Xander looked to the floor. It was the first time I saw him truly uncomfortable. “Those of us who are strong enough can make another. I know of only a few that can do it, Azriel being one of them. An exchange is made between two souls, creating an ethereal connection that changes you forever.”
“How,” I said. “Tell me how.”
“In essence, he would have taken a part of your soul into himself, and in return, given you a bit of his own to replace the empty space.”
“In essence?” I shrieked. “Bullshit! I want details.”
“He might have seduced you. It usually happens during moments of passion, such as love, longing, or even anger. It would have been a simple act, though not simple to perform. With just the joining of your mouths, bodies, spirits, you would have opened your heart to him, and that’s all it would have taken. A window of opportunity for him to extract that small piece and replace it with something of himself. It is not only physical in nature, but metaphysical as well. It would have taken a moment of strong emotion for the exchange to happen.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, turning my back on him. “You’re trying to tell me an exchange on a spiritual level effected a physical change. It’s impossible.” I would have fallen for a bite or drinking blood. Hell, an STD would have made more sense than soul exchanging.
“I understand your skepticism,” he said. “It’s a very rare occurrence. I know of only three who have been made, including you. You must have been particularly receptive to the change.”
“Receptive . . .”
“Receptive, meaning that maybe your life wasn’t a wonderful thing and you longed for a new life, a different existence. Or maybe you were truly in love with him.”
I snorted in disgust. “You still didn’t tell me how it was done.”
“At night, in his shadow form, he would have passed through your body. The exchange is made at that moment. What do you remember from the last night you were human?”
“Not much,” I said. “I remember him, the brief time we were together before it happened, and the time we were together afterward. But of the actual transformation, I remember nothing.”
“There must have been a shadow on your soul, Darian.” His voice slithered around me in false, empty warmth. “You were a shadow of a human; that’s why it was so easy for you to turn. You were one of us before you ever realized it.”
I turned to face him. I hated him more now than ever. He’d managed to draw me from obscurity, connect me to others like me. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t, in some deeper part of me, crave to belong to something. Because of that I knew—against my better judgment—that I would stay this course.
“Will you do this terrible thing for me?” he asked, taking my hands in his.
I looked away. “I’m leaving now,” I said, low. “I’ll meet Raif tomorrow night, and I want double my fee. And after this is done, I don’t want to see you again.”
Xander drew a deep breath. I cut him off before he could speak, saying in a strong and determined voice, “I wish Tyler was here to pick me up.”
Tyler never disappoints.
Delilah was gone when we got back to my studio. Tyler must have sent her home. It’s not like I missed her. I’d never thought her skinny ass would have been much good for anything anyway.
The ride up the elevator had been nearly intolerable. Ty’s gaze flitted back and forth from the floor to my face and back again. Though he didn’t say a word, I had the feeling volumes of prose sat on the tip of his tongue. I’m sure he wanted to talk—share oodles of feelings, clear the air. But I didn’t have it in me. I’m not big on sharing or feeling, for that matter. Plus, I was still mad that he’d kept his true nature from me for so long. So the last thing I expected to do was go after him like a carb-starved dieter after cake.
Which is exactly what I did.
He waited in the lift and stepped out right after me. His delicious smell floated on the air, his body close enough for me to feel a static tingle in the space between us.
My mind raced with almost incoherent thought. Memories flooded my consciousness, some from my human life and others from my Shaede existence. I thought of Azriel more than anything, and a hole opened up where my heart should have been, threatening to swallow whatever was left of my soul.
I couldn’t stand it. The pain, the memories, the heartache were too much. I’d gotten used to my gray, stoic self. I’d been unfeeling for so long, the walls I’d put up began to crumble, and I thought I would start screaming and never stop.
My gaze absorbed the cold, unwelcome studio. Everything about it spoke of detachment. The white furnishings and cold brick walls. The polished concrete countertops, sparsely covered and shining with an antiseptic quality that made me shudder. It was more than I could take. To see what I had become, what I had reduced myself to . . .
I turned, and Ty beamed at me. It was one of his huge, unguarded smiles that usually made me want to slap his face and then strip off all his clothes. The joy of that expression seeped into my pores, and all I wanted was to be taken away from my cold, unfeeling nature for a little while, at least.
I rushed to him, twining my fingers through the thick locks of his hair, and kissed him. My mouth pressed hard against his, and I ran my tongue along the cool skin of his parted lips. His arms hung limp at his sides, and I guided them around the small of my back so I could press my body closer. Slowly, I traced my hands up his arms and shoulders, and my mouth tasted the flesh at his neck. His scent, the delicious smell that had no comparison, intoxicated me, and I inhaled deeply at his throat before biting at the skin there. He sucked in his breath between his teeth, and I felt his hands leave my back to wrap around my arms just above my elbow. He gently pushed me away.
“No, Darian,” he said.
I lunged toward him, determined to have my way. “What do you mean no? You’ve been after me for months, and now no?”
“You’re angry and hurt, and I don’t want to be some kind of revenge screw so you can feel better about something.”
“Why are you saying this?” I demanded. “Revenge screw? You’re acting like I’m using you to get back at a boyfriend or something.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
His calm answer pushed me closer to the edge. Couldn’t he just shut up and act like a selfish, sex-starved man for an hour or so? “You think I’m doing this because of Xander? You think I’m trying to make him jealous or something?”
“No,” he said, too calm. “I think you’re doing this because of Azriel.”
“Get out!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
I didn’t even have to wish to make him leave. He turned, gone before I could beg him to come back.
Chapter 14
Raif didn’t say anything to me about my outburst at Xander’s. We trained like we usually did, but Raif decided to quit early, which was out of character for his never-say-die attitude. He looked uneasy. Great. Apparently, he was going to bring up my outburst.
“War is serious business, Darian,” he said. “And we are at war.”
“I’m not at war,” I insisted. “I’m hired help. I have only one job to do.”
Raif laughed, and it always sounded strange coming out of his hard-lined mouth. “You are a very stubborn woman. Do you know that?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”
“I want you to know I was never in favor of information being withheld from you. It was my king’s decision. I must abide by his ruling.”
Touching. Raif was reaching out, albeit a little stiffly. “I appreciate that,” I said. “But I don’t like being played with. I’m not just going to sit here and pretend that it’s all water under the bridge, because it isn’t. I’ve been lied to long enough, and I don’t want to be lied to again.”
“I’ll level with you,” Raif said, “because I believe a soldier must know what he is fighting for if he is to commit to battle. Azriel is Alexander’s so
n. He’s been in exile for almost a hundred years. That was the last time he tried to rise against his father. Obviously, he didn’t succeed, and his punishment was banishment. He was kept comfortable, as was his due—under guard, of course.”
Sure, of course. Why the hell not?
“A few months ago, he managed to evade the detachment Xander had assigned to watch over him. He came straight to Seattle, so naturally we followed. Curious as to what might have drawn his interest, we came to only one conclusion: He came for you.”
If he’d kicked me to the curb all those years ago, leaving me convinced he’d been killed, I couldn’t imagine he was looking for a lover’s reunion. “Maybe he just missed the city? He always loved it here. Besides, it’s not like he came out of hiding to take me out to dinner or anything, Raif.”
Raif shrugged as if he weren’t interested in my opinion. “Either way, he must be dealt with.”
“So why kill him now?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a father signing his son’s death warrant, but Xander had done it easily enough. “Why not lock him up, keep him under house arrest like you did before?”
“How do you suppose we do that?” Raif asked. “He managed to escape once. He’d do it again.”
“What about the rope you used on me?” I suggested. “I couldn’t move or transform. We could tie him up with it.”
“Lyhtan hair,” Raif said. “That’s what the rope was made of. He’s become much too dangerous to be simply restrained or imprisoned. No. He’s crafty. Deadly. The best student I ever trained. And you’ll have to be better than him if you want to beat him at his own game.”
I got deadly. In fact, I considered myself a tad deadly. But dangerous is never good. “Dangerous how?” I asked, banishing the image of being bound with Lyhtan hair from my mind.
“Three of my best men were ambushed just before dawn yesterday,” Raif said. “They were torn limb from limb.”
“By Lyhtans?”
Raif nodded. “I assume so. We’re tracking them now, but they’re not so easy to find. Elusive creatures”—he almost spat the word—“and violent to an extreme.”
“And you’re sure Azriel commands them?”
“Yes. He sent an envoy a month ago.”
“What was the message?”
“ ‘Surrender the throne,’ ” Raif said.
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
I had to admit, it sounded like Azriel. He didn’t mince words. “What does he want with Xander’s throne?”
“What does any usurper want?” Raif asked. “Power. Think, Darian: Kingdoms are not often inherited in our world—not when the king might live for millennia. Azriel would be nothing more than Xander’s son for what might as well be an eternity. A crown prince, of course, but an impotent figurehead. Azriel craves that which he might never have: a king’s crown upon his head and the power to command those under his rule. And who better to help him in his endeavors than an army of Lyhtans? Vicious killers”—Raif paused and massaged his temples between his thumb and fingers—“and easy to control.”
“But why would he want me?” I asked. Did he, perhaps, hope to kill me before I could kill him? I wondered what death would be like for a Shaede. Would I wander like a spirit, confined to shadows for all eternity, insubstantial and unrecognized?
“You are his weakness,” Raif said, taking me by surprise. “His Achilles’ heel.”
“What makes you say that?” I said.
“I would have killed you decades ago,” Raif answered with a frankness that told me he wasn’t kidding, even a little.
“Who are the three who made others?” I needed to know, in some perverse way. Who were these Shaedes that had taken human lives and transformed them into something else altogether?
Raif contemplated his answer. I think he wrestled with whether he wanted to tell me or not, but he finally spoke. “Anya, who made Dimitri, her mate. Azriel, who made you.” Raif paused and looked at the floor. “And Alexander, who made Azriel’s mother.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Who? How? Why?”
“Padma,” Raif said with a harsh laugh. “And I don’t know why. I would never ask. That is my king’s business, and his alone.”
“So what do you want to know, Raif?” I was tired of beating around the bush. “If Azriel is my weakness as well? Do you want to know if I’ll be able to seal the deal?”
“I suppose yes, that is what I want to know.”
“You want to be sure that I’ll kill Azriel before he can kill Xander.”
“Yes, I want to be sure,” Raif said.
Let’s see. In the time I’d known him, Azriel had used me, lied to me, and abandoned me. He’d seduced me, and I’d loved him. And his only gift had been leaving me with just my wits to survive by and a farce of an existence to guide me. And now he’d sent his Lyhtan lackeys to threaten me. “Don’t worry. It’s in the bag.” And I wondered if it could really be that easy.
Delilah wasn’t waiting in front of my building. Strange. She’d become such a permanent fixture that her absence sparked a small amount of concern. I stepped from the lift and found Tyler sitting on my couch. Probably why Delilah wasn’t here.
“What’re you doing here, Ty?” I tried to sound normal, not like a jilted woman, even though I was.
Tyler didn’t make eye contact. His shoulders slumped and his forehead fell to rest in his palms. “Delilah is missing.”
All I could think of was poor, skinny, helpless, and blind Delilah being knocked around, bound and gagged, and dragged away with nothing but her smart mouth for defense. “Who did it? Do you know?”
“I think it was a Lyhtan. There was a pretty foul odor surrounding her house.”
“Why would they want her?”
“Maybe for the same reason we did: to use her as a scout.” Tyler looked lost, guilty, and angry.
“No.” I doubted they needed her for something as trivial as that. It had to be something else, something she hadn’t been used for in a while. “How many other Oracles are there wandering around the world?”
“A couple maybe, including her,” Tyler said. “Oracles are rare in this world. She had a sister, but someone killed her two or three centuries or so ago. I don’t know much about it. Delilah may be the only one. You don’t think—”
“Why not?” I said. Wouldn’t it be handy to know the outcome of a war before you had to shed any blood?
“But why kidnap her? Couldn’t they just hire her to do the job?”
“Tyler, she said no one could afford to pay the price. She said it takes a sacrifice.”
His face snapped into an expression of awareness. “What about you?” he asked.
“Me?”
“Darian, the kind of sacrifice necessary to pay an Oracle is a high price because it’s something you can’t bear to be parted from. What if that sacrifice is supposed to be you?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Azriel is leading the Lyhtans, and if he needs an Oracle, I’d be the last thing he couldn’t bear to be parted from. Trust me—if I meant anything to him, he wouldn’t have abandoned me.”
Tyler paused. “But what if it isn’t Azriel who took Delilah?”
The politics of war made my head spin. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the various intricacies. “Ty, I’m tired. Don’t be cryptic.”
“If Azriel is shacked up with the Lyhtans, maybe there’s a displaced leader. Maybe he’s the one who wants you dead.”
It sounded far-fetched, but I was willing to pursue any angle if it meant getting Delilah back. “What do we do, then?”
“Find out if there’s a disgruntled leader out there and arrange a meeting.”
Oh, fabulous. That sounded like a ton of fun. “Ty,” I said. “How fragile is Delilah? I mean . . . could they—”
“Don’t worry,” he said, a sad smile offering assurance. “If we’re right, they don’t want to hurt her, just use her as a crystal ball. Besides, she’s not as breakable as she looks. Meet me at
The Pit tonight around ten. Okay?”
That didn’t seem like the best place to start looking for a Lyhtan king, but I wasn’t about to question Tyler anymore. “I’ll be there.”
The typical throng of people hadn’t yet lined up outside the door, giving Tiny little to do. Inside, the club wasn’t much busier; only a few regulars hanging around, drinking their evening away. Tyler sat waiting for me, in my usual corner, but tonight he wasn’t alone. Levi sat with him.
I took a seat next to Ty. He brushed his hand along my arm, squeezing as he settled on my hand. I pulled away. There was no such thing as PDA at a business meeting.
“So, what’s up?” I asked.
Ty looked a little crestfallen. I sighed. I was sure we’d have it out later. For some reason, he had a hard time differentiating between us in public and us in private. They were all one and the same to him. It might have had something to do with the bond Delilah talked about; he had been a lot more touchy-feely lately. In fact, I felt a little more tuned in to him as well. He put me at ease just by being near. Had we been bonded all along these past five years? He’d made me feel safe since the night of my first job when we sealed our business relationship with a handshake and a silver ring. I hadn’t thought about it, but perhaps something as simple as skin-to-skin contact had prompted Ty to bind himself to me. Or maybe it had been that first kiss outside Xander’s warehouse, because I hadn’t felt the same since that night. And like every other piece of knowledge I’d had to fight for these past weeks, I was going to make Ty spill his knowledge as well.
“Levi is what you might call a liaison,” Tyler said, breaking me from contemplative thoughts. “He’s a go-between for the natural and supernatural worlds.”
That’s the understatement of the century, I thought. Levi was a walking supernatural encyclopedia. “Well, Levi,” I said. “What’s the word?”
He smiled at me, a very genuine expression on his frat-boy face. I fought the urge to ask him if he was late for a kegger.
“There’s a lot going on right now,” Levi said. “There’s talk of war between the Shaedes and Lyhtans. Many beings have their eye fixed to the outcome. It could mean change for more than just the parties involved.”
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