Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “Seee, sssafe with me. Sssafe with Lusssinda.”

  Lucinda … the name jabbed at the locked box in the back of my brain I hadn’t even known was there. A distant memory stirred like weeds at the bottom of a murky lake, but then a figure walked into the clearing below, and every iota of my attention focused on him like a laser beam.

  The shimmer man paused briefly in the exact spot I’d just been standing. If he looked up, would he see me? If I moved, would he hear me?

  He canted his head to the side. “Oh, how I’ve missed our little games, Kitty Kat. When I find you, we’ll have all the time in the world to play. When I find you, we’ll be together forever.”

  The brand on my arm tightened suddenly, squeezing the blood in my veins into a burning sensation. I sucked in a breath. The shimmer man froze. He was going to look up. Oh, shit.

  Lucinda moved lightning-fast, wrapping herself around me so tightly I could barely breathe, and visibility was zero.

  My blood thumped in my ears, and my heartbeat was a drum that I was sure the shimmer man would hear. Was he still there? Was he still watching? An icy doubt pricked the back of my neck. What if he was gone? What if he was no longer the threat? I was wrapped in snake. What if I was about to be dinner?

  The band around me loosened, and sweet air rushed into my lungs. I slumped on the branch, gasping.

  “He isss gone. For now. But he will find you. Only one can keep you sssafe.”

  “Who?”

  “We call her the shadow.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  “You don’t. She findsss you. If she deeemsss you worthy.” Lucinda’s face drifted closer to mine until we were almost nose to nose. “Are you worthy, Kitty Kat? Have you become the woman we all hoped you would be?”

  “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember this place. I don’t …”

  Lucinda’s eyes smiled. “You will. When the time is right, you will. We have hope.”

  “We?”

  “The natives of Somnium. Thisss …” Lucinda looked down. “Thisss isss nothing. Thisss is where he wantsss you to roam, but out there, beyond hisss bubble, we wait to be free. You will ssset usss free.”

  “How? How do I stop him?”

  “That, I do not know.” Her head jerked up. “He is headed back thisss way. You mussst leave. Get on my back. I will help you get a headssstart.”

  I clambered onto her back, holding on to the surprisingly dry skin. Not how I expected a snake to feel, not that I spent much time thinking about feeling up snakes.

  “Hold on,” Lucinda said.

  I wrapped my arms around her thick neck, and then we were in motion, sliding through the trees. Leaves brushed my face and smacked me in the head. Slender branches clawed at my arms. My stomach dipped and rose as Lucinda navigated the upper echelon of the jungle, a layer filled with fragrances that made my head light. Buzzing, fluttering insects beat their wings to stay abreast of us as if they were following our progress. The warm air grew cooler until it was biting and gnawing at every area of exposed flesh. I cracked open my eyes to risk a peek at what lay ahead. A blanket of white awaited us.

  Lucinda came to a stop. Her body trembled. “This is asss far as I can go. Head for the mountainsss due eassst. Thisss may be part of hisss playground, but he hatesss the cold. It’sss the lassst place he will look. It will buy you time.”

  I slid off her back. “Thank you.”

  “You can thank usss all by ending hisss reign. Now go. Sssurvive.”

  I shimmied down the tree and then jogged out of the forest into the clean, crisp snow. Thank goodness I didn’t feel the cold keenly, because for some reason, my jacket hadn’t made it with me into Somnium. When I glanced back, the jungle was gone, taking Lucinda with it.

  * * *

  The snow stretched out in an endless flat land that ended in the peaks of blue mountains topped with gray and blue puffy clouds. How far were they? How far behind me was the shimmer man.

  I pulled my sleeve back to check the hourglass. Half the sand was gone.

  I could do this. I was halfway to winning. I just needed to keep moving to evade him. To stay ahead of him.

  The dickhead captured me. He had me, but he’d decided to play this game. He was confident I’d lose. Confident in a win. I’d fucking show him.

  I ate away at the distance between me and the mountains, watching them rise higher and higher, growing larger and larger until I was jogging into a valley that cut through them. The chill abated a little as the mountains shielded me from the air laced with razors.

  I might not feel the cold, but the cut and bite still affected my skin. Thank God this was just my dream form because I was totally out of my favorite moisturizers.

  How was I doing back in the real world? How were the others doing? Had they gotten me back to Scorchwood yet?

  I needed to wake up.

  Wait. When had it gone so quiet? Okay, slow it down. Look around. My hackles quivered in predator alert mode. And then the reason appeared on the rocks and ridges above me. Lips pulled away from lethal fangs in silent snarls, the massive, shaggy white wolves glared at me with icy blue eyes.

  Shit, they blended so neatly into the snowy landscape, I’d almost missed them. How long had they been tracking me?

  My fangs slipped from my gums, and a primal growl vibrated in my chest. Predator here too, fucker, so back off. No point wondering if they could hurt me for real; my gut screamed that they could, that damage here meant damage on my flesh-and-blood body. I had no idea how I knew this. The knowledge was just there.

  The wolves closed in. A pack seven strong, they surrounded me, approaching at a leisurely pace because heck, where was I going to go? I was stuck in a ravine.

  Where the fuck was the shimmer man when you needed him, eh?

  There was nothing to do but fight.

  Two wolves leaped toward me. I crouched, ready to leap out of the way. Whizz, thunk, thunk.

  The huge beasts twisted in the air, their coats blooming crimson before they tumbled to the ground with arrows sticking out of their flanks.

  Whizz. Thunk. Another wolf took an arrow between the eyes. The rest snarled and yipped before turning tail and running.

  Where was the shooter? I scanned the mountains rising on either side of me. Shit. I was exposed. In perfect view. An easy target.

  The crunch of boots was followed by a whoosh, and then a figure landed on the ledge to my left. Slender, petite, dressed in white furs, her golden hair pulled back off her face, the woman glared at me with eyes I’d seen in the mirror way too many times.

  “Dammit, Kat, I told you not to come after me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You shouldn’t have come,” my mother said. “I told you not to.”

  She was here. Talking to me. She was fucking awake. Alive. Okay, so not alive, but still. “Mum?”

  She made a sound of exasperation. “Does he know you’re here?” Her gaze dropped to my wrists, and her face paled. “Oh, no. He has you. He has you, which means …” She shook her head. “I have to go.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Her face crumpled. “I can’t help you, Kat. He has you, and I can’t help you. Only you can help yourself now.”

  “You can help me. I have time. He says he’ll let me go if I can evade him till the time’s up.” I showed her the hourglass on my forearm.

  She shook her head. “No, no. It’s a lie. The cuffs mean he can find you at any time. That he can call you to him whenever he pleases. It’s a game. Just a game. Why did you come here, Kat, why?”

  “I had no choice. The binding keeping me safe is gone.”

  She slapped a hand over her mouth, and then her eyes hardened. “You listen to me, and you listen to me good. The shimmer man is arrogant, egotistical, and insane. Use that to your advantage, and get those cuffs off. He won’t hurt you. He can’t. He needs you to get out of here, but you can fight him. You can block him. You need to be strong, do you hear me
, sweetheart? When he pulls you to him, you need to be strong, and when you make it out of here, you need to find Morpheus. You need to find him, and you need to bring him back. Somnium belongs to him, and maybe if he returns, we’ll have the strength to fight the shimmer man.”

  “I don’t understand. What happened to you? How did we even get involved with the shimmer man? Mum, you need to tell me … Who’s my father?”

  My mother sighed. “Come with me. He won’t follow you here; we have time before he pulls you back.”

  She leaped up onto the ledge then reached down to pull me up with her. The walkway was narrow but wide enough for me to walk behind her. She stepped to the side and vanished. I reached the spot where she’d been, and there was an aperture in the rock face. A cave.

  “Come on,” she called from inside.

  I followed her into the darkness, squeezing down the tunnel. It opened into a chamber where a fire burned low in a stone circle.

  “Sit,” my mother said.

  “This is where you’ve been hiding?”

  “One of the spots, yes. I have several across the island. I’ve been here almost as long as he has. He’s not the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve.”

  “But you can’t leave.”

  “No. Not while he’s in control. Now that he has access to the two seas filled with dreaming souls, no one is safe.”

  She threw more wood on the fire and then sat on a rock opposite me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you growing up. I’m sorry for all the secrets. Your father and I met here in Somnium.”

  “Morpheus?”

  She smiled fondly. “No, Morpheus was a good friend of mine, but we never had that kind of relationship. I’d been coming here for a long time, swimming to shore and spending time on the island. Morpheus was my guide and my mentor. My dreams were a haven. I guess my mixed heritage, something about my genealogy, made me different. I asked your gramps about our family tree, but he always insisted we were pure blood. I knew it was a lie. I knew I was different. Morpheus told me so. He told me about his close friend, one he hoped to introduce me to one day. But our paths didn’t cross until my nineteenth year. And then your father’s visit and my visit to Somnium coincided for the first time.” She sighed, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “He was so handsome and so charismatic. But most of all, he was kind. We were meant to be. But he didn’t belong in my world, and I couldn’t live in his.”

  “What? Why? Who was he?”

  Her smile was tired. “Kat, your father is Death.”

  Death? “My father is … Death?”

  She searched my face as if looking for the horror, the confusion, but for the first time in a long time, everything made sense. Everything clicked into place. My ability to see ghosts and jump in and out of the shade. My ability to tether spirits to myself. It was hereditary because … Death.

  I frowned. “But Death’s gone.”

  She nodded slowly. “After I found out I was pregnant with you, I had a little bit of a panic. I stayed off the island for a few weeks. When I went back, your father was beside himself. He thought my feelings for him had changed. I knew then he’d be happy with the news. I was right. He was ecstatic. Death is the only entity that can move freely between the realms of the dead and the living, specifically the mortal realm, but until then, we’d only ever met in Somnium. No one knew about our liaisons. We made plans for our future. He promised to build a place for us, a place in between where we could be together. A family. He was working on it when I came here, heavily pregnant, to find the place in chaos. Morpheus welcomed me, but it wasn’t Morpheus, it was someone wearing my friend’s body.”

  “The shimmer man.”

  “Yes. He sensed something in me, something unique, and he tried to woo me with his lies. I kept going back, hoping to discover the truth about what had happened. Hoping that Death would come for me.” She paused. “Yeah, that sounds weird, right?”

  I shrugged. “Hey, I just found out Death’s my father, so weird is kinda the theme right now.”

  She smiled. “You remind me of him. He was always quick with the jokes.” She blew out a breath. “Anyway. I learned a few things. I learned that the shimmer man had done something to your father. I think when your father was crafting a realm for us, he must have awoken something, let something in or out, or whatever. Set the shimmer man free. I believe the shimmer man hoped to use Death to get into the mortal realm, but Death brought him to Somnium and left him here.”

  “Trapped him here.”

  She nodded. “With Death gone, the only way out was Morpheus. The shimmer man took his body, but I believe Morpheus’s soul fled.”

  “Leaving the shimmer man trapped in Morpheus’s body.”

  “Yes. I believe your father and Morpheus worked together to trick the shimmer man. They trapped him here. They didn’t think he’d be able to break free. But then I came along, pregnant with you, and he sensed you. He knew you were the key to getting out of here.”

  “Because I’m Death’s daughter?”

  She nodded. “Not only that, you were conceived here in Somnium. You are his bridge.” She swallowed. “There was only one way for me to keep you safe. The night I gave birth to you, I went back to Somnium, and I cut ties with my waking body. I had to stay here to keep an eye on him. To make sure that if you set foot on the island, I was here to protect you.”

  “I came here.”

  “Yes, you did.” She smiled. “But by that time, I was his prisoner. My allies on the island kept me informed, telling me how he was manipulating you, befriending you. How you seemed to adore him. I finally succeeded in bringing you to me. You saw me, and you recognized me. You didn’t understand it all, but you knew enough to take my message back to your gramps, and … and I never saw you again. Until now.”

  “And you’ve been hiding here all this time? Running from him?”

  She shrugged.

  “Why didn’t you wake up, once I was gone.”

  Her smile was sad. “I thought about it. I almost did several times. But the people here need me. They need a sane voice. The shimmer man … He’s a tyrant. You have no idea the things he’s done to the lost. And … and I needed to be here in case your father came back.”

  My heart ached for her at the same time as anger raged through me. “You stayed for him. You could have woken and been a mother, but you stayed for Death.”

  Her expression hardened. “I made a choice, and yes, I regret not coming to you sooner. I didn’t realize that my body would fail me like it has. I didn’t intend to die.”

  “The shimmer man knows your body is dead.”

  “I know. I’m dead, and yet your father didn’t come for me.”

  Oh, man. “He hasn’t come for anyone. He’s gone. Death is gone. No one has seen or heard from him in years, and there are hardly any reapers left.”

  “You have to find them, Kat. Death and Morpheus were unable to stop the shimmer man, but maybe the three of you together can. Maybe together you can put a stop to him for good.”

  “You want me to find Death and Morpheus, the god of dreams. Great. Nothing too challenging then.”

  Yeah, I was pissed. Pissed at a mother who had chosen her lover over me. But then she had saved me as a child.

  Urgh, I hated this cocktail of emotions.

  My arm stung where the shimmer man had branded me. How much time did I have? The hourglass winked at me, only a handful of grain left. Something tugged at my solar plexus.

  My mother’s eyes widened. “We’re out of time. Remember what I told you. Hold on to the memories. Do not forget. Fight him, Kat. You have more power inside you than you know, more power than even he knows. Figh—”

  Darkness ate away at my vision until I was blinded by light.

  “Got you!” the shimmer man said.

  I was back on the beach, in the exact spot I’d started, and the shimmer man was standing several meters away, twirling a set of keys on his fingers. Fury surged through me and exploded f
rom my lips in a string of colorful curses.

  His laughter rose up like heat off tarmac on a hot day. “Did you honestly think you could win? Oh, oh, my little Kitty Kat, you were always so gullible. Although your language wasn’t this colorful. I shall have to put you over my knee and spank you.” He sobered. “Would you like that?”

  Creepy much. “Look, you don’t have to do this. The mortal realm sucks ass. This place is kinda cool, I mean, why do you want to leave?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why? Why?” His tone got higher. “Because I should be able to. Because I deserve more than this shitty little island filled with fucked-up lost souls fawning over me. I deserve a whole world, and you, my little Kitty Kat, are going to give it to me.”

  He tucked the keys into his pocket and walked closer. I resisted the urge to run because where the fuck would I go?

  He stopped a foot away from me and stared deep into my eyes with his stunning silver peepers. Morpheus’s stunning peepers, to be precise. “Let me inside you, Kat. Deep inside you.”

  There was no ignoring the sexual connotation to his request, and yes, gag. But I plastered a smile on my face because he had the keys to my cuffs, and I needed him to get closer.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure I could handle you.”

  His eyes flared. “God, I’m torn. I could throw you down onto the sand right now and fuck you senseless, or we could meld. I could slide under your skin and ride you out of here.” He touched my shoulder and ran his hand down my arm.

  Even with the fabric between us, there was no ignoring the spidery creepy feeling that spread across my skin.

  “Mmmm, what to do first?” he pondered. “I mean, once I have you, I can have you any time I want. There’s no rush for us to consummate our relationship.” His expression grew cold, and then his hand was on my throat. “I think I want a ride. Give me your mind. Give me your soul.”