“I can’t get th-there!” I scarcely recognized my defeated voice. Hunger was reversing my personality. These days, my emotions barreled back and forth between weepiness and seething anger.
I felt like a drunk ex, sobbing in one breath to get back together and railing in the next. Come pick me up at the bar I hate you.
“Are you crying?” he asked with a laugh. “By all the gods, your tears cheer me. Of course, they’ll dry as soon as you hang up the phone. You always were a talented deceiver.”
“Aric, Es tevi mīlu. I love you.” He’d said I kept his soul within me, right next to mine.
“The sentiment is no longer returned.”
“Do you want me to beg?” The red witch would never beg; she still seemed to be enjoying her nap.
“Yes, Empress. I would like that very much. Beg me, and I’ll consider the cilice.”
Biting back my pride, I parted my lips to say—
“Oi, bait, c’mere!” Joules called from the cave entrance. “You’re on deck. We’ve got a live one, so leg it down to the road.”
Was I relieved to be interrupted or pissed? Both.
Aric said, “You’re in a cave, near a road. Not even out of the foothills yet? I’ll be sure to direct Fauna’s most vicious predators to your vicinity.”
“Whatever, Death.” My emotions catapulted to the seething anger side of the drunk-ex spectrum. “You could have had everything you’ve ever wanted. But you’re letting your fucking cook control you. Remember that.” I disconnected the call and pocketed the phone in my coat just before Joules came into view.
“Were you talking to the Reaper?” His skin sparked with irritation.
“Moment of weakness. Won’t happen again.”
“How come you can call him, but I can’t talk to Gabe?” Joules probably missed him as much as I missed Aric. Or, rather, the old Aric.
“Because you have a temper that Gabriel will know how to needle. He could get you to spill our plans.” Such as they were: find Circe before we starved.
“I don’t have a bloody feckin’ temper!” Our gazes darted as his voice echoed off the cave walls. Lowering his tone, he said, “Just come on with you. Tarch heard an engine a ways down the road. I got a good feeling about this one.”
I rose, then reeled on my feet. Joules grabbed my arm and squired me out of the cave.
Not far in the distance stretched the lightning-lit road. Tendrils of fog floated a dozen or so feet above the pavement. Kentarch already lay in wait behind the truck, his knife ready. He took one look at me and said, “You should have drunk the blood.”
I nearly stumbled when Joules released me to hide.
“For feck’s sake, this’ll only work if you can stand up straight. Otherwise they’ll think you’ve got the plague.” He himself leaned on his javelin as if it were a walking stick.
Kentarch said, “Mentally will yourself to remain upright for five more minutes. Remember: Your mind has dominion over your body.”
I flipped him off. Sometimes I wanted to strangle Tarch too.
I blundered out onto the road. As I waited, I replayed my call with Aric. Back in the golden days of our relationship, that bastard had said we should communicate. Maybe he should have divulged that he was carrying some mega-baggage from our past!
Instead, he’d told me he was a planet off axis. Apparently he’d found his two-thousand-year-old groove again and was spinning right along.
Screw him. Screw. Him. I gazed down at my wedding ring. He’d destroyed the one I’d given him; I would trash the one he’d given me. I yanked it off and tossed it away. “How about that, Reaper?”
Joules cried, “Finally!”
Pling.
The faint sound of it hitting the pavement was earsplitting to me. “Nooo!” How could I have? I dropped to my knees, scrabbling through Flash-fried asphalt and patches of snow. “Where is it?” I closed my eyes to sense the sap, my hand moving . . . .
There! Sucking in breaths, I slipped it back on. If I truly decided to take it off, I knew Aric would be lost to me forever.
Kentarch cocked his head. “A motorcycle approaches. The rider won’t have many stores or much fuel. Let’s allow this one to pass.”
“A motorcycle?” The rumbling sound reached me—reminding me of Jack’s arrival at Haven all those months ago. A lifetime ago.
“She probably thinks it’s the hunter,” Joules told Kentarch. “He drove a bike.”
“Who’s the hunter?”
“A human who went by the name of Jack.” Joules, that ass, added, “He was boyfriend number one before the Reaper and Sol. The timeline goes like this: She was boffing Death in a past life, then Jack in this one. Then Death. Then Jack. Then Sol, then Death.”
“Damn it, I was never with Sol! I told you we were just friends.”
As if I hadn’t spoken, Joules said, “Jack was a good bloke. Brave as hell and hardworking. But he died in Richter’s massacre.”
Kentarch frowned at me. “I thought you witnessed that attack, Empress. Did you not see him perish?”
“I did.”
But I’d heard him through Matthew.
But Jack was undefeatable.
The bike’s rumble grew louder. What if? What if? What if?
Kentarch was studying me, as though I were settling some internal wager he’d made about me. Yes, Chariot, I’m crazy. Trouble with the promise of rubble.
I’d just been crawling on the ground to find the Reaper’s wedding ring, and now I was imagining another man returning from the dead.
The motorcycle neared, sounding like it was racing toward some emergency destination. Jack would be racing to find me. “I know it can’t be him, but . . .”
“Hope is a funny thing,” Kentarch finished for me. “When I was once pinned down by poacher gunfire, they called out that they would let me live if I surrendered. I knew they wouldn’t, but I was filled with desperation to see Issa again. My hope lied to me, whispering in my ear, ‘Believe these men, and you will reunite with your wife.’ Tell me, Empress, do you trust the whisper of your hope?”
Did I? I wanted to believe anything that told me Jack lived. But maybe I was too scarred from all the heartache I’d endured to trust my hope. Maybe my hope was slowly dying.
The bike was just around the bend. That creeping fog fanned out in slo-mo, like a blanket in one of those old dryer-sheet commercials.
Joules’s tone grew exasperated. “The hunter’s dead. Finn told us Jack and Selena rode out with the army. We know for a fact that Selena’s toast, and she was always by Jack’s side.” I knew this. “Gabe and me saw that valley. Or what used to be a valley. No one could have survived that. Especially not a mortal. And since this isn’t the second coming of Jack, get ready to face a bogey.”
I tried to stand. Failed. Tried again.
A helmeted rider with a tinted visor emerged from the mist. I squinted to make out his build.
He was tall, muscular. Roughly the same size as Jack.
First instinct? Flag him down. Second instinct? Stay where I was and glare at what was surely a bad guy.
I managed to make it to my feet, and the man turned to me. I tugged my hood down, and we stared at each other as he passed me—
The bike’s front wheel plunged into a pothole. He flew over the handlebars, his body rocketing down the road, the bike skidding along behind him.
I ran for the crash site. The motorcycle was on its side, still running, its front wheel mangled. The rider was laid out nearby.
Kentarch and Joules flanked me, weapons raised.
I dropped down beside the biker, my flickering glyphs reflecting in his visor. My heart beat erratically, my breaths panting bursts. “Please be him, please be him, please be him.” No, my hope hadn’t yet died. Was it about to?
I reached for the visor with shaking hands. I flipped it up.
Jackson Daniel Deveaux.
My Jack was here. “A-alive.” I clutched his shoulders as my gaze greedily took in his fa
ce, those broad cheekbones, that rugged jaw, his stubborn chin. “Ah, God, are you okay?” He wore his customary bug-out bag and crossbow.
He opened his gray eyes and blinked at me, then slowly lifted his hand to my face. “Peekôn?” he said. “What the hell are you doing out here?” He yanked off his helmet.
My heart thundered. Dizziness swarmed my head. “Jack? Is it really you?” My balance shifted. With all the grace of a boulder, I toppled forward and sprawled over his chest.
18
I didn’t lose consciousness—I had to stay awake to make sure Jack didn’t disappear again—but my brain seemed to short out.
I felt him lifting me. I heard Joules directing him to our cave, introducing him to Kentarch on the way.
Inside, Jack gently laid me down next to the fire. “When’s the last time you guys ate?”
Joules said, “’Bout to ask if you had any grub.”
“Non. The leather of my belt’s starting to look good.”
Need to see him! I blinked open my eyes. “You . . . you’re alive. H-how? I saw you . . . I watched you die.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, blurring my vision. I swiped angrily at them. Nothing could mar the sight of Jack.
He’d lost weight—was as leanly muscled as Aric now. “I’m here.” Sitting beside me, he took my hand and brought it to his lips. “Selena saved my life. She sensed the Emperor seconds before he struck and shoved me into an abandoned mine.”
My God. “She protected you till the end.”
“Ouais. She did.” Jack pulled a canteen from his bug-out bag. “Here, bébé.” Unscrewing the top, he lifted it to my lips. “Why’re you out in the Ash? You’re supposed to be safe in Domīnija’s castle.”
I drank. “How did you know that?”
“Coo-yôn told me.”
“Where is he?” No longer could I blame Matthew for letting Jack die.
“We were on the road together for a spell, but he split.”
“Then why didn’t he tell me you were alive?”
“Richter was in the area, so coo-yôn didn’t want to turn on the Arcana radio to contact you. Didn’t want to give anyone’s location away. Plus, it wasn’t a sure thing that I would pull through.”
“That close?”
Stoic nod. “He told me that Death saved you from Richter. So where’s Domīnija?” Jack’s gaze slid over my wedding ring. His brows drew together, and raw pain filled his gray eyes.
I’d betrayed him with Aric. I should’ve believed Jack would somehow come for me. But then I wouldn’t know what it was like to love Aric.
Of course, I also wouldn’t be knocked up and stranded in the Ash.
What should I say? Damn this dizziness and shock! I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t sort my chaotic thoughts.
“If the Reaper isn’t here, I know he’s on his way.”
I shook my head.
In a voice that might have been just shy of hopeful, Jack said, “Dead?”
Joules sat on the other side of the fire. “I wish. That fecker tried to off her. Chased her right out of the castle.”
Jack’s jaw slackened. “Bébé?”
“It’s complicated. He’s been brainwashed. Lark and Gabriel too.”
“Like the Hierophant did?”
“In the same vein.” I wasn’t ready to tell him that Aric might have succumbed to buried hatred, a murderous rage, and the inability to let go of the past.
Joules said, “Paul, their medic, was the inactivated Arcana, the Hanged Man. No one inside that big, warm, food-filled stronghold knew. So Paul poisoned Finn to activate his powers. Offed the Magician straight out of existence.”
“Not Finn.” Jack swore under his breath, his expression shaken. “I’m goan to gut this fils de pute.” Jack had spent more time with the Magician than anyone still alive.
Joules tossed more wood on the fire. “The Hanged Man’s got this yellow sphere that spread over Death’s castle, surrounding the entire mountain. If an Arcana crosses the boundary, he gets brainwashed. When Gabe heard the Empress screaming, he flew off to save her. Then he got nabbed like the rest of ’em. No good deed . . .”
I said, “Paul convinced Aric, Gabriel, and Lark that I killed Finn. Her wolves had me and Joules surrounded. We’d be dead if the Chariot hadn’t arrived.” I waved toward Kentarch, standing off to the side.
Joules added, “He teleported us—or ghosted more like—through a giant grizzly. Then he materialized the truck and exploded that bear’s arse.”
Kentarch looked uncomfortable with this praise, but he did take a seat by the fire.
“Teleporting, huh? My sincere thanks.” Jack gave him a nod, taking this new Arcana craziness in stride. Then he turned to me. “What happened to your grand-mère? Coo-yôn told me she was at the castle.”
“Paul killed her. She would’ve died of natural causes, but he accelerated it.”
“He got her too? Condoléances, Evie.” He brushed the backs of his busted-up knuckles across my cheek. “You guys got a plan to fight this Hanged Man?”
I nodded. “Circe, the Priestess Card, is a witch. She might be able to cast a spell to neutralize Paul’s power. We’ve been trying to contact her in rivers and ponds on our way to the coast.” As Jack seemed to let everything percolate, I said, “Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you return to the fort?”
“I got knocked unconscious in the floodwaters down in the mine. When I woke, I was in slaver chains.”
I had so many questions. How had he escaped from them? Where had Matthew been going when they split up? But first . . . “I’m so sorry about your army.”
That muscle in Jack’s jaw ticked, his tell. Whenever I saw that, I knew he was barely keeping his emotions in check—the levee about to be overrun. “I’m goan to make Richter pay for that. Somehow, someway.”
He sounded like Jack, looked like Jack. But he seemed changed. Older. Even more hardened. How could he not be?
“I’ve been saying the same thing. I thought he’d annihilated the army, Selena, and you.” Another wave of lightheadedness hit me. “Where were you going just now?”
“I’ll tell you all about it. But first, we have to get you some food. I’ll head west and see if I can scare up something.”
“You actually think I will let you out of my sight. Adorable.”
Kentarch said, “We came from the west. There’s nothing.”
“Merde. For days, I haven’t passed anyone to roll. I can sometimes bag a snake or a rat”—he patted the crossbow over his shoulder—“but I came up empty.”
“So you earned your name of hunter?” Kentarch tilted his head. “I could teleport you to a place thick with game. More meat than we could possibly eat.”
Huh?
“That so?” Jack asked suspiciously. “You look pretty handy. How come you haven’t gone and . . . ?” He trailed off with a look of comprehension. “You’re talking about the animals at Death’s castle. Lark’s creatures.”
Kentarch nodded. “I can’t go within that sphere.”
“But a civvie could.” Jack’s eyes lit up. “Oh, hell yeah, Chariot.”
“Oh, hell no, Chariot!” I clung to Jack’s hand. “Did you not hear the part about the giant grizzly? It’s too dangerous.” I’d just gotten him back!
“You think I’m goan to let you starve when there’s game to be had? Joules will stay with you, keep you company. Kentarch and I’ll be right back.”
“This isn’t like poaching an alligator from a Louisiana state park. This is Death, Lark, and Gabriel. They won’t let you just walk in there, fill up your shopping cart, and stroll out. She has thousands of creatures now, and under her influence, they’re all killers.”
Jack grinned. “Then she woan miss a measly pheasant or two.”
“Lark’s much stronger now than when you last saw her. She’ll do anything to hurt me—which means hurting you.”
He pried his hand from my weak grip. “It’s the only way.” He stood. When I reached for him, he
seemed to force himself to back away. “You woan sway me in this.”
Was he risking his life because he planned on a future with me? He didn’t know everything. “There’s something I need to tell you—”
“His mind’s made up, Empress,” Joules interrupted. “You’ll have plenty of time to catch up later. But for now, you don’t want anything to banjax his motivation or his focus. You don’t want to get him killed, do you?”
I glared at the Tower. Selfish much? “This hunt is not happening. Jack, you’re not leaving.”
Holding his ground, he said, “I know this is tough, but I swear to you I’m coming back.” He turned to Joules. “Anything happens to her . . .”
The Tower created a javelin. “I got this.”
Jack squared his shoulders and faced Kentarch. “Come on, Chariot. Never teleported before, but by God, I’m ready to poach Domīnija’s lands.”
“Do you require a rifle? Something more than a compact crossbow?”
“Goan in quiet, me. Slip in, bag some birds, slip out. They’ll never know we were there.”
If I could manage a vine, I’d tie Jack to me. “I can’t lose you again.” I raised my hand to use my powers, but nothing happened.
“Evie, I promise you I’ll be back.”
“No time to dawdle.” Kentarch took his arm.
A spindly vine finally shot from my palm. It lashed only air. They’d already disappeared.
19
The Hunter
“Mère de Dieu,” I muttered when we touched down in a new snowy landscape. I’d officially teleported. One thing I could say since meeting Evangeline: life was never dull.
When I’d first seen her face out on that road, everything inside me had lit up—the way I always felt around her. This time I hadn’t nearly gone over my handlebars.
I told Kentarch, “You could’ve let me give her a proper good-bye, finessing that situation a touch more. Remember, I just came back from the dead.” And now she’d had to watch me leave yet again.
The last time she’d lost me, it’d broken her. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through back in that cave. It had taken sheer will to leave her.
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