Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2)

by Jasmine Silvera

  “You called them here.” Isela glared at Tariq, at the bottom of the stairs again. “You had no right.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Isela.” Evie cut her off.

  Gus smiled. She jerked her thumb at the taller blond woman. “I like this one.”

  Isela whirled on Gus, but Evie closed the distance first, hugging her. “All my dreams lately are of you getting into some trouble or other.” A smile softened her words. “It feels good to be doing something for once. Chris and Bebe told us about the Alchemist—”

  “Nobody messes with a Vogel,” Bebe cut in.

  Markus barked, his hackles flared as he paced the windowed wall. Christof circled Isela’s calves and set his rump down on her feet.

  Ofelia grinned resolutely. “My ankles are huge. I would love to get my feet back up on a couch ASAP. Can we get going?”

  The pale wolf chuffed a lupine laugh. Bebe took her turn for a hug, batting him aside. Isela looked over her shoulder at Beryl. The older woman looked more energized than Isela had seen her in weeks.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, taking in the Vogel brood with satisfied pride. She met Isela’s eyes finally, and Isela blinked back tears at the emotion in them. “It’s Sunday. If you won’t come to us, we’ll come to you.”

  Isela struggled to breathe over the emotion battling for dominance in her chest. “You mean to do this now?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gregor took one look at the scarf clenched in Azrael’s palm when he returned to the Land Cruiser and his brows rose. Lysippe drove. On the outskirts of town, a stocky Asian man in a fur cap tended four uniformly unremarkable brown horses working their way through piles of hay, their bellies barely clearing the sheep grazing among them.

  Unremarkable, but strong and capable. Leave it to Lys to pick good horses. Gregor groaned at the sight of them. “You weren’t joking.”

  The ride to the mine took them up a series of switchbacks and along winding goat tracks carved into the sheer faces of the rocks. Azrael gazed into the drop-offs, his fear of falling long ago silenced.

  “Why aren’t we taking the road, again?” Gregor inquired delicately when they stopped to water the horses.

  “Booby trap,” the guide pronounced proudly before rattling off the specifics in a language that only Lysippe understood with any fluency.

  She looked at them. “Vanka left a few reminders of her presence on the road. To discourage any treasure seekers. After all, she paid the villagers a fortune. She didn’t want them coming back to figure out what she was interested in.”

  “Which means she didn’t find what she was looking for,” Gregor said resolutely, batting at the horse’s nose as it tried to use him for a scratching post.

  “Or she hopes to come back for it,” Azrael said, scratching his own nose idly. “Either way, she’ll know we’re here soon. I want to get in and out quickly.”

  Understanding the vibe if not the words, their guide tightened his own girth and swung astride. Lysippe joined him with enviable grace. Gregor did so with reluctant efficiency. Azrael came last. He’d grown up with horses, but as his power emerged, he found them increasingly skittish around him. He found it best if he moved slowly and didn’t give them a reason to be startled. This one was a good, sensible beast. Still, it tossed its head when it caught scent of him and blew out sharply.

  “Today is not your day, young fellow,” he said affectionately as he swung astride. “You’ll die an old man with your nose in the manger.”

  The horse bucked and loped after his fellows.

  The mine shaft was every bit as foreboding as their guide had boasted. Feeling its energy, Azrael didn’t wonder why the villagers feared it. This was the thinnest of places. Strangely, he felt his own power respond by flexing within him like a roused beast. His control strained. His horse reared, crow-hopping sideways. Azrael went flying, and the horse skittered away, eyes rolling in terror. Their guide scrambled to catch the animal. He stroked its sweaty shoulder, blowing in its wide nostrils until it calmed and stood beside his own mount.

  Gregor and Lysippe watched him as their own mounts shied away, the former strangely, the latter with a knowing, worried gaze. His first and his last. They knew him best. He clenched hold of his control, bringing his quiet down over the flexing roar of power in him until the animals were all calm.

  “What was that?” Gregor murmured as they shouldered their packs and headlamps.

  “I don’t know,” Azrael said honestly.

  “I don’t want you bringing this place down on us—more than it is,” Lysippe said.

  “I’ll control it.”

  They descended into darkness, leaving the guide staring after them with worried relief in his gaze as he muttered prayers to gods even Azrael didn’t know. But his instructions had been good. Lysippe led them to a passage that hadn’t fully collapsed, and deeper yet. The mines tapped a natural system of caverns. The cold and the dark both welcomed and set them on edge. Azrael scanned the rock around them, detecting the corpses of the miners left in the collapsed caverns.

  “I fucking hate caves,” Gregor said as an afterthought. “More than ships.”

  “You could have stayed with the horses.” Lysippe laughed, fearless as always as she guided them along the tunnels.

  The power swelled again in him and he had to pause, bent over double with his hand braced against the damp stone wall to gather himself.

  Lysippe’s light shone back on him, her face blocked by the brightness but her voice carrying the weight of her concern. “All right?”

  “I will be,” Azrael said.

  A tug on the thread of gold that he’d come to associate with Isela thrummed through him. The icy shadow pushing back against his control raged at the idea that she was somehow threatened or in danger. He knew better. Thin places often had their own defenses against intrusion. Triggering his sense of wrongness and amplifying his connection with her might be the work of the cave itself.

  “Here,” he said as the passageway opened into a natural cavern. “Right here.”

  The unsettled sensation around his bond with Isela only grew as they pressed on.

  Lysippe and Gregor spread out, sweeping the space with their beams.

  “Something’s coming,” Gregor said, the hilt of his sword glowing at his back as he unholstered a short blade from his thigh.

  Lysippe switched off her headlamp. A slim leather-wrapped bow appeared in her hand, quiver at her hip. “Lights out. No powers. Not in here.”

  Azrael let his labrys drop into his palms out of the ether from which he called it, the weight instantly heavy and comfortable in his hands. His eyes, preternaturally sharp in the darkness, made out the slightest flinch of movement in the shadows.

  The attack came all at once. Slavering beasts made of claw and shadows, not demons but made of flesh that had once been human—and animal. Lysippe grunted in disgust, emptying her quiver twice, and when the fight got too close sheathing her bow and switching to pair of short, sickle-shaped blades she wielded like the slashing claws of a big cat.

  Gregor’s blade was blacker than the darkness, a shorter, narrow weapon well suited for close-quarters skirmish. Azrael moved between them, the rhythmic swing and slash of the double-bladed ax growing more familiar with every pass. He’d missed the singing and pounding of the blood in his veins, the sweat and exertion of hand-to-hand.

  There had been much more of it in the old days, and it had bonded them as vows never could. He caught a clawed strike intended for Lysippe, and she tipped her head in thanks before gutting the beast. Gregor’s heel slipped on the floor and she spun, yanking him out of the way as she blocked his opponent. He recovered and stepped to guard her weak side instinctively. Azrael found himself apart from the others, dogged by twin scorpion-tailed monstrosities. He swung and dodged, but they had him on the retreat until his back brushed the stone wall.

  “Down.” Gregor barked a second before Lysippe cannonballed through the air. She spun as she fle
w, slicing the tips off both tails as she passed. Azrael rose again just in time to snag her in midair and assist her rebound off the wall. She landed in a crouch, teeth bared.

  “I’d forgotten that trick.” She laughed, rising and swiping her blades on her pants as they regrouped.

  “Stay together,” Gregor barked, glaring at Azrael. “And I’ll see you in the training room when we get back to Prague.”

  They moved through the space, rotating their backs against each other as they took turns carving a path. On the opposite side of the cavern, Azrael urged Lysippe and Gregor ahead of him into a narrow passageway, then blew the cavern with a bolt of energy so powerful that the mountain rumbled around them.

  In the ensuing silence after the thunder of rock coming down and the cries of the trapped and dying creatures, Gregor chuckled softly. “They heard that all the way in the village.”

  Lysippe leveled a long look at Azrael. “Do that again and we’ll spend an eternity digging ourselves out from under a mountain.”

  Azrael couldn’t help but look at his hands in stunned awe. He’d sent out what he thought was a controlled burst, meant to vaporize anything moving in the cavern. He hadn’t intended to bring it down. The mountain made an almost human sound, groaning as tremors moved through the walls. Was it the thin place wreaking havoc with him, or something else?

  Lysippe led them, squeezing through the narrow rocks and sliding down a long talus slope. Azrael felt the cut of rocks and scrape of sharp edges, but he plunged after them with the heedlessness of one whom death could not touch.

  He felt the power here now, something pulsing in the blackness beyond. The heart of the thin place. The air grew damp and full of a thickness that came with humidity. It was warmer here than it should have been.

  They tumbled into a vast opening that was no less claustrophobic for the sense of space. Lysippe flicked on her light but nothing happened. Gregor tried. Azrael sent out what should have been a small ball of light but emerged a full-fledged beacon, illuminating the hollow they’d stumbled upon in the mountain. The glow bounced off walls thick with minerals that caught the light and shone like sparklers on a dark night.

  In the center of the space, a stalactite glowed over a pool, a thin, viscous liquid coating it and the pool below. It took him a moment to realize the pool was still, reflecting nothing at all, and the water ran not from the stalactite down but from the pond up, sparkling droplets rising to the point of the rocky outcropping and sliding upward until they disappeared into the ceiling.

  Lysippe thumped Gregor in the ribs. “Your flask.”

  He grumbled but drained it before handing it over. She reached out, turning the open end down and positioning it between droplets. They waited, one drop at a time, until at last the liquid spilled over the edge of the flask lip and rolled up toward the stalactite. She withdrew the flask, carefully screwing the cap on before turning it upright and offering it to Gregor.

  “Don’t sip on accident,” she advised, brow raised.

  He slipped it into his inner pocket. “No worries about that. Now we know what she came for.”

  The cavern cried out around them.

  “Time to go,” Azrael said, focused.

  Lysippe had the instinct of a bird for the sky, guiding them ever up and out, and both men fell in behind her. They made their way higher, winding and crawling, scrabbling and dragging one another. At last even Azrael could smell the fresh air. They stood at the base of a sheer cliff, the thinnest edge of light tricking over the top. Behind them, the mountain sighed and moaned like the restless sleep of an unrequited lover.

  “Gregor,” Lysippe said, panting with exertion.

  Gregor dropped his empty pack and slid the coils of rope over his shoulder. He scrambled up, scaling the wall with enviable agility. When he got to the top, he disappeared over the edge. They waited. At last the rope sailed down, unspooling from the coil as it fell. Azrael gestured. Lysippe scaled the wall, gripping the rope hand over hand.

  His chest still ached, and he rubbed it absently.

  Isela? he thought before he could control himself. Are you there? I feel you, what is—

  A tug of the golden thread snapped pain through him.

  Distracted, the impact took him by surprise. Teeth sank into his arm, sending pain up his shoulder and into his neck. As the steel-trap muscles attached to those jaws clenched him hard, his feet left the ground. His body slammed into the walls. His bones broke and healed and splintered again. Hearing Lysippe’s and Gregor’s alarmed calls, he ordered them to hold their ground as the mountain rumbled again. He tried to make sense of his attacker—some kind of hybrid with too many teeth and slobber that burned his skin.

  Azrael! Isela’s shout was no illusion. She was hurt, in danger; she needed him.

  Mine. Mine. Mine.

  Then, suddenly, the teeth were gone. Gregor rode the unnatural’s spine, his sword hilt deep in its neck. Lysippe’s arrows sang their way to their target. Bristling with arrows and spending its lifeblood, the creature careened around the opening, bellowing.

  Azrael wheezed as he dragged himself away, feeling his punctured lungs fill with blood and drain as his ribs retreated.

  When it was dead, they were at his side. Gregor tried to put Azrael’s arm over his shoulder. Lysippe had the rope ready. Azrael’s knees refused to hold, but he did his best to shake Gregor away. The voice screamed now, telling him what to do, how it must be done, even if he didn’t understand.

  “Get out,” Azrael said instead. “Collapsing.”

  “That’s the plan,” Lysippe said impatiently. “Let us help you—”

  Azrael gave Gregor one last shove, the force sending both men stumbling apart as the ground shifted beneath them. “Isela is dying.”

  Gregor went still, his eyes the cold blue of battlefield sky that Azrael hadn’t seen in two hundred years. Lysippe tried to push past him, reaching for Azrael, but he blocked her. His eyes sliced into Azrael, as sharp as the blade in his hand. “You can help her?”

  Azrael closed his eyes, thinking of her face. “Get yourselves out now. I have to get to her.”

  “How—” Gregor began.

  Azrael simply vanished.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The fireproof room had been transformed. Vibrant tapestries of mythical creatures hung on the walls, obscuring the complex, layered sigils Azrael had burned into the concrete. A rich red-and-gold rug blocked the cold from the stone floor. The single bed was hidden behind a trifold screen painted with scenes of Cossack cavalrymen performing extraordinary feats of horsemanship. This room, clean and small but with walls thoroughly warded to protect against a massive expenditure of power, looked almost identical in the waking world. Except instead of it being crowded with witches and necromancers, Isela stood alone with a god and a man who was not a man.

  Are we in the In Between? But Isela already knew the answer. There was no tug of power, no invisible wind or gray overlay seething around the edges with hungry blights. Gold stood beside her. Isela could feel their shared heartbeat, and when the god spoke, her voice was internal.

  That’s because we are in your mind, she said. Sort of. Like sharing a dream. You gave him the room; he apparently did the decor. Be careful, Issy. There are certain assurances you must get from him before you agree to help.

  But he’s dying. His vitals were poor, and in spite of intravenous fluids, he seemed to be wasting away at twice the speed of normal humans.

  He’s a creature of power, unwillingly trapped in human flesh, Gold said uneasily. And we do not know where his loyalties truly lie.

  You think he’d help Vanka after all this? In the brief silence before the god replied, Isela studied the man.

  I think the promise of a return to his true form, even if a lie, would be a powerful lure to get his compliance in any of her schemes.

  Like getting inside Azrael’s territory and finding out more about his allies.

  Gold nodded.

  A small wood wri
ting desk stacked with a few books stood against the far wall, next to a hot plate and a pair of cups on a little table. A man sat at the little desk, shoulders hunched as he wrote in a small leather-bound book. Isela tapped on the nearest surface to get his attention. The figure’s head jerked up—if he had been plumed, the feathers would have risen in warning or alarm.

  Isela could appreciate the transformation as he rose carefully from his chair. Gone was the tattered drunk. In his place rose a lean man who appeared to be born of fire. His close-cropped copper hair and trimmed beard carried the threads of the red and gold that flickered in newly caught flames. Orange freckles stood out against pale cheeks, and when he turned those sea-glass-green eyes on her, she felt the shadow of what he had once been in his clear, piercing gaze.

  “She told me that you would come back,” he said anxiously, casting his glance about the room, as though he wanted to look anywhere but at her directly.

  He could not look at Gold.

  Can you turn it down?

  Gold dimmed abruptly. He sighed and his shoulders lowered like feathers settling back into place.

  “Tea?” he said, already moving to the electric kettle plugged in beside the sink and mirror.

  He dragged the reading chair closer to the desk and offered it to her with flitting precision. Gold stayed behind Isela, just over her shoulder.

  Go ahead. Time moves differently here than in the real world.

  “Do you have a name?” She watched him arrange a small plate of crackers and candies from the tin stored in the shelves beneath the kettle. “I’m just not sure what to call you.”

  Again the startled bob of his head and the repeated blinking as he attempted to parse what to her seemed like a straightforward question.

  “I had no need of a name. I simply was.”

  “Phoenixes are the holders of great wisdom,” she said. “The memory of the world, all that ever was, has passed before your eyes.”

  It had sounded like beautiful poetry at the time. But looking into his face now, she wondered how much of the pain she saw had come from his capture and transformation and how much of it was the price he paid for an eternity of watching. Premature age carved lines into the face of the mortal the phoenix occupied.