by Linda Welch
“The rich and elderly of Gettaholt want nothing more than a healthy young body when they near their end. Some find their way to me. I have exchanged many a soul between bodies with no fatalities.”
He took the spirit from a dying old man or woman and put it in someone else’s body? What about this other person? I don’t imagine they volunteered. Did their soul go into the elderly, dying body or be set adrift? The sheer dreadfulness of what he did made me ill with revulsion.
Royal’s lip curled with disgust. “What of the donor?”
“Not your concern,” Shan said. “I will occupy the High Lord of Bel-Athaer’s body. I will open the Gates and return to Bel-Athaer, where I will rule.
“My dear brethren do crave to be there when the Gates to our dimension open, but that is where our aspirations diverge. They have thrown in the towel, so to speak. They want nothing more than to return to our dimension. They will leave the Gelpha to make what they will of Bel-Athaer. But I . . . I will find my people, rouse them and lead them to Bel-Athaer. Under my command they will destroy the abominations we so willfully and carelessly bred. I will open the Gates to your world and we will conquer it. And this place.” A sneer creased his smooth face. “These creatures should not exist. I will destroy them.”
People who lived here called their world Downside but Angelina spoke of it both as a world and as an entity that plied the magic which shaped this place, and a kind of . . . custodian? Confusing? I kid you not. Did she communicate with this entity? Did it guide her? She sent us to Rain and River who just happened to know a sióga prince who could impersonate Lawrence.
Why, when according to everyone we spoke to this place had a huge criminal population and bad things happened all the time, did it take an interest in Shan? After all, it let the Dark Cousins in, in the first place.
Now I knew the answer. Angelina was right when she said Downside hadn’t as such let Maggie in, it wanted Royal and he insisted on bringing her. It knew Shan planned to ruin this hidden world and wanted Royal stop him.
“And Tiff?” Royal fixed Shan with a black gaze guaranteed to shrivel another man.
Shan’s eyes drifted to my body. “Arthemy will restore her. I want her to see her lover die.”
Die? Ice rippled through my veins. He meant to kill Royal.
“And although she can bear witness as she is, a soul set adrift, I want her here in person. I will savor her response, the helplessness, grief and rage in her eyes. And she interests me mightily. I will keep her. I look forward to breaking her.”
Royal struggled again, muscles straining, face contorted with rage, loathing and fear.
“Blood and magic,” Shan mused. “We have magic in abundance.” He turned, and one hand swept to encompass the mage and his circle. “We need only the blood.”
As he looked at the monstrosity holding Royal, Shan’s tone chilled me to my core. “Take him to the circle.”
No! Royal was the sacrifice, his blood would activate the spell.
To Arthemy, Shan said, “Begin.”
The great beastly thing propelled Royal forward. He tried to dig in his heels, use his elbows to jab it, but it resolutely pushed him along and Royal was a toy in its grasp.
Arthemy came to the table, took the small container and carried it to the circle. He chanted in a low voice as he crept around the perimeter, letting the pail’s contents dribble through his fingers to create a white line on the black circle. For the first time, I noticed four fat brown candles sat on what might be the four corners of the compass.
The white circle complete, Arthemy returned the pail to the table and walked the circle again, lighting each candle with a snap of his fingers. All the time, he chanted in a language I didn’t recognize, his voice gradually becoming louder.
Oily black smoke roiled on the floor inside the circle and the air stank of sulfur. The greasy smoke climbed to fashion a shape, churning as it formed. A head wearing pointed projections, a thick body, the beginning of arms and legs.
Facing the circle, Arthemy lifted his arms and chanted louder. Lips parted, Shan watched.
In the foul smoke, smoldering crimson eyes blinked open.
Although I prayed the wraiths would come, their entrance made my heart skip a couple of beats when they rolled into existence a few feet from the wall.
What they showed us in their apartment is difficult to describe. They seemed to slowly lose substance and become slightly hazy to the eye. Their claim they could disappear altogether stunned me like nothing else. Rain said they moved short distances before they rematerialized, including through solid objects. But although they penetrated barriers, their clothes and weapons didn’t make it through.
Chris demanded a demonstration. Rain laughed and refused.
So Rain and River burst in the room naked, and in other circumstances I’d look everywhere except at them. Rain reached the table first and plucked up her sword. She didn’t miss a beat, took several steps and swung at Shan. River came behind her and grabbed his pistol.
But Shan stepped in and lifted his hand to block Rain’s sword and the stroke which should have taken his head severed two fingers, spraying blood as they fell. Shan hissed and slid aside but didn’t lose his focus; his other hand, fisted, shot out and connected with River’s chest, punching him across the room. The lad’s gun went flying, it hit the floor and skittered until it struck my table’s leg, and River slammed into the wall. His head struck with a sickening crunch and he slid down, leaving a sticky trail of blood and black hair on the plaster.
He faded until he was no more than a watermark on the wall, and disappeared. It happened so quickly, I would have missed it had I blinked.
He came back instantly, on one knee on the floor, and bounced to his feet as if he had not sustained a dreadful head injury. Shan stood between him and his gun as the Cousin easily dodged every swish of Rain’s blade. My jaw dropped to see River without a mark on him.
Shan soared, he floated in the air, and kicked Rain’s sword from her hand. In my mind’s eye, I saw a deserted factory in the bowels of the High House, Shan with gore dripping from his fingers, Royal immobile in an ever widening pool of blood on the floor. It was over apart from Shan tearing Rain to pieces.
But he landed lightly and beckoned with one hand, inviting Rain to retrieve her weapon, which she did without a moment’s hesitation.
This was a disaster. They were supposed to take Shan by surprise and kill him. But it all went wrong. Held immobile by the huge men, Royal couldn’t help. A sense of futility flooded me.
Rain’s shuffling feet toed one of Shan’s severed fingers. It rolled into the circle.
Shan’s fingers, a blood sacrifice . . . . The thing in the circle solidified in seconds. Slick skin like black vinyl pulsed and writhed as if a million tiny worms moved beneath it. Fingers ended in talons, black fangs lined the red mouth and two horns spiraled like bone corkscrews.
Your typical run-of-the-mill demon.
River ducked and rolled, and was gone. He appeared near the tables, took up the knife and threw it overhand. It should have skewered Shan, but the Cousin moved at the last minute and the blade whizzed past him and struck the wall.
River went for his gun, but Shan somersaulted over Rain and backhanded him. River’s feet left the floor. He blinked out in midair.
Shan was playing with River. Playing with both wraiths. He could have killed River with one blow, but he pulled his punches. He could have taken Rain’s sword away and killed her, but he continued their dance with a sparkle in his eyes.
Movement near the circle pulled my head around. River was near the wall, edging toward the circle.
Arthemy’s voice thundered now, but ended in a surprised yelp as River’s feet hit his back and catapulted him inside the circle.
Bulging arms caught Arthemy and folded on the mage.
A giant hand grabbed my midsection. I yelped as it tugged me sideways.
Into my body.
I lay there, disoriented, a
nd squinted blurrily at my long body clad in a ridiculous hospital gown and a rucked blanket, at my hands lying neatly at my sides.
I gaped like a fish as air thundered into my lungs. My blood sang in my veins, my nerve ends tingled. Colors looked brighter, sharper. Life coursed through me. It was unimaginably glorious. I felt invigorated, I could fly, I could leap tall buildings in a single bound.
And I was me, Tiff Banks, lying on her back on a stone table.
I rolled my head to the side. Nothing much had changed in the few seconds my soul took to settle in my body. Rain continued to hack at Shan with ferocious concentration. Her body gleamed with sweat; it ran into her eyes but she didn’t blink. Shan’s lips pulled away from his teeth in a malicious smile as he gracefully swayed and slid and angled out of her sword’s path with inhuman precision. I knew nothing of Rain’s experience with a sword, but I doubted she had ever gone against anyone as fluid as Shan.
My fingers twitched. I lifted one hand. The back was bruised and stung from the IV needle, and I loved the sting. Rolling to my left hip, I experimentally pushed up on my shoulder. The blood drained from my head. I closed my eyes and felt as if I drifted. Black dots floated behind my eyelids.
Get it together, Tiff. You don’t have time for this.
I opened my eyes and managed to get on one hip. And found myself on the floor, on my knees, without knowing how I got there. I fell forward on my hands, got hold of the gun and dragged it to me. I needed to clench it between my knees and use both thumbs to cock it, and getting it positioned in my hands and lifted seemed impossible. It was one heavy mother.
I held the gun and tried to line the sights at Shan as my finger tightened on the trigger. My hands wobbled badly. That’s when I discovered the damn thing had a hair trigger.
Unsurprisingly I missed Shan. The bullet hit the ceiling as the gun’s recoil knocked me on my back and the air from my lungs. Oof. The report was horrendous, it sounded like cannon fire. It startled everyone, including Shan. Alarm flickered in his eyes, he dipped and turned his head.
Everyone but Rain.
She swung two-handed. Her sword cut deeply into his neck, so deep it must have severed his trachea.
Till my dying day, I will never forget his expression, wide-eyed, disbelieving, as he stood motionless.
Rain wrenched the blade free, a thin stream of blood jetted from Shan’s neck. She swung again and the sword sheared through flesh and muscle, severed his spinal cord and his head tumbled from his shoulders.
Shan’s body toppled, his torso landed on the white circle, blood spurting from the stump.
One gnarled hand took Shan by a shoulder and pulled him in to lie between the beast’s legs.
Rain ran in and grabbed Shan’s head by his long black hair. “Hey, you forgot something.” She threw it in, where it landed with a sickening thud and rolled between the monster’s legs.
I couldn’t breathe. The demon had dragged Shan’s body through the salt, destroying the circle, and didn’t breaking a circle allow whatever was trapped inside to come out?
Arthemy draped the demon’s arm, his spine bent at an impossible angle, eyes bulging, mouth open in a silent scream. With its other hand, the thing picked up Shan’s head by his silken hair.
“You have your sacrifice and he who tried to bind you. Return to where you came from,” Rain said. She looked tiny, facing the monster three times her size.
It loosed a deep hollow chuckle which coiled around the chamber. “But I only now arrived, little one. I think I will bide awhile.”
Rain backed to the table and plunged her hand in the pail. “Do I have to use the salt on you?”
Its teeth ground; it laughed again. “There is always another time. I will not forget you, wraith.”
A flash of black light, a gust of air smelling of burning rubber, and a ghastly silence.
Dagka Shan, the blood mage Arthemy and the demon had disappeared.
“Thanks, Castle. High five.” River held his hand up, palm out. “Castle told me to knock the mage in the circle, send him out of the land of the living to the dark realm. All his spells failed. Pouf!”
“And did Castle remember Arthemy’s spells bound the demon to his will?” Rain panted. “Nothing but a pail of salt stood between it and us.”
She listened for a second, made a noise in her throat and an impolite sign in the air.
“Your master is dead. Let them go,” she ordered. My head spun so much from being knocked back by River’s clunky pistol, it took me a second to realize she spoke to the big men.
They took their hands from Royal’s and Baelfleur’s shoulders. Baelfleur stepped away, but Royal immediately rounded on them.
“Leave it,” River said. “You can’t take a mountain troll down.”
Troll? They were trolls?
One troll scratched his hairless head. They looked at each other. Then without a word they turned and lumbered from the room.
And I found myself feet off the floor in Royal’s embrace.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You don’t know how good it is to feel you.” I husked. My throat felt like cardboard.
I pressed my palms firmly to Royal’s cheeks and inhaled his sandalwood and amber scent. “And smell you.”
“We will not get anywhere if you keep stopping to touch me,” he replied with an amused lift of his lips.
He didn’t understand. How could he? I’d been in sensory hell for days. To smell anything was marvelous, even this dank passage.
Four heavy wood doors lined it, each with a small hatch. I sniffed. “Although . . . oh lord, do you smell that, Royal?”
Bel was himself, an anonymous figure in a brown cowled cloak. Rain and River stood outside the first door on the right. Thankfully they’d retrieved their clothing. With everything which happened, my mind was too busy with other things to be embarrassed by their nudity, but being confronted by two naked people now would make me uncomfortable.
“You don’t want to look,” River said.
Before Royal opened the hatch, I smelled what lay inside. I pinched my nostrils when the reek hit me full force but it got in my nose and coated my throat, making me want to gag.
Putrid flesh, old blood and charred meat.
Royal opened the door and went in. I decided to wait outside. He stayed in there a minute.
“They were torn apart, limb from limb, decapitated and burned,” he said in a numb voice lacking any inflection.
I pictured the charred, featureless remains of a once beautiful woman, victim of the Charbroiler who decapitated his victims. I saw a den in a big house, a death vision of Shan ripping into an innocent family with his bare hands. I saw him crouched on a girder, gore dripping from his fingers.
Shan personally killed these people. He tore them apart. He made sure they were never coming back. They must be Cousins.
“Tiff?” Royal held my shoulders and squeezed.
“S’okay.” I pulled away and went to the next door. “Let’s open box number two.”
“Wait,” Rain said. “Castle says the dryads are in here.” She eased open the hatch and looked in, and shook her head at what she saw. “Poor things. Easy prey. I bet Arthemy took them off the streets to use in his experiments or spell-working.”
She opened the door, beckoned and spoke in a soft non-threatening tone. “Come. You’re safe now. Come with us and we’ll get you to the Auld Wood.”
As an aside, she muttered, “Stupid things. Why do they come to Gettaholt? It’s the worst place for them.”
I peeked around the doorframe at odd willowy creatures with silvery skin, brown twigs for hair and golden eyes; not human but nonetheless feminine.
Bel went in the cell and grasped a dryad’s thin arm, drawing our attention to blood seeping from a bandaged wrist and I swear green streaked the red. It cried out in a thin whistling voice and shrank from him.
“Fresh blood empowers a spell.” His eyes became hard as pebbles. “Arthemy bled them. I think he me
ant to use their blood until they died.”
While Rain, River and Bel tried to coax the dryads out, I went to the door on the other side and slid the hatch. I was weak and still slightly disoriented, but not stupid. I thought I knew who waited behind the door and it stayed locked till Royal and I decided otherwise.
Harsh? Excuse me for harboring unfriendly feelings for Dark Cousins.
And there she sat on a bench on one side of the bare cell. Gia Sabato in all her glory. Not a dark hair out of place, makeup professionally applied, no crease or rumple messed the rose-colored suit of pencil skirt and tight-waisted jacket. She might have come from an appointment at an upscale salon.
Wearing white jeans and a pale-blue shirt, yellow hair in long tight coils, Teo Papek sat with her. Two tall Gelpha leaned on the wall. Short, curling black hair framed a woman’s dark, heart-shaped face. The man with olive skin wore his straight black hair to his waist. I had never seen them before.
An elegant hand snaked between the bars; slender fingers clamped on my throat. I took my eyes off Gia for a second, which was all she needed.
“Get us out,” she hissed.
I tried to speak but what came from my mouth began as a squawk and ended as a gurgle. Frantic, I tried to pry her fingers loose.
Royal grasped her wrist. “Let her go!”
Her fingers dug into my trachea. “Quickly. Shan is here. Free us and we will protect you.”
“Shan is dead, you foolish woman!”
Her eyes flared and she released me. I reeled backward, making choking sounds and holding my throat. Royal caught and steadied me as I gasped for air.
“You killed Shan?” Gia’s gaze went past us and her lip curled. “No, not you. Wraiths. You used wraiths.”
“What does it matter who killed him? He is dead.”
“And the mage?”
“Dead.”
They traded stares. “So, Shan is gone. What now, Ryel?” Gia asked.
“It depends on what you mean to do if we set you free.”
With something vaguely like a chuckle, she said, “I have never been called a foolish woman before. After all these years wearing this form I think I have in truth become a woman, with a woman’s emotions. I fell in love and was forced to part with him.” Her tone became poignant. “I left Rio above with his family, where he is safe. I have nothing left in me now. No ambition. No desire.”