Disappointment and disillusionment.
Like I’d been robbed when I thought I had nothing to steal.
“I would have given it to you if you’d only asked.”
Rising, I turn my back on my grandmother and walk out.
Once I follow Aidan and Maria outside the wards, the pain ripping a hole in my chest only growing worse as I leave Bernadette behind.
Toeing off my Chuck’s I walk in the pitch-black stream, the water cool on my feet as I look up at the clear sky. Stars – so many and so vast – sprinkle the night sky with just enough beauty to keep me going.
Just enough goodness to wash a little of the hurt away.
I don’t look at my sister, and I don’t look at Aidan. I can feel their eyes on me as I make this decision – the one I don’t want to make but have to.
“Okay, I’m in. Let’s go get her.”
Chapter Eighteen
MAX
What does one wear when they go off on a quest to kill their father? I ponder this as I try to decide between a 1960’s mod-style wiggle dress and a pair of gray skinny jeans, thick leather boots, and a tank top that says ‘Sunshine and Fucking Rainbows’ in a circle surrounding a skull and crossbones.
I know which one will be more comfortable should the evening not go according to plan, and I know which one will irritate my mother the most. Spoiler alert: they’re the same outfit, and that thought makes me smile.
It really is the little things.
Getting dressed, I make sure the sheath at my spine is secure and adjust the weapons so they can lay right under my jacket. Walking down the hall, I hear the brothers arguing in the living room, their voices carrying through the house.
“You’re going to get her killed. You’re going to get yourself killed. You didn’t even want me to be a part of this, and now you’re what, just along for the ride? What the fuck, Aidan?” There is a thud of flesh hitting flesh, but only once and no more.
I hear Aidan whisper, but I can’t quite make out what he’s saying. I’d hate for someone – cough, Maria, cough – to catch me in this hallway eavesdropping, so I quit my hiding and walk into the kitchen.
Maria is sitting at the table, a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a glass in the other, listening to the guys bitch at each other from the safety of the breakfast nook.
“…I’m not the one who threw her away, brother. That’s all on you,” Aidan’s deep growl is clear as a fucking bell even from in here, and I turn my eyes from the hallway leading to the living room to my sister. Her expression likely mirrors my own, eyes wide, mouth gaping open like a fish.
Maria starts snickering first, and then I follow, busting up laughing for I have no idea why. I’m not even sure I want to know why – at least not right now.
All I know is it keeps me from thinking Ian would rather I go alone than have help, and I keep laughing to make sure that particular hurt doesn’t stick its barb right in my heart.
Once my laughter dies down, I focus on Maria. She has emptied that glass twice since I came in the room and I wonder if I should be worried.
“You mad?”
She focuses on me – a little drunkenly, but I’ll take it. “Why would I be mad at you? I know why you don’t want me to go,” she says raising her glass, “I’m a liability.”
She can’t quite mask the hurt in her voice, though, and that really sucks.
“Baby girl, you aren’t a liability. I have every faith you can hold your own. You are strong and capable, and a fucking badass. But you’re my weakness. If Andras had taken you, there would have been nothing I wouldn’t have done to get you back. If he takes you now, I won’t be able to kill him. I won’t be able to do anything but get you back.”
Her eyes mist over, and she takes another sip of the bourbon. “Even though you got left behind?”
“Even then,” I murmur, as I tilt down to kiss her forehead. “Always.”
“But you’ll have my brother out there with you,” Ian’s voice lashes the air behind me.
“Yes, and you’ll be here protecting my sister. Even-Steven.”
Ian levels me with a look that could cut glass. “You’ll bring him back.”
“Or die trying.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
We manage to track Andras – or rather my mother – to Savannah. Savannah was a Witch ‘hub’, of sorts. The Southeast Coven leader even has a home here. I’d met her once after she’d been attacked in said home, nearly all of her security taken out on the same day my mother and sister were attacked.
That wasn’t a great time to be a Witch leader.
The locator spell tagged my mother in the middle of the historic district, and I’d taken great pains to map out the area since I was in no way familiar with the city.
I tended to stay out of Witch hubs.
“You sure you want to be here?” Aidan asks under his breath as we traverse a sidewalk of the canopied street. Savannah is known in some circles as ‘spook central’ with its ghost tours and such. A lot of battles were won and lost here, a lot of dead, and not just old dead. I assume just like in Denver, the veil is thin here, and there has been enough death, enough blood soaked into the ground to power the ley lines until the end of time.
“No, I don’t want to be here. At least if we run into a spook, you can eat him. What the hell am I going to do? Stab at him? Make him run away? I swear to the Fates this place is creepy.” I try and fail to suppress a full body shudder.
“I meant with your parents.” Aidan gives me a sideways glance like I must be some special form of stupid.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“Honestly, I’m almost four hundred. I should be over my parental issues by now, right?”
Aidan stops walking. “Why should your age have anything to do with it? They’re your parents, and they failed you.”
Unable to give him a good answer, I simply shrug and keep walking, leaving him to trail behind me. My mother is in one of the dozens of houses that border Forsyth Park, and I won’t know which one until we get a bit closer.
Maria spelled one of my rose quartz crystals to get hotter the closer I was to her, which is fine in theory, but only works if you’re really close.
“Anything yet?”
“A general warmness. Let’s get closer to the spot I pegged on the map and see if this thing actually works. It’s not like I can just keep an eye out for warding lines. This place has magic out the ass, almost every house is lighting up like a damn Christmas tree.”
Witch hubs. It’s no wonder I picked Denver as my home. Shifters and Angels roam those parts. Sure there were a few Witches thrown in, but they tended to stay in cities with a bigger base of power like New Orleans, Savannah, and Boston.
Forsyth Park is all but deserted, there are a few people out giving Fido his last stroll, a few revelers still cackling about a ghost tour they just took, but everyone else is smartly hanging up their hat for the night. I snap my fingers, arriving a few hundred feet away from the pin in the map, Aidan arriving beside me.
“How come you don’t puke when you do that, but whenever I take you anywhere it’s chunks city?”
Just thinking about it makes me want to dry heave. “Because I’m not using another species’ magic?”
“But Demons and Wraiths aren’t far off from each other. It shouldn’t be that bad.”
He’s probably right, but then again, I’m not all Demon, now am I? Shrugging, I keep a lookout for visitors. “Don’t ask me. I just work here.”
Moving closer, I can peg the house. To call it a mansion would be too broad a statement, and yet there is nothing else I could call it. Built probably in the 1800’s, everything about the home is a work of art. From the moldings to the columns to the garden. Everything is arranged to be pleasing to the eye, and yet… That house holds two of the worst people ever created.
It’s a wonder how many Ethereal families are just like mine. Where the cast-offs are always on th
e outside looking in.
I feel the coldness first, a freezing caress on the back of my neck. It stops me in my tracks, afraid that I’d just imagined it, and even more afraid that I didn’t.
“Aidan,” I whisper, his name barely a breath on my lips.
“I feel it.”
Trembling, I pull the athame, pressing the rune to expand the blade. The street lights flicker, barely keeping lit under the strain of power heading for us, the city practically vibrating under my feet. What sounds like the wind howling perks up my ears. I know it isn’t really the wind, even though I have a distinct hope that if someone were to look out their window, they don't see what I am.
“What the hell is that?” Aidan shouts over the din, and I hate to have to tell him the truth.
“Souls. Hundreds, thousands. Micah brought friends.”
It’s a trap. Andras never wanted to exchange the knife for my mother. All he wanted was for me to get close, to leave the safety of my city and pounce like the dickhead he is. He wants the blade, but leaving me alive is just too much of a liability.
The ground vibrates hard enough to nearly shake me off my feet. I can’t stop this. I can’t even fight against it. I was stupid to come here in a place soaked in so much death, in a place where the dead are celebrated.
I close the distance between Aidan and me, not using him like a shield, but the fact that he’s bigger than me and is a better fighter, well…
“How many souls can you eat at a time? Is it like a one by one thing, or can you unhinge your jaw like a snake?” I’m only half kidding. I’d take a Wraith with indigestion over dying in the midst of this shit any day.
Aidan looks down at me, his face awash in what I can only peg as regret. He’s fighting his phase – his eyes flickering back and forth from full black to pale green. Against his will his fangs lengthen, his jaw popping and reforming. Black mist cradles him in its embrace, swirling around his legs, his arms. “I can’t take them all. Sssome of them don’t desssserve to go.”
His words hiss as he says them, the snake-like quality of all Wraiths coming to the surface. He means to Hell. Some of them are good souls tricked into doing the bidding of someone else. After what Bernadette described of Hell, I wouldn’t be able to send someone there unless they really deserved it. Meaning we could die if we stay.
Meaning we will die if we stay.
“Max, we need to go,” he shouts, and I look back to the house my mother is likely in. Where she’s waiting for me to come get her. I promised I would do this – save her – but I also promised I would keep Aidan alive.
And I can’t do both.
Aidan grabs my hand, pulling me, running farther from the house that holds my mother. I feel the lift, the pull of his Wraith ability tugging on me, ripping me apart bit by bit.
Then Aidan’s hand is ripped from mine, and all I feel is cold – the frigid aching burn of the clutches of a spirit. The warmth of the August night is all but gone, all that is left is cold hard hands tearing at my hair, my skin. Micah’s face appears right in front of me, and all I can do is hope Aidan got out, and he’s smart enough to not come back.
“You’re some kind of stupid, aren’t you? Instead of staying behind those wards where I can’t get to you, you come here of all places. Don’t you know, Maxima? The dead have power here,” he murmurs in my ear chuckling.
I scream when he presses the tip of his freezing finger against my cheek. This time my skin doesn’t just burn with a bout of frostbite. This time I can actually feel the skin cells die.
“Why? You said someone told you to go after me. Why are you still doing their bidding? You’re dead!” I scream in his face, wishing he was actually corporeal so I could spit in his face.
“You should know, poppet, even death doesn’t break a contract.” He seems so pleased with himself, as if death makes no difference to him. As if he might be getting something out of the deal.
Micah’s fingers latch around my throat, the burning, squeezing strength in them cutting off my breath, freezing my skin and deeper. Reaching into my body and snuffing the flame that is me. My body goes slack, and some of the cold on my arms goes away. I can’t tell if it’s from spirits letting me go or from shock. The tips of my boots frantically scrape the pavement, the athame falling from my loose fingertips.
In the distance, I hear Aidan’s roar of frustration, of pain. Wherever he is, he’s losing – the honor he clings to so fiercely is failing him this time.
I only have one weapon I can reach, and I swore I wouldn’t unsheathe it unless I had to. This looks like a ‘have to’ kind of situation. My fingers scramble for the hilt of the bone blade, pulling it free. Micah doesn’t notice me moving, his once ice-blue eyes focused more on my throat where his hands are squeezing the life right out of me.
I slash at his arm, doing anything to break the hold he has on me, and I’m rewarded with sweet air when his grip loosens and falls. Falling to my hands and knees, I take a second to catch my breath before I slash and stab at anything I can reach, the black specter of the souls swirling around the pair of us.
“He said the blade couldn’t touch me anymore,” Micah murmurs as he cradles his wrist, disbelief written all over him as he stares at the wound the blade created. Blood – black as night and twice as thick – pours from the gash in his arm.
“I guess he lied,” I croak, staggering to standing, ready to face him head-on, prepared to kill the Demon who has haunted me since the day he came into my life.
Since the day he was hired to ruin me.
Micah bares his fangs to me. Forgetting his arm, he braces himself, ready to take me on. Out of the two of us, I’m definitely the worse for wear, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to win this time around. Micah strikes, his talons slicing through my jacket and the thin fabric of my shirt into my belly, the warm gush of my blood cooling while tainted with his spirit.
“This is how I killed Melody. Just like this,” he hisses in my face, the agony of that statement worse than the killing blow he’s made to my middle.
And then he’s gone. I’m out of Micah’s clutches and in warm arms while another man – a man made of darkness and glowing golden eyes attacks him with a sword made of pale bone. The ally flickers back and forth from human-shaped to smoke, and I recognize him.
Andras.
I don’t know why he’s helping us, but I can’t worry too much about that right now.
Turning from the melee, I look up to see Aidan hovering over me, keeping me warm as my blood leaks from my body. He’s crying, his tears carving tracks down his filth-covered face, and I don’t know why. My death doesn’t mean much to anyone but Aurelia and Maria, and even then, Maria’s lived almost her whole life without me. Ian might care for a minute, but my death is to be expected. He won’t mourn for very long.
But of all people, I would have thought Aidan would take my death in stride. The fact that he isn’t is a balm on my battered soul. I want to reassure him, but I’m a little too focused on breathing to think up anything particularly profound.
“Don’t wo-worry. I’ll be right b-back,” I mutter, the heat and strength and life pouring from me as I struggle to drag the blade into its sheath.
“You damn well better be,” he orders, guiding my fingers so I can seat the blade.
I want to tell him to be careful.
But I never get the chance.
Chapter Nineteen
AIDAN
Max’s mouth parts as if she’s about to tell me something when her eyes roll back in her head, and her body goes slack. Blood stains her full bottom lip like one of her lipsticks, and I feel the loss of her light like a gut punch. Shaking her, I plead for her to wake up.
But just like in our lessons, she doesn’t listen to me.
I don’t have much time. If I want her safe, if I want her to come back, I need to get her out of here.
“Answer me!” the man – Andras – shouts, his fingers around Micah’s throat. I’ve never seen anyone but m
y brother able to touch a ghost, but Andras is. “Tell me where my brother is.”
Micah’s lips tip up, black blood staining his teeth in a grotesque smile. Andras growls at him before taking Micah’s head with the edge of a bone sword. How he can do that to a man that’s already dead I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to do it myself.
Andras wipes off the blade, and slips it over his shoulder into a sheath draped across his back. When he sees Max, he does a stutter step, his nostrils flaring, scenting the blood. He rushes us, and my instincts kick in. I gather Max in my arms, protecting her and baring my fangs to the bastard also known as her father.
“Give me my daughter, Wraith.”
“Over my cold, dead body.”
I know I can’t beat him. I know it would be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done to try. But I also know there is no way I’m leaving this woman unprotected. There is no way I’m letting this man take her from me.
Not now, not ever.
“Look, I know you don’t trust me, but I can save her. I can heal her. Just…” he trails off, “Just let me try, okay?”
My nostrils flare of their own accord as I take in his scent. And I feel nothing. No hunger, no thirst for the soul of an evil man.
Just nothing. It doesn’t make sense. An evil man kidnaps. An evil man sends spirits to do his dirty work. An evil man orders the death of his daughter.
“You… you aren’t evil.” It comes out as an accusation, and it is. His scent doesn’t make sense with all the wrong he’s done. For all that he’s taken.
“I know I’m not, but that doesn’t stop people from believing it. Look, these spirits aren’t going to just go away. They’re drawn to the blade,” he says nodding to the bone blade sheathed at Max’s hip. The one I had to help her put away because she was too weak to do it. “We need to go inside the ward.”
The screams of the swarming souls circle around us, spirits teaming, roiling to come closer but they don’t.
Daughter of Souls & Silence Page 12