She caressed the keyboard cover and gently lifted it. “I didn’t know you played.”
The weight of Aldric’s hands left her. He eased to one side, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t.”
She frowned as her fingers stroked over the keys with no pressure. She tried a few tentative notes… it was a little out of tune. “Then why is it here?”
“As a reminder.” His face twisted into a bitter smile and he rubbed at his chest again. “Play for me?”
Dutifully, she fell into Moonlight Sonata, something she could play without thinking. “A reminder of what?”
He faced the window again, barely choking back a cough. Was he…crying? “Of what it feels like to love.”
She faltered over the fourth bar, but kept playing. Bri had known the night of her mother’s death that her father had changed. She imagined his heart a withered thing inside his chest. As hers had been, until Kean brought it back to life. Aldric only had his memories, dry and brittle. Bri’s sadness for both of them seeped into the notes, which hit the high stone walls and rained back down. The sky outside was quickly darkening with thick clouds. Though the weight of the past few hours made her eyelids droop, she kept playing.
She opened her mouth to ask about Astrid and Kean again, but at the same moment, her father doubled over in a coughing fit. He gripped the sideboard, and his next breath rattled as he sucked it in. Bri rushed to his side and lightly brushed his shoulder.
The sky shook around them with the reverberation of thunder.
Her father took in a few short breaths, then straightened. Bri’s mind was buzzing with panic, but she couldn’t make any rational sense of it. Worries had piled up and layered over each other so much, it was hard to tell one from the other. Several voices screamed in her head — memory, vision, instinct — but they blended together into an internal clatter that made her vision blur.
Rain started to skitter down the window.
“I never told you.” Cough. “What that night meant for me.” Wheeze.
It’s him, Bri.
Bri’s hand fell away, and the pressure in her forehead became an icicle jutting into her skull. She took a careful step back. “No…”
He bent and coughed again, large wracking heaves, until something cracked.
“No.” Bri stumbled back.
Her father’s body twisted and writhed.
You have to see.
“Briana,” her father said, in a voice almost his own, “forgive me.”
She tripped over the bearskin and fell, biting her tongue on impact. Blood filled her mouth. The room felt like it was closing in on her.
Aldric’s shoulders rose and fell with his wheezing breaths, and the oiled gravel voice from her most terrible nightmares said, “I took her life, and every day since has been a battle to hold on to this body. But you, daughter mine,” the endearment was a sickening whine, “will be my redemption.”
Bri scrambled across the floor, putting the piano between them before she climbed to her feet and faced the monster. A sallow wraith of the man she’d called father shifted toward her with a limping gait. His face was contorted into an unrecognizable mask of pain. In the center of his oblong forehead was a charred patch of flesh in the shape of a bird with spread wings.
A flash of white lit the sky, turning him into a misshapen silhouette. Except for the eyes, which glowed like blood on fire.
“No!” Bri’s heart matched the next pound of thunder. She sidestepped around the piano as he approached and tried to gauge the distance to the door. If she could time it just right, she could shove them both through the wards, and then run—
The piano skidded across the floor and halted in front of the only exit.
She drew in a breath to scream as he closed in, but long, razor-sharp talons wrapped around her neck and lifted her from the ground. “Choose, Skydancer: the mirror or your soul. One way or the other, I will find a door into this world tonight. You are not strong enough to resist me.”
For a fleeting second, as she choked on her own blood and acrid fear, Bri considered giving up the mirror. Give the monster what it wants, and make it go away, whispered a terrified voice in the back of her head. With possession of her soul, he could bring unspeakable destruction — his own words. But would he do any differently with the mirror? No. She couldn’t give up what her mother, and Ce-Ce, and Tara had died for.
Protect the Legacy.
Her lungs screamed for air. Her legs flailed. She dug bloody runnels into his forearms with her nails as he snarled up at her. She closed her eyes to the ugliness of her father’s disfigured face, and she saw… Kean laying on the floor, lifeless; herself, falling through an endless black abyss; a tide of blood and chaos and mountains of bodies. Hell unleashed on earth.
No!
If the demon was here, with her, was she already too late? What if Kean and Astrid were already dead? She had no choice — she had to resist him. Even if that meant dying. Vivianne had done it. Her life was a small price to pay. Die, and take the secret of the mirror with her. It might be the only way. As darkness ate at her vision, the rain smacked on the windowpanes harder, and a long howl sounded somewhere in the distance.
***
Lucas was on his way to the security office to see where the other two witches were being held when the alarm was called. He didn’t know how many times the message had been picked up and carried before reaching him: a long howl, followed by three shorter ones. Murder. He listened carefully for an answering call, one indicating pursuit. Instead, the same echoed around him from every direction.
Murder. Murder. Murder.
The sound clawed at his insides, making it impossible to breathe.
Ana.
His legs were carrying him up to the Arcanum before his mind registered the action. He flew up the stairs four at a time and bolted for the center wing, where the calls were most concentrated. Halfway there, he stumbled into an unseasoned pup tearing through rooms at random, barking and yipping nonsensically. Lucas grabbed him by the scruff and shook him hard before dropping him to the ground. “Report!”
The wolf transformed and climbed to his human feet, still panting. “Councilor Mayberry has been killed. Hohlwen patrol found her in the east woods, dead at least half an hour. Captain Jair has put the whole fortress on lockdown. No witnesses, and no scent trail from the body yet.”
“Where are the prisoners?” Lucas growled.
The young man shuffled his weight from foot to foot, his pupils tiny lantern flames as he fought to hold his form. “Two are still locked in the west wing. The girl is missing.”
A roar of fury bowed Lucas’s back and reverberated through the empty hall. She should have been safe here. How had a demon infiltrated the Synod? He turned and slammed his fist into the nearest hard surface. The marble slab cracked and fell away, revealing the brickwork underneath.
“Sir?”
“Inform Captain Jair that I am on the hunt. I’ll sound off when I pick up the trail. Tell him to send me a Flight of Hohlwen and to alert the Council.”
“Sir?” the young guard said again.
“Don’t question me. Just do it.” Lucas whirled on his heel, already marching towards the room where he’d last seen his mate alive. Where he’d left her alone and distraught — easy prey for a Soul Eater. What had he done? Not an hour ago, she’d been safe in his arms, begging for his help. He should have listened to her, protected her. Stayed by her side regardless of consequences. If he lost her again…
He shook thoughts of the Void from his mind and focused on his quarry.
It wasn’t hard to pick up her scent. He’d memorized it the first time they met, and it was all over his hands and clothes. The trail from the room she’d been held in led to the south tower. At the base of the stairs, he hit the first ward and cursed his blindness.
Her own father.
The ward wreaked of Councilor Wright, and something much, much fouler, which he hadn’t sensed for millennia: purebred Khao
s demon. Even with a Flight of Hohlwen drawing full force, it would take precious time for the barrier to fall, and this was likely the first of many.
Lucas shifted into his wolf and announced the source of the trail. He ran as fast as four legs would carry him to the west wing. Briana’s precious Ward might be the only one who could save her life, and rescue Lucas from certain despair.
Chapter Thirty-One
By the time Kean had wrestled out of his binds and strategically tested the wards holding them in, Astrid was just rousing. He’d untied her and tucked her into one of the chairs. Her head tossed from side to side.
“Astrid.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face.
She flinched, but didn’t open her eyes, her head lolling. “Hungry.”
If the situation had been less serious, he would have laughed. “Sorry, no food.”
“Whisky?”
He smiled that time. “Nope.”
Her eyelids slid open a crack. “Where’s Bri?”
Kean glared over his shoulder at the door, which was bleeding magic in a slow trickle from a tiny scratch he’d been able to inflict with an energy blast. He was still suffering from the leech’s siphon, almost completely out of juice. “They must be keeping her somewhere else.” He stood and resumed pacing. “You need to get up.”
Astrid shifted his sweatshirt off of her and slid to the edge of the chair before dropping her face into her hands and groaning. Kean could relate — recovering from a siphon was like the hangover after your twenty-first birthday, only worse. Especially the first time. He’d had plenty of practice. Now the pain only fueled him, and the dizzy spells just pissed him off.
“Get your feet under you. It’ll help.”
She peeked through her hands at the floor. “Ugh. I think I’m gonna be sick.”
He handed her a pounded copper ritual bowl he’d gotten ready for just such an event. She didn’t have much to throw up, but afterwards he leaned her back in the chair and covered her up again. She was shivering, even though her brow was slick with sweat.
Fucking leech could have killed her. The next immortal he ran into was going to pay. And Gawain… Kean’s fists cramped, but he had no energy to call.
“Damn it!” He spun and kicked a low table over. The lamp crashed to the floor.
“Kean,” Astrid said.
He huffed in frustration, but knelt down beside her and took her hand. “Yeah, Pear?”
“What are the charges?”
“I don’t know, but I bet Gawain’s trying to lay this whole mess on us.”
“Asshole.”
Kean snorted. Her fingers were ice cold. His brow knit together. “Just hold on, ‘kay? This will get better, I promise. You’ll be pushing me around again in no time.”
She gave him a faint smile. “I’ll be fine. Don’t puss out on me.”
He laughed as he tried to chafe some warmth into her hands. That was his Prickly Pear. “Yes ma’am.”
“They can’t just hold us here. We have rights.”
He snorted again. The Council could do whatever they wanted. They could leave them there to rot, and no one could do a damn thing about it. Of course, he would tear the room down around them before he let that happen. If Astrid was counting on justice, she was more out of it than he thought. He’d learned a long time ago that when it came to the Synod, there was only one rule: they made the rules.
He hated this place. Hated how time stood still while you were buried inside the catacombs of the keep. Hated the lifeless fires, and the cold marble, and the impenetrable wards. He hated the leeches, and the wolves, and—
As they were spelled to do, the walls of the entire fortress hummed with the Kinde guard’s alarm.
Kean spit out a curse and shot to his feet.
Astrid gripped his hand and stared up at him, wide innocent eyes shimmering. “What’s that?”
He swayed on his feet as a wave of mingled anguish and rage rocked the floor beneath him. Everyone who worked at the Arcanum knew that call. “It means someone’s dead.”
Astrid threw off her covering and scrambled to stand, pulling on his arm for support. “You mean we’re under attack?”
“No. I mean someone’s been killed.”
Astrid clung to his shirt. “We have to get out of here.”
Kean clenched his jaw, staring at the doors and his insignificant scratch on the wards blocking them in. He thought of Bri, frightened and alone somewhere in this unbearable place — because he refused to think of her as dead — and ground his teeth.
Astrid shook him, and he wrapped an arm around her. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He squeezed her harder. Just as he was preparing to pour everything he had into another pathetic energy blast, the doors burst open.
The wards shimmered purple as a lethal-looking Wolfkinde crossed the threshold. His fur was a cinnamon color, with a mantle of longer black hair across his massive four-foot high shoulders. Gleaming black claws clicked on the marble floor as he approached.
Kean thrust Astrid behind him and conjured as much magic as he could into his palm.
The wolf tilted its head and snapped its teeth. Then, he shifted. A haze of magic shrouded him in silver smoke, and miniature stars winked, leaving spots in Kean’s vision. An invisible wind swirled the smoke away, and that bastard Kinde who’d put on a show for Bri stood in the wolf’s place. He was just as imposing as the beast, in full Khaos battle garb — leathers and heavy boots, with a long sword strapped to his back. An arrogant sneer twisted his face when he saw Kean’s energy blast poised and ready.
“If you want to keep her alive, you’ll save your strength, Ward.”
Astrid shoved Kean’s arm to his side. “Bri’s in trouble?”
The Kinde nodded once, never taking his flame-filled gaze from Kean’s face.
He let the energy in his palm dissipate. “Where?”
“Councilor Wright has her locked in the south tower. He harbors a Soul Eater.”
Astrid gasped, gripping a fistful of the back of Kean’s shirt until it choked up around his neck. He felt her legs wobble as she struggled to stay upright. His world capsized, and he couldn’t find any air. Soul Eater. The demon had been right there all along. He’d ignored his instincts about Aldric and let Bri walk right into his grasp.
He turned to pick up Astrid. “Take us.”
“I will carry the little one,” the Kinde said.
Though it galled him to admit, Kean was in no state to run with Astrid’s added weight, slight as it may be. He was already weak, and would rather save what he had for Bri. Still, he hesitated to trust an immortal. Astrid had no such qualms. She lunged into the Kinde’s waiting arms, and held out her hand to Kean in a wordless demand.
He took it, and the three of them crossed the ward together.
The Kinde took off at a lung-chewing pace Kean could barely keep up with. The effects of the siphon and thoughts of Bri in the hands of a Soul Eater tried to trip up his feet. He stared straight ahead at the Kinde’s rune-engraved sword and kept running. The half-demon carried a Khaos-wrought blade in a leather sheath over the inked markings of the Legion Army on his back. A first-generation Kinde. Kean had never gone up against a true demon, but this half-breed probably had, and he believed they had a chance to save Bri. That small reassurance kept Kean’s legs pumping, his breath dragging in and out, despite his utter exhaustion.
They halted at the base of the south stairwell. Several wolves were sniffing along the corners of the hall. A group of Hohlwen gathered in front of the door. The half-breed set Astrid down against the wall and marched ahead, bellowing, “Why haven’t you started?”
One of them, a Captain by the looks of him, stepped forward. “He’s poisoned the wards against us. It took three of my men down already.”
The Kinde snarled out a curse in some ancient language, and the Hohlwen widened their perimeter around him.
Kean slid down the wall beside Astrid, still trying to ca
tch his breath. She leaned against him, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.
He studied the door behind the crowd of immortals. Bri was locked somewhere above them, suffering at the hands of her murderous father. He smacked his head against the stone at his back and closed his eyes.
Hell. He was in Hell.
“Ward!” The Kinde was suddenly looming over them. “Is your love for her true?”
Kean stood, pulling Astrid up with him, and met the Kinde’s glowing eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Then you can fade to her.”
Kean clenched his jaw and glared at the band of Hohlwen to their right. His voice thick, he said, “I’m too drained.”
A purple-tinted vial appeared in the half-breed’s hand. He held it out, more a challenge than an offer. “It will renew your strength.”
Kean’s lip curled as conflicting instincts rallied through him: get to Bri — don’t trust immortals. The rustle in the hallway ceased, and a sharp silence encased them.
Astrid shoved him forward. “Take it!”
He snatched the vial and opened it to sniff. The contents were odorless. He studied the Kinde’s fierce expression, the wildness in his eyes, and he didn’t trust it. He couldn’t. It broke Synod laws to offer Khaos magic to a Zyne. He was risking severe punishment. Kean narrowed his eyes. “Why are you helping us?”
“I lost someone once,” was his only answer.
“Take it!” Astrid urged again, her voice almost shrill.
Without another thought, Kean downed the whole thing. The influx of power was so immense it knocked him back a step. He’d never felt anything like it before. His fingertips hummed. His normal shields snapped into place, only a thousand times stronger. He felt like he could bench-press a Volkswagen, or run a hundred-mile marathon, or conjure an energy blast the size of a small house.
“Are you okay?” His senses had sharpened too. Astrid’s hand on his shoulder was a trickle of fresh spring water.
“I feel…incredible.” He turned back to the Kinde, fumbling for words he thought he’d never speak in a million lifetimes. He offered his hand in truce. “Thank you, whoever you are.”
Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy) Page 28