Grim Rites

by Bilinda Sheehan

  Nic grimaced and pushed onto his feet. The act of going from sitting to standing put me at a disadvantage and he suddenly towered over me.

  “You want to get coffee or something?” he asked hopefully.

  “Covered in blood? Not particularly,” I said, gesturing to the front of my shirt.

  But it wasn’t as though I could go home; the forensics were still combing the area and the last thing I wanted to see was all the blood still staining the sidewalk. No, what I really wanted to do was run and hide from everything that happened. It wasn’t going to be possible but it didn’t mean I didn’t feel like it.

  “You could come back to mine, I’ll take the couch if you want to crash for a while…” he said, and the sudden intensity in his gaze made me want to squirm under his scrutiny.

  Was it good idea, going back to his place? What if I blacked out again and woke up covered in Nic’s blood?

  “You won’t hurt me, Amber, I trust you…” he said, as though he could read the insecurities swirling in my head.

  “But you don’t know that for certain,” I answered. Sighing, I pushed my hand back through my hair and grimaced as my fingers became tangled. My hair was beginning to harden with the dried blood.

  “Fine, but if anything happens….”

  Nic grinned, “I’ll be certain to handcuff you to the bed.” There was a wicked glint in his eyes that suggested he wasn’t entirely teasing me. My head was suddenly filled with images of him handcuffing me to his bed. Heat spread up my chest and into my face before I could stop it.

  “You’re actually thinking about it, aren’t you?”

  “No!” I said, a little too forcefully, and I was instantly reminded of the famous line from Hamlet about ladies and their protests. “So what if I was? Last time I checked, the Thought Police weren’t a real thing.”

  Stalking toward the front door, I tried to keep my back straight and my head high. The muffled sound of Nic’s laughter behind me only made the heat in my face flame more.

  I was a dork, a giant dork, one that needed a giant sign over her head that read, “dork available to make complete and utter fool of herself for shits and giggles”. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Nic caught up to me and caught my arm; the feel of his hand against my skin sent little bubbles of excitement racing in my veins.

  “I’m sorry for laughing,” he said, the grin still firmly fixed in place on his face.

  “You do realise that continuing to grin at me like a smug idiot isn’t doing much for your apology?”

  “I know, but I’ve got a pretty good reason to….” I waited for him to continue but he remained silent.

  “Fine, what is it?”

  “Well, it’s just, I remember rather distinctly the first time I ever kissed you. You pretty much threatened to tear me a new one if I ever did it again.”

  “Because you kissed me to help you hide from someone else.”

  He sighed and released his grip on me. “You going to hold it against me forever?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  He moved in closer, close enough that I could see a swirl of blue right in the centre of his grey eyes. “Well, just so you know, I wouldn’t mind handcuffing you to my bed for reasons other than you trying to kill me….” There was a huskiness to his voice that I hadn’t noticed before and it tightened things low in my belly. I wanted to crush my body against his, to feel his lips on mine.

  “I thought you said all that stuff was too Fifty Shades of Grey for you?” I said. The second the words left my mouth, I cringed inwardly.

  Shit, shit, shit, what the hell was wrong with me?

  “What?” Nic said, a smile curling his lips, and the hungry look he’d been giving me melted away.

  I was definitely a dork.

  “Never mind, but if the offer of your place is still open, I’m definitely going to take you up on it. I need to get cleaned up before I can go and see Graham. Please tell me you’ve got a shower and hot water?”

  Nic threw his arm across my shoulder, “I got you covered on the shower and hot water … I’m just not sure about the towel situation. A hand towel will cover all the important bits anyway, right?”

  I stared at him in horror and he laughed, the sound rumbling from the middle of his chest; it lifted my mood for the first time that evening.

  “Honestly, Amber, anyone would think you’d never heard of jokes before,” he said.

  I smiled, and perhaps if the situation had been different, I would have laughed along with him. But there was only so much lightening that could be done to my mood. The thought of laughing after what I’d done—well, it just didn’t sit right with me. I’d killed all those men, and no matter what they’d tried to do to me, they hadn’t deserved to die so horribly; nobody deserved that except maybe the demon who’d given me the mark in the first place. The sooner I could get rid of it and send that creature back to Hell where it belonged, the better it would be for everyone….

  Chapter 3

  Standing beneath the water’s spray, I watched the crimson colour as it swirled away down the drain. Why did it always come back to this? Every time I finally thought I was getting somewhere with the Elite, I found myself back at square one. And for what?

  Was this what I wanted from my life now? I’d started working for the Elite in order to find out who’d killed my father. Well, I had that answer now, so why continue? Was there a point to any of it anymore?

  If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t have the same drive I’d had before. There was far more death and destruction than I’d been expecting; some of it had been caused by me, and how I was supposed to reconcile that within myself—well, I just didn’t have the answer to that.

  But what else could I do? From the moment my father died, I’d been so determined to find a way to bring his killer to justice. And now that I knew that was me, how was I going to pay for my sins?

  Was helping people my chance at redemption? I certainly wasn’t a hero; nobody would write songs or make movies about my life and my eternal struggle with the war that raged within me, a war I was pretty sure I was rapidly losing. I dropped my gaze to the swirling circle branded into my skin. The black edges of it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  To the rest of the world, it looked like a normal tribal tattoo, but this didn’t belong to any tribe on Earth. It wasn’t until you really stared at it, allowing the edges of the swirling lines to blend into the rest of the surrounding skin, that you could truly see it as it moved and shifted against my body. A living, pulsing entity all of its own.

  It shifted again, the words “Animae Damnotorum” appearing through the black lines and my body shuddered. “Soul of the Damned”; it wasn’t exactly something you wanted to see written across your own body, particularly when it wasn’t by choice. How anyone willingly sold their soul and could live with the brand was beyond me. Wearing mine made my skin crawl.

  Flipping off the spray of water, I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in the fluffy black towel Nic had given to me. At least he really had been joking when he’d threatened only having hand towels. I was comfortable in my own skin—well, as comfortable as any woman was going to be—but that didn’t mean I fancied strolling around someone else’s apartment with something that just covered the important bits….

  Pausing in front of the mirror, I could just make out my outline through the steam coating the glass and I flipped open the cabinet. It was nosy as all get out, but I didn’t care; poking through other people’s medicine cabinets was a little like getting a glimpse into their souls. You could tell a lot about a person’s intentions by what they kept inside it.

  For example, if the cabinet was ridiculously tidy, everything coordinated, their labels uniformly facing forward, with focus-enhancing drugs alongside caffeine pills, you were probably dealing with a control freak. Of course, the opposite also applied. If the cabinet was in complete disarray, dangerous prescription medications placed alongside benign over-the-coun
ter drugs, packets split wide open, spilling their contents across the shelves and a general appearance of uncleanliness … well, it probably wasn’t kept by someone you wanted to entrust your life to if it came down to fighting your way out of a tight corner.

  Nic fell somewhere in the middle, with the usual pain pills and bandages I’d expect to see for someone who hunted monsters for a living. His razor sat on the middle shelf, the bottle of shaving foam spilling over and down the side, which made me smile, until something along the back wall caught my eye. Reaching through the mishmash of items, I ran my fingers along the circle and a frisson of power darted beneath my skin.

  A flash of imagery crashed through my skull the way a bull might charge through a china shop. Blood, screaming, the smell of incinerated flesh invaded my nostrils, and I was gagging as my lungs burned, filling with water.

  I jerked my hand away and the world returned: the stark bathroom, white tile running with moisture after the shower I’d had. Sweat beaded along my brow and my finger still tingled.

  He was a hunter, but what in all Hell was he doing with a witch hunter symbol etched into the back of his medicine cabinet? My stomach dropped and I pressed my hand against my chest as my breaths came in small, shallow pants.

  Get a grip, Amber, it’s probably nothing!

  I fought against the feeling of betrayal that opened up in the centre of my chest. Along with the Shadow Sorcerers, it was long believed the witch hunters had died out. After the purge, they weren’t needed anymore and went underground, but the originals, the ones who hunted witches because it ran in their blood—they’d completely died off.

  Or at least that was what I’d always been lead to believe. But then, everything I’d thought I knew had been a lie. Why would this be any different?

  But if Nic was a witch hunter, then it was literally in his blood, a calling that couldn’t be denied. So, despite knowing what I was, why hadn’t he tried to take my head yet?

  “You nearly done in there?” Nic called out. His voice sounded as though he was standing directly outside the door and my heart started to gallop in my chest.

  “Yeah, I just need a few more….”

  Who was I kidding? I needed more than a few minutes to digest this—there wasn’t enough time on Earth to get to grips with it. And anyway, none of it made sense. If he was what the symbol said he was, then I wasn’t going to hang around here playing roommate.

  Tightening the towel around my chest, I jerked the door open and came face-to-face with him.

  His gaze met mine, before it dropped lower, the intensity in his eyes increasing as he realised I was wearing nothing but the black towel he’d given me.

  “I didn’t mean … but hey, I can’t say I’m not pleased with this development….” There was a huskiness to his voice that tightened things low in my gut, and the demon mark tingled. It would be so easy to give into my carnal desires. To sate myself with his body.

  “No!” I said, more to myself than to Nic and he jerked his gaze up to meet mine once more.

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asked, staring past me into the bathroom. After the way he’d found me earlier in the night, he was probably expecting to see a collection of dead bodies piled around the toilet.

  “What the hell is that thing?” I asked, jerking my arm back in the direction of the bathroom and the still-open medicine cabinet.

  “What’s what?” he asked, confusion filling his face.

  Anger bubbled in my veins and power crowded my head. The light bulb hanging overhead exploded in a burst of sparks and cascading glass that rained down over our heads.

  Nic jumped, covering his head with his hands as he stared at me, a little wide eyed.

  “What was that for, Amber—Christ, what are you thinking?” The huskiness I’d heard in his voice had disappeared, replaced with an anger that threatened to rival my own.

  “You’re a witch hunter,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m a hunter. I thought that was pretty obvious.”

  “Not just a hunter. Don’t play me for a fool, you’re a witch hunter, Nic—don’t lie to me, not now, not now I’ve seen the mark.” Anger continued to bubble in my veins as he shook his head, tiny shards of glass falling from his hair.

  He stormed past me into the bathroom and slammed the cabinet door back against the wall, causing the mirror to crack straight down the centre. A stupid part of my brain wanted to chastise him for bringing seven years’ bad luck on his head, but I bit the words back behind the hurt that welled within me.

  “This thing?” he asked, pointing to the mark on the wall. I could still feel the tingling burn of it against my fingers.

  “Yeah, Nic, that thing,” I said, forcing myself to sound stronger than I truly felt.

  “It’s not mine, Amber, it belonged to my brother!”

  The world swam in colour and I gripped the door frame hard enough to chip my nails. It wasn’t his. He wasn’t the one after me, and his brother was dead….

  “Shit…” I said, a mixture of relief and embarrassment flooding down my limbs, turning them to jelly.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Nic answered. The look of anger and irritation in his face made me shrink back on myself and I took a trembling step back.

  I wasn’t afraid of him, but I’d never realised before just how much his opinion mattered to me. When had that happened? Because whenever it had occurred, well, it was going to be a pain in the ass to deal with. And after the stunt I’d just pulled, things were going to be awkward with a capital A.

  “You can take my room down the hall; I need to shower.” There was a disappointment in his eyes that I hadn’t been expecting and it cut me straight to the core.

  He slammed the door, leaving me to stand in the hall surrounded by shards of broken glass, and my heart sank in my chest once more. He hated me, and if I was honest, I couldn’t really blame him.

  Chapter 4

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I listened to the sound of water as it switched off. He was pissed at me, and how could I blame him? I’d accused him of being something that had gone down in history as truly horrendous. The witch hunters’ reputations had certainly preceded them, their acts so heinous that they’d been wiped from the history books. Those who’d been affected—witches from my mother’s line being one such instance—had never forgotten, the stories passed down from generation to generation.

  So what the hell had his brother been doing leaving witch hunter symbols in the bathroom? It wasn’t the sort of thing you could get yourself into. Witch hunters were born, not made, especially the sort who could create symbology with as much of a kick as the one in the medicine cabinet.

  Glancing down at my finger, I noticed the small blister that had formed on the tip—the tip I’d touched the mark with. If simply touching the mark could do that much damage, then what would happen if I ran into the maker of said mark?

  It didn’t bear thinking about and I closed my eyes as the bathroom door down the hall swung open. Nic strode out into the hall. The sight of him in his combat boots while wrapped in only a towel brought a small smile to my lips. He caught my gaze and glared at me before disappearing into the living area.

  Whatever little trust we’d been building, I’d definitely damaged it. But how could he blame me?

  He doesn’t understand, the small voice in the back of my mind piped up, and for once I didn’t instantly dismiss it. It was true—he didn’t understand, how could he? He knew as much as the rest of the world about the true history between the witch hunters and the Shadow Sorcerers.

  I’d heard the stories from my mother, but what I’d witnessed in the bathroom from simply touching the symbol—that was something else. I’d felt the bubble of my flesh, the feel of the red hot poker as they’d pushed it into places that should never be abused. The rush of water as it filled my lungs and I fought against the iron bands wrapped around my body. I’d touched the mark for only a second, but I’d experienced the torture of a multitude of
souls.

  Grabbing my clothes, I quickly dragged them on, wrapping my hair up into a knot that I secured with an elastic. I pushed my feet into my boots and crunched down the hall over the broken glass. After what had happened, there was no quiet way to move around.

  Pausing in the doorway, I scanned my surroundings; the living room was bare, apart from a battered brown leather couch and a huge wide screen television. Littering the floor in front of it, I could see at least two different game consoles and plastic game boxes. Across the room, near the largest window in the apartment, sat a dining room table, its surface covered in books. Without exploring further, I crossed the room and paused in front of the table.

  The books were old, their pages yellowed and stiff with age. Many of the inscriptions I couldn’t read, due to them being in some language I definitely didn’t speak. Nic could speak more than one language? It didn’t seem utterly unlikely and, well, I’d never bothered to ask him if he could or not.

  Come to think of it, there were a whole lot of things I didn’t know about him. A whole lot of things I was going to have to find out, especially if his brother had been a witch hunter.

  “Find something else you’d like to accuse me of?” he asked, making me jump. I spun around to face him. He’d gotten dressed, his hair still wet and slicked back away from his face.

  “Can you read all of this?” I asked, picking up one text that had particularly caught my eye. There was something about it, something so very familiar, but I had no idea why it should be. As far as I was aware, I’d never seen it before in my life.

  “Some of it I’ve got a working knowledge on, the rest I use dictionaries for, and if it’s a language I just don’t recognise then I take it to someone who can.”

  “Like who?” I said, running my finger down across the writing on the page. The symbol that sat in the centre drew me in, enticing me to….

  Nic’s hands closed over mine and he snapped the book shut. “Maybe spending too much time with this stuff isn’t such a good idea for you.”