I wished I had a way to establish a Blood Bond between us. It would be the perfect test to see whose bond was stronger—Dracula’s or mine. But I hadn’t been able to see bonds since my other powers had been taken. I’d already checked as Xylo led me through the tower.
Xylo didn’t even have blood for me to bond with, and he also had no method for digesting my blood, essentially nullifying that option even if I had that power remaining. Maybe I could rub some of my blood on his lips or something, but I wouldn’t be able to know if it worked or not.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing—gah!” I gasped as the freaking butterfly charm suddenly bit me, causing me to reflexively unclench my grip on the charm and yank my hand away as if it had become a hot coal.
It hit the ground with a surprisingly deep clink sound, and it didn’t even bounce, strangely enough. It just landed entirely flat like it had struck a magnet. I felt a rumbling sensation in the stones beneath my boots and knew that Dracula’s Beast had somehow sensed it, momentarily stirring from her deep slumber.
Shit.
Chapter 11
I waited for the bridge to suddenly give out from beneath us.
But…nothing happened. The rumbling sensation faded almost as abruptly as it appeared, hopefully meaning that Sanguina had gone back to sleep. I let out a breath of relief and stared down at my palm, expecting to see singed skin, but my flesh wasn’t even flushed, let alone bleeding. It hadn’t actually bit me.
So…what the hell had it done?
I looked up to find that Xylo stood unnaturally still, staring down at the small charm with his jaws hanging open. “What…” he whispered, unable to peel his attention away from the butterfly charm.
I hurriedly tried to avert his interest, wanting to finish what I had tried to say before it bit me. “It’s nothing…” I said lamely, my hand drifting to my katana as I realized I was already too late, because Xylo was crouching down over it, seemingly unable to hear me. He didn’t look greedy or suddenly evil—like he would look if he was trying to take it for himself. He looked genuinely awed, entirely enthralled by the small charm. But I remembered what Nate Temple had once told me about other people trying to touch his Horseman’s Mask and getting the living hell zapped out of them.
I couldn’t risk sounding too desperate. Otherwise he might consider trying to keep it for himself, and I would be forced to cut his arm off so I could get it back before he made a run for it. “Xylo—” I urged, but I wasn’t fast enough. His skeletal claw carefully scooped up the Mask of Despair, cupping it like it was some priceless piece of ancient glass.
And it didn’t zap him like it should have. Maybe because he was already dead and his bones weren’t affected by electricity, just like they weren’t affected by wind.
He stared down at it in utter silence, entranced. I very carefully squeezed the hilt of my Silver-powered katana in case he did anything even remotely too fast for my taste. Homeboy was going to lose an appendage again if he even rattled unexpectedly.
I silently chastised myself for not taking the damned skull rather than letting him traipse around on his own two feet. Boots. Whatever.
“This…echoes,” he whispered dryly, talking more to himself. I frowned, wondering what he meant. It hadn’t zapped him, and it hadn’t changed into the actual Horseman’s Mask, so what was he talking about? He reached in to poke it with a finger from his other hand. “If I just—”
Shadows instantly erupted out from the butterfly charm, as thick and dark as smoke from an oil fire, enshrouding Xylo so entirely that I could no longer see him through it. My pulse suddenly ratcheted up about a million miles per hour as horror swamped me. What had he done to my Mask? Had Dracula summoned him back, having completed his mission to steal my last power?
Oh, god.
I heard a faint, dismissive cough from within the cloud, and then embers and sparks began to penetrate the smog, brilliant and blinding as they poured over the ground around Xylo, splashing down like hailstones of smoldering coals to bounce and skip over the stone bridge. And the shadow slowly began to fade away as if it was being sucked up by a fan in the direct center of the cloud. Xylo.
Were his embers and sparks countering the shadowy cloud? Eating the cloud? Or absorbing it? Was the dark cloud my Horseman’s power? Had he just drained the power from the Mask?
Xylo emerged from the shadow, slowly climbing back upright. The smoke visibly pooled in his eye sockets, even as the rest of the shadowy cloud was devoured by the embers and sparks holding his bones together.
Before I could demand he hand over the charm, I gasped as a current of raw energy suddenly bloomed within me—like I had just taken the perfect power nap.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been tired. The energy crackled throughout my body, searching out any crevice or crack, any weary muscle or aching joint, relaxing muscles that I hadn’t even known were in knots. Injuries and bruises earned from my fight with Roland faded away. I let out a shuddering breath, unable to speak as the energy seemed to even zip through my internal organs. My breathing suddenly felt easier, my stomach abruptly calmer and not hungry, my eyesight momentarily sharper. My tongue tingled and my skin flushed with prickling warmth as blood flooded through my body.
It was an exaggerated form of when I had once tried a pre-workout drink.
After moments or minutes, I wasn’t sure, I finally settled back on my heels and lowered my arms—not even realizing I’d been standing on the balls of my feet with my hands to the heavens as if I’d just high-fived God in an exultant yet subconscious prayer stretch after a godly yoga session.
Goga session.
Xylo was staring at me, looking just as startled and content as I felt.
Except the last of the dark cloud—smoke as black and shadowy as the depths of a deep, underground cave—now pooled within his eye sockets, ever-shifting and roiling like the steam over a cauldron of witch’s brew. He still held the charm in his hand but seemed to have forgotten it as he stared at me instead.
“I…feel you,” he said faintly, sounding as if he’d been exceedingly careful in choosing his words.
I stared back, stunned to find that I was slowly nodding as I realized I felt something similar from him. In fact, I could almost feel the charm in his hand—not physically, but more as if some deep intuition confirmed that he was holding it. I even felt confident that I could turn around and accurately guess which hand he held it in—no matter how many times he might try switching them back and forth—like a disembodied extension of myself.
The most amazing part was that I was touching magic again. Even though it was a strange and scary and exciting flavor of magic that I couldn’t explain, I was touching magic again. Even that small touch was enough to strengthen my confidence, my resolve for the tasks ahead.
I studied Xylo, noticing that my perception of him went far beyond the mere physical.
His mind was a dark, twisted bramble of thorns—a maze with a center that kept getting farther away the harder he tried to find it.
He might not physically feel pain, but what resided inside him was incredibly superior to anything that might be done to his physical form. Even attempting to comprehend that swamping darkness inside him…the magnitude of it threatened to consume me utterly.
Despite the metaphor not quite fitting the situation, the only way I could think to describe it was a bone-deep pain infesting his very marrow. Except I knew for a fact that he didn’t understand it—not knowing what had caused it, where it had come from, or why he felt it—and that he had simply chosen to accept it as the natural order of his existence.
He no longer cared to question it.
I blinked away tears, my breathing shallow as I stared at him staring at me. I was confident that his inner pain wasn’t some deeply buried guilt. I was also entirely certain that it wasn’t him purposefully holding back some secret. He truly didn’t know what it was that made him feel this way, and he no longer cared to find an explanation, let alone a solut
ion.
He was familiar—old friends—with his sorrow and held only a bleak acceptance of his fate. He didn’t even see it as a sorrow anymore. It was just the way things were. Period.
And it suddenly clicked in my mind. His morose, defeated demeanor. His lack of self-confidence. It all stemmed from this darkness within, this unanswered question.
And that despair had somehow opened him up to my Mask.
Despite his lack of confidence and swagger, I sensed an alarmingly deep well of power within Xylo—maybe even the source of his embers and sparks. But it was elusive, entirely foreign to me, and I didn’t know what to make of it. The power wasn’t necessarily evil, but it definitely wasn’t nice either. It just was.
Like a wolf having no sympathy for its prey. It wasn’t that the wolf didn’t care for the dead rabbit’s family, it was that it didn’t have the capacity to entertain such an abstract thought of anything beyond the immediate solution to its own hunger.
Eating meant surviving.
And that fresh spurt of rabbit’s blood hitting the wolf’s tongue after a merry chase through the forest was undeniably rewarding—the sweet, savory taste of victory.
Whatever this power was, it was simply a tool Xylo had access to. The unsympathetic nature of that power wasn’t a reflection of Xylo’s character any more than my own powers were a reflection of mine. My mind controlled my magic, the magic didn’t control my mind—because Roland had taught me the dangers in letting passions rule your objectivity.
To further prove the point, I didn’t think Xylo was even aware of the potential of the power within—at least that he didn’t know how to use it in any beneficial manner. Dracula never would have allowed it—and probably should have killed him for even having it.
Which begged the question…
Why had Dracula handed Xylo over to me with even less concern than would have shown for his collection of last season’s vampire capes? Maybe he didn’t know? Or…
Maybe my Horseman’s Mask had woken it up or activated it. Maybe it was the magic of Despair fusing itself to his bones. With rising panic, I probed deeper, and it only took me a moment to verify that this wasn’t the case—that he hadn’t drained my Mask or stolen its power. I could still sense the power from the charm, and Xylo’s power—although similar to the Mask—had a different aura, I guess you could say.
I still let out a sigh of relief.
Even though I didn’t share Xylo’s naturally defeatist attitude, I felt a kindred spirit in Xylo. A bond or camaraderie between us.
He cocked his head suddenly—his only movement in minutes. “What is this bizarre feeling?” he asked, sounding decidedly uneasy and not best pleased.
I laughed, unable to help myself. He was reading me just as I was reading him. “Joy. You’re picking up on my relief and joy, Xylo.”
He mouthed the words as if trying to digest the alien emotions. Finally, he shook his head, choosing to accept it rather than question it.
His go-to coping mechanism.
A new thought hit me, and I abruptly closed my eyes, holding up a finger for him to give me a moment of silence. I focused on the new shared sensations between us.
And my legs almost buckled in disbelief.
Chapter 12
I was able to visibly see the strange yet powerful bond between us, much like the Blood Bonds I had shared with a few others recently. Except…this was also entirely different than those. Bony spines as numerous as a blackberry bramble connected us in place of the cord of light. Branches, roots, and vines consisting of aged ivory tendrils connected us in dozens of places, the bone cracked and dry.
Despite the brittle appearance, I knew they were incredibly resilient. Still…
“Would you mind drinking my blood, Xylo?” I asked without opening my eyes. Because as I studied him closer, I saw a pulsing black cord of anti-light stretching out from behind him, fat and sluggish. Our multiple bonds severely outnumbered that black one, but it looked so sluggish and deliriously happy that I wanted to kill it with figurative salt and fire.
Dracula’s Blood Bond. I just knew it.
I opened my eyes to look at Xylo.
The smoke now living in his eye-sockets shifted back and forth as he stared back at me. I actually preferred it to the empty socket and interior of the skull look. “I can try,” Xylo said uncertainly, knowing he had no way to actually consume my blood.
Maybe I could just draw a smiley face on his forehead with my blood.
I drew my katana a few inches and sliced my palm open on the base of the blade. Then I walked over to Xylo and lifted my fist above his head. “Open wide and swallow,” I said. “If you remember how.”
He tilted his head back and spread his bony mouth open. My blood dripped freely over his teeth and jaws, splashing down through his body and over his spine and rib bones. The blood immediately steamed where it came in contact with bone, and then the bones absorbed it—sucked it down like water poured on hot, dry sand.
Xylo shuddered violently with a rattling drum solo, groaning as he panted, his head still tilted back. I closed my eyes again, focusing on the bony roots between us and I watched in stunned disbelief as they grew stronger, thicker, and more vibrant. I also felt the wound on my palm grow very warm, but I didn’t open my eyes to check.
More importantly, the fat, black, sluggish cord suddenly hissed and screamed in agony—just like I’d hoped when I’d thought of salt poured on a slug—writhing and whipping back and forth as it shriveled and shrank. Its whistling screams mirrored Xylo’s sudden panting. I winced, hoping I hadn’t caused him too much pain—
And realized that I could simply focus on him if I wanted to gauge his physical well-being. He was definitely uncomfortable, but I was relieved to see he wasn’t in any unbearable agony.
The black cord of power abruptly popped, oozing black goop before it faded away to nothing.
Xylo let out a final, shuddering breath and I opened my eyes. I checked the wound on my palm to find it mostly healed, leaving only a faint pink line where the small cut had been. I grunted, looking up at Xylo.
He stared at me incredulously, the smoke in his eyes whipping back and forth as if battered by wild, shifting wind. He stared at me for about thirty seconds before I finally spoke, wondering if he was feeling something that I couldn’t perceive.
“Are you…okay, Xylo?” I asked nervously.
He gave me a very slow nod. “Never better,” he rasped, his voice raw.
I frowned. “It’s just that you’re staring at me, so I wanted to make sure you were okay…”
He nodded slowly. “I’ve never felt these things before. I was crying.”
My heart cracked a little at his reaction to such a vital emotion—one he hadn’t known existed—happiness.
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed that I was intruding on his private cry. “That’s okay, Xylo. I didn’t see any tears so I thought you were waiting on me for something.”
He shook his head. “That is how I cry. On the inside,” he said, deadpan.
Wow.
Okay.
We had a long, dark road ahead of us before I would let him meet any of my friends—otherwise he might send them spiraling into depression via the bottom of a bottle of Jose Cuervo.
I shook my head, trying to wrap my own head around it all. I’d come up here looking to connect with my Horseman’s Mask—and had instead found an ally. An ally who shared a strong affinity with Despair. I was doubly glad I hadn’t chosen to just take his head, now.
“You should have this,” Xylo said, holding out the butterfly charm. “It is not for me, but I think it tolerates me.”
I smiled, nodding as I reached my hand out towards the charm, slightly relieved to hear him say he didn’t want to keep it—because after seeing the reaction it had caused, I’ll admit that doubt had entered my mind about who the real Horseman of Despair might be.
Despite the circuitous route I had taken, I had successfully found power of a sort up h
ere. I felt excited. I now had a chance against Dracula and his guests. I could do this. I could win.
The butterfly charm shone in the crimson moonlight, my fingers almost touching it—
A stone monster suddenly dove down from the sky and struck Xylo like a meteoric hunting falcon, knocking him clear over the railing of the bridge and out into the empty air, taking my Horseman Mask with him.
My chances at survival fell with Xylo and my Mask. Three more thuds of stone striking stone sounded behind me, letting me know I had my own welcoming party to deal with.
I slowly turned, gritting my teeth and narrowing my eyes as my hand closed around the hilt of my katana. A trio of gargoyles with eyes of crimson fire stared back at me.
They knew not what they had just done.
But I was looking forward to showing them the error of their ways—that their remains would make perfect gravel for any infrastructure improvements that Dracula might have been considering.
As long as he did so before I killed him, too, of course.
Chapter 13
I drew my katana, assessing my foes.
Their forms were solid, iron gray stone and they stood about a foot shorter than me. But they were two or three times wider and heavily sculpted with layers of dense muscle, like little Dracula had a field day in pottery class when he created them.
Gargoyles could come in pretty much any flavor of design, but most resembled some demented amalgam of beasts—mammal, reptile, or bird—upon a bipedal frame to create truly grotesque monstrosities. These gargoyles had the heads of mutant super-bats, complete with fiery eyes and pointed ears, but their bodies reminded me of substance-abusing dwarves—their short, stubby, and muscular frames weathered and pitted from eons of bad life decisions.
None of them held weapons, but their claws were at least six inches long, two inches thick at the base, and curled like a velociraptor—perfect for decapitating unwary wizards, for example. Those claws would allow them to grip ledges and perches much like a bird, locking them into place so they wouldn’t fall.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 7