Forsaken: The World of Nightwalkers

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Jackson. It was Jackson. Leo realized it so suddenly and so sharply that he felt wetness in his eyes and tightness in his chest. He had to be Jackson because Leo couldn’t imagine life without him. He was everything good that Leo was not. He was Leo’s anchor and moral true north. Jackson kept him honest, and he needed to be kept honest. He walked the edge too often to run around without that anchor.

  It was a leap of faith. Believe or don’t believe. Like Santa Claus. Only Jackson wasn’t a myth. He was real. And Leo had been pissing on what had been the deepest relationship he had ever had.

  And how had he come to realize this?

  Faith. His ally. A trustworthy ally. And he would need that ally not only for dealing with this Jackson thing, but when dealing with his mode of recourse against Chatha. He would need her power…and her levelheadedness. He would need her to keep him honest and on the right side of good. Just like Jackson.

  Leo was not an evil man and he would not allow Chatha to make him one. He would much rather have Faith and his friend to keep him from becoming one.

  Leo exhaled, soft and long.

  Good, he thought.

  Good.

  By the time Leo returned to the library, Faith had finished constructing the wish she was going to make. It had taken a few drafts and a lot of careful thinking, but eventually she had come up with something she could tell herself was reasonably satisfactory. A Djynn as clever as Grey could find a loophole in any wish, she was sure, no matter how careful she tried to be. She just hoped that the Djynn was a man of his word and that he was above such petty amusements. But she did worry, just the same. Usually the older a Djynn was, the more powerful he was, and the more easily bored he was. If Grey was looking for a way to divert himself, Faith could very well be making herself the perfect entertainment.

  All she could do was pray that, for all their sakes, this was not the case. Leo was struggling enough as it was with trust and his understanding of the world around him. He didn’t need a Djynn reinforcing his mistrust of all things Nightwalker.

  Leo looked significantly more settled, having had the time and the peace to put himself back together. She had known that he had been putting a lot of energy into fantasies of how he would take his revenge out on Chatha. For all he was human, he was a man of action and deeds, and if he was imagining doing it…then it would most likely get done. The problem had been that he was thinking in linear human terms, totally disregarding that there was a great deal more complexity involved than what met his unpracticed eye.

  She had not wanted to be the one to rob him of his illusions, but neither had she wanted him to throw his life away without seriously thinking about what he was doing. In a way, Leo was going through a massive grieving. He was grieving the loss of himself. The loss of the man he had thought himself to be and the power and control he had once thought he had. In the blink of an eye he had gone from being a badass mercenary to a victimized, insignificant, mortal man. That couldn’t be an easy thing to cope with. And on top of it the trauma itself? She couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like, what he must have suffered. All she had was the scrawling, fiery words that had streaked across his scroll in a wild, acidic jumble as he had struggled with her earlier.

  “Are you ready?” Leo asked her. He was absently running a hand over the scarf still tied at his belt loop. Watching him get comfort from it, she found herself hiding a feeling of…it was hard to explain what the feeling was. Intimacy? A part of her realized that she and he and their pseudo relationship was tied tightly into the silk making up that scarf. Just looking at it reminded her of…

  “Yes,” she said, shaking off the thought and trying to stay focused on the moment.

  But it was hard to stay focused when, every time he slid the scarf against his palm she was remembering the feel of his hands on her body as she’d lain there tied and helpless, unable to do anything but feel the pleasure he was giving her.

  Faith gasped softly and turned away from him, giving herself a mental shake. Now was not the time or place for such thoughts. And knowing how he felt about Nightwalkers, there would never be a time and place. Not involving him, in any event.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, laying a hand on her back, moving it in soothing circles. “You can still back out of this before it’s too late. I don’t care what Grey says. There’s nothing for me to wish for other than…anyway, I’ll do it instead of you.”

  “Other than?” she repeated back to him, unable to keep her curiosity from devouring her self-control. What was it, she wondered, that he would wish for? Revenge? A power with which to fight the Nightwalkers? A way of protecting himself against them?

  He was silent a long minute, long enough for her to think he wasn’t going to answer her. Then he looked at her and reached for her nearby hand, giving it a squeeze.

  “I would wish to forget it all. It sounds cowardly to my own ears when I say it, but there it is. I’d wipe myself clean of remembering what Chatha did to me. I…I wouldn’t want to forget there were Nightwalkers and such out there in the world, I can’t protect myself with that kind of ignorance. But my wish…my wish is to cleanse myself of these memories and of the paralyzing terror that it causes to run through me.”

  “I can grant you that wish. All you need do is ask.”

  Faith and Leo turned to face Grey, who had apparently materialized on one of the couches, his long legs crossed while he picked a microscopic piece of lint from his pants, then brushed the area smooth.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather swallow a bucketful of hot needles.”

  That made Grey chuckle. “That’s fine,” he said with an amused expression. “But should you change your mind, all you need to do is find some sand and write my name in it. I am allowing you the ability to summon me.”

  “Gee, you’re a real peach,” Leo said dryly. “But I wouldn’t hold your breath. You’d die of asphyxiation.”

  “Leo,” Faith warned softly.

  “No,” Grey lifted a conciliatory hand, “he’s perfectly entitled to have his opinion. I won’t take it personally. So your wish?”

  Faith cleared her throat and, holding the paper she had written the wish on in her hand, she recited it very carefully, word for word.

  “I wish for Jackson’s and Menes’s souls to be retethered into Jackson’s body, as they were right before Apep’s attack on him.”

  Grey relaxed even farther back into the couch, his mouth curving into a smile. “I’m really quite impressed. It was detailed yet succinct. And, as you know, left little room for creative interpretation.”

  “You mean trickery,” Faith said with a dark frown.

  “Yes. But I assured you I wouldn’t do that and I’m a man of my word. But I am also to be taken seriously when I say there is a price to pay for this wish. There is always a price to be paid, however small the wish might be. But this one is quite complex and will require a great deal of magical expenditure.” He paused for a thoughtful moment. “I believe I am going to require payment for your wish immediately.”

  Leo stiffened so hard and so fast that Faith could feel the energy of it hit her like a shove. She hastily reached out to catch his hand in hers, squeezing it tightly in warning, a reminder that he wasn’t dealing with a mortal person here. This was a being of great power and his mood might turn on a dime if he was mishandled.

  “What kind of payment?”

  Grey smiled again, meeting Leo’s angry gaze.

  “I am going to need you to retrieve a certain item for me.”

  Faith narrowed her eyes on him. “You mean you want us to get a nik for you,” she said, her tone sharp. Leo turned to look at her, a mixture of surprise and tension swirling over and through him.

  “Yes. I’d like for you to nick a nik.” He chuckled and leaned forward. “Steal it, to be blunt.”

  “All right,” Leo said carefully, outrage crawling across the light of his scroll, belying the calm tone of his voice. “Let me get this straight. You want us, a Nig
ht Angel and a simple mortal, to steal a nik from what I’m assuming is a very powerful Djynn, even though you are reputed to be the most powerful Marid Djynn in North America?”

  “Inaccurate but close,” Grey said rising to his feet.

  “Why don’t you just go get it yourself and leave us out of it?” Leo snapped. “If you’re so damn powerful just take what you want from the other Djynn.”

  “I would, but there is only one problem with your assumptions. The nik isn’t being held by a Djynn, it’s being held by a Wraith.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Leo could tell by the way Faith suddenly clenched his hand within hers that there was something very, very wrong. He didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they were jumping straight out of the frying pan and right into the fire.

  “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that Wraiths are not very nice people,” he said.

  “Wraiths are…” Grey trailed off to hunt for a way to describe them. “They are very powerful and very dangerous. I find them to be a xenophobic, inflexible, and noncooperative species as a whole.”

  “And you can’t get this nik yourself because…?”

  “Wraiths can kill other Nightwalkers with just a touch,” Faith said quietly. “Their death-touch is useless against humans, but to Nightwalkers…” Leo heard her swallow noisily and he could just about taste the fear on her. “For the most part they stay to themselves, keep themselves away from other Nightwalkers. Wraiths are the boogeymen Nightwalkers tell their children about in scary campfire stories.”

  Leo blinked. “You go camping?”

  The question was so unimportant that it made her laugh shakily. Then when she looked at him she realized he’d made the joke in order to calm her fears…and she was grateful to him for it.

  “So I get it. You need a human to go into some Wraith’s house and steal this nik,” Leo recapped. “Is that death-touch the only thing they can do? Any super speed or strength or any other physical or metaphysical aspects I will find myself up against?”

  “No! Leo, you can’t do this! It’s a death wish!” Faith turned a fiery gaze on Grey. “He doesn’t understand the nature of what he’ll be dealing with!”

  “It’s no more or less dangerous than bringing him onto the territory of the most powerful Djynn on the continent,” Grey countered firmly. “In fact, you are going to be the one in the most danger. A mere touch and a Wraith can kill you. You would be wise to send him in alone.”

  “Absolutely not! I won’t send him into a Wraith dwelling with—”

  “I’ll do it,” Leo interrupted her.

  “Leo!” Faith was breathing hard, her hand shaking in his, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Faith,” he said softly to her, using his tone and the strength of his touch to center her, to calm her. “I have made it in and out of heavily guarded fortresses with no one the wiser more times that you can imagine. I’ve killed a man…a monster…in his own bed while a phalanx of guards waited right on the other side of the door. This is what I do. This is what I’m good at.”

  “Except Nightwalkers have reflexes, senses, and powerful abilities that you have never gone up against before,” she argued fiercely.

  “You’re wrong,” Leo said grimly. “I have been up against it before and I know exactly what I might be getting myself into.” He turned back to Grey. “So tell me, what else?”

  “My god, you’re insane!” Faith hissed before pulling her hand out of his and pacing anxiously away from him.

  “To be very honest, we don’t know very much about the Wraiths. All we know is we must avoid touching them skin to skin at all costs. I know that they are incredibly strong and fast when in their noncorporeal states, but when they are in the corporeal state they are at their most vulnerable, no different than any other Nightwalker.”

  “Got it. So the best thing to do is to go after this thing in daylight.”

  “Wraiths are not stupid,” Grey warned him. “They most likely use humans to protect what they feel requires protecting. Mortal creatures and mortal technologies.”

  Leo chuckled. “Now that’s music to my ears. So the Wraiths can’t operate in sunlight I’m assuming, like any Nightwalker. Will they be awake? Able to see me and warn whatever guards they might have?”

  “It’s possible. Like all Nightwalkers daylight is their time for sleep. When sunlight turns a Djynn to smoke we are able to see and feel everything around us, but without corporeal bodies there is nothing we can do about it. The same might hold true for a Wraith. But I will warn you, do not let the Wraiths see you. They won’t forget an insult like this and it is likely they will not let a theft go unpunished.”

  “Like I said, stealth and precision extractions are my specialty. But I don’t want Faith coming with me. If just one touch can kill her, she can’t be anywhere near these things.”

  “I am not letting you go by yourself!” Faith snapped at him. “I don’t even want you to go at all! If this is the price we have to pay then you can keep your wish! We’ll find another way!”

  Grey regarded her patiently. “The wish is already made. It will be done, but only when that nik is in my hands.”

  Leo frowned. “What is this nik exactly? Because if it’s a life-sized marble elephant, we’re in a world of trouble.”

  “Actually, it’s not a niknak. It’s a nikki.”

  Leo sighed. “Okay, you lost me.”

  “Niks hold our power, yes?” He waited for Leo’s nod. “There are two kinds of niks. Inanimate niks are called niknaks. However, living niks are known as nikkis.”

  “This thing is alive?” Leo asked. “Please tell me it’s not Bigfoot.”

  “Leo, this is no time for jokes!” Faith said in a burst of emotion. She couldn’t understand why he seemed so damn delighted by this! They’d been tricked into doing something deadly and dangerous. Even the thought of being within a mile of a Wraith left her cold and sick inside.

  “It’s the perfect time for jokes,” he replied, a lazy sort of smile crooking up a corner of his mouth. “When things are already funny and happy, jokes are just redundant.”

  Faith fought back hot tears. She wanted to scream at him and shake him and make him understand what he was doing! After being faced with what Chatha could do, she would think he would be more wary, more cautious…just as he had been since they’d started this journey. Grey wasn’t to be trusted!

  Leo turned and saw the expression on Faith’s face. He reached out for her hand but she jerked it away from him. He followed her with a step and this time caught her hand, pulling it by the wrist until it was pressed against the warmth of his chest, until she could feel the beat of his heart.

  “Look at me,” he ordered her when she turned away and stared hard at a row of books some distance away. “Look at me,” he said more firmly, squeezing her wrist tightly until she did. It was not meant to hurt, only to acquire her attention. “Not my eyes, Faith. Not my face. Do what you do and look at me.”

  He meant he wanted her to look at his light, he wanted her to read his scroll.

  And there it was. All the answers to all of her questions and confusion. Strength. Power. Confidence. Potent words, robust words. Words that had been faded from his scroll…faded and missing from the places they used to inhabit. This was what made him who he was. This was what gave him power. This had been ripped away from him, left him floundering, left him afraid…and now it was back. It was his element, and it was where he belonged.

  “All right,” she said quietly, not willing to take any of that away from him. It was dangerous, yes, but he needed that danger, needed to prove to himself that he could win against one of the Nightwalker breeds, the creatures he’d turned into personal boogeymen. It was crazy dangerous and her heart was still in her throat, but she wasn’t about to tell him no.

  “I need a floor plan, I need to know what I’ll be carrying and I’ll need to know what I might run into,” Leo said. “And I’ll need weapons. The best you’v
e got.”

  “If there is one thing I excel in,” Grey said with an amused smile, “it’s in having the very best of everything.”

  “I am content,” Apep said with a satisfactory sigh. “Yes. This was an excellent idea and a job well done. He was quite powerful, you know. An excellent choice.”

  “You didn’t bring him to me? I wanted to play.” Chatha pouted as he fussed over his surgical tray. The highly polished metal on the tray gleamed from all angles. His tray had been acquired over time, this blade from one place, this from another and so on. The hunting knife with the serrated spine and wickedly sharp edge had come from his last toy. Chatha knew that toy from the inside out. He had studied every part of him over and over again. It had been such a wonderful experience. They had become so close with each other.

  He had been very disappointed when he’d realized Kamen had stolen his toy from him. Actually, he had been very put out. Kamen should have been his friend. Instead he had betrayed him and taken his favorite toy away from him. It was really quite fortunate that his mistress had awakened. His mistress but not his mistress.

  A god. His god. His god promised him a free hand. Promised him any toys he liked. But he had not brought him the stud to play with, and that made Chatha feel cheated.

  “I think it best we leave that dog to lie. He will meet his death. But take pleasure in the fact that he was suffering the entire time. There’s a good boy. Now, I think I’m craving something. Maybe chocolate. Ice cream, perhaps? I like ice cream. What clever things mortals invent.”

  “I want Kamen.”

  Apep lifted a brow. “Is that so?”

  “He stole my toy…so, I want to play with him. Yes. Very much so.”