by Ophelia Bell
“Something about how you played that guitar triggered its magic. It’s meant to call fate hounds, but there hasn’t been a turul powerful enough to actually do that yet.”
My eyes widened. “Fate hounds . . . is that what they are? You can see them?”
He sighed and shook his head, then walked over and slumped into an oversized armchair. “No, but I felt their power, and when Willem was attacked, I saw its shadow. They aren’t supposed to behave that way . . . they don’t bite, at least not as far as I know.”
I moved and perched at the edge of another chair, carefully clutching the blanket around my chest. “I’m sorry about what happened . . . they respond to my singing in a weird way, but I didn’t think they would come out during the day. I guess now I know why that happened.” He narrowed his eyes at me and I sighed, realizing I needed to elaborate a bit more. “I’ve been watching them since the Equinox. They attack members of the bloodline. Sometimes their wounds are fatal, or they just fall into comas. I haven’t been present when any have actually died. I don’t understand why they would attack dragons though. The bloodline is human. Well, except for the link to Dion.”
“Most dragons have a human parent,” the turul said softly, shooting a worried look at the unconscious dragon on the sofa.
“Dion . . .” The ursa said thoughtfully. “You mean Dionysus, the actual god? Were you there when he sacrificed his power to kill the Lamia? Are you—do you work for the Quorum?”
I chewed on my lip, trying to decide how to begin explaining exactly how I fit into everything. The turul sat forward with his elbows on his knees and saved me the trouble. “I think you’d better start with your name,” he said. “I’m Sandor Sirocco. This is Keagan Sundance, and our unconscious friend here is Rohan Tanan. Willem’s the big guy in the bedroom.”
I took a deep breath, shooting a glance at Keagan, whose face was pinched with worry I ached to ease. He slipped down onto the floor beside the sofa, angled toward Rohan’s head with one hand resting on his friend’s chest. Could he sense the damage to Rohan’s soul?
“My name is Deva Rainsong. I’m not exactly working for the Quorum. They don’t know where I am, which they probably aren’t too happy about.” I shook my head, cringing inwardly at how pissed my parents probably were.
“But you’re somehow involved with them and the bloodline, I take it,” Sandor said.
“The Quorum are my family,” I said and lifted one shoulder. “I helped deliver the message to the bloodline on the Equinox.”
That was the understatement of the year, but I wasn’t ready to divulge my full significance until I knew where I stood with these guys. The last thing I wanted was the Quorum—in other words, my parents—descending on me and hauling me back to one of the four sacred realms we called home. I had to figure out what was going on with these beasts, these fate hounds, and why they behaved the way they did around me.
“You aren’t an ursa,” Keagan snapped. “Why the hell is your name Rainsong?”
My skin prickled at his bitter tone. The hand he had rested on Rohan’s chest was now clenched into a fist. The dragon’s energy gradually seeping out beneath it reminded me that we really didn’t have time to just sit around chatting and it was too much effort to try to come up with adequate lies or half-truths that would satisfy Sandor’s turul lie detector.
“The Summer Shaman is my mother,” I said. “Or one of them, anyway. She’s how I got my name. The rest really isn’t that important. All you need to know is that on the Equinox I sensed something attacking the bloodline. I was in the Haven at the time and drifted directly to the nearest victims, both of whom happened to be admitted to a hospital in town. I’ve been watching them ever since but today’s the first day something new has happened. I believe I can help heal your friends if you let me.”
“So you know why the fate hounds bit these guys?” Sandor asked. “You know how to wake them up?”
“Why they bite, I don’t know. I believed it was just what they did . . . feeding on their spirits. But I do know how to wake them up. Music—at least music with some turul power backing it up—seems to strengthen the victims’ auras enough to slow the soul bleed. I’m not sure how to heal the bites completely though.”
Keagan jumped up and grabbed the guitar, shoving it at me. “Do it. Wake him up. Now!”
Open mouthed, I took the instrument and glanced at Sandor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to use this again if it’s what summoned them.”
“Will singing work by itself?” Sandor asked.
“Coming from you, it should. Better than me, probably.”
Sandor lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever the hell you are, you’re a modest one. I may have designed that instrument, but my power’s never been strong enough to play it to that effect. Yours is. Only a turul soul with the pure strength of one of the Winds could make Agnes sing the way you did.”
I shook my head. “Then it couldn’t have been the guitar that attracted the hounds. Maybe it was something else about me. They probably tracked me from the hospital.”
He gave me a dubious look. “What makes you so sure it wasn’t you? You absolutely have turul blood with a voice like that.”
“I do. I have North blood, in fact. But what I don’t have is a turul soul. I don’t even have a soul.” My shoulders slumped and I hugged the guitar gently, taking comfort in its familiar heft on my lap.
“I find that hard to believe,” Sandor said. “But if my singing will help, we’d better do that. You two join me, but yeah . . . better not test Fate again by playing Agnes there.”
He reached to the side of the chair and produced another guitar that had been hiding in the shadows. After only a few notes, I recognized another song from one of the many tunes I’d heard on the radio over the past few weeks.
The very moment our three voices mingled in the room, Rohan’s aura brightened and his pallid complexion warmed. His shallow breathing gave way to a single big exhale.
Keagan’s voice broke and he fell to his knees again. “Rohan, are you all right?”
Sandor kept singing but stood and moved back around the chair toward the bedroom, strumming his guitar as he went. When his playing halted I knew Willem must have roused as well.
I kept going, not wanting to chance them falling unconscious again until they regained their wills a bit. After seeing how Susannah had managed to remain conscious even with the weaker power of her daughter and grandson’s music, I hoped that would be enough to at least allow Rohan and Willem to remain awake.
Rohan’s eyelids finally lifted, revealing shining golden irises. He glanced at Keagan for only the briefest second before craning his head toward my singing. With his gaze fixed on me, he sat up and smiled.
My breath caught, the song cut short. I could only stare at him as my adrenaline spiked, at first from the most acute arousal I’d felt in weeks, then from the terrifying knowledge that I’d fucking done it again. I’d fallen for a man in the span of a song.
At least Rohan’s soul had brightened to a healthy orange glow despite the open wound. His aura glimmered stronger now thanks to the singing.
A faint, curious warbling sound hit my ears and I stiffened, my skin erupting in goosebumps at the awareness of a new presence in the room. Rohan’s bleeding soul pulsed and he let out a harsh gasp, clutching at his chest.
Stealing a glance down at my side, I shook my head in denial. “No, please go away and leave us alone,” I whispered desperately. “Stop hurting them, please!”
The hound craned its neck and pushed its blaze-adorned snout into my hand, then padded over to Rohan and pushed its nose into his chest. With its tail a fan of shadowy wisps wagging in the air, it looked back at me and warbled again, looking proud of itself.
I had the strangest impression that it believed I somehow wanted Rohan’s soul juice or something. But I didn’t. All I wanted was for them to go away and stop hurting people.
Sandor had said the guitar I held was made for summoning t
hese things. If that was true, then maybe I could use it to make them leave, too.
Retrieving the guitar and standing, I began to strum one of the more powerful songs I’d learned recently, and with deliberate intent, sang straight at the beast.
Around the part where the song demands of some unwanted lover that they walk out the door, the hound made a pitiful whining sound and astounded me by actually hopping up and trotting away with its tail between its legs.
The guitar continued to vibrate with odd power after I stopped playing and when I looked up, all four men were staring at me.
“I Will Survive?” Willem said, then chuckled, his laugh a comforting rumble that filled the room. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
“What just happened?” Rohan asked.
“It came back, didn’t it?” Sandor gently extracted the guitar from me as I slumped back down in the chair and buried my face in my hands.
I nodded. “I don’t understand what it wants . . . what they want.”
A warm palm gripped my shoulder, sending a zing of electricity into my body. Without looking, I knew it was Rohan.
“Why don’t you tell us what you saw and we’ll help you figure it out? Was it the thing that attacked me? For a second there I felt like something was trying to pull my testicles out through my belly button. Not a pleasant sensation so I’d love to get to the bottom of it too.”
Even though I knew simply looking at him was risky as hell, I couldn’t help it. His warmth and humor drew me in, making me acutely aware of how damn lonely I’d been for three weeks. But there was no denying that I’d managed to unlock something between us with the song we’d sang together earlier, and that something was mutual.
It hadn’t been a proper mating song, which was the crazy thing. Some other person had written it, not me. Yet I remembered how absolutely thrilled I’d been to have him join me, and then how his voice had drawn me into the lyrics and how I’d had the briefest wish for a man as sweet and handsome as he was to love me the way my parents all loved their own mates. Their soul mates.
I closed my eyes. There were only two things I really wanted in this world, even more than I wanted to understand how to make my wimpy powers work.
The biggest one was a soul. I’d been born without one, and was almost positive that lack was what held me back from my powers maturing.
The other thing I wanted more than anything was a soul mate.
But how do you find a soul mate, if you don’t have a soul?
For some reason the hounds seemed as keenly interested in souls as I was. If they were connected to me somehow, could their desires have overlapped with mine and compelled them to attack?
That made no sense considering so many members of the bloodline had fallen victim before I’d arrived. But the last four victims had been attacked in my presence, as a result of my actions. At least that’s how it seemed on the surface.
A hot coal lodged in my throat as I stared at Rohan. He gazed back at me so tenderly, it was all I could do not to throw myself into his arms.
Steeling myself, I sat up straighter. “The one that was just here seemed to want some kind of . . . approval from me for what it had done. Like it was giving me a gift. It was right here at first . . .” I gestured to my side. “Then it went to Rohan and nuzzled at his soul, then looked at me like its accomplishment deserved my praise.”
Completely out of the blue a voice popped into my head.
“Are you a dragon?”
My gaze shot to Rohan, who smiled, his golden eyes sparkling. I almost missed the question Sandor asked then.
“You say you don’t have a soul, correct?”
I nodded and started to speak when Rohan’s voice was in my head again.
“You’re fucking beautiful, you know that? Getting bitten on the soul was worth it to hear you sing.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s right,” my brow twitched and I forced my attention back to Sandor, trying my best to ignore Rohan.
“What’s your name, pretty girl without a soul?”
“It’s Deva, can you just stop for a minute? This is important!” I glared at him.
Sandor narrowed his eyes at Rohan. “Am I missing something?”
Rohan responded with a half shrug and leaned back on the sofa, wincing and covering his abdomen as though he could actually feel the wound on his soul. “Just testing her talents. You’ll be happy to know she’s probably part dragon.”
“I could’ve told you that if you’d asked,” I shot at him, though I was secretly pleased by the warm hum of interest that lingered in my head, like he was just biding his time until we finished the conversation. “The truth is, I’m a hybrid of all four higher races, so yes, I am part dragon. But I don’t have a soul. I was born without one.”
Sandor studied me, frowning. “Fate hounds are a mystery to most of the higher races, but the turul have known about them for a while now. Several centuries, at least. We were cursed by Fate to have no choice who our true mates were. They were predetermined for us, with no clue how to seek them out. Fate didn’t exactly make it easy to find them, either. Fate hounds exist to help soul mates find each other, at least if you don’t have the misfortune of having been born a turul. I made that guitar with the hope of . . .” He bobbed his head back and forth. “Let’s say, luring a fate hound and compelling it to search for my soul mate. Except I was never strong enough to actually use the thing.”
My brows creased as I looked between Sandor and Willem, who had perched on the arm of the chair with his big hand on his friend’s shoulder. He squeezed, and Sandor gave him a tight smile.
Their auras were intermingled so closely it was clear to me that they were lovers, yet they didn’t have the soul link I’d witnessed between my parents and their own mates.
Sandor sighed. “No, Willem is not my One. I wish he were . . . I love him more than life despite that, but a turul always knows the second they set eyes on their true mate. We also know better than to force a soul bond with someone new and break the tie with the person Fate chose for us. I want to find that person so badly. I have to believe that if she really is my One, she’ll love Willem as I do. You can play the guitar, you can control the hounds. Maybe you can find my soul mate, too.”
I balked. “Not if this is what these hounds actually do! I’m not going to put more innocent people at risk!”
Sandor shook his head. “No, and I wouldn’t ask you to, but I’m telling you, this is not how fate hounds are supposed to behave. They don’t bite. They’re supposed to sing. At least that’s the lore I’ve always heard. They come in pairs, and seek out pairs of souls who are made for each other. Then the hounds sing to those two souls, marking them. It’s sort of like charging two pieces of metal with magnetic fields that are designed to attract only each other, then the pair of soul mates are drawn to each other whether they like it or not. And once they find each other . . .” He clapped his hands together and twined his fingers. “Bam, soul mates.”
“But turul don’t get that?”
“Nope. Something to do with shit Ouranos pulled at the dawn of time that pissed Fate off. My race has been cursed to wander, searching for our mates without having that extra nudge, so we’ve tried everything we can find to improvise other ways. Our songs are the closest things we have. When we compose our mating song, we leave it unfinished, hoping that the person it calls to will hear it and complete it. But simply hearing that song can be enough to start drawing the two soul mates together.”
I pondered his explanation, feeling a tug at my own empty core where I knew a soul should be. It hurt, that ache, but Rohan’s interest made it almost bearable for once.
“Maybe if we can learn why they bite, we can figure out a way to undo the effects,” I said.
“We know it has something to do with the bloodline.” Sandor offered. “You said so yourself, and Willem and Rohan both qualify, even though they’re dragons. And we all know the origin of the bloodline isn’t exactly squeaky clean, even if it
has been taken over by Dionysus now.”
I shook my head but didn’t respond. My origins were as dubious as the bloodline itself. More so, which just reinforced my conviction that somehow I was tied to these hounds in ways I didn’t quite understand yet, but I was determined to find out.
6
Deva
“I need to get back to the hospital,” I said, rising. “There were other victims there that I need to check on.” I hoped that the Dylans had managed to go home, but if something happened to keep them at the hospital, it was the best place to start. Besides, the unnamed victim was still there. I needed to know if he had woken up yet.
The four men all stood, leaving me feeling conspicuous as I held the blanket around my chest and glanced around awkwardly.
“You going back out like that?” Keagan asked. “Or is the dragon part of you capable of conjuring clothes?”
My cheeks heated. I lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I usually can but the hound leached all the remaining power out of me when it leapt through my body earlier trying to get to Rohan. I’m tapped.”
At my side, Rohan swiftly tore his t-shirt over his head. “Here.”
I stared at the white cotton clutched in his trembling fist. His skin rippled oddly as though shimmering gold scales flowed beneath the surface. Glancing up at him, I couldn’t miss the sheen of sweat across his brow and the hazy look in his eyes. His soul was still hemorrhaging power and if he reacted the way most dragons did to the loss of magic, we were in trouble.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the shirt. When our hands met, I had the strangest impulse to hold onto him. I took the shirt with one hand and clasped my other around his wrist, unsure where that instinct came from. It reminded me of the day I’d first connected with the bloodline, when my sheer desire to push every ounce of my power out to them allowed me to reach each and every last soul among them.