“What happened?” she asked. It was such a simple question, and for a moment I found myself unable to answer. I’d half expected her to be happy about my injured state; she’d certainly never shown any care about my well-being before, so why start now? “Tell me, or I can’t help you,” she said, irritation colouring her tone.
“Why do you want to help?”
“What?”
“Why do you want to help? What’s in it for you?”
She sighed in frustration and removed the dark glasses she wore over her sightless eyes. The muscles contracted and spasmed as she stared down at me, and for a moment I could have sworn that I felt the weight of her gaze on me.
“Child, what did you do?” she said, crouching down next to me and reaching out her bony, birdlike hand to brush aside a strand of my hair.
I tried to move out of her reach, but she caught my chin between her thumb and index finger with a sharp pinch. Under normal circumstances I might have protested, but I had nothing left in me now. No fight, no will—I could feel it leeching away slowly but surely like the air from a balloon.
“I died,” I said.
“Harbingers are not supposed to die. It was not your time.”
“We can die. It is part of our power.”
She shook her head as she tilted my chin up and around, examining me from every position. “No. Just because you have the power does not mean you should use it. Were you never taught this?”
“They didn’t like to speak of it. But I know some of the tales of those who also died.”
“If you did, you would not have attempted this,” she said.
“Gregor.” Noree turned her head and called back into the office. “Gregor, come here and carry her down the stairs.”
A man—if I could even call him that—appeared in the doorway, his hulking frame filling the space to the point where I wasn’t sure if he would fit inside the hall. He stepped out, stooping so that his head brushed the ceiling. His hair was black, and because he was stooped I could see the patch of baldness ringing the top of his pate. His black leather jacket creaked as he bent over at the waist and scooped me into his arms as though I weighed nothing at all. When he tossed me over his shoulder, pain lanced through my core, but I didn’t have the energy to cry out.
I tried to struggle—getting carried around was definitely not my idea of fun—but my arms were leaden and refused to budge as he popped the locks on the door to the stairs and carried me down.
I listened to the sound of each wooden step cracking beneath our combined weight. When he laid me out on the basement sofa, I stared up at the cobwebs covering the wooden beams that ran the length of the ceiling. I was really going to have to get up there and clean them.
Noree appeared over me once more, her bony fingers rubbing something slick across my forehead. The smell reminded me of mothballs and cheese, but I kept that thought to myself as she moved out of my line of sight. I felt her cold touch against my chest, and I knew she’d rubbed more of the foul-smelling, sticky stuff there too.
She began to mutter beneath her breath in a language I couldn’t quite grasp, which surprised me. Banshees could understand all languages—it was a little hard to warn someone of their coming death if you couldn’t understand them and vice versa.
“What are you doing?” I asked a little more firmly.
“Drawing the death out of your body,” she said.
“Drawing the what from the where?”
Her words made no sense whatsoever, and when I tried to lift my head from the pillow I found that I couldn’t budge. The oil she’d rubbed on my head trickled down either side of my forehead and into my hair, soaking through my pores and into my very core.
The moment it found the well spring of my power, panic flared within me. I hadn’t thought to check for my magic, but Noree’s power had gone straight to the heart of me, and what it found there left me feeling nauseous.
The barest hint of a spark remained, so small that the least little wind could blow it out.
“Stop it. Stop, or you’ll destroy what’s left!” I fought against her hold on me, but my body refused to move.
“It doesn’t work like that, Darcey. Patience.” Her voice was soft, soothing even, but it did nothing to quell the panic taking root inside me.
What had I done? Was this the price I paid for taking death upon myself instead of life? Was this how the others had faded away into nothingness?
Noree pressed something cold in the area above my stomach, and I flinched inwardly, my physical form still unable to move. The moment it touched me, my skin stopped feeling cold and instead began to burn. The feeling increased until I was sure I wouldn’t be able to take the pain anymore. I longed to scream, but my voice refused to let me.
My body arched up off the couch, and I felt the darkness within me loosen as whatever Noree was pressing to me separated it from where it had wrapped its tendrils around my very soul. The darkness poured up and out of me, spreading through my body faster than I could draw breath. Something sharp sliced at my skin, and then I saw it—the darkness that had coiled around inside me streamed up and out from my centre. The pain was so intense that tears formed at the corners of my eyes and slowly trickled down into my ears.
I wanted to tell her to stop. That I couldn’t take anymore. But I had no words. The world seemed suspended in time, and I was cocooned in agony. Noree stared down at me, her lips barely moving as she recited her incantations.
“Darcey!” Samira’s voice cut through the fog of pain that surrounded me. Her cry tore at my soul, but there was nothing I could do.
Fighting against the pain, I slowly curled my fist as the last of the darkness drained away into the item in Noree’s hands.
She glanced down at me, and for a moment I could have sworn that her eyes weren’t gone, weren’t destroyed by the magic we had used to cage Mannan. She smiled at me, her lips moving but no sound coming out.
The world rushed back in around us, and Noree stumbled slightly before collapsing onto her knees. I caught her before she completely hit the ground, her body frail in my arms. She had also paid a terrible price for stopping Mannan. I had never thought about it before, but now that I could truly see her as she was, the realization hit me like a punch to the gut.
She was always pretending that she was tough, strong, that nothing ever touched her. It dawned on me then that she had clearly been using some sort of glamour to make herself appear tougher than she was, because I could now feel every one of her bones sliding beneath her skin as she lay limp in my arms.
Her face was slack, the wrinkles making her look far older than her true age.
Why had she been lying to me all these years?
Or was it a lie? She obviously had her reasons for such an extreme glamour.
“Darcey,” Samira said, catching my arm as I laid the Noree down on the sofa.
Blood trickled down the side of Samira’s chin, and as I turned to look at her I could see a bruise blooming down her cheek.
“What happened?” I said, remembering her pained cry and my inability to help her.
“Some guy tried to stop me from getting down here,” she said, eyeing the Noree on the couch. “What did she do to you?”
Glancing down at the unconscious woman, I shook my head. “She saved my life, but I’ll be damned if I know why.”
“It didn’t look like she was trying to save you.”
“Where’s Gregor?” I asked, changing the topic as I glanced around the room.
“Upstairs,” Samira said before looking back down at the floor.
As though on cue, the sound of someone moaning floated down the stairs.
“What did you do to him?” I asked, unable to stop my smile.
“Gave as good as I got,” she said, rubbing her chin ruefully.
I grinned at her as the Noree made a small moan and shifted on the sofa.
“Good, but don’t let her know that,” I said, pointing to Noree, who was slowly beginning to come around.
Samira nodded and headed for the stairs.
“Oh, and if he tries to lay a hand on you again—” I started to say, but Samira grinned and cut me off.
“I really don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” she said. “He may have hit me in the face, but I think I accidentally made him infertile.”
She disappeared up the stairs, my laughter following her.
“It worked, then,” Noree said, dragging herself upright.
“Let me help.” I reached out for her, but she slapped my hands away and muttered something in Romanian.
“You have done enough,” she said to me, daintily fixing her purple skirt around her legs.
“Not by half,” I said.
“We need to talk.”
I nodded. “That we do, but first I’m ordering food. After whatever in hell just went down, I have no intention of chatting about it on an empty stomach.”
She stared at me for a moment, the empty sockets of her eyes widening as though in surprise before she nodded and scooped up her black glasses from where they had fallen during her spell work.
“Fine, but I want Indian food,” she said.
It was my turn to look at her in surprise.
“What? Just because I’m a regină doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy all kinds of food.”
With a shake of my head, I headed for the stairs. Noree would never cease to surprise me.
Chapter Eighteen
I sat on the basement floor with my legs crossed beneath me, shovelling lemon rice and butter chicken into my mouth as fast as I could get it onto the fork. I was always hungry after using my power, but never like this and never so severely.
Noree was perched on the edge of the couch, picking at the food I’d given her.
“You asked for Indian food,” I said, before shovelling another forkful past my lips.
Noree smiled at me, but the cruel twist of her lips left my skin feeling cold. “It’s not the food; it’s what we must discuss.” She lifted her face so that I could see her pointed expression.
Samira cleared her throat awkwardly and picked up her plate. “You could have just said you needed privacy,” she said to Noree before making her way up the stairs.
“The child is very disrespectful,” she said, twirling her fork between her fingers with a deftness that seemed at odds with her nature.
“She’s not a child, and she can still hear you,” Samira called from somewhere near the top of the stairs.
Noree gave a long, dramatic sigh to indicate her boredom and complete disinterest in Samira’s feelings. The sound of the door slamming meant that we were finally alone, and Noree raised an eyebrow at me.
“She is still so young and yet should know better because of all that she has witnessed.” Noree laid her fork down on the side of her plate, then pushed everything aside and folded her hands across her lap, giving me a hard stare.
I contemplated ignoring her and just continuing to eat, but the woman had saved my life for the second time in as many days. As much as I disliked it, I owed her.
Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I put down the plate and cocked an eyebrow at her.
Noree began fidgeting with her skirt, suddenly more interested in the pattern of the fabric than in what we were here to discuss.
“Look, you came to me,” I said. “You’ve insulted Samira, and I’ve stopped eating so we can discuss whatever it is that’s so important that you couldn’t just pick up a phone to tell me.” I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but if I didn’t get my point across, I knew she would just beat about the bush until we were both confused and I was none the wiser as to why she was really here.
“I asked you to come back and see me,” she said. “I told you there was something else besides the poison from the wolf’s bite in your blood.” The accusation in her words hung heavy in the air between us.
“I’ve been a little busy,” I started to say, but she shook her head in irritation.
“I don’t care what you do in your own time, but when it endangers me and mine then I do care,” she snapped.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I recognise the poison in your blood. Not the one from the wolf, but that which came before. Now tell me what drove you to go to him.”
“Go to who?” I asked, confused. “Look, I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” It wasn’t directly a lie, but the sinking feeling in my stomach told me I knew exactly who she was rambling on about.
“I know about the bites,” she said.
“I didn’t…”
“Don’t lie to me! I recognise them. Did you think I wouldn’t recognise the mark of his true disciple? I had one of my own, remember? I still remember the feel of its slick skin against mine, the ever tightening grip before it struck.” Her words brought memories to the surface of my mind. Memories I wanted to forget.
“Stop it, I don’t want to hear it,” I said.
Noree dropped to the floor and crawled toward me. She grabbed my wrists, pinning them down by my sides faster than I anticipated. I could have stopped her—I could have fought her off, shaken her free, and gotten away—but I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. Her hands slid up my arms to the crooks of my elbows, rolling up my sleeves until the bites were revealed.
She twisted my arms, forcing them to turn so the marks faced the ceiling. I stared down at the ragged skin along the edges of each tooth mark.
“You went to him. You gave yourself to the beast once more…” She dug her fingers into the wounds hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“I did not give myself to him,” I said.
“Don’t lie! I gave my eyes for this. I gave up a piece of my soul so you could lock him away, Darcey. And for what? So you could go running back to him when you grew tired of being weak and pathetic?”
“I swear, I have not gone to him…he came to me.”
She released me, dropping my arms as she shoved away from me, and scrambled backwards on the floor like a spider until her back touched the couch.
“That’s not possible. He cannot reach beyond the cage—we made sure of it. Each of us gave up something to make it impenetrable.”
“Something changed,” I said, dropping my face into my hands. I could still remember the feel of the shadow creature’s grip on my body.
“Nothing has changed. You came to me not that long ago, and I checked on the cage then. Everything was as it has always been.” Her tone was whiny and insistent.
“Well something has changed…something pretty fucking major,” I said, finally losing my temper.
She was always so willing to blame me, to make it all my fault. The mere thought of ever going back to someone like Mannan made my flesh crawl. I would never go back to him. I would die before I gave myself up to his creature.
“You love him, Darcey,” she said quietly. “That can do strange things to a soul.”
“I did love him, but that didn’t stop me from locking him away so he could never hurt anyone again.” I left out the bit about locking him away so he could never hurt anyone the way he’d hurt me. I’d sworn I would never again allow anyone to violate me, to violate who I was and the power I possessed.
I was a slave to the Faerie Court, but I still had a choice—death or slavery. It wasn’t a good choice, but for the most part I was allowed my freedom. When Mannan had taken my will, when he had used me…
“Never again,” I whispered, a lone tear tracking down my cheek.
“There is one thing that has changed,” Noree said, cutting through my reverie.
“What?” I asked, whipping up my head so I could meet her unseeing gaze head-on.
“MacNa is dead, and so the piece of his soul that helped seal the cage must have burned up,” she said.
“I thought when we pledged the pieces of ourselves, they would be impervious to harm,” I insisted. “How can his death have had such a serious effect?”
“It weakened the cage—it must have. H
ow did he come to you? Was it a dream?”
I nodded. The nightmare had made me afraid to fall asleep again.
“Then MacNa’s piece kept the astral spirit trapped. With that gone, he is free to reach out to any of us, or to anyone else.”
The thought of Mannan reaching beyond the cage filled me with fear. There was another whom I had no doubt he would be reaching out to, and the Elite would not be able to stop him. The Elite were fine for dealing with rogue vampires or witches, but not something like Mannan. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if I was fit to deal with someone like Mannan, and I had locked him away the last time.
“We need to find a way to kill him,” I said.
“There wasn’t a way to kill him then, so what makes you think we’ll find one now?” Noree asked.
“What choice do we have?” I asked. “I’m not strong enough to cage him again if he manages to break free. Neither you nor I have anything more to give.” It was a bleak but honest assessment. Noree had given up as much of herself as she could—any more and she would have died, and then we’d have been back to square one. And I had given my power, the core of who I was, to best him, and still it hadn’t been enough. I hadn’t killed him.
Noree smiled at me, reminding me of the woman she had once been. “You always did have such a rosy outlook on life.”
“I’m a banshee. You want rosy, go and have a chat with a flower fairy.”
“I often wondered how your tongue could get you into so much trouble,” she mused. “Now I know.”
I didn’t answer her; the sound of feet crossing the upstairs floorboards held my attention, and I was on my feet before the door leading down to the basement even opened.
“What is it?” I called up to Samira, who came clattering down the steps like all the demons in hell were hot on her heels.
“It’s the Elite,” she said, her face completely drained of colour. I could see her eyes filling with panic, and I couldn’t blame her. I knew what it was like to be hunted, to have others wish for your death.
“Where?” I asked, stalking up the stairs.
“Outside. They said they want to talk to you,” she said. I could see too much of the whites of her eyes, as if I were looking at a frightened animal about to bolt.
Huntress Moon (Bones and Bounties Book 2) Page 13