by Cassi Carver
“A black feather?” her throat completely dried up. Kara wished she could comfort him, but she couldn’t reach out. Her hands had gone numb. “It’s my fault,” Kara said. “I got Abbey involved in this.”
“Please stop. I can’t hate you right now. I need to be with someone who loves Abbey as much as I do.”
“She loved you, too—you know that? You’re the only one she ever loved. She just didn’t know how to show it.”
“I shouldn’t have left. Oh God. How could I have left her tonight?” He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “He killed my baby. He burned her up. And he leaves us a note, like it’s some sort of game. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to take him apart with my bare hands and roast him over a spit.” The lights in the back of the ambulance flickered.
Kara ran a hand along the planes of the black bag. “If the man who did this to Jaxon can take down one of my people so easily, you’ve got to stay away from him.”
Tray looked over at the bag. “I’m so sorry, Kara. I know you cared about him. He seemed like a solid guy.”
“He was.” As she said it, Kara imagined Jaxon’s pendant vibrating with energy against her skin. She felt the warmth of the metal and hoped it was a sign he was looking down on her from wherever he was now. She wanted to think he forgave her.
Tray shook his head and sniffed. “If I’d only gotten there a minute earlier, maybe I could have stopped it.”
“If you’d have gotten there any earlier, you’d be dead.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I think the man responsible for this is…” Her voice trailed away. But this wasn’t the time for secrets. “He’s not human, Tray. There’s nothing you, or me, or even Jaxon could have done.” The pendant burned, and Kara reached up to move it away from her skin. She held it in her grip and felt the current flowing from the silver moon.
“What do you mean? Witches can die, Kara. One bullet to the brain and even a witch isn’t getting back up.”
“Not a witch. A fallen angel. A…demon.”
Tray’s breath hissed out between his teeth and he glanced up at the roof of the van. “No. This shit can’t be real.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “I’m real. You’ve known me for years now, and I’m not a witch.”
His face contorted in disgust. “You’re one of them?”
She nodded. “Not by choice. I was born that way.”
“Did Abbey know?”
“I told her when I found out. You know I never could keep anything from Abbey.” The tears wouldn’t stop. Kara smiled, but it hurt. “She thought I was a remedial witch. She tried so hard to fix me, but nothing worked.”
Kara laughed softly, but then her throat closed up. Losing Abbey was like losing the best part of herself. It made an empty space in Kara that neither time nor vengeance could ever fill.
“Ouch!” Kara dropped the pendant against her shirt when a burst of heat burned her palm.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, I—” Kara began, but Tray’s eyes suddenly went wide.
“Holy shit.” He pointed an index finger at the body bag. “Tell me I’m not seeing what I think I see.”
Kara turned in her seat, her gaze flying over the large black lump of vinyl. The plastic covering Jaxon’s head was fluttering lightly, puffing up, then flattening back down over the contour of his mouth.
Kara sucked in a breath and almost leaped at the body, fumbling to zip the bag free of Jaxon’s face. “Jaxon!”
When the bag pulled away from his mouth and nose, Jaxon took a huge gaping breath, his eyes wild and blinking rapidly.
“Oh my God!” Kara cried in disbelief as he started to thrash. “Unstrap him!”
“Jaxon!” Tray came to kneel beside Kara. He took Jaxon by the shoulders through the heavy material. “You’re all right. Calm down, buddy. You’re gonna be all right.” Tray unbuckled the straps pinning Jaxon to the gurney and zipped the bag down. “I don’t believe it,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
Jaxon’s gaze darted around the interior of the ambulance, until he locked eyes with Kara. He stopped flailing, but his breathing was ragged. “Abbey,” he rasped.
“I know.” Kara put her fingers to his lips. It was a surreal mix of emotions to be so happy to see him breathing and yet totally annihilated by the loss of her best friend. How could she tell him Abbey was gone? She reached down and grasped his hand. “She’s gone, Jaxy.”
He tried to sit up, but he didn’t have the strength. “We must find her.”
“No…” Kara’s breath hitched on the word. “She’s gone. She didn’t make it.”
“No, mistress. It can’t be.” Jaxon rolled to his side and struggled to prop himself up. “Where did he take her?”
Tray’s expression was bleak. “She never made it out of the fire.”
Jaxon frowned and pushed himself up on his elbows. “She was never in the fire.” He coughed, ducking his chin toward his chest as a rumbling hack erupted from his lungs. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips and it came back covered in blood.
“What are you saying?” Tray demanded.
“By the time he finished with me and lit the house, she was already gone. I’m sure of it.”
Kara’s hand flew to her lips. “She’s alive?” The high-pitched sound from her mouth seemed to originate in her soul. “Who took her? Where’d they go?”
Jaxon finally sat up, his brow knotted in anger. “I don’t know. He hid his essence from me and I have no way of tracking them. I’ve failed her.”
“Abbey’s alive,” Tray breathed out, blinking up at Jaxon.
Jaxon’s mouth pulled down at the corners, in shame or grief, Kara didn’t know. “He won’t kill her until he gets what he wants.”
Tray threw his hands up. “What does he want?” The warring hope and desperation in his eyes made him look like a man on the edge of sanity.
Jaxon met Kara’s eyes. “My mistress in exchange for her friend.”
“Why?” Tray asked. “What does he want with Kara? And why are you calling her your mistress?”
Jaxon was straining to stay upright but finally gave in and lay back on the gurney. He threw his arm over his eyes to block out the dim light of the interior. “She is not my girlfriend, but my lady. The one I’m sworn to protect. But as for why the black-wing’s taken an interest in her, that I cannot say. Maybe breeding. Maybe he wants to kill her. Either way, I won’t let it happen.”
“I can’t believe you’re alive.” She grasped Jaxon’s hand. “If he had Abbey, why didn’t he kill you when you were unconscious?”
Jaxon laughed and the low sound set off another fit of coughing. Kara reached for strips of gauze on the shelves above him and wiped the blood from the corners of his lips. He squeezed her hand and took a deep breath. “If I rule out the kindness of his heart, he must want me alive to take you to him for the exchange.”
“But where?” Kara rolled her hands into tight fists. “I don’t know where to look.”
Tray leaned toward Kara. “I’m not saying you should trade yourself for Abbey, but he did leave a note. He must think you’ll know what it means.”
Kara glanced back at Tray. Not saying she should trade herself—her ass. He was practically salivating at the thought of handing Kara over for Abbey’s return. And Kara couldn’t blame him. The idea was sounding pretty good to her, too.
“There was a note?” Jaxon asked. “It makes sense there would be. What does it say?”
Tray sat back on the seat across from Jaxon. “‘Tiger’s eye for rubies where our bodies ignite.’ That’s it.”
Jaxon nodded. “You’re the tiger’s eye,” he said, grasping a lock of Kara’s hair between his thick fingers, “and Abbey is the ruby. As for the rest…I’m not sure.”
“Jaxon, there’s something else.” Kara’s mind whirled like muddy water down a drain. The dreams. The feather. The symbol. Gavin. She didn’t even want to utter the w
ords out loud. “I was with Gavin tonight. I kissed him and…he had the symbol tattooed on his neck.”
“What symbol? The fucking murderer’s symbol?” Tray bit out. “You’ve been sleeping with the murderer?”
The more Kara thought about it, the less it made sense. She looked to Jaxon. “Besides the fact that Gavin would never do anything like that, he’s not a black-wing. He’s a silver-wing. You said yourself that it was the sign of Brakken. Gavin wouldn’t do this. But why would he have Brakken’s symbol?”
Jaxon pushed himself up again and rested his elbows heavily on his thighs. “I couldn’t tell you until I was sure, but your discovery confirms it.”
“Confirms what?”
“Lord Gavin is Brakken’s son.”
“What?” Kara gasped.
“He forbids speaking of it, but I’d heard rumors that the Aniliáre bastard sired the Mercury Lord.”
“What does that mean? Is Gavin in on it or a victim like Abbey?”
“I can’t answer that question for you, but I don’t think we should ask for his help until we know for sure. I’m hard-pressed to believe he and Lord Julian could have been living beside you without being aware of a black-wing in their midst.” Jaxon shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like my lords.”
Tray let out an angry breath. “Okay, so we’re on our own against this black-wing guy. Tell me where he is and we’ll get Abbey back.”
“Where our bodies ignite,” echoed Jaxon. “You have the key, mistress.”
Kara sat silent for a moment, feeling sick that Brakken would even say something like that based on a few wet dreams he’d planted in her head. She wanted to scrape her brain out with a melon baller to get rid of the unwanted erotic images. Black wings. Never a face. His hands on her body. Glowing red lava singeing the tips of his wings as he pounded into her. Saplings catching fire and bursting into flames like her body when he made her come. “Oh my God. I know where it is.”
Jaxon reached out, grasping her hands in his. “Yes?”
“That little black island off the Mercury coast.”
He looked as if he hadn’t been expecting that answer. “Firebird?” he choked out, coughing up another mouthful of blood into the gauze pads. “It’s a small volcanic island. Nobody lives there. Are you sure?”
“That’s where he’s been all along. I need you to take me there.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kara and Jaxon argued for minutes over what they should do. There were several problems, not the least of which was Jaxon being almost too weak to travel. The other was his insistence that the two of them would be virtually defenseless against a true Aniliáre.
“Then we need help,” Kara said.
“Who would you suggest besides the man who bears Brakken’s symbol or his closest friend?”
“Shit!” she ground out, her fingernails cutting into her tender palms. “I don’t know. I’m just rolling with the punches here and trying to stay on my feet.”
“I’m going,” Tray insisted again in his most macho cop voice.
Kara glared at him. “Jaxon won’t have enough juice to get Abbey back safely if he has extra baggage. The answer is no.”
When he opened his mouth to let fly a string of cuss words, Kara put up a hand. “I know you love her, Tray. That’s why you need to let us do this. I love her like a sister and I won’t let anything happen to her. Besides, we need a cop on the ground to explain where Jaxon’s body went when we pull up to the hospital, in like, two minutes.”
Tray’s nostrils flared. “Yeah, and how am I supposed to do that?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” She turned to Jaxon. “Are you ready?”
He shook his head. His lips were a narrow slash of frustration. “If I were a smarter man, I would tie you up and take you as far from Mercury Island as I could travel.”
“Then it’s a good thing that my word is your command—and you have a thing for redheads.” She winked at her bruised warrior.
Tray’s face could have frightened a serial killer into turning himself in. “What about redheads?”
Kara chuckled as the ambulance slowed and the sirens cut off. “It’s time to go.”
Jaxon let out a long, slow breath and opened his arms to Kara. “Your harem is never dull, mistress. I’ll give you that.”
And with that, Kara squeezed him tight and dissolved into a million pieces.
The suffering was unbearable, like nothing Kara had ever experienced in her life. The sludge slipped into her lungs, filled her nostrils, choked her soul. It was hard to think with raw agony seeping into her pores and dissolving her bones, but one thought managed to break past the pain—if Jaxon couldn’t hold them together, they were going to be lost in this black wasteland forever.
Her screams were sucked into the thick silence, suspended like particles in outer space. When she dropped on her side in the cool white sand, Jaxon went limp beside her, his neck as slack as a rag doll and his eyelids fluttering.
For a moment, all she could do was breathe. Finally, when her strength started coming back, she ran her hands over her legs and arms to be sure she hadn’t left a piece of herself in the never-ending void.
“Jaxon,” she whispered, nudging his shoulder. “Are you okay?” She shouldn’t have asked him to do this. He was still too weak from getting fried, and he wasn’t moving.
Kara sat up and looked around, trying to judge if it was day or night. The sky above her was dark with heavy gray clouds. It looked like it was going to split open and hemorrhage, and that mirrored what her head felt like at the moment. She reached up to dab at the irritating wetness under her nose and her fingertips came back red.
She wobbled to her feet and tried to get her bearings. The ocean stretched to her left, the jungle to her right, and off in the distance was Firebird Island. A soft plume of smoke billowed up from the land mass and lifted into the air, mixing with the rain clouds until she couldn’t distinguish the two.
Kara knew Jaxon was awake when his coughing scared the parrots from the nearest tree. She dropped to her knees beside him and ran a hand over his hair. “Hey there, cowboy. That was one wild ride. Hope you don’t mind if I swim home.”
He laughed weakly, then doubled over with another spasm. When he was finished, he propped himself on one elbow and spit. The blood soaked into the sand like an offering to the gods. “I can demand payment for old favors and find us both a ride home. At this point, I’m not too proud to be clutched to a stronger warrior’s chest.” His wry smile told another story.
“Yeah, about that… Not that I’m complaining about your nonstop service to Mercury Island, but why are we over here when we need to be over there?” Kara pointed to the small island. If she was right, Abbey was there, almost within Kara’s reach.
“If I’m going to take on a black-wing, I’d like to be armed with something more than your house key.” Jaxon rose and lumbered toward the dense trees like a two-hundred-pound toddler just learning to walk.
“What are you doing?”
“Come see,” he called.
Kara followed him, stepping into vegetation so thick she couldn’t make out a trail. “All I see are plants slapping me in the face.” She put one hand in front of her eyes and pushed at the limbs with the other. After only a few minutes of trudging through the undergrowth, she almost ran face first into a hut completely covered in vines. She wouldn’t have been able to find it had she not been within an arm’s length of Jaxon’s backside.
He ripped away tentacles of thick leaves covering the entry and pushed open the door. Kara followed him inside the dark hut, waiting for her eyes to adjust. “Where are we?”
She glanced around, seeing ropes and tethers tied to posts and an assortment of weapons cluttering the floor. Then she saw other things—blindfolds and items shaped suspiciously like ancient sex toys. “Great. Another old love nest.”
He clenched his jaw and nodded. “Yes, though the dust has barely gathered here.”
He ran a hand through his hair, looking chagrined. “It wasn’t so much for her, mistress.”
Kara remembered the day she’d met him and the black leather straps he wore. “You know what, I don’t even want to know.”
He ducked his flushed face as he sifted through a wooden crate by the wall, then pulled out what looked like an old brass pocket watch and wiped the dust from the surface. “I think that’s for the best.”
Kara turned away from Jaxon’s hobby room and began rummaging through a collection of swords in decorative scabbards. One in particular caught her eye. “What should we take? What works best with a black-wing?”
“We? What kind of protector would I be if I allowed you accompany me to Firebird Island?” he asked. She answered with a snort.
Jaxon moved beside her and reached for the sword in Kara’s hand. He took it from her and pulled it free of the leather sheath, revealing a glistening blade as sharp as the tip of a serpent’s tongue. Intricate etchings ran up and down the metal with strange words and squiggly designs.
She reached down to touch the markings, but when she laid her fingertip against the blade, her ruby ring pulsed with static electricity against her skin and made an ominous buzzing sound, like a hive of bees. She snatched back her finger.
Jaxon frowned and took her hand in his. “What do you have there, mistress?”
“A ring from my father. At least that’s what Gavin told me.”
“It doesn’t like this blade. You should pick another.”
Kara’s brows shot up. “It doesn’t like it? What are you talking about?”
“All Aniliáre artifacts contain quanta. Energy. Each one is unique. Not all the artifacts harmonize with one another.” He brought her hand closer and inspected the ring, running his finger over the surface. A faint hum resonated in her bones. He smiled. “It likes me, though.”