Haunted by Shadows: Magic Wars: Demons of New Chicago Book Two

by Carpenter, Kel

  I may have healed fast, but something told me I probably wouldn’t come out of this one.

  But Ronan? He still fought. Tooth and nail, he clawed his way forward.

  “You don’t get to die,” he said. Hands grabbed at my shoulders, but I didn’t feel them anymore than the acid eating away at me. “You hear me? You want to save Bree? Save Nat? Then don’t die. Pull it together.” His voice was gruff, thickened with emotion I didn’t want to feel.

  “I told you, I can’t stop it. The fire. The power . . .” I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry, and I was losing all feeling. My muscles trembled. My teeth chattered. Either the crash or death would claim me, and only time would tell which. “I’m as much a slave to the magic as you are. I guess we’re both . . . weak.”

  “Liar,” he spat. Voice fading in and out. “Coward. If you really loved them, you’d fight.”

  “The same could be said about you,” I breathed, not knowing if he could hear me or if I was already gone.

  Darkness was closing in. The silver of his eyes was the last thing I saw, and I smiled just a little. Not that I’d ever tell him if I somehow survived, but there were few sights nicer to look at while dying. And even fewer that brought me some measure of comfort.

  One Week

  Two Weeks

  Three Weeks

  Four Weeks

  Five Weeks

  25

  Ronan

  The sun rose and fell thirty-five times.

  The moon waxed. It waned. It was empty and now approaching full once more. I watched it with unseeing eyes as I sat at her bedside.

  Waiting.

  Wondering.

  Would she wake up? I had to think she would. Because if she didn’t . . . my free hand clenched into a fist, knuckles white and veins bulging. The only thing that kept me stable was the flutter of her pulse. I kept my left hand on her wrist day and night, feeling that tiny blip. It was the only thing that calmed the darkness. The chaos.

  My magic and I were one, and we were both irrevocably bonded to her. In the same way my mind told me she wasn’t dead, my magic simmered on the edge of a boil because it knew she wasn’t here. Not truly. Not since that damned night.

  She’d burned so bright. So angry. But she'd exhausted her own source of magic in doing so, and barely had enough to keep herself alive. She wouldn’t have survived it if not for me. Her blood turned to acid over and over and over again.

  I gave her my blood each time.

  I pried open her limp jaw and poured what I could down her throat. It was enough to stabilize her through the worst of the curse until eventually the witch’s magic fizzled out, but it wasn’t enough to wake her.

  It seemed that power was with Piper, and Piper alone.

  Two knocks at the door made me blink slowly. The witch didn’t wait for me to respond. The door opened and closed quietly, soft footsteps trailed over the wood floors.

  “Any change?” she asked, her voice both hesitant and hopeful.

  I opened my mouth to say no when Piper’s heartbeat picked up. It was half a second faster, which before might have meant nothing—but now . . .

  I leaned forward, studying her flawless porcelain skin. Looking for any change at all, a twitch of the lips, a flutter of her lashes. Anything.

  But after a moment of staring, the hope dwindled. It shriveled and shrank as if set on fire.

  I let out a tight breath that I’d been holding. “No,” I murmured. The same answer I’d given twice a day, every day, for five long weeks. That was how often she came to the penthouse because I wouldn’t let Piper out of my sight.

  The witch was faithful to her own. Not those that shared her blood, but those she claimed by choice. And just as Piper had asked me to save her with what she thought could be her last breath—Nathalie did not give up so easily either. I’d give her that. But right now, all I wanted was to be left alone with my atma.

  “Soon,” she muttered. I wasn’t sure if it was meant for me or herself. Perhaps both. “It has to be.”

  “You don’t know . . .” I trailed off.

  There it was again. That blip. That abnormality. It was only a half second, but that was twice her pulse had sped up at the sound of Nathalie Le Fay’s voice.

  “What is it?” she asked, concern coloring her tone. She appeared on Piper’s other side and reached for her other hand. “Something happened, didn’t it?” She leaned over, peering into Piper’s face. The bridge between her brows puckered as she frowned. “Piper?” she said softly, not waiting for my response. “I need you to wake up, asshole. You left me in this shithole with the mess you made.”

  I narrowed my eyes and would have told her to leave if not for the sudden rapid-fire beating of Piper’s heart. It was a series of gunshots in my ears. A clap of thunder over a cloudy sky. It was the most responsive she had been in five weeks.

  I faded into the back of my mind, feeling for the tether that connected us.

  I’d tried to pull her from her sleep more times than I could count. I’d also tried to enter it just as many, but shields surrounded her mind. Walls as high as mountains and trenches deep as oceans. Whatever that output of magic had cost, her brain had tried to protect her from it by shutting me out.

  I understood why, though it didn’t make the process any easier.

  It was the singular reason I didn’t push or pull or try to break my way past them.

  But now, with her pulse quickening and the uptick in her breathing, I tentatively reached down that bond, and lifted my hands to her shields.

  “Piper,” I said in a whisper from mind to mind.

  It stretched across the void. Two syllables held together by nothing but space.

  One breath passed. Then two. When no answer came, I turned back internally and sighed in frustration.

  My hands clenched at my sides. My nails curving and sharpening to claws.

  Then I felt a tug.

  It was soft, and so slight at first that I almost missed it.

  My head whipped around, and I surveyed the chasm between her mind and my own once more.

  Another tug pulled. It was fast and as fleeting as a kiss. It hit me hard and filled my lungs with fire and ash. I inhaled sharply and took one step toward the void.

  And then the wall fell. Brick by brick, it cracked and crumbled.

  And the trench as deep as the sea filled. Rock and dust and mortar piled up. Slowly but surely, her mind unfurled.

  The wall reached the ground, and the ground reached the wall, and there in the emptiness she stood.

  Her long blonde hair was braided back. A cut scraped her cheekbone. She dressed in a white tank top and jeans that clung to her long legs. Her black bra peaked over the edge. It was a stark contrast from the Piper I’d become accustomed to seeing.

  Gone were the black pants, combat boots, and long-sleeved shirts.

  Her brands twisted and twined around her arms, black tinged with red—as if the magic refused to calm after the last episode.

  I stared at them, stared at her, and then—

  “Did you do it?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  I frowned. “Do it?”

  “Did you save them?”

  Her eyes. Her damning, haunting eyes. They were blue-tinted violet windows that stared straight into me, but this time I let her see. I wanted her to.

  Because this time I did exactly what she wanted.

  “I did.”

  She didn’t blink or act surprised. The apathetic expression never left her face as she took that in and then nodded.

  Piper turned on her bare heel and walked into the dark.

  “Wait!” I called, crushing through the barrier between us. “Where are you—”

  My words faltered as she peered over her shoulder. The shadows kissed her skin with longing, and a small half smile dragged up her lips in amusement.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Time to wake up.”

  26

  Awareness didn’t return slowly as
it had in the past. For weeks I’d been surfacing, but my body was too weak to respond. My mind too closed off to reach out. I was a prisoner to my magic. It had risen like a tidal wave to protect me.

  And so I waited in the shadows of my mind, unfeeling to the world around me, though I sensed time passing. It was a strange thing to be locked inside the void. I both hated it and yet didn’t. I hated that I couldn’t tell whether Nathalie had made it. I hated that it was only myself for company, and my own thoughts and memories that could fill the silence. That I hated most of all because it forced me to come to grips with some things.

  The first was that maybe it wasn’t magic itself I hated. I seemed to rely on it an awful lot. Perhaps it was less magic and simply just people. Bad people.

  Which led to the second. Not all supernaturals were evil.

  Nathalie was my case and point. While there were plenty that weren’t good, she, the twins, Ronan, and somehow even Lucifer all went against that. They may not have been good in the traditional sense, but neither was I—and I was once human. So perhaps it was not as black and white as I’d led myself to believe.

  That brought me to the third and final realization.

  My entire life had been built on systemic prejudice and speciesism. It colored everything I did, from the decisions that led me to find and take power for myself—to my family dying as a result—to the subsequent decade I’d spent hunting the people whose ranks I had joined. Every single thing I did, and even the guilt I harbored, was because of it.

  Including the many, many lies I told myself.

  Lying was easier. It was softer. Kinder. You found a way to manipulate the reality, and you made yourself believe it. Say the lie ten times, then twenty—and one day, you would no longer question it.

  But it would come back. The past always did. In the end, the truth would always find you.

  In the deepest recesses of my mind, it found me, and it made me take a cold, hard look in the mirror and ask myself what I saw.

  I didn’t like the answer.

  It was only then that I saw another truth. I was stuck in my mind for so long because of myself, and no one else. I feared what I’d done because I lost control. I feared what Ronan didn’t do. I feared that the guilt I would wake up to would be too great.

  It was only with that realization that the barriers began to crumble, and I heard her voice, and I felt Ronan’s touch as his mind brushed against mine.

  The crash may have been what dragged me under, but it was the words ‘I did’ that pulled me out.

  I still wasn’t sure if I would tell him that, or anyone for that matter, when I opened my eyes for the first time in what I was certain had been a very long time.

  All I knew was that I couldn’t keep going this way.

  I wouldn’t.

  And it was time to wake up.

  * * *

  I winced into the light. After so long of staring into the dark, even the softest flicker was still bright. Painful.

  My dry lips parted. I inhaled deeply, ignoring the strain in my throat. If I thought it was dry before, that was nothing compared to now. While my head didn’t pound from dehydration, my ashen skin and chapped mouth made me feel more like a corpse brought back to life. I’d have wondered if they turned me into something like a vampire, if not for the steady thundering of my heart.

  The sound of it pounding as it pushed blood through my veins calmed me. I took a few deep breaths before trying to sit up. A wave of dizziness hit me instantly, and hands grasped my shoulders. “Take it easy,” a deep voice rumbled. Goosebumps pebbled my skin. Even half dead, my body still responded to him and his presence.

  “Where am I . . .” The light gray walls and dark curtains were wholly unfamiliar, and yet not.

  “Ronan’s penthouse. You’ve been out a long time. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight,” a feminine voice scoffed. My chest tightened, then released. I blinked a couple of times to clear the haziness and wait for my vision to focus. “You gave us a scare this time. You really are an asshole.”

  Despite feeling like a train wreck, a harsh raspy chuckle slid between my lips. I’m pretty sure I sounded like I was choking, given the growl that elicited from Ronan. His narrowed eyes slid sideways to glare at Nat. She shrugged her slender shoulders, completely unfazed. The soft golden glint in her eyes spoke of mischief, like she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Judging by the fact that you’re here, I take that to mean the coven’s attempt to open a portal failed?” I asked. Her easy smile dimmed, and her eyes flicked downward. Avoiding.

  I frowned, concern and confusion filling me. Ronan must have sensed the difference because he replied quickly, “Yes and no. They managed to open a portal, but they didn’t find the source.”

  “I see,” I rasped. “And Lucifer? Where is he? I would have thought after he was freed—”

  “I didn’t free him,” Ronan replied. I lifted my eyebrows in silent question, preserving my already aching voice.

  “He died,” Nathalie said. Her body slid back, away from my side, as if needing to put some space between us suddenly. “The siphoning killed him. I tried to save him. I tried to—” She broke off very abruptly and took a harsh breath. “He died,” she repeated. “He wasn’t strong enough to bolster the corridor. They managed to open it but couldn’t keep it open. It collapsed when his magic gave out. Several of my family members and the Pleiades Coven were on the other side. The rest fled shortly after when Ronan came for me.”

  Silence filled me. A loss I didn’t understand. There was a hole in my chest, not as deep or wide as what I felt at the loss of my sister and parents, but still there, nonetheless. I didn’t understand it.

  “His death is the reason you lost control,” Ronan said softly. My head jerked up. “Nathalie told me you’d entered the first blood bond with him. It would have been enough to trigger a response similar to a true atman dying. It’s why you were in so much pain, and why you couldn’t stop it.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I barely knew him, and yet part of me seemed to grieve. I felt the truth in his words, and it made sense in a way. Mates often lost control and went mad when their other half died. If the atman bond was a deeper mate bond, it surprised me that I was okay.

  “Will I go crazy?” I asked, not wanting to voice the concern, but needing to be sure.

  “I don’t believe so,” Ronan answered, his bare thumb skimming over my shoulder where he still held me up. A thin long-sleeved shirt kept us from making contact, but my pulse raced. My breath hitched.

  This response I had to him. It was electric. Magnetic. It was . . . magic. But then, so was Lucifer and my bond to him, yet I didn’t feel this way. There wasn’t even a speck of trust or true desire.

  I could lie to myself. I was good at it, but when I woke, I said things would be different—and I meant it.

  “Because of you, right?” I said, lifting my face to look him in the eye. “Your bond with me, that’s what will keep me sane?”

  The silver seemed to intensify in his gaze.

  “Partially,” he acknowledged. “I believe that because he wasn’t your true atman, your magic won’t degenerate rapidly either way. It was a made bond, not a natural one. There’s also the fact that you weren’t born a demon that may impact it. It’s possible that even my own death wouldn’t do it.”

  “Does that bother you?” I asked, unabashedly. Nathalie let out a cough and muttered something about getting me water before stepping out of the room.

  “No,” he answered almost instantly. “Because it means that you’re safe from the worst once the bond is complete. I won’t be a weakness for you.”

  I couldn’t help but stare. He meant it. Every word.

  Ronan may want me, even need me, but he could acknowledge that once it was done, I wouldn’t need him. Something about that settled in me, burrowing deep under the skin.

  “Demons are hard to kill. Near impossible, it seems. I wasn’t even sure if they could die,” I sai
d.

  “We are resilient,” he agreed. “Me more so than most,” he added with a hard twist of his lips. It was a makeshift smirk, but it didn’t hold the same arrogance as before. What had happened in the Underworld had rattled him. That much was clear.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m the Harvester,” he said simply.

  “You’ve yet to tell me what that means,” I rasped.

  “You’ve yet to earn it,” he replied. This time the taunting smirk was genuine.

  “You said yourself it wasn’t my fault for losing control this time. I didn’t exactly enter stasis by choice.” I shuffled back, pulling away from him. He let his hands drop as I settled against the onyx headboard. One of them rested lightly on my knee, his strong fingers wrapped around it, heat radiating through the comforter.

  “Stasis wasn’t, but you chose to go after the witches alone in the first place—and that is your fault,” he rumbled.

  “We had no way of knowing that they were trying to capture her as bait for me.” Nat’s voice floated in from the cracked door. She entered the room a few seconds later, carrying a steamy cup.

  I wrinkled my nose.

  “What is that?”

  “Jasmine tea with a teaspoon of honey,” she said. “And before you complain, understand that this single cup would cost two thousand dollars, so you’ll drink it with a smile on your face because I’m dipping into my own profits here.”

  I accepted the cup even if my lips were pursed. I’d never had tea before, for obvious reasons. It was a luxury expense. Something I couldn’t afford as a bounty hunter.

  The mug warmed my hands. “So, why exactly were they after you?” I asked her, taking a sip. The scent was strong, and the taste a little strange, but not unpleasant. I swallowed it down, and my parched throat thanked me immensely. I hummed under my breath.