His hands left my shoulders, and he lay them gently over my eyes, blocking my vision. Shivers ran over my skin and dizziness engulfed my head. My eyes felt inexplicably cool, as though a breeze was blowing across them. He spread his slender fingers, forming two triangular windows through which I could gaze straight ahead.
A pale mist that hadn’t existed moments before draped the valley. It drifted serenely, immune to the fitful wind. The remains of the barn were there but not, a dark structure almost dense enough to be solid. Half a dozen large shapes, heaped on the ground inside, were far darker.
Zak stood before the ethereal building. I could see him … but I hardly recognized him at all.
Shadows spilled out of him like heavy smoke overflowing from an incense burner. Charcoal flames danced across the ground, and pale sparks shot through the strange mist, sharp and agitated. The fae runes on his inner arms glowed with power, and he—he glowed too. A soft, effervescent light radiated through his skin, shimmering like ripples on a sunlit pond.
“Do you see it?” Echo breathed in my ear. “His power, his allure. Sweet, intoxicating. It draws us. Humans possess but a touch. Witches, a taste. Druids … a feast.”
I shivered.
Zak still hadn’t moved, but the darkness spilling from him was thickening. It writhed, flashes and sparks erupting like tiny bolts of lightning in inky clouds. His body’s ethereal glow brightened.
“They come. Called to his power. Called by his pain.”
As though the dragon’s words had lifted a veil, I could see them—shapes drawing closer. Shadows, silhouettes, glittering forms that made no sense to my human brain.
Black wolves with glowing red eyes came first—his vargs. A white panther, its two tails lashing in agitation. Tiny pixies, their gossamer wings fluttering. Strange reptiles, wreathed in shade, crawling on the ground. Tall, thin beings with long, dragging arms and gray skin—the darkfae who’d tried to kill him in the forest last summer. A shaggy creature, similar to a bear, lumbering upright on two legs. Two shimmery silver sylphs, twins to Hoshi, undulating weightlessly as they nervously approached.
I couldn’t breathe as creatures of fantasy and nightmare emerged from the darkness.
A huge stag, his coat unblemished ivory, his golden antlers rising high above his head in an impossible tangle, picked his way across the ground. With each press of his golden hooves, grass sprang from the ravaged earth. The plants shot upward, leaves sprouting, flowers blooming. A strip of summer meadow marked the buck’s path out of the forest.
The fae, light and dark, ugly and beautiful, gathered around the grieving druid, but none approached him—and in the empty space between them and Zak was Lallakai.
The Lady of Shadow, the Night Eagle. Phantom wings arched off her back and inky power swirled around her feet, mixing with the darkness flowing out of Zak. She stood with her hands on her curved hips, her chin tilted up in confident challenge, daring the other fae to approach her druid. Her consort.
“Echo,” I whispered, “what is Zak’s relationship with Lallakai?”
“She is his guardian, his guide, his keeper. For a long time, as time passes for humans, she has nurtured him. A druid as potent as he, as seductive to the fae who hunger for a feast, would have perished long ago without a protector so powerful and dedicated.”
The darkness, the light, the shivering power rolling off Zak deepened. My limbs tingled, the magic in the air sparking off my skin. The gathering fae shifted restlessly.
“She will own him until his last day.”
Lallakai swept her hand out, dragging it through the druid’s thickening power. Raising her fingers to her lips, she licked them as though they were coated in sweet wine.
Green eyes burning in her flawless face, she turned to Zak as he bowed beneath his grief, lost in whatever dark hell he’d spiraled into—a hell so deep he was calling the fae of the forest to him. The darkness spilling out of him continued to deepen, the sizzling flashes inside it growing more violent.
He was inflamed with fury. I could not soothe his raging heart.
But had she tried?
She slid closer to him. The other fae drifted nearer. Zak was disappearing in the haze.
My heart thumped loudly in my ears.
I pushed Echo’s hands off my face and launched down the slope. The cool magic infusing my eyes held, and I could see the gathered fae scattering out of my path. I charged through them and into the empty ring around Zak, guarded by Lallakai.
She was watching him, lust on her face. She didn’t see me until I was almost on them.
“Zak!”
He jerked upright, half turning—and I collided with him, my arms locking around his head and pulling his face into my shoulder. He almost fell but righted himself, grabbing my waist.
“Zak,” I gasped, holding him so fiercely I couldn’t breathe. “Zak, it’s okay to cry.”
His fingers bit into my sides.
“I’ll cry too.” My voice wavered. Tears stung my eyes. “You’re not alone. I’m with you.”
He sucked in a trembling breath—and he buckled.
I held him tightly as he sank to his knees, his shoulders shaking silently. Kneeling with him, I held his face to my shoulder, shielding him with my arms, hiding him from the fae and their watching eyes. And I cried too.
I wept for the innocent lives he’d treasured so deeply, for the unconditional love he’d lost. His horses had never demanded anything of him. Had never tried to use him. Could never have betrayed him. He’d loved them as he couldn’t love another person. Trusted them because he couldn’t trust anyone else.
And someone had taken that from him.
A step away, Lallakai stood frozen, gaping down at her druid, clutched in my arms, his hands fisted around my jacket, his rage drowned in anguish. My borrowed fae vision, now fading, revealed that the shadows surrounding him were dissipating.
Fury twisted her face. Teeth bared, she reached for me, her fingers curled.
With a sweep of starry wings, Echo landed beside her. His hand settled lightly on hers, halting her reach—her pointed nail inches from my face. Her blazing eyes shot to his.
“His grief is human,” Echo murmured. “You are not.”
She hissed softly—and he smiled, revealing his carnivorous teeth. A ripple distorted the air as immense power rolled out from him. It sizzled over me, buzzing across every nerve in my body.
Lallakai faced the dragon, breathing hard, then pulled her hand free. She whirled, hair sweeping out, and took three steps away. Now it was the dragon standing guard over the druid, his back to us, wings spread like a curtain, hiding us from the hungry stares of the gathered fae.
Closing my eyes, I rested my cheek on Zak’s hair. The hard ground under my knees didn’t matter. The cold wind didn’t matter. The terrifying fae all around us didn’t matter.
I would hold him for as long as he needed me.
Chapter Eleven
Zak and I sat together against the side of the barn, out of the wind. Night lay heavy across the mountains, no hint of dawn on the horizon. I stared up at the waxing moon, only a few days from full.
Like me, Zak’s head was tilted back, his dull green eyes on the stars. His hand, warm and calloused, was tucked between both of mine.
“Did all the fae leave?” I asked quietly. Lallakai and Echo had wandered off, but I couldn’t tell if the others remained. My eyes were back to normal.
“Lallakai chased them off. How did you know they were there?”
“Echo gave me fae x-ray vision for a few minutes. It was wild. You glow like a nuclear experiment gone wrong.”
He huffed. “Makes it hard for witches and druids to blend in with the crowd, doesn’t it?”
“What do humans look like?”
“Most don’t have visible energy. Mythics can have an aura, but it’s different.”
“Can you see auras?”
“No, but Lallakai can.”
I rested my head against the wal
l. “Is that how you knew I wasn’t a diviner? Way back when we first met?”
“In part. I also had a contact of mine dig up every scrap of information on you, legal and illegal, that’s ever existed. There’s no mythic anything in your background.”
“I’m first in a new line of humawitch.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
“I don’t like witchuman as much.”
“Didn’t I tell you that you’re a real witch? You don’t need a special term.”
“I know, but I don’t feel like a witch. Fae sort of pay attention to me sometimes, I guess, but we don’t have a special connection. Besides, I’m kind of dabbling in everything. I have the Queen of Spades, and the crystals you gave me—”
“That you stole.”
“—and these cool brass knuckles. Wait until you see them. I’ve been learning to use offensive and defensive alchemy, too. I have my own paintball gun now. The guys gave it to me for Christmas.”
“Hmm. Maybe ‘witch’ is too limiting, then. You’re on your way to becoming a jack of all classes.”
“No.” I grinned. “I’ll be the Jack of Spades. Get it? Because SPADE stands for Spiritalis, Psychica, Arcana, Demonica, and Elementaria.”
“I know the acronym, Tori,” he said dryly. “Usually, only advanced combat mythics excel in wielding multiple classes.”
“I’m just that awesome.”
His gaze turned to me. “Yeah.”
My cheeks heated. I pushed myself up out of my slouch and leaned back again, letting his hand slip from mine. He returned his attention to the sky, the moonlight softening the haggard lines around his mouth.
“You said you want to call in your favor right away,” he murmured.
“I was just angry. You don’t owe me anything.”
“But there’s something you need.”
My stomach twisted. “Ezra … he’s running out of time.”
“Don’t demon mages last the better part of a decade? He’s young yet to be—”
“He’s been a demon mage since he was fourteen.”
A long, disbelieving pause. “Who would turn a kid into a demon mage?”
“I don’t know, but Ezra’s had his demon for almost ten years now, and his demon is getting stronger. He’s starting to lose control, and he may only have a few months.”
Silence slid between us.
“Tori.” Zak’s rumbling voice was unusually gentle. “Any form of demon contract is for life. They only ever end with a death.”
“I know that, but …” I gulped. “I found this amulet. It—well, it belonged to a demon, and it has the power to interrupt a demon contract. I used it to stop a demon from killing me. The amulet freed the demon, and it turned on its contractor.”
His eyes widened. “The artifact belonged to a demon?”
“I need to know how the amulet works and whether it can be used to separate Ezra and his demon, but I can’t find any information on demonic magic or artifacts. That’s what I need your help with.”
“An artifact with power like that …” He rubbed his mouth, fingers rasping over dark stubble. “Could it be sorcery? If it is demon magic, I don’t know whether information on it would even exist. Interrupting a demon contract … but would that work on a demon mage? The simplest way to find out would be to test it on a demon mage, but where would you find another one?”
“I’ve gotten the impression they’re rare.”
“Extremely, yeah. The important question might not be whether the amulet can separate the demon from the mage, but whether they can survive it. How tightly bound are the demon and its host?”
“I don’t care if the demon dies.”
“Demons are hardy. It’s Ezra you should be worried about. An otherworldly creature has been possessing him for ten years. How much has it changed him?”
Cold that had nothing to do with the frigid January air pierced me. “He’s stronger and faster than a human.”
“And he can endure injuries that would kill a regular man. He kept fighting with a sword wound that should’ve had him down in minutes.”
Zak was referring to that terrifying battle to save Nadine last summer. Aaron’s sword flashing downward. Ezra falling. He’d fought until the very end, and only collapsed from blood loss after it was all over.
I hugged myself. “Ezra is doomed anyway, so I have to try. But I can’t just give him the amulet, not without knowing what will happen.” Especially since Eterran wanted it so badly. The demon’s desire for it had triggered all my alarm bells.
“I’ll see what I can dig up on demonic amulets, but I don’t think it will be much. What about demon mage contracts? What do you know about them?”
“Me? Uh …”
“Have you done any research? If you want to save Ezra, you should be learning everything you can about demon mages.”
Déjà vu jolted through me. Darius’s somber gray eyes, his chilling instruction: Ask Ezra to teach you everything he knows about demon mages.
“Aaron and Kai already researched—” I began.
“Them,” Zak interrupted with a dismissive scoff. “Maybe Kai would’ve tapped into illicit sources, but his experience is with crime—the black market, smuggling, forgeries, embezzlement, blackmail, racketeering. Neither mage has a clue how deep the webs of dark magic run.”
A hint of energy revived his green eyes as he sat forward. “Real summoners are like druids. They don’t write how-to books or do interviews with scholars or volunteer as MPD consultants. All their knowledge is passed from master to apprentice, and they jealously, violently protect it.”
“So how am I supposed to learn about it, then?”
“The hard way.” He tapped my knee in emphasis. “The guidebooks MagiPol created are the beginner’s version of Demonica. You need an expert level education in it if you want any chance of figuring out the amulet and saving Ezra.”
Didn’t that just sound impossible. “Will you help me?”
“I pay my debts.” He pushed to his feet. “But it’ll have to wait. I have something I need to do first.”
Feeling oddly nervous, I scrambled up too. “What’s that?”
Flat, frigid hatred flared in his eyes as his gaze swept from the barn to the house. “I’m going to kill the bitch who did this.”
I was still gaping as he stalked away. “Wait. You know who did this?”
“She might as well have carved her name in Morgan’s body.”
“Morgan—”
Without breaking stride, Zak whistled softly. A few paces away, the air shimmered and a fae appeared—an albino panther with yellow eyes and two tails, their furred tips glowing with faint power.
Zak crouched, his hand extended toward the feline. “Niari.”
The panther slunk to him, head low and tails drooping. It pushed its forehead into his chest and he stroked its thick fur.
A ping in my memory—that panther poised over me, fangs bared, while the blond and bossy witch Morgan stood nearby. Tori, meet Niari, my familiar.
“I would’ve guessed who did this even without a witness, but Varvara wasn’t as thorough as she could’ve been.” He rubbed Niari’s ears, then added in a whisper, “Morgan died quickly.”
“Is … is she here? Should we …” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“MPD agents took her body.”
So Shane wasn’t the only one who’d found the valley after Zak’s farm had been destroyed. “Varvara did this?”
I wasn’t surprised. The dark sorceress was a hell of a piece of work. Between kidnapping her enemies’ daughter to raise as an apprentice, almost killing Kai and Aaron when we’d tried to save Nadine from her clutches, and sending her minions after Zak and forcing him into hiding, Varvara was one of my least favorite people on the planet.
With a final caress for the panther, Zak rose. “She wants one of two things—for me to disappear forever, never to trouble her again, or for me to reveal myself in a
blind fury, making it nice and easy to get rid of me for good.”
“Well, the first one definitely isn’t an option,” I said warily. “But neither is the second.”
“The second is exactly what I intend to do.”
“But—”
He looked over his shoulder, his rage burning deep. “Her mistake is thinking she can kill me. I ran from her once. This time, I’ll destroy her.”
My throat bobbed in a failed attempt to swallow. He continued walking, and it took me a moment to get my numb legs moving. I pulled my jacket sleeves over my frozen hands.
“Okay …” I trotted to his side. “What next?”
“Next, I figure out what she and those MPD bastards didn’t steal.” His jaw tightened. “I left things here. I thought they would be safe …”
He trailed off, then extended his stride until I needed to jog to keep up.
First, he checked the former alchemy garden. All that remained was burnt earth and a few charred fenceposts. A hole in the ground revealed a metal case, empty except for dirt and snow. Zak gazed at the uncovered cache, then turned away and kept walking.
“What was in there?” I asked worriedly.
“Dangerous artifacts I didn’t have time to get rid of. And Harry.”
“Harry? The talking skull?” My eyes widened. “What if Varvara or the MPD got him, and he told them you’re a di-mythic?”
“He wouldn’t betray my secrets. We have an agreement.” He frowned. “I’ll have to recover him at some point.”
“You sure he didn’t betray you?” I persisted as we headed toward the house. “He wouldn’t have been happy about being buried for months.”
Zak kicked the porch steps to ensure they were sturdy before stepping onto them. “I have a different idea of where the MPD’s anonymous tip came from.”
“Aaron, Kai, and Ezra didn’t blow your secret,” I said angrily. “They would never do that, especially since you know about Ezra. Why would they take that chance?”
“I know.”
“Then who do you think tipped off the MPD?” I demanded. When he continued into the house without explaining, I muttered under my breath, “Fine, be mysterious.”
Druid Vices and a Vodka: The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Six Page 10