by Jasmine Walt
“Well, it is simply that these friends of mine have not made an appearance, and I am growing worried.” Maddock’s expression grew pinched. Indeed, he did look worried, but I suspected that was because of the artifact rather than his imaginary friends. “Have you seen them? A tall man with thick, silver hair, and his companion a beautiful redheaded woman.”
“Oh! Thomas and Celia Madison,” she said, her eyes lighting with recognition. “Yes, they were here earlier, but I haven’t seen them for some time. Shall I check with my head of security?”
“No, that’s quite all right,” Maddock soothed. “Please, go and rejoin your husband before he worries. Thank you for your assistance.”
“Oh, but I would much rather stay here with you,” she purred, sliding her hands up Maddock’s shoulder. Her lips curved into a wicked smile, and I wanted to slap her. Did she seriously not realize I was standing right here? Maybe whatever spell Maddock was using had addled her senses.
“Go,” Maddock said sternly, all pretense of manners disappearing. Obviously he was getting tired of this act.
Mrs. Navalny’s eyes widened, and she scurried off immediately, obeying the magical command before she even realized what she was doing. She returned to her husband’s side without a backward glance.
We found the head of security, and Maddock coerced the name and address of the hotel Thomas and Celia were staying at before grabbing our coats and teleporting us out once more. This time, when we settled back into reality, I doubled over, clutching my stomach and dry-heaving. I just couldn’t take doing this so many times in such a short period of time.
“Get yerself together,” Maddock hissed, gripping me by the shoulders. We were standing on some kind of grassy lawn outside a two story stone house that looked like a bed and breakfast.
“Fuck off!” I knocked his hand away and took a deep breath. “What the hell is wrong with you? I haven’t seen you this agitated since…” Since I’d nearly died, I said silently to myself, remembering how he’d tried to offer his life to Father James in exchange for mine. Clearing my throat, I continued, “You’re acting like the world is about to end. What aren’t you telling me?”
“We need to get hold of that artifact before these two disappear with it,” Maddock said tightly. “I didna come this far to allow it to slip out of my hands. If you dinnae hurry up, I will have to leave ye here.”
“Charming,” I muttered, straightening up to stare at the house. “So this is where they’re staying?”
“Aye.” Taking my hand, Maddock hurried us into the front entrance and up to the check-in desk.
“I’m looking for Thomas and Celia Madison,” he told the young woman behind the counter without preamble, magic still thick in his voice. “Tell me which room they are in.”
“Room twelve,” she said promptly.
“Give me a key.”
The woman produced a key card, and Maddock took it. “You will not remember this conversation,” he told her, then he whirled on his heel and headed for the elevator down the hall.
“These are not the droids you’re looking for,” I muttered as we got inside.
Maddock shot me a glare as the elevator doors closed behind us. “Ye think this is a laughing matter, Detective?”
I bared my teeth at him in the semblance of a smile. “I’ve got to find humor where I can, especially since you keep insisting on dragging me into dangerous situations without my weapons.”
The doors opened, and Maddock hurried out, not even bothering to grab my hand this time. I guess with no one else around, there was no point in keeping up the pretense. I rushed after him as fast as I could in my ridiculous heels, and a chill shot down my spine as I heard wailing coming from Room 12. Just what the hell was going on?
“Fuck,” Maddock swore, wrenching the doorknob from the door with brute strength. “It’s already started.”
“What’s already started?” I demanded as he pushed the door open and stalked inside.
I followed him in, then froze. The two thieves, Thomas and Celia, were backed into a corner of the living room, cowering like children. Celia was curled into a little ball, her body shaking, and Thomas was pressed flat against the wall, his eyes stark with fear.
“Here it is,” Maddock said, swiping a small, granite statue in the shape of a naked woman with long, flowing hair. It was about the size of an Oscar trophy. “Now let’s go.”
“What about them?” I demanded, pointing to the thieves. “Shouldn’t we help them? There’s clearly something wrong!”
“We are helping them,” Maddock snarled, grabbing my hand. A huge howl shook the room, and my heart jumped in my throat as a wave of pure terror struck me. “Now let’s go before it’s too late.”
We teleported out, and the next thing I knew, we were standing in a clearing in the middle of some forest. The air out here was frigid, and I wrapped my arms around myself as the cold ripped straight through my coat.
“Shade this!” Maddock shouted, holding the stone statue out to me. “If you do it now, perhaps this thing won’t be able to find us.”
“What thing?” I demanded, grabbing the artifact.
I tried to focus in on the dark power inside me, but my heart was still beating a staccato against my chest, my blood icy as it raced through my veins. It had only been for a moment, but that howl had inspired such an intense wave of fear in me that I’d barely been able to breathe.
“It’s called a Nocnista,” Maddock growled, looking toward the tree line. “And it’s come far sooner than I expected.”
“What the fuck is a Nocnista?” I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself so I could use my powers, but my annoyance with Maddock for keeping secrets yet again, coupled with the fear, was making it difficult. “And why didn’t you fill me in on this earlier?”
Another howl tore through the night air, coming directly from the forest. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and this time when Maddock grabbed my hand, I didn’t even think to protest.
“It doesna matter,” Maddock shouted. “Run!”
I took off after him as he pulled me into a full on sprint, and after nearly twisting my ankle, I kicked off my heels. My feet pounded against the forest floor as we dashed for the cover of the trees, and my feet ached with sharp pains as my soles beat against the rocky earth. Jesus, what the hell had we gotten ourselves into now?
“What matters now is that you cannot believe anything it says or does,” Maddock warned. “The Nocnista feeds off pure terror.”
A snarl ripped through the air, and I stumbled forward as a blast of icy air hit my back, almost as if a beast with frigid breath were right behind me.
“Maddock,” I said, struck with more fear than I think I’d ever felt before. “Just get us out of here!”
“It’s too late for that.” Maddock grabbed me, then whirled around and shoved me behind him. “Remember what I said. We’ll get through this.”
Then the stone statue was somehow in his hand again, and he held it aloft, facing some kind of swirling darkness in the air.
“Stay back!” he commanded, without a trace of fear in his voice. It took everything in me not to press my back against a tree—how did Maddock stand it? “This is my property now, and you have no claim over it, or us!”
A dark chuckle echoed through the forest, bouncing off the trees, and then the darkness rushed in on Maddock. I yelled his name as the swirling blackness eclipsed him, then screamed as the darkness came barreling toward me. A wave of intense fear rushed over me, and I fell to the ground.
I wasn’t sure if the darkness had knocked me over, or if my knees had simply given out. I wanted to stand up, but my body refused, curling itself into a ball and shutting its eyes against the darkness.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay on the cold, hard ground, but eventually the darkness receded, and mobility seemed to return to my limbs. I waited for something else to attack, but after several seconds of silence, I uncurled myself and hesitantly opened my eyes.
&
nbsp; “Hey, Brooke,” said a familiar voice, and shock struck me so hard I couldn’t breathe again. Tom Garrison stood over me, hands tucked into his leather jacket pockets, smiling down at me as though there wasn’t a care in the world. As though he wasn’t dead. “It’s been awhile.”
Chapter 14
“Tom?” I scrambled to my shaky feet, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with the truth. “What the hell is going on? You can’t be Tom!”
“Can’t I?” Tom smiled, and it was a horrible smile, full of rotting teeth. His eyes grew pitch black, as if he’d been possessed by some sort of evil spirit or demon. “No, I guess I can’t,” he admitted as he began stalking toward me. “After all, I’m dead, aren’t I? You killed me.”
“Father James killed you,” I snapped, standing my ground. I reached for my weapon, then cursed when I remembered it wasn’t there. Fear rippled through me as I looked around for Maddock only to realize he wasn’t there. What had happened to him? Had the Nocnista taken him? He wouldn’t have teleported out of here without me. Would he?
“He might have pulled the trigger,” Tom said, backing me up against a tree, “but it was because of you, you little bitch.” He grabbed me by the throat and hauled me up against the rough bark. I clawed at his grasp; his hand was cold, the skin peeling off to reveal the dead, rank flesh beneath. “I was a good soldier, and I did everything I was told. And still I died, because of his obsession with some silver-haired bitch.”
Brooke, Maddock’s voice whispered in my head as I struggled for breath. Don’t let it do this. Yer stronger than this vile creature.
But I didn’t feel stronger. I felt weak, weighed down by guilt and fear, and by the truth of Tom’s words. No, I hadn’t pulled the trigger, but I had killed him all the same, hadn’t I? I hadn’t even given him the decency of a proper burial.
“No, you didn’t,” Tom said as I struggled. His grip was tight enough that I had to gasp for air, but not so tight that my suffering was going to end anytime soon. “You and your new boyfriend changed my body into my murderer’s, then had me buried beneath his grave. How did you think I could rest in peace?” he snarled, spraying fetid spittle across my cheek. “How did you think you could get away from me so easily?”
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, tears running down my cheeks now. “I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t think about that.”
“No, you didn’t,” he sneered. “You were only thinking about your own pathetic life.” Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out his gun. “Do you think you deserve to live, Brooke? Knowing that you were the cause of my death after all?”
He pressed the gun to my head, and I closed my eyes against the tears. The cold barrel was heavy against my skull, the weight of all my sins pressing down on me at once. Yes, I had done bad things in my life. I’d made mistakes. But was Tom’s death really on my conscience?
I remembered the vision I’d seen when I touched Tom’s badge, of him talking to someone on the phone about me. I hadn’t been ready to accept it at the time, but even back then, he had been my enemy. He’d been spying on me for Father James, trying to determine if I really was a shadow. Tom…or whatever this thing was…was hardly innocent. He’d been betraying me from the start, making me believe that he was something he wasn’t. That he was kind, and decent, and a protector of the innocent.
Instead, I’d found out he was a demon posing as an angel. A dangerous man who had been willing to deliver me to a coven of witches out for my blood.
My eyes popped open, and fury blazed hot in my chest, driving out the fear. “I don’t owe you my life,” I hissed, pressing my hand against his shoulder. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”
A twinge of fear pinched my chest at the thought of what I was about to do, and Tom’s eyes lit. I pushed the fear aside resolutely, remembering what Maddock had said about the Nocnista feeding off the emotion, and let the anger consume me again.
Focusing all my will at the Nocnista, I did my best to envision the power that pulsed within this creature. It was cold and dark, a ball of black ice that hummed with energy. The moment I had it in my mind’s eye, a rope of energy snaked out of me and into Tom, latching onto that icy ball.
“You evil bitch!” Tom’s eyes popped wide, his grip tightening on my throat.
I ignored the pain, the lack of oxygen, and resolutely focused on pulling every shred of power out of him that I could. I yanked on that rope of energy with all my strength, and dark, icy magic came spilling out of him and into me. A bright red glow enveloped us as Tom’s hand slackened on my neck, and I dragged in a greedy breath as I consumed his magic.
Like the last time this happened, my body swelled beneath the influx of power, sending a rush of euphoria through me. I was a goddess, a mountain, a giant with the world poised beneath my feet. I could crush anything, annihilate anyone, including the abomination in my grasp.
Tom let out a scream of agony, his skin and flesh crumbling, and my euphoria was momentarily eclipsed by guilt and horror. The moment the fear entered my heart, Tom began to solidify a little, a grin forming on his face.
This is not Tom, I reminded myself sternly. Tom was dead and gone, lying beneath Father James’s grave. This was a monster, and if I wanted to live, I couldn’t stop.
Gritting my teeth, I doubled down on my efforts to destroy him, and the creature let out another shriek of agony.
When I’d yanked the last bit of power out of him, Tom’s body disintegrated completely, leaving me covered in a disgusting layer of black ash. Relief swept through me, but it was short lived—the euphoria faded, and the icy magic began to overwhelm me, slowing my movements, the blood flowing through my veins, my very heartbeat. I was cold, so very cold, and if I didn’t do something…
“Maddock,” I croaked, crashing to my knees. Oh God. Was I dying?
“I’m right here, lass.” Maddock’s arms came around me, his voice low and soothing. I let out a cry as icy pain wracked my body, and even the heat from Maddock’s big body couldn’t ease it. “Come now. Ye know what to do.”
I took a deep, shuddering breath, then tossed out another rope of energy. Maddock sucked in a breath of his own as I began pushing the icy, dark magic into him, shoving it out of my body as fast as I could. He pressed his forehead against mine, his skin cooling fast, his harsh breathing mingling with mine.
“That’s enough,” he said through gritted teeth, severing the connection between us.
The sounds of the night came rushing back—leaves rustling, crickets chirping—and I sagged against Maddock in relief. The power was still inside me, but it was much more bearable now that I’d unloaded a bunch of it to Maddock.
“Why didn’t you just get us out of there? Jesus Christ, Maddock.”
“Come now, Detective. If it were that easy, I would have.”
I found that hard to believe, since plenty of things were that easy and he still seemed to like to do it the hard way.
“The Nocnista is tied to the artifact. It would have followed us,” Maddock clarified quietly. “But ye did well to defeat it on yer own.” He rubbed my back, and I shivered a little as the warmth from his hand began to drive the cold from my veins. I normally didn’t mind cold, but this had been on another level entirely. “I tried to reach ye with my voice, but the Nocnista’s magic blocks everything out.”
“I heard you.” I lifted my head to look into Maddock’s eyes. The worry shimmering in those green depths lightened something in my heart. “I was paralyzed by fear, but then I heard your voice, and I snapped out of it.”
“I’m glad.” Maddock smiled, and my stomach flip-flopped at the uncharacteristic warmth in his expression. Blushing, I looked down, then noticed the layer of ash coating his expensive suit.
“Oh,” I cried, jumping away. “You shouldn’t have touched me like this. I’m disgusting.”
“It’s just a suit, Detective.” Maddock glanced down at himself, as if ruining a thousand-dollar tuxedo was only a minor annoyance, then climbed to his feet. “We sh
ould get back,” he added, offering a hand to me.
As he pulled me to my feet, I noticed the artifact still clutched in his other fist. “Wait a minute,” I said, finally processing his revelation from moments ago. “You knew that…thing…was somehow part of the artifact?”
“Not exactly part of it,” Maddock corrected, placing the stone statue in my hand. “The Moirtéal Dealbh was cursed sometime in the last hundred years. Anyone who owns the object is tormented by that hateful monster, usually by night. The Navalnys were no exception, and they staged this ‘viewing’ hoping that someone would relieve them of the artifact. They’ve only had it about a week, as I understand, but were eager to get rid of it.”
Well, that explained why the Navalnys looked so sickly. “So are you saying that the Nocnista wouldn’t have actually killed us?”
“Not tonight. It would have kept us alive as long as possible, coming to us each night to feed off our fear. The Navalny’s would have died eventually, as did the people who owned it before them, had they not gotten rid of it.”
“You knew this, and you didn’t tell me.”
“If I had, you wouldna have agreed to take it.”
“Damn right, I wouldn’t have,” I nearly growled. “You told me you were going to be more forthcoming. I thought fae couldn’t lie.”
Maddock wagged his finger at me. “Aye, I never said I would be more forthcoming. Ye said that, not me. I said I would tell ye what we were collecting and why, not the history of the item or risks involved. I did exactly as I said I would.”
I hated that he was right. I should have gotten a better promise from him, but I was quickly learning any efforts to do so were a lost cause.
“Are you okay?” I asked finally, noticing the exhaustion in his expression. I hated that I even cared, but then again, it was important to me that he stayed alive. “Did the Nocnista feed off you as well?”
“It tried,” Maddock sneered, curling his lip, “but I am powerful enough to block its efforts. Even so, it would have pestered me on its own for a long time until I found a way to get rid of it, so I’m glad that ye killed it.” His lips quirked into a smile. “Seems that yer good for more than shading things.”