Idol of Bone

by Jane Kindred

  Cree’s throat went dry. She’d suspected she might have died, but this wasn’t what she’d thought. “I’m sorry,” she managed at last. “I am grateful for that. Despite—how it turned out.” She flicked her eyes toward Ume. “I wouldn’t leave you for the world,” she murmured. “Ever.”

  “But, again,” said the Caretaker, this time, it seemed, a bit impatiently, “you misunderstand.” She looked at Ume. “You have not failed Pearl. Your actions drove Prelate Nesre to act rashly to protect his prize. As we told you, he coveted even more power. He used Pearl to lure MeerRa to In’La.”

  Cree shook her head, not seeing how it was somehow a better outcome that another Meer had been drawn into Nesre’s web.

  “The fire was MeerRa’s,” said the Caretaker, speaking slowly, as if Cree weren’t very bright. “She released the boy and killed the prelate.”

  “She…what?” Blood pounded in Cree’s ears. She wasn’t hearing right. Couldn’t be, because MeerRa hadn’t been a “she”—of course, Azhra hadn’t been a “he” then, either, and who was Cree to question who anyone else was, after all? But Pearl… What was the Caretaker saying about Pearl?

  Ume shook her from her lightheaded confusion with two hopefully expelled words. “Pearl lives?”

  The Caretaker inclined her head. “We hear him. He is in the world of the living. He is safe from harm, and he is content.”

  “Where?” cried Ume, weeping now with tears of joy as she clung to Cree. “Where is he?”

  “He does not tell us the name of the place. Pearl’s world has been very small, and now that his shell has broken open, his thoughts are not as clearly conveyed to us, with so many things to see and hear. But Pearl is clear about one thing. He is with the mother of MeerRaNa.”

  The mother of MeerRaNa. Cree felt her knees go weak beneath her, and she dropped unceremoniously onto her ass, though Ume tried to catch her. She had a son—the child of a Meer. And he was with Azhra.

  About the Author

  Jane Kindred is the author of The Devil’s Garden and The House of Arkhangel’sk and Demons of Elysium series. Born in Billings, Montana, she spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.

  You can find Jane on her Twitter account and Facebook page—both of which are aptly named “janekindred”—and her website, www.janekindred.com.

  Look for these titles by Jane Kindred

  Now Available:

  Demons of Elysium

  Prince of Tricks

  King of Thieves

  Master of the Game

  Looking Glass Gods

  Idol of Bone

  Coming Soon:

  Looking Glass Gods

  Idol of Blood

  Idol of Glass

  Lost Coast

  When desire rises, angels will fall. One, by one, by one…

  Prince of Tricks

  © 2014 Jane Kindred

  Demons of Elysium, Book 1

  Over the past century, Belphagor has made a name for himself in Heaven’s Demon District as a cardsharp, thief, and charming rogue.

  Though the airspirit is content with his own company, he enjoys applying the sweet sting of discipline to a willing backside. Angel, demon, even the occasional human. He’s not particular. Until a hotheaded young firespirit steals his purse—and his heart. Now he’s not sure who owns whom.

  A former rent boy and cutpurse from the streets of Raqia, Vasily has never felt safer in the arms—and at the feet—of the Prince of Tricks. He’s just not sure if Belphagor returns those feelings. There’s only one way to find out, but using a handsome, angelic duke to stir Belphagor’s jealousy backfires on them both.

  When the duke frames Vasily for an attempted assassination as part of a revolutionary conspiracy, Belphagor will do whatever it takes to clear his boy’s name and expose the real traitor. Because for the first time in his life, the Prince of Tricks has something to lose.

  Warning: Contains erotic sex: m/m, m/m/m, m/m/m/m…oh hell. Let’s just say “mmmmmm!” and be done with it. Also one m/f scene. Smart discipline meted out with a great deal of love and charm. Erotic sex acts requiring copious amounts of elbow grease.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Prince of Tricks:

  In the gaming room of the Brimstone for the next several evenings, Belphagor kept an eye out for Vasily’s entrance without appearing to do so. He hadn’t become the best wingcasting player in Raqia by telegraphing his moves. He played exceptionally well, in fact, by maintaining an external awareness beyond the boundaries of the marble-rimmed table while projecting an air of inattentiveness to anything but his own cards. The false inward focus was contagious and tended to make his opponent forget to take note of the broader actions of the game.

  When he cast the die or called his opponent’s cast, he let his attention encompass the entire establishment. This part of the game was only chance; willing the die to land on the elemental creature one had called or staring anxiously at the twelve-sided game piece as it struck the table’s rim after an opponent had called one’s own cast had no effect on the outcome. Shifting the air around the table might, of course, but that was easily done with the flick of the wrist in casting or the breath of a bored sigh. If Belphagor’s cardinal element responded more readily to his influence than it did for other airspirits, it was no coincidence.

  He’d devoted years of his life—and the number was considerable for a demon who frequently fell to the world of Man where aging was far more rapid than in the pure celestial air—to understanding how to master the dominant element in his blood. The number of Fallen who literally fell was small in comparison to the demonic population, and the average demon had never experienced terrestrial magic. In Heaven, a demon—or even an angel, though they were generally too uptight to try—might manipulate his element for simple tricks and folk magic, but in the world of Man, every celestial possessed a radiant power that manifested as elemental wings.

  Belphagor had first fallen when he was only fifteen years of age. He hadn’t made the discovery right away, and the Fallen he’d encountered there, in the city of Petrograd, hadn’t told him. It was only in fleeing the law some months after his arrival that he’d inadvertently found his wings. Leaping from a bridge to escape, he’d expected to swim for it and found himself instead soaring on the wind, the radiance that burst from his shoulder blades outstretched as wings of solid air that seemed to swallow up the visual range of light into their element.

  “Ptarmigan,” he said absently as the die tumbled from his opponent’s fingers and struck the rim. The other demon scowled as the die landed with the ptarmigan face-up. Sometimes Belphagor’s luck was better when he put no effort into the game at all.

  “It’s a loaded die,” the player accused. The demon had clearly had too much to drink.

  Belphagor narrowed his gaze on the pallid-looking waterspirit. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Loaded die!” He stood and delivered the accusation loudly enough for the house to hear. Any such accusation had to be taken seriously. The game was immediately halted and the pot forfeited to the house while the deck and die were confiscated for examination.

  It took every ounce of Belphagor’s restraint to keep from leaping on the little worm and delivering a very unerotic beating. He’d automatically turned up the cuffs of his shirt in preparation for it without being aware he’d done so, showing his ink like an animal might show its teeth in warning.

  The bluish-black tattoos that marked his fingers and the backs of his hands were the badges of his incarceration in the Russian prison system. They marked him as vor, a thief, and announced in no uncertain terms that he was not to be trifled with. The association commanded a certain level of respect in the wo
rld of Man—among the right people—that he might never have been afforded due to his less than impressive physical stature, but in Raqia it had the added intimidation factor of making it clear that he had not only dealt with the harsh prison system of the Zona but with the Seraph bounty hunters who exploited it with their own terrestrial magic.

  Just as the game inspector pocketed Belphagor’s favorite wingcasting set, the street door opened, ushering in a blast of wet winter wind and admitting a party of young angelic toughs—arrogant, but breathtaking in their sterile waterspirit purity. One of them had his arm over the shoulder of a demon smartly dressed in a black velvet frock coat and tailored slacks. Despite his impressive size, had it not been for the shock of red matted locks done up in a knot just below the demon’s crown, Belphagor might actually have missed him.

  The sore loser still glaring his defiance across the table at him ceased to matter in the rush of possessive desire and jealous fury that nearly knocked Belphagor off his feet.

  Angels were touching his boy.

  His brain dropped into his testicles, and he charged across the bar like a bull sporting bloody banderillas and struck the angelic prick right in the kisser.

  The angel went down in stunned surprise, and time seemed to freeze for a moment before the rest of the angels in the fancy one’s entourage sprang forward and descended on Belphagor, dragging him upstairs to the street. Despite his stature, he was more than a match for a pair of the little bastards, or even three; prison had taught him a number of valuable skills. But he’d had the misfortune to anger a pack of them.

  “Learn your place, you Fallen piece of trash.” A fist landed in his gut while he struggled, snarling, with the group of angels who had his arms, and another slammed into his cheek. As he spat blood into the snow, the angel before him raising his fist for another blow suddenly howled with pain. Behind him, Vasily had reached over the angel’s shoulder and twisted his arm into an unnatural pose.

  Belphagor’s odds had just improved.

  The angel went sprawling across the slush-dirty cobblestone while two of the angels holding Belphagor let go of him to converge on Vasily. Belphagor slammed his elbow into the throat of another on his left, simultaneously kicking sidelong against the knee of the angel on his right, dislocating it with a loud pop drowned out instantly by the angel’s shriek as he hopped backward. While the choking one on Belphagor’s left swung wildly at him, he grasped the wide-swiping arm and knocked the angel face-first into the brick wall of The Brimstone, punching him in the kidney for good measure.

  He turned and saw the two angels Vasily had grabbed scrambling away, badly bloodied, while the one on the ground dragged himself across the street with one arm at an alarming angle, howling like a child. Two others that had been behind him, and the first one Belphagor had punched, who now stood on the top step, wisely took off running, shouting racial slurs over their shoulders in cowardice.

  Belphagor wiped his fist across his bloody lip and met Vasily’s eyes. Flame sparked dangerously in them.

  “Sukin syn,” Vasily snarled. This was not the Russian Belphagor had taught him. “You think you own me, you son of a bitch? You think you can just march up and mark your property the moment someone else takes a fancy to me?”

  Belphagor’s stance was casual, but the set of his jaw was hard. “I told you.” He spoke calmly. Dangerously. “Angels are not to touch you.” Vasily had just dispatched a handful of angels in seconds, the same angels who’d been beating the snot out of Belphagor a moment before, yet his angry expression was now tinged with fear. Knowing he could strike that fear into Vasily despite his superior physical strength made Belphagor hungry to make good on the unspoken promise. “Did I not make myself clear, malchik?”

  “No—I mean, yes, you—” Vasily stopped and swallowed nervously, clearly trying to pull his defiance back on. “Why?”

  When the sun goes down, their passion awakens…and so do their nightmares.

  The Dream Alchemist

  © 2014 Joanna Chambers

  Somnus, Book 1

  Centuries ago, a man with Bryn Llewelyn’s dreamwalking ability would have been a shaman or a priest. In this time, he’s merely exhausted, strung out on too much caffeine and too little sleep.

  Sleep means descent into Somnus—an alternate reality constructed of the combined dreaming consciousness of ordinary humans. A place he’d rather avoid. Trouble is, his powers don’t include the ability to go without sleep indefinitely. At some point his eyes close…and his nightmare begins.

  As a teen, the treatment that cured Laszlo Grimm’s sleep disorder stole his dreams—and his ability to feel emotion. Petrified of needing more “treatment”, he clings to familiar rituals and habits. But lately his nightly terror has returned, and when he meets Bryn in the real world, the man seems hauntingly familiar. Not only that, Bryn awakens feelings in Laszlo for the first time in years…

  Slowly Bryn and Laszlo realize they are both unknowing pawns in a plan of unspeakable evil. And that their powerful attraction could release the destinies locked within them—or be the instrument of their doom.

  Warning: Contains the stuff of your lustiest dreams—and most frightening nightmares. You may want to read with a candle at the ready…just in case the lights go out.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Dream Alchemist:

  He usually arrived in an empty dust field, but this time when he opened his eyes, it was to find himself in the middle of a wood, in a fairy-like glade surrounded by ancient lichen-covered trees. Their branches formed a canopy over Bryn’s head, high as a cathedral. Green-tinged fingers of sunlight poked through the spaces between the leaves.

  The glade was beautiful, the work of a single mind, Bryn was sure. There were none of the inconsistencies or wavering here that made most of Somnus so impossible to navigate.

  Everything in Somnus was built by drones—those billions of sleeping humans that flowed in and out of Somnus without ever really seeing where they were, trapped in their own myopic dreams. Drones had no awareness. They came and went in a never-ending churn, each wakener taking his creations with him. Drones built, then destroyed, and the whole of Somnus undulated with the constant change, a living landscape.

  Except for the safe house, of course.

  And this place.

  Bryn had felt the first pull a couple of months ago. It had been slight to begin with, a tug he could’ve ignored had his curiosity not got the better of him. Since then, though, that tug had become steadily stronger, and now he had no choice about following when the call came…

  Bryn turned slowly around, taking in his unfamiliar surroundings. The presence of trees suggested someone else was here—though probably only one someone. There was nothing to suggest the presence of multiple drones. No superimposition. No blurring. No sudden winking out of objects, just a single, stark scene. Trees that whispered in an imagined breeze.

  Everything looked so real—it was strangely eerie.

  So like the real world.

  Bryn couldn’t see anyone standing amongst the trees, but he knew there had to be someone here. The last time Bryn had been summoned, he’d spied some trees a way off, and a drone—a man—trudging around them as though patrolling the perimeter.

  Was that drone the creator of this glade? And if so, was he here now?

  For long moments, Bryn stood in the clearing, listening intently, his eyes searching for some telltale movement in the trees. But there was nothing, no signs of life anywhere, just those too-real trees, and eventually he set off, zipping his jacket up to his throat and thrusting his hands in his pockets, the fingers of his left hand curling around the ivory knight.

  He aimed for an obvious gap in the trees that led to a well-trodden path. There was no point going off the beaten track in Somnus—it wasn’t as if there was anywhere to hide here. That was something you learned over years of dreamwalking: if
you kept landing in the same place, on the same path, you just had to deal with whatever it was that was making you shift there.

  After a few minutes, Bryn caught the faintest echo of a familiar, sibilant whisper. It wasn’t really a whisper, but he could almost swear he heard his name, half-whistled, half-whispered. Brr-yy-nn. But no, not a voice. More a feeling, a compulsion. A magnet drawing him, despite the repulsion that ate at his gut. He shivered, fear tying his stomach in knots even as he moved towards whatever it was, entirely unable to turn away.

  At length, the path led him out of the woods. He found himself at the edge of the tree line, looking out. And there it was, a more familiar sight this: a huge, barren wasteland.

  The contrast between the lush green woods behind Bryn and the scrubby dust fields before him couldn’t be starker. As stark as life and death. And in the midst of all that dusty death, in the far distance, right in the middle of that vast field of nothing, was the thing that made Bryn’s gut twist with dread. The thing he shifted a little closer to every time he was pulled here.

  A tower. An ancient-looking tower, one that didn’t so much stand as stoop, like an old man leaning on a stick.

  The warped structure was surrounded by a swarm of Cyhyraeth, or Shades—spectres from nightmares—that gloved it in a grey, cobwebby miasma.

  Just then, a sudden noise drew Bryn’s attention away from the tower. Footsteps, heavy and uneven. He turned his head sharply to see the drone he’d spied the last time he was here, but much closer now, perhaps just twenty yards away. He was coming round the bend in the tree line—patrolling his creation.

  Like any drone, he walked clumsily. Unlike dreamwalkers, drones were unable to fully control their sleeping forms and were largely unresponsive to their surroundings. So, although this drone was close, he was unaware of Bryn and likely to remain so. Whilst there were a few drones who could engage with dreamwalkers to a limited extent, most couldn’t see beyond the end of their own noses. Their sleeping vision was limited and myopic. Even if this drone was one of the more able ones, one who could see a dreamwalker, maybe even communicate, he would be slow and uncoordinated compared to Bryn.