her pretty, half-breed friend was treated by others and didn’t like it too much, either.” He smiled knowingly when Bryce blinked at his correct guess regarding her relationship to Danika. The emotions he’d probably read in her face.
Briggs went on, “My followers knew Danika was a potential asset. We’d discussed it, right up until the raid. And that night, Danika and her pack were fair with us. We fought, and even managed to get in a few good blows on that Second of hers.” He whistled. “Connor Holstrom.” Bryce went utterly rigid. “Guy was a bruiser.” From the cruel curve of his lips, he’d clearly noticed how stiff she’d gone at the mention of Connor’s name. “Was Holstrom your boyfriend? Pity.”
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Page 34