Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2)

by Jasmine Silvera

Tension and desire triggered a rush of warmth in her. Mine. Not my consort. Not god vessel. Not wolf kin. Mine.

  That was all he needed to know. Speaking quietly to Divya, he might not have looked any different than a few days ago. But it was how he felt that had changed. Something restless in him had calmed, coiled deep and powerfully at the center of his being and gone quiet. She could feel the change; rather than straining at the tethers, it had heeled to him like an obedient hound. That their relationship could affect him so fundamentally shook her to the core.

  She felt his gaze caress the long line of her spine to her bare neck. Her hair, braided and pinned to the top of her head, shivered as though stroked. She felt the pins loosen.

  Ah ah ah, she tsk-tsked mentally, snugging the pins without lifting her hands.

  He made a small mental sound of disappointment. We had a deal.

  She looked back at Azrael and bit her tongue on unspoken words—be careful, don’t take unnecessary risks, I love you. When she met his eyes, she saw he knew. I’ll come back to you, little wolf.

  She swallowed the fear that tried to choke her. You’d better, death dealer.

  She moved to the center of the room, pointed her toe, and began to dance.

  Azrael knew the mortals in the room could no longer focus on Isela. The light streaking from her fingers and toes was too bright, her movements too fast.

  She moved through dances, seven or eight of the ones she thought the most likely Yana would use to replicate her. Her movements formed an inquiry, a call. She would repeat them, in sequence, until she got a response.

  She had been through seven cycles, and nothing.

  Gus murmured something dubious to Gregor. Azrael held up a hand before the doubt spread. A tingle snapped against his awareness. Her attention went up, her movements becoming directed, slowing down. He marked the repetition of the cycle and then the image her reflection wavered as the mirror lining the wall became a window. On the other side, another woman danced in darkness. As Isela matched the dancer step for step, he could see the tiny details on the other woman’s face.

  He felt Isela’s heart leap with recognition, and the image wavered.

  Steady, little wolf, he said.

  The image grew clearer. He took a big breath, extending his contact to the group around him. Gregor, Rory, Ito.

  Gus reached for him eagerly. She’d cornered him the previous day as he reinforced his defensive wards in the aedis. Sire, I would fight with you if you’ll have me.

  She’d never feared him as Dante and Tariq had in their early days under his tutelage, but her ability to trust had been damaged by Paolo’s vicious attack. Rebellion seemed to be her standard response to challenge, and defiance greeted his every command. He refused to adopt Róisín’s way for his own progeny, though it was all he’d known. Learning to work with her had taught him more about patience and forgiveness than centuries among monks.

  Quieres a Paolo, supongo. He spoke but kept his eyes on his spellwork. He’d always known there would come a day for this. A half dozen times over the centuries, she’d wanted to try. He’d advised patience.

  She shifted on her feet. Estoy listo, Azrael.

  ¿Eres tú? When he met her eyes, the circle of metallic shine around her pupils was complete.

  She lowered her chin once but her eyes never left his. Es la hora.

  He remembered Gregor’s words on the frozen plains and bit his tongue on words of concern. He nodded once.

  The eagerness in her voice made it gritty. I won’t let you down, Az.

  She was halfway to the door when he was certain he could keep his voice light. Hoy por ti, mañana por mí.

  Laughter shook her shoulders. After this, I think you owe me one, old man.

  Once Isela made contact, he couldn’t help but do a quick scan of her defenses. Her brow rose immediately—checking my work?—but he didn’t care. Pride filled him. Her ward work was impeccable, focused and without a break. He reached for the mortal on the other side last.

  Where was it? How far? He found he didn’t need to know, only to focus his attention on that room, building the bridge with his mind.

  NOW.

  The power belled out from his core in a wave, sweeping over the small party and making the lights in the room explode into shards of glass and sparks. The director and her guard cried out. Dante’s voice, shouting a ward to shield them, echoed in their wake.

  He landed in the darkness, driven to one knee with the force of their arrival. The soft flapping of wings as startled pigeons alighted for the broken windows in the roof drew his eye. An abandoned building.

  Azrael straightened his legs and tugged at the lapels of the coat that was both armor and a weapon.

  “Everyone still alive,” Gregor asked, rising and dusting off his pants.

  Gus reached for her blades, casting an illusion geas around them. “They don’t know what we are, but they know we’re here.”

  “Where, exactly, is here?” Azrael scanned the dilapidated shell of a building. It had been grand once, the manor house of minor noble, but time and nature had taken their due. Moonlight spilled into the entryway from the buckled roof above. Birds called alarm as their wings beat air in hasty retreat from their shelter.

  “Sudetenland, I’d guess,” Gregor said, glancing at the weathered crest above the door. “That’s a Habsburg unless memory fails.”

  Azrael doubted Gregor’s memory was capable of such a terrific faux pas. “Is it one of the Teutonic Order’s?”

  Gregor scanned the room. “Unlikely. Paolo wouldn’t have been able to use it for his purpose otherwise.”

  Azrael nodded. The order had been known for its protections against the supernatural. The last thing he needed was a centuries-old defensive booby trap to spring while he dealt with Paolo and Vanka. The old halls echoed with the sound of booted feet. Ito slipped into the shadows, and only Azrael’s connection to him revealed his progress to the second floor and onto the roof.

  “Incoming.” Gus grinned, stepping forward in unison with Gregor.

  Gus and Gregor made quick work of the undead. Azrael counted ten. At a junction in the corridor, Ito stepped from the shadow and jerked his head to the left before disappearing again. They entered a ballroom where an exhausted human dancer levitated above the floor. The specter of death loomed large in this one, but she was still alive. Barely. And not possessed. Yet.

  Between them and the dancer clustered a squad of undead, headed by a great shaggy brute of a warrior Azrael recognized as the head of Vanka’s guard.

  Rory recognized him too. He stepped forward. “Pietro is mine.”

  Gregor saluted.

  Paolo’s trio of tattooed brawlers dove from the balustrade above, and the fight became a melee.

  Azrael slipped the double-headed ax free from his back and the leash from his rage. This time he didn’t hold back his power, sending it away from him like a burning whip and cutting through anyone who stood in his path. Those unlucky enough to survive the blaze received the kiss of death from the sharp blade.

  When he emerged on the other side of the room, gore splattered his coat, none of it his own. Gus slid to his side, leaving bloody trails beneath her lug-soled boots. Her eyes glittered as she spun a blade in her palm.

  Vanka lounged in a chair by the cold fireplace. Paolo stood at the mantel.

  “Welcome, Azrael,” Paolo stepped forward. “And the lovely ‘Gus.’” His voice was mocking. “An unexpected pleasure.”

  Gus bared her teeth. “I’ve come for your heart, deceiver.”

  Paolo laughed, patting his chest. “I offered it to you once, lady. And you declined.”

  “I’d rather take it myself.” Gus snarled and the edge of her blade shone.

  Paolo’s sneered. “Come then, bitch. Try it.”

  For a moment, Azrael thought she would take the bait, but she held her countenance and issued her challenge formally. “I challenge you for your territory and all you hold within. I will take your
soul tonight or you will take mine. There will be no interference. To the final death.”

  The remnants of charm fell away from Paolo. The predator beneath his playboy smile rose, ancient and inhuman as the eyes of any jungle reptile. “I am not here to answer to you, little girl.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Azrael said. “Answer or forfeit.”

  Paolo showed teeth, but Vanka cut him off. “You know the code, a challenge issued must be answered.”

  His furrowed brows betrayed uncertainty. Vanka met his gaze with a serene scowl and a little shrug. Azrael observed both, with dawning understanding. He’d assumed it was Paolo who pulled the strings, manipulating Vanka’s rivalry with Azrael to his advantage. That had been a mistake. As Paolo and Gus dropped into the In Between, he focused his attention on the female necromancer who had once challenged for the territory he held.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Isela sagged in the center of the ring, the scent of burned wiring wrinkling her nose. Divya and Niles crouched beside Dante, the faint blue glimmer of a dome fading around him. The bodyguard had stretched his coat over the director for good measure. The room was emptier without Azrael’s team.

  From across the room, Tariq grinned at her. “You did it.”

  The god swelled inside her with alarm, and Isela willed her legs into motion again. “They’re here.”

  Outside, the threads of the witches’ spell slid past her as they wove through the damp night air. The streetlights cut long swaths of light through the foggy darkness. She stepped into the center of the paving stones, framed by the Municipal House, the national ballet, the national bank building, and the Powder Tower.

  This was the other reason she’d chosen to dance at the Academy—the Powder Tower was one of the original thirteen gates to the city.

  “Think of the old city walls and gates like ley lines,” Bebe had explained the day before. She must have had the phone pinched between her cheek and shoulder because her voice was muffled and Isela had heard the rustle of pages turning as she spoke. “They’re natural conduits for power. Your mom didn’t pick Vyšehrad by accident. The fortress and gates were the first time humans tapped into the ability of the city to protect itself. And Libuše herself saw the future of the city from Vyšehrad.” That led to a half-hour history lesson that ended with how the American planes claimed a navigational mistake saved Prague from intense bombing suffered by other major European cities during World War II. “Even the godswar left Prague untouched for the most part. Those necros picked the wrong city to fuck with.”

  A thumping against the inside of Isela’s skull, slimy as river mud, brought her back to the icy cobbles and the damp night. The wet aroma of composting mud was distant enough to be just her imagination, but she knew it signaled the invading army. She couldn’t see it yet, but she could feel the golems as clearly as the bright, colorful threads of witch geas racing through the air around her and knitting between the buildings.

  Isela went to one knee as Dory joined Aleifr and rest of the guard to form a defensive circle with her and Tariq as their center. The people passing slowed and stared at the sight of the warriors. A whispering went up, thick with unease.

  Tariq began to murmur again, this time his geas a wordless whisper of suggestion. As one, the people began to take shelter in the surrounding buildings, moving with the slow, steady pace of compulsion. She could see them behind the glass doors as they sank to their knees, helping each other to the floors before curling up into fetal balls like puppies sharing each other’s warmth. As the geas spread across the city, she could see the strain in Tariq’s face, the sweat beading on his brow and rolling down his cheeks until his dark mane of hair was soaked and his shirt clung to him.

  Isela closed her eyes, lowered her chin, and placed her hand on a single cobblestone beneath her.

  She clutched the edges of the stone as though she might take it up as a weapon, but instead of drawing, she gave. She wrapped her intention in love, love for the only city she knew as home and the love of her man, who was no longer a man at all but something as elemental as the force that rose to her bidding. It spilled out of her and raced into the stones at her feet in uneven waves.

  The crackle of gold sent sparks showering around her, bouncing off the figures and weapons of the guard that formed her circle. Not one pulled their gazes from the shadows surrounding them as she became a miniature sun at the center of their orbit.

  Gold flowed into the colorful witch threads, strengthening and thickening them until a vast weaving overlaid the city.

  The slimy sensation closed in. She could see the mud men now in the sweeping, impossible gaze of Gold’s vision. They moved into the streets of her city, bringing the stench of rot and the strength of earth. Destruction followed in their wake, seeded in the thick mud of their limbs and gaping maws. They would pull the city apart, brick by brick, stone by stone, and not stop until it was reduced to river mud and waste. Such was their charge. The wordless, howling hunger of their approach battered her with silent dissonance.

  For a moment, doubt clutched at her like the chill that crept into her from the stone. Who was she to protect a city? She was just a dancer. Her fingers gripped the smooth edges of the stone worn as much by time as by the original hand that’d carved it. Along with hundreds of others, just this size, made to fit in interlocking lines forming row upon row that paved the dirt beneath and turned it to a firm, even surface. It was one stone, but it was one of many. And so was she. Surrounded by warriors as good as immortal. Backed by a necromancer who could sing an entire city to sleep. Broadcasting the spell of a coven of witches that were both blood and family. Held above all others by the most powerful necromancer in the world. The vessel of a power so great it could only be thought of as a god. She stood at the center of it all.

  She opened her mouth and roared back. The city roared with her.

  Hundreds of years of human construction animated by something even older than the buildings or the name itself came to life at her call. The stone caryatids and atlantes beneath balconies and doorway columns; the etched sgraffito figures of satyrs and nymphs, warriors and goddesses; the statuary in gardens and fountains of parks, all rose from their places as if shaking off the same slumber that had claimed the human citizens moments ago.

  It was as if the whole city splintered in two—the sleeping human one in shadows and the one now alight with the magic of an army of stone and mortar, myth and architecture. The dreamy art nouveau maidens with bowers of ginkgo leaves and reed baskets stood beside Renaissance ideal men amid the angular cubist proletariats wielding the weapons of industry. Stone lions shook their manes and roared, leading a menagerie of animals into the fight. Patron saints stretched their patinated limbs beside historical figures shaking off bird droppings in preparation for battle. Bronze horses rattled their bridles and breastplates, bugling in eagerness.

  Horned imps leaned from rooflines and balustrades. Their cups spilled golden ichor that sizzled and burned the golems back to the brackish dirt from which they came. Gargoyle heads blasted golden flames into the attackers.

  The mud army rose back. They dragged the fragile ornamentation down, burying them in thick, sucking mud. They swallowed the small birds and cherubs whole, crushing their golden bows in uneven stone teeth. Three dragged a proletariat to his knees, using his own massive hammer to pound him into the tracks of a tram.

  In the sweeping gaze of Gold’s vision, the massive figures of the Titans that did battle over the gates of the castle pounded the mud figures to bits. The great hill overlooking the east of the city and the central thoroughfare of Wenceslas Square stood empty; the mounted figures of one-eyed warrior Jan Žižka and the saint fighting side by side against a brackish wave of mud with hundreds of arms and sawing river-rock teeth.

  The force of the defending spell stretched Isela taut and was glad she had gone to her knee as she braced her other hand on the cobblestones—this time as much for support as to feed power to the spell
.

  The god might have been able to withstand the demands made on her power. The part of Isela that remained yet human began to splinter. She called on it anyway. The trembling that had begun in her fingers and toes wracked her body now. She grit her teeth to keep them from chattering, bowing her head to hide the tension on her face as the hair shook loose from her braid.

  As one, the golem army changed course. Now they had a new priority. She heard Aleifr’s voice, a bellow calling his fellows to war, and then the clash of metal on wet earth. Her heart stuttered.

  “Right here, Issy.” Tariq called her back when she would have faltered. “Look in my eyes.”

  His gaze rooted her. He kept her grounded with eyes and geas, and gratitude swept her face. With every moment that passed, he looked less substantial. The wind picked up, no longer gentle but a howling gale; a sandstorm without the fine grains of sand was still a force to behold. For the first time she wondered what would happen if he lost control of his power. If Azrael was capable of destroying a city, what could his firstborn do unleashed?

  “Stay with me,” she said. “I’m not letting you go either.”

  “Let them come.” A dangerous grin lit Tariq’s face as the wind whipped his hair into a fury of streamers. All at once she understood what he meant to do.

  She nodded. Gold, I need a little more. And we have to protect the Aegis.

  The god did not answer, but Isela felt strength rise from a place she’d thought tapped dry. Tariq met her eyes once as the golem army closed over them, and then the light went out.

  NOW.

  A hazy drone of sound rose, muted by mud. As it grew, it became a sucking roar. She felt the pull on her skin and her hair, drawing her away from the street. Power domed over her, gold and shining, expanding to include the Aegis, and she looked up. Tariq stood with arms open wide and head thrown back. She could no longer hear him over the roar. A great tunnel of wind snaked above them. Beneath the translucent dome, she watched the surrounding golems battered by wind and breaking apart, sucked slowly into the funnel and blasted to their component parts.