Max emerged and bobbed in the water, his expression inscrutable.
I crossed my arms. “I don’t like being mocked.”
A low growl cut through the air, and a chill swept over my skin as the presence made itself known. I turned my head slowly to look up the jetty and froze. Three pairs of glowing eyes glared back at me from several feet above the ground, and a distorted dark shape blocked my path.
What the—
It charged.
Henri’s bellow cut through the air, and he landed beside me with a thud just as a spray of water smacked me in the face, and Max landed on the jetty between me and the beast.
It hit him full force in the abdomen, taking him down.
My dagger was out and at the ready when the sound of slurping and laughter stalled me.
“Off, boy, get off.” Max laughed as the huge three-headed dog tried to lick his face off. He shoved the beast off and stood.
“This is Benji. He likes long walks on beaches and ripping limbs off intruders. And he’s one of five ceberi that patrol the island.”
I stared at the three-headed hound and shook my head slowly. “He named it Benji?”
* * *
Benji bounded beside us as we walked across the beach toward the woodland area.
“He would have ripped your face off, you know,” Max said softly.
“He wouldn’t have made it past me,” Henri said.
“And you’d have felt like shit for hurting a creature who was just guarding its master’s land.”
Henri didn’t say anything. How could either of us argue with Max when Benji was bounding around like an eager puppy.
I hugged myself. “Is this your way of getting me to apologize for throwing you into the sea?”
“Maybe.” There was humor in his tone. “Maybe I deserved it. I haven’t exactly been civil.”
“You have a civil mode?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t suppose these ceberi are registered with the council, are they?”
Max let out a bark of laughter. “And if you want Murray’s help, you’ll keep your mouth shut about them. They’re his babies. He raised them from pups when their mother died. He loves them like they were his own children.” Max picked up a stick and threw it into the tree line.
I watched the stick cut an arch through the air and vanish into the tree-line. “Ceberi are highly dangerous.” Benji loped off after the stick. “Okay, most ceberi are highly dangerous.”
“They’re also highly trainable and almost extinct,” Max pointed out. “The Watch employed them in the war, and hordes of them were killed fighting the fomorians. After the war, when the treaty was signed and the new laws came into effect to protect humans, the ceberi were rounded up for dispatch back to Demonica. But rumor has it they never made it. Rumor has it that the Watch had the ceberi slaughtered.”
Shit. No way. “Why would they do that?”
We stepped into the woods and began to wind our way through the trees.
“Ceberi are powerful, magnificent beasts in battle. They’re an advantage to any army.” He shot me a sly look. “Maybe the Watch didn’t entirely trust that their treaty with Demonica would hold? Maybe they wanted a little insurance?”
Henri made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “So, they tried to wipe out an entire species?”
I shot Henri a sharp look. “No. The Watch wouldn’t do that.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Max drawled. “Because the Nightwatch is everything but self-serving.”
“I know what the Watch stands for. It stands for honor and protection. If it wasn’t for the Watch, humanity would have decimated the supernatural race a long time ago.”
He stopped and turned to me. “And you need to remember that. Remember what you fight for. You fight to protect supernaturals from humans. It just so happens that the only way to do that is to protect humans from the scourge of the supernatural community. To keep the glamour intact.”
He was right. It was easy to see humans as weak, as needing protection, when, in fact, their weapons of destruction, the biochemical and physical armory, could wipe us out in the blink of an eye if they ever saw us for what we were. We hid in the shadows to survive. And we protected them to survive.
“From what I hear, ceberi are rare in Demonica now,” Max continued. “Breeders have tried to swell the populations but without much success. Females seem to have stopped producing litters. Murray’s litter is a rare achievement.”
“Is that why he stopped being active?” Henri asked. “To stay here with his ceberi?”
“That’s Murray’s story to tell,” Max said. “But if you want his help, I advise you stick to telling your story.”
The woods had thinned without me even realizing, and as howls drifted up into the air, we stepped into a clearing.
A low squat building greeted us, and a figure stood on the steps. He was dressed in worn jeans, hiker boots, and a knitted jumper that hung off his broad shoulders but emphasized his slender frame. His dark hair fell across his forehead and green eyes took me in from beneath thick brows.
His lip curled. “What the fuck do you want?”
Chapter Twelve
The crossroads daemon didn’t look like a Murray. Murrays were old guys with flat caps and knitted vests. Nothing like this emerald-eyed, sharp-featured male who was looking at me as if he wanted to throat punch me.
Shit. I held up my hands. “We just want to talk to you, Murray.”
“Then talk.”
Benji loped over to his master and sat at his feet. The beast’s head came up almost as high as Murray’s shoulder.
I cleared my throat. “I need you to open a thinning to Demonica.”
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Um … yes.”
“No.” He turned away and began trudging toward the house.
“Hey, wait.”
He stopped. “You talked. I listened, and I gave you my response. Now, get off my property before I sic the ceberi on you.”
There was a dullness to his tone, a deadness that told me he meant every word. He’d happily sic the ceberi on us.
“We should leave now,” Max said.
Murray was on his porch now.
“No, wait! Please.” I took several steps toward his house.
“Max, get them off my island.” Murray’s tone was saturated with warning as he reached for the door.
Howls drifted through the trees.
Max’s hand closed on my elbow. “We need to leave. Now.”
Gramps’s face filled my vision. I couldn’t fail at the first hurdle. I wouldn’t. “If you don’t help me, they’ll kill my gramps. Please, I need your help to save him.”
His shoulders tensed, and he froze in the doorway.
Okay, he was listening. This was good. “The council has him. They want me to retrieve a book from Demonica, and if I fail, they’ll execute my gramps. He’s the only family I have left. I can’t lose him. Please, help me.”
Murray turned slowly to face us. “You have daemon blood.”
I nodded. My mouth was suddenly dry.
Max sucked in a breath. “Well …”
Murray descended the steps of the porch and walked straight toward me. He was tall but nowhere near as tall as Max or Henri. He stopped a foot away, and then his hand whipped up to grasp my chin. His grip was cool and firm. My instinct was to pull away, but I held still as his green eyes bore into me. I needed his help, and if he was studying me, then he wasn’t retreating and siccing his ceberi on me.
If he was standing in front of me, then there was hope.
Henri was a mass of tension beside me. Ready to act if need be but instinctively taking his cue to hold fire from me.
“What’s your name, Nightblood?” Murray asked.
“Kat, Kat Justice.”
His throat bobbed. “Jacques’s granddaughter?”
I nodded again.
He blew out a breath and released me.
“Those fucking Watch bastards. Playing with lives.”
I held my breath.
“You can’t go alone,” he said.
“I won’t be.”
He nodded. “Fine, I’ll open a thinning for you and hold it for seventy-two, but that’s the longest I can hold it without detection from the Administrators.”
Administrators … that was a new phrase. “Who are they?”
“The daemons that police the fabric of Demonica. They monitor the registered thinnings and flag any illegal ones.”
Seventy-two hours. “I can do that.”
“When do you want to go?”
“In a week. Saturday.”
“Meet me at Leyling crossroads at midnight.”
He made to turn away.
“What changed your mind?”
He paused and looked back at me with a sad smile. “Your eyes … They remind me of someone I used to know.”
And then he was loping across the yard and into his house. The storm shutter closed with a sound of finality.
We had what we needed, but why was I left feeling strangely unfulfilled?
* * *
There was a familiar car parked outside the mansion.
Karishma was there.
Either she’d decided to deliver the talisman in person, or she had some information that could help Henri.
Tris climbed up onto my shoulder, and Henri looked at me questioningly.
“Come on, let’s go see what she has for us.”
Karishma was in the lounge with Jay.
“I was just about to call you,” Jay said. “But then Emmet brought tea.” He pointed at the tray set for three. “I figured you must be on your way back.”
“You figured right.” My gaze went to Karishma. “You have something for me?”
“I do.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a chain with a gold locket hanging from it. “I disguised it to look like a regular locket.”
I took it from her and handed it to Tris, who slid it around her neck. “Ooh, pretty.”
I looked at her hopefully. “I doubt you came all this way just to deliver this.”
“No.” Karishma glanced from Henri to me. “I think I may have a solution to your problem.”
Henri stiffened. “Problem? Is that what I am now?”
Karishma blinked at him in surprise. “You’re offended.” She looked to me. “I see what you mean now, Kat.”
Because emotions weren’t a characteristic denoted to golems.
Henri crossed his arms. “If you’re here to deactivate me, then get it over with.”
Deactivate? “Hell, no.” I took a step to shield Henri, which was ridiculous because firstly, he was huge, and secondly, my body wouldn’t be able to block the word to deactivate him.
Karishma smiled, her eyes crinkling kindly. “I’m not here to deactivate you, Henri. In fact, I’m here to liberate you from the word that binds you.”
His arms dropped to his sides. “What?”
The hope that I’d been suppressing unfurled in my chest. “You found another way.”
She grinned. “Oh, yes, Kat. I most certainly did.”
Chapter Thirteen
Karishma had claimed the single sofa, and for the first time since we’d come to the mansion, Henri claimed the spot beside me on the larger one. Tris poured the tea that Emmet had so intuitively prepared, and my stomach was a swirling mass of nerves as I drank mine.
“I did a lot of digging.” Karishma tucked a tendril of dark hair behind her ear. “It wasn’t easy to find the journal on Henri’s creation. It was misfiled, and after reading it, I believe that was a deliberate error. Vinod didn’t want the records found because when he created you, Henri, he broke the rules.”
Henri sat forward. “What do you mean?”
“The protocol for creating a golem is very clear. You use energy from animals such as foxes or turtles, lions or wolves. In one case, they drew residual energy from a dinosaur fossil. But your energy came directly from the aether.” She said the last bit as if it should mean something to us and paused as if waiting for a reaction.
I shook my head. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
She studied her cup for a moment. “Okay, well, the aether is all around us, a separate plane of existence where you can only travel in the form of pure energy.”
“Like souls?” Tris asked.
“Yes, like souls, but not the dead. From what I learned, these are mainly souls traveling away from their existing bodies. Gurus and sages have spoken of becoming one with the aether for as long as history has been written. Muses travel in the aether, crossing space and time to enlighten the worthy. It’s a sea of mystic energy that is home to various energy signatures, most of which are tethered to physical matter, and there are countless access points and doorways into this sea. Vinod essentially went fishing in it and caught the energy that reanimated Henri.”
Wait a second, that would mean … “Henri is … he has a soul?”
Karishma nodded slowly. Her mouth turned down. “As soon as I realized this, I jumped in the car and headed down here. This is unheard of. It’s forbidden.” Her expression was somber.
“Vinod pulled a soul from its body,” Tris said softly. “No. He wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t be so cruel.”
She was right. It sounded like the actions of a callous madman, not the generous, kind weaver we’d all known.
“I don’t know why he did it,” Karishma said. “But he did, and we need to find a way to fix it.” She looked at Henri. “In usual circumstances, a deactivated golem’s energy simply dissipates into the surrounding atmosphere. It becomes one with the world. But I’m not sure what would happen to you if we deactivated the body you’re tethered to. You could simply be untethered and lost. You could become trapped in the golem body, or you could somehow find your way back to the aether. But there is no guarantee you would be reunited with your real body because when Vinod pulled you from the aether, he cut the silver rope that bound you to it and forged a new one to bind you to this one.”
Henri’s face was a smooth mask. No emotion. Nothing. “So, what do you propose?”
Karishma looked taken aback by his flat tone and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. But I knew Henri well enough to know that this was him holding it together and processing. I called it his computer mode.
“I looked through our archives, and I found something interesting,” Karishma continued. “A practice that was undertaken by Nightbloods during the fomorian war. The weavers created powerful golems using energy from dangerous animals, and instead of binding them to a word, they bound them intricately and directly to the Nightblood. This way, the Nightblood could share the golem’s power, and they were connected in a way that made them into a single-minded fighting machine.”
“And what happened to these golems?” Tris asked. “After the war, what happened to them?”
Karishma ducked her head. “They were set free by their masters.”
I held up my hand. “Whoa, what do you mean set free? As in they could go and live their own lives?”
“No,” Karishma said. “It means they were no longer bound to their master by word or enchantment.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, so why are you wearing your bad-news face?”
“Because once the golems were unbound, they were dismantled.”
“Golems are indestructible.” Jay looked confused. “How could you take them apart?”
“That’s a common misconception that has been perpetuated to protect the Nightblood and his or her golem,” Karishma said. “Have you not wondered what happens to a deactivated golem?”
Oh, crap. She had a point.
“The weavers have enchanted tools that can both forge and dismember a golem.”
Henri’s hand curled into a fist, and I slipped my palm over it and squeezed reassuringly.
Silence reigned as her words sank in. They’d used the golems, given them freedom, and then e
ssentially killed them. I swallowed my anger because although she represented the people who’d done this atrocious thing, this wasn’t her fault, and from the look on her face, she was just as disgusted as we were.
Tris had no such qualms about placing blame. “You killed them?” Her voice trembled. “They served you, and you killed them for it.”
Karishma took a shuddering breath and looked up to meet her eyes. “I have no words. I’m so … ashamed of what the weavers did.”
“Not the weavers’ fault,” Jay said softly. “The weavers work for the Watch. They simply followed orders.”
“Still,” Karishma said. “I can’t help but feel they should have stood their ground. Refused to commit such an atrocious act. Something. It isn’t as if our race is powerless. We have legacy families of our own, a whole network of power.”
“Times were different back then,” Jay said. “What we need to know is how this can help Henri now.”
Karishma nodded. “Yes, of course.” She looked to Henri. “I can free you of the word, but I would have to bind you to Kat.”
My pulse leaped. “And then I can set you free.” I looked to him. “Henri. You can be free.”
“Actually,” Karishma said. “I haven’t found the unbinding script yet. I’m still searching for it.”
“But you have it somewhere, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, it will be somewhere. But most of the old stuff is archived and misfiled, which again, I think, was deliberate. It could take some time. But in the meantime, binding Henri directly to you will protect him from the shimmer man. The word to deactivate him will no longer be relevant.”
Henri had been silent this whole time, and now, when he spoke, his voice sounded gruff and unused. “What does it mean?”
“Sorry?”
“To be bound to someone directly? What will it feel like?”
Karishma sat up straighter and rubbed her palms on her jean-clad thighs. “Honestly, I’m not sure on all the details. I do know Kat will be able to feed off your power if needed, and that you’ll be able to find each other with ease if you get separated. Essentially, the binding creates a circuit between your life forces.”
Give Up the Ghost: The Nightwatch Series Book 2 Page 11