“Sweet Miriam.” I gasped as I looked at them all. Legs stuck out at crooked angles and arms wrapped around backs. Dark fluid pooled out around cracked skulls. I coughed when I wanted to swallow. “All those—”
“All those grim ones,” Ari said, grabbing me by the shoulders and spinning me around to face him. Someone’s lumen beamed light across his face, and in his expression was a sort of shock but also a different sort of look I’d never seen before. I couldn’t read it.
“I don’t know what the hell happened,” he said, “but you took down at least six of them.” He looked askance at what I now realized were the once-human creatures I had encountered on the beach.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to let relief wash me clean. I hadn’t killed anyone. I wasn’t a murderer. Something that was already dead couldn’t be killed.
Thinking I was hyperventilating, I cupped my palms over my mouth to try stemming the panic. I might have muttered Freya’s name into my palms, maybe even let go a few Sweet Miriams and a couple of curses about the oracle and her ridiculous predictions. The only thing I knew for sure was that my heart was hammering in my chest like a rabbit thumping ground to warn its warren mates of danger. My blood sang in my ears, creating a delirious sort of ringing.
I wasn’t a murderer. I hadn’t killed anyone.
They were already dead.
Those three sentences became a mantra in my thoughts as I peeled my hands away from my face. I pulled in a deep breath and caught Ari’s eye. There was something in his gaze that looked how I imagined pride might look. Some sort of respect, even.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I demanded, glaring at him despite the little bubble of happiness flickering in my chest. “You’d think you’d never seen a woman with mad skills before.”
I was aware that someone had slapped me on the back of the shoulders. In a haze, I swung my gaze sideways to see Gus. He wasn’t grinning at me like Ari was—rather, he was giving me a sort of wary berth as he backed away. He ran his hands over his biceps and let them settle beneath his armpits.
“Mad skills indeed, boots girl,” he said, but I couldn’t detect a note of admiration in his voice. Instead, he surveyed the area with a dark look. “Bastards got at least three of our men and took half our bounty before they ran off.”
He clomped over to the group of girls from earlier and pulled them away from each other like they were strings attached in a rope. One by one, he checked their lumens and grunted when he saw they were still intact.
I looked around, doing my best to find some sort of calm. There were significantly less derelicts in the building now. Some of the people lay staring upward at the ceiling with empty eye sockets, looking grey and shriveled. Something from within them was gone, and it was far past simple death that eroded their skin. It was as though every spark that ignited every muscle and sent fire to every synapse had been siphoned free of the tissues.
“Where’s Uriel?” I demanded even as the gorge started to rise in my belly.
I had a flash of the boy lying somewhere looking like that, the hope of the hollow gone to the grim ones’ hunger. My throat burned with bile. I didn’t think I would make it to the curtain, but I managed to hold the shock of it all down as I pulled the material back.
Blinking up at me from the toilet hole, covered in fluids, was the boy.
“Blessed Miriam,” I said and reached in to hook him beneath the armpits. I yanked him free of the hole and slung him against my torso. He slid down my waist and nearly off my hip, and I had to struggle to keep him docked to my body.
I had him. Filthy and stinking, but I had him. Now I just had to get out of the building. Whatever had happened to the people here or why the grim ones had attacked us didn’t matter now.
I reached behind my back and flicked the curtain closed, cutting us off from view while I tried to force my memory to envision which path through the crowds was the fastest. Which direction held the fewest people to get in the way of my escape? Pulling him from my hip to my waist, I held him close. I felt his heart beating against mine, and his lumen dug into my belly.
I eased my eyes closed and tried to remember what the room had looked like as I’d surveyed it. Tried to remember where each brigand was located.
“It’s okay, Uriel,” I whispered. “I’m going to get us both out of here.”
I thought the boy had responded by squeezing me tight, and some strange warmth snuggled into my chest, but it turned out to be Ari’s hot palm squirming its way beneath my arm. Seconds later, he was with me behind the curtain. His body was pressed close to mine, hugging my back and reaching around me for Uriel.
I felt his breath on my neck. “Squirrely little thing, aren’t you?” he asked. “I almost believed you were worried about the boy.”
“You dropped him in that fetid hole?” I asked. “You thought that was an acceptable thing to do?”
“Far preferable to the grim ones getting him, don’t you think?”
“There’s no telling what he’s been exposed to in there.”
I felt him shrug from behind me.
“E. coli poisoning, diphtheria, cholera.” He moved suddenly, and I realized he was taking off his jacket. He stepped in front of me and scooped the boy from my arms by dropping the coat over Uriel’s shoulders and wrapping him up in it. “Besides,” he said. “I didn’t drop him in there. All I did was push him behind the curtain. He must’ve fallen in.”
He shouldered his way back through the curtain, the boy held out ahead of him as he went, with me trailing behind.
“Where are you going with him?” I demanded.
Without so much as twisting around to address me, he forged ahead, pushing his way through his comrades who were busy herding the remaining derelicts back into groups.
“To the kitchen,” he said. “I’m dumping him in the sink and running some water over him. A little soap on his mouth and face.” He looked this way and that before bee-lining for an open door. “We can’t deliver him looking like this. Or smelling like it, either.”
Without the cloth in his mouth, the boy started to wail. I wondered again how old he was and why he wasn’t speaking. I was close enough to them that the sound made something in my chest go tight. Some urge bade me put my hand over the jacket where I thought his head was and shush him.
I heard him snuffling against Ari’s shirt and imagined him rubbing his nose back and forth into the material. The metallic glint of the edge of Ari’s lumen peeked out between the buttons. For the first time, I realized how strange it was that I hadn’t yet seen his.
“Is that your lumen?” I asked.
He shifted the boy against his chest and ran a hand between the buttons, effectively pushing the lumen back out of sight.
“Why are you hiding it? Could be maybe you’re the one who’s different?” I snorted, enjoying throwing Gus’s accusation of me at him.
Ari craned his neck forward, letting his lips touch the side of my cheek in a conspiratorial whisper. “For the same reason you are, little one,” he hissed against my skin, and a tingle ran down my spine. “Only a fool shows how fully lit he is or how dark he’s growing.”
The note of conspiracy in his voice made me decide to scan the room for Gus, hoping he was busy in the shadows somewhere rounding up some of the people who had managed to flee the building in the chaos.
“I’m coming with you,” I said, trailing his heels again so I wouldn’t lose sight of him in the shadows of the farther end of the building. My night vision was starting to improve, but I couldn’t see very far in front of me without the light from the lumens to chase away the gloom.
“Suit yourself,” Ari said. When I stepped on one of his heels, he halted and spun around. “But stay out of my way.”
“What do you think they wanted?” I asked. “The grim ones. Why would they come here after us?”
I didn’t want to believe that it could be my magic that had trolled them in. That would mean I couldn’t use m
agic the entire time I was here, and if I couldn’t use magic once I got Uriel into my clutches, then I’d have to use my physical training and nothing more to protect him. That meant I’d have to let go of him if the time came that I needed to defend him. Or I’d need to find a partner to help me. Maybe if I appealed to Ari’s sense of greed, I could convince him to leave his group of merry men.
“Do you think maybe Brad did something to give away our position?” I pressed when Ari didn’t answer.
“What do you mean our?” he asked. “And what do you think they wanted? Same thing they always want. They suck everything out of their victims, siphoning off all the energy. Once they do, they go back to their masters—the Dark Fae use that light to augment their magic.”
I had assumed the grim ones were a result of Coventina’s darkening magic. That the Dark Fae Coalition was using the darkly consumed for their own ends hadn’t occurred to me.
Did the witch coven know about these grim ones? Surely if they had any inkling they existed and that the Dark Fae were using them to strengthen their powers, they wouldn’t have sent me on such a foolhardy mission alone. Even if they did hate me.
I squirmed in my boots as I imagined they might have done just that.
I wanted to ask him more, but he had already stalked away from me and was disappearing into the shadows that waited beyond the open kitchen door. I hurried ahead, blind to anything but the way his head appeared to bob about in the shadows.
When I entered, one of the kitchen volunteers was standing with her back to the wall with her hands against her chest. She looked as though she was praying. Ari grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled her close to the sink, then plunked Uriel into the basin.
“Get me some towels,” he barked.
In the weak light of her lumen, I could make out a broad counter with a huge double sink. Uriel was nothing but a black mound within it, the tap digging into his little head. Ari pushed the tap off to the side, and when he peeled off the jacket, Uriel blinked and started to cry.
“Now what’s wrong?” Ari asked in the voice of a man who had been pressed too far. He turned to the volunteer. “What do you think is wrong with him now?”
“He’s filthy,” I said. “You’d be crying, too, if you were full of shit.”
He twisted to look me up and down. “You mean like you?”
I squared my shoulders, hurt and defensive all at the same time. “Maybe with me full of shit, the rest of you lot will keep your hands off me.”
He shrugged, and the ghost of a smile played on his lips. “I tried to tell you already, little one, no one wants a redhead. Maybe Gus, but his tastes run to the perverse.”
I swallowed. It hurt. I wasn’t sure why. But it did.
I stomped over to the sink and ran my palm along Uriel’s cheek. With a sigh, I peeled his clothes away, careful not to hurt him. When I got to his lumen, I no sooner had my fingers whispering against its surface before I felt Ari’s hand on mine. He squeezed.
“No funny business,” he said.
I looked sideways at him. “No funny business,” I repeated.
I hoped he would read sincerity in my face, but it was hard to infuse it into my expression knowing I was going to slip away the moment he turned his back.
He let go my hand. Apparently, he saw what he wanted to in my face as he crossed his arms over his chest. He stood painfully close. The tapping of his foot against the tiles unnerved me. I wished he would give me some space. I wished I wasn’t covered in excrement. I wished that whatever he was thinking about me, it was something good and kind. I was so tired of people hating me.
“What’s the holdup?” he asked, a bit of a growl in his tone, and I realized I was staring at the little face in front of me without so much as picking up the soap.
I let go a sigh loud enough that Uriel repeated it. Then he smiled. He had all of his teeth, I noticed.
“Come on, little man,” I said. “Let’s get you clean.”
I turned on the tap and ran it until it was warm. A bottle of dish detergent sat on the counter, and I squeezed some of the liquid onto a dish rag. As I was wiped him clean, he was squirming as though I was tickling him. When he giggled, I felt a smile slide across my face, too.
Ari groaned from beside me. “Hurry up,” he said. “We don’t want to be around here when they come back.”
I peered at him. “When who comes back?”
“The grim ones,” he said. “You don’t think they just left us here, do you?”
“But they’re all dead,” I said.
He cocked an eyebrow at me as the volunteer shifted subtly to the side. I caught sight of her in the corner of my eye and realized she hadn’t liked what she had heard him say.
“We killed them all,” I said.
“We killed some of them,” he said. “The rest of them ran off. Where do you think they would run to?”
I thought about that. I had no experience with the grim ones besides the ones I had killed on the beach and the ones here. “Are you saying they’ll be bringing the Dark Fae with them when they return?”
I expected Ari to answer, but it was Gus’s voice from the doorway that answered me.
“I think he’s saying something trolled them here, and I’m willing to bet it’s that boy’s light.”
The volunteer hovered behind him. Tattletale, I thought, sending her a glare.
Gus’s boots scuffed across the floor as he entered. When he grabbed the volunteer by the waist and held her against his side, she whimpered. I immediately regretted my assessment of her. She’d no doubt been forced to spy.
“He’s saying there isn’t anyone else in the building,” Gus went on. “Or anyone we’ve seen for that matter—who has that much lumen.”
Ari lifted the boy from the sink, dripping and leaking water onto the floor. He said nothing, but I noticed he had pursed his lips when Gus entered. I’d bet anything he didn’t trust the man. It made me feel slightly better.
“It’s the Dark Fae who are coming?” I asked, making a stab at the reason both looked so tense.
“If the Dark Fae would pay the light price for the boy, they could have him,” Gus said. “But they have a habit of just taking what they want.”
“You mean like you do?” I snapped.
“Careful,” Ari whispered. “I told you he has perverse tastes.”
“Yes,” Gus said. “Be careful, boots girl. Your boyfriend here might end up discovering he doesn’t have quite so many friends among your enemies.”
At that, Ari pulled a dishtowel from a counter drawer and dried the boy off. Then he lifted the lumen from the sideboard and tied it back around Uriel’s ribcage, just over his heart. It didn’t escape my notice that while it had been lying inert on the counter, it had gone dark, but now that it touched the boy’s skin again, it glowed bright enough to make me shield my eyes. I thought I heard Gus smack those disgusting lips of his.
“You know,” Gus said, shoving the volunteer aside and slapping her on the backside. “You just might be off the hook, Ari.”
Ari pulled Uriel against his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“I was beginning to wonder about you,” he said. “We’ve been having trouble with those grim ones ever since you joined us.”
Ari sucked his teeth. “You saying you think I’m working for the Dark Fae?”
Gus blew air. “Hell, no. What would the Dark Fae want with a human? And you are human. Just like this little girl here.” He pointed to me with his chin.
“It’s Everly,” I said through tight lips.
Gus grinned. His mouth looked like a snake stretching out over a hot rock. He ignored me, however, striding almost casually over to Ari. My fists clenched against my legs. Just let the bastard try to take Uriel. Just let him.
He stretched out his hand and waggled his fingers in the air as he waited for Ari to agree to the grip.
“Truce?” he said.
Ari gave a short nod and reached out until Gus slipped h
is palm into Ari’s. There was one short pump and then the hands sort of hung in the air, neither man willing to let go or sure if he should.
Gus gave a playful tug. “He’s ours. Right, brother?”
“Damn straight,” Ari said and tugged back. Uriel hid behind Ari’s legs.
“Share and share alike,” Gus said. A peculiar expression crossed his face, but he seemed almost hesitant to look at me again. “We stick together. Share. Have each other’s backs.”
I shuffled my feet, my glance darting to Uriel as I wondered how I could divest him from Ari now that the boy seemed so damned comfortable with the brigand.
“You said it,” Ari said. He pulled his hand free of Gus’s and reached for Uriel.
It was obvious he might be agreeing to stick with Gus, but he wasn’t about to let the boy free to wander into the man’s clutches. Did Gus understand the subtle way Ari shifted to block out the boy’s form from Gus’s eye? It didn’t really matter. The tension was gone between the two, and I was left to wonder if I could use the calm to wrangle myself a spot within the group and follow Uriel until I could wrest him away.
At least it was how I felt for one decidedly uneventful moment. In the next, Gus’s attention slid to me and the look he gave me as he lunged for me made my belly go clammy.
“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s see what she’s got to share.”
Chapter 10
It took me at least a heartbeat to notice the room had come alive with a bustle of men rushing from the shadows to throw themselves at Ari at the same moment Gus released his hand and leapt for me instead. I didn’t bother to count the shadows as they flew at Ari and knocked him flat. Something in my psyche knew how many there were. The counting was automatic, ingrained by years of training. I ticked them off unconsciously as Ari landed with a gush of air and Uriel let go a whoop of terror before scampering for the darkness. Three of them. Plus Gus.
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