by Jenn Stark
The attackers struck, flying out of the pews toward the old man, but I got there first.
I blasted into them with a scream that was loud enough in my own mind that even the assailants heard it. The force of my fury formed a violent punch, carrying them both back a step. I didn’t normally like to go through human bodies when I was in my incorporeal form, but there was always the exception. This definitely counted as a worthwhile exception.
Realization struck me as I crashed through the first assailant, heard his scream. He could see me! See me and see me blow straight through his body, his brain scrambling to figure out what was happening to him. That his vision was so acute marked him as a Connected, but not a high-level one, I could tell at a glance. Still, he instantly whipped away from the priest, causing his partner to stumble, and then his partner spun too, catching sight of me. They both began babbling in Spanish, clearly terrified, but I could do nothing more than this, nothing more than play the part of the phantom.
Still, I could do that with fervor, and with each pass, I saw more—felt more of who these Connecteds were. I saw into their eyes, felt their thoughts, heard their cries—and the cries and words they’d spoken hours, even days before. Their memories were offered up to me as I shattered their body’s energy. I couldn’t kill them directly, certainly not in this form, but thinking of those two bodies up on the altar, I could make them wish they were dead.
Finally, they were left in a crumpled heap, nothing but screams rising from them, screams and helpless sobs. I turned to the priest, but he wasn't screaming anymore. Instead he held his hands high, his mouth moving.
Angel, he said—or I think he said it. Angel.
I met the man’s gaze and felt him truly see me—see me, though he was not Connected in any traditional sense. Still, his faith in his God and in the hope still left on this earth for humankind was enough.
Angel, he mouthed again, a third and final time. “Go and do God’s work.”
We stared at each other a moment longer in utter silence. Then the sound of sirens cut through the night sky.
I fled.
The moment I burst through the church’s protective walls, though, I realized something was terribly wrong. Screams were rising now, no longer from the shell-shocked killers in the church, but from every corner of the city. Revenants, I knew at once. Their wails seemed to follow me like living things, latching on to my legs, my arms, my hair. Not to pull me back down to earth, but to add the weight of their expectations to my already overwhelmed spirit.
It was too much…too much!
By the time I crashed back through the walls of Jonathan’s household, I was delirious with pain and misery and the endless cries of a community I hadn’t even known existed mere days ago. I fell forward with such quick violence that Nikki barely caught me in time before I brained myself on the table. As it was, she pulled me back, settling me firmly in the chair, then had to brace me from sliding to the floor. My head tipped back, my eyes rolling.
“Sara!” she snapped, her face in mine. “Sara, c’mon, girl, give me your eyes, your eyes, look at me, dollface, bring it back home. Speak to me, sweetheart. Show me you’re here.”
Too much! The screams wailed inside me. Too much…
But I already knew the truth of what I’d seen, I already knew who had sent those wraiths who’d rent asunder the bodies of those innocent Revenants, searching for their life’s essence. I already knew the danger we faced—and that it would not end in Barcelona. I’d suspected it the moment I’d stepped foot in the destroyed club, if I was honest with myself, but I hadn’t been willing to face it until now. Until…
“Sara,” Nikki repeated, shaking me roughly. “C’mon, girl. What in the—”
“I’m back,” I finally croaked with a broken, rattling cough. “I’m back.”
I drew in a ragged breath. “And so is Gamon.”
Chapter Nine
It took a few hours before Ma-Singh and Nigel would leave me alone, and even then it was only to barricade me into my hotel room. Armaeus had announced me shipshape with alarming speed, but Nikki had seen through my attempt at normalcy and had insisted we check into the nearest luxury lodging option that met Ma-Singh’s exacting security standards.
For his part, the general was beside himself with what he’d respectfully termed my “rash indiscretion” in racing pell-mell into the night and not treating the astral traveling experience as the true threat that it was to my form and function. Since I didn’t come back to my body able to run out of the room, unharmed, on my own two feet, he had a point. The fact that I generally didn’t attempt to travel without assistance didn’t serve at all to placate him. Both Nikki and the most powerful Connected in the world had been at my side, he reasoned. I still came back in virtual pieces.
It had been harder to let go of the image of the murdered Revenants than I’d expected. I’d seen so much darkness before this, the tragedy shouldn’t have affected me this much. Yet, the only thing able to banish them from my heart and mind was my solemn vow to avenge them—avenge them and protect their community as my own. I’d made this promise not to my House or my people—at least not yet—but to the wailing, watchful souls who had marked my passage through the night, linking me irrevocably to their cause.
Then, at last, I slept. Or tried, anyway.
I flopped over on one side and punched a pillow into submission, flailing a little on the enormous, oversoft bed. The voluminous pillows, coverlets, and mattress tops were conspiring to drown me, but I didn’t have the energy to move to the suite’s second bedroom. I didn’t have the energy to fall on the floor with one of the extra comforters either. I barely had enough wherewithal to keep breathing.
“You fight too long and too hard.”
“Not you again,” I groaned.
The chuckle that rolled over me did little to improve my mood. I slitted open one eye, and there, arrayed on the bed beside me, his body beneath the tangle of sheets and his head, chest, and one powerful arm and shoulder exposed, lay Armaeus. He rested his head in his hand as he watched me, his nearness and tone almost that of a lover. But we weren’t that.
Well, technically we were, but not right now.
“We could be, if you were not so stubborn.” He shrugged, the movement sending a ripple across his pectoral muscles and straight down my spine. “It would undoubtedly make you feel better.”
“It would. But you’d be in trouble, trust me.” I flopped over on my back, not missing the look of alarm that flitted across Armaeus’s face. But since he was here…I had questions. Lots of them.
“Gamon sent those killers to harvest the hearts of the Revenants, didn’t she? The timing is suspect, don’t you think?” I let the sludge of emotions I’d experienced in the Revenant club and again at the church wash over me once more, my senses reviling everything that Gamon was. Murderer. Torturer. Betrayer.
I’d never encountered the woman before meeting Annika Soo, so wrapped up in my own work finding artifacts and funneling money to Paris to finance my friend Father Jerome’s work to protect the children of the Connected community that I hadn’t really bothered to keep up with the more despicable reaches of the arcane black market. I’d heard rumors, whispers, but nothing more. Then those rumors began to be attached to a name more and more, a name at first I’d assumed was a man’s, given the atrocities particularly against Connected children Gamon had perpetrated. Sexist, but true. Then Soo had lured Gamon into striking…but had underestimated the dark practitioner’s strength. Gamon had killed Soo before I could reach her in time, then had fled as I’d cradled Annika’s dying body.
Gamon had gone underground in the weeks since, only to resurface now. Why now?
“In what way is the timing suspect?” Armaeus asked blandly, though clearly he could tap into my thoughts if he really wanted to. Unfortunately, he was a big fan of making me work things out on my own. It was one of his most irritating qualities, which was saying something, considering he had a dozen.
/> “In the way that, if she had her ear to the ground at all, she’d have heard of the call for the artifacts,” I groused. “She’d also have heard I’d become a secondary target. That’s assuming she didn’t place either of those calls herself. Either way, she knew I was going to be tied up, so she moved in while I was gone.”
Armaeus inclined his head. “It seems a most likely scenario.”
“But why now? These Revenants have been here for centuries. She could have attacked them at any point.”
“It might not have been time to do so. Think of what they were harvesting.”
“Blood, maybe? A living heart? I don’t know what else.” Other than the surgery to open the chest cavities, the bodies had been unmolested postmortem. No cuts to the head, no additional organs removed, no obvious other removal of skin and tissue. The assailants had first and foremost been after the hearts. “But why these kids? They’re not the only immortals on the globe, and they’re kind of hard to get to.”
“True. But for all the attempts, there are relatively few immortals—or near immortals.” Armaeus offered a rebuttal of my statement. “You, the Council.”
“Wait,” I frowned. “What about the witches and warlock sect?” I’d only met a few witches in my time, but I knew they lived well past a hundred.
“Their lifespan is longer, yes, but not as long as the Revenants. There are some who whisper that the oldest Revenant has walked the earth more than five hundred years.”
I sighed. “Gamon is a Revenant, isn’t she?”
Armaeus watched me with eyes that were more black than gold, a sign that his own abilities were getting triggered by the conversation. “That’s never been proven.”
“But it makes sense. She’s held her reign of terror over the Soo family for generations. The few times we’ve fought, she hasn’t tired. According to Ma-Singh and the House generals, her MO hasn’t changed from one generation to the next. But if she is one of these…” I flapped my hand wearily, “people, she wouldn’t need more of them for her own research, right? In the past she’s harvested the organs of Connecteds to fuel her technoceutical development. So, what, she’s on to bigger, better drugs now to feed into the arcane black market? One that requires Revenants? She wouldn’t need them.” I sighed, knowing my logic was running in circles but unable to stop the chase. “She could utilize her own DNA to cook up whatever noxious technoceutical she’s testing now.”
“Unless she doesn’t want her DNA alone,” Armaeus said reasonably. “And in truth, if she’s searching for a heart, losing hers might be further than she’s willing to go. She’d need donors.”
“Donors.” I winced. “Are there any other reports of Revenants gone missing?”
“They’re a reclusive group.”
I eyed him. “They sure contacted you in a hurry.”
“I’m reclusive as well. We are, in that sense, kindred spirits.”
“And yet you’re not being a recluse now.” I lifted myself up on my elbows, staring hard at Armaeus. “You came personally, to help them out. Why? And don’t give me that bullshit about wanting to help me astral travel. Your presence here totally violates the Council’s whole noninterference code, and you know it.”
Armaeus didn’t rise to the bait. He was annoying that way.
“It does, in the narrowest interpretations of that code,” he said calmly. “But remember, paramount over even the need to remain apart from the plight of those who wield magic in this world, is our sacred charge to ensure the balance of magic. There is some indication that Gamon is looking to upset that balance, and we cannot allow that.”
“Upset it how?”
Armaeus leaned closer to me, his intense gaze raking over me. “Tell me about the Gods’ Nails,” he said. “How they…attached to you. How they worked.”
I glanced at him. His eyes were deep and profound, and I could feel the insidious pull of their magic. “Setting aside the fact that you’re changing the subject, why are you trying to compel me to answer you? I told you what the nails are already.”
“You told me what you believed.” He shook his head. “But I need you to show me your memories once again, Miss Wilde. They’re currently blocked to me.”
“Yeah?” That surprised me. Normally I kept a pile of readily accessible memories for Armaeus to shuffle through if he ever stumbled upon my brain without me noticing, just to keep him occupied and not off sniffing into the more dangerous corners of my cerebral cortex. My adventure with the Norse artifacts fit solidly into the category of useless extraneous details—I wouldn’t have blocked that.
Nevertheless, I refocused my attention on the events, letting Armaeus see them as I verbally recalled them. At his murmured insistence, I slowed down my accounting. I also relaxed deeper into the bed, my voice dropping to a low murmur. Armaeus didn’t seem to have any trouble following me, even when my mumbles devolved into really loud thoughts.
I opened one eye. “You’re not really in bed with me, are you?”
His own gaze remained amused, assessing. “Is that a problem?”
“Just answer the question directly for once in your life. I’m in no mood to figure it out on my own.”
His laugh rumbled over me. Sounded real, felt real, the bed moving with the tremor of his body. But that didn’t mean anything with the Magician. He could project himself anywhere he needed to be, even in the flesh, I suspected, though he hadn’t ever owned up to teleportation.
Fortunately, he didn’t make me punch him to figure out the truth. I was way too tired to punch anyone.
“I am not physically present, no. I left Barcelona three hours ago, and am now en route back to Las Vegas. There are issues there I need to address.”
En route. That presupposed a plane, not a magic carpet. Interesting.
I squinted at him. “Issues like what?”
“Council issues. By your own admission, not your concern.”
I was never too tired to roll my eyes. “What, trouble in Paradise Valley already?” I prodded. “You guys have a full complement of council members now, I thought. So what’s the problem?”
“There is no problem.” Armaeus’s answer was beyond luxury-car-salesman cool. He’d ratcheted all the way up to cosmeceutical commercial, and he purred his next words out in a way that had me rethinking my cold cream. “We could always use more council members. There remain three positions to be seated, though, unlike the rest of the council, the remaining two members are no one I know personally.”
I frowned. I wasn’t good at math, but even I could pick up on this one. “Three positions, but two members? How does that work?”
“You forget, there is no Empress on the council. That will likely be the easiest position to fill.”
The contemplation in the Magician’s voice rankled me. “I’m not taking that job, Armaeus.”
He smiled smugly. “I wouldn’t ask you to. You’ve made your choice by casting your lot with the House of Swords. It’s a strong position for you as the war escalates.”
A true statement, but the fact it came from Armaeus made me doubt the extent of its truth. “The war can take a powder,” I grumbled. “I’m going to find Gamon. That’s my priority right now.”
He hesitated, then inclined his head. “I entrust you to your House. However, recall that Annika Soo tried for years to track Gamon—unsuccessfully. I would suggest you speak to Ma-Singh about what he knows and what he doesn’t, and focus on filling in the gaps.”
“Fair enough.” I picked up the thread of his original conversation. “So who are you recruiting for the Empress role?” I totally didn’t want that job, but I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of someone else filling it.
“There are several viable candidates,” Armaeus said, his evasion so obvious that I buried the spike of annoyance and jealousy that reared up. He was pushing my buttons on purpose, I knew. And, I reminded myself, I didn’t care who he chose for his kickball team. I had my own team to take care of.
Still…
“What are the other positions?” I screwed up my face, trying to find the holes. There were twenty-one Major Arcana cards, but some corresponded more closely to humans than others. I wouldn’t exactly want to try to find the human incarnation of The Sun—I suspected it didn’t exist. But all this information was in the council’s secret playbook, which I hadn’t gotten hold of. Yet.
True to form, Armaeus put me off as well. “You should rest, Miss Wilde,” he murmured, and now that I was focusing on him, I realized he’d been speaking in my mind all along. It had only seemed like he was real. Like first loves and low-fat fudge.
“Uh-huh. Don’t think I won’t remember this question, buddy. You can’t avoid me forever,” I griped, but the truth was, I was already drifting off, so quickly that I almost didn’t hear his last words.
“I consider the tragedy of that possibility more than you could ever imagine,” he whispered. Then he was gone.
Chapter Ten
I didn’t remember him doing so, but Armaeus must have left a parting gift of healing before he whisked away, because I woke feeling better than I had in days. That ebullience lasted all the way to me exiting the bedroom portion of my suite and encountering my assembled House team. They’d congregated in the suite’s public area after I’d alerted Nikki that I’d rejoined the living, but none of them seemed especially happy to see me.
“You’re recovered?” Nigel spoke first, his face unreadable as he swept a quick, hard gaze over me.
“Tip-top. What’s happened?”
Ma-Singh had stood when I entered, and now gestured to a laptop on the table. “Reports of other attacks,” he said succinctly. “Milan, Munich, Tokyo. No other deaths or kidnappings identified yet, but the damage has drawn much unwanted attention.”
I frowned. “I didn’t know we were that plugged into their community.”
“We weren’t,” Nigel interjected with a scowl. “They’re now plugged into us. After you found the two youths, additional calls hit our secure channel. The expectation is we will put the House resources in play to protect the Revenants.”