by Sarah Piper
Haley was gone. I was no longer sitting on the floor of Elena’s guest room.
I was, unsurprisingly, back in my own magical realm, the now-familiar black trees glittering with silver threads. Slowly, I got to my feet, trying to get my bearings. The spell had brought me here, which meant that Liam and Emilio were somewhere in my realm, probably near the gate to the Shadowrealm.
The crunch of leaves and branches sounded at my back, and I spun around expecting Liam, my lips already curving into a smile.
But the gaze that greeted me was not the peaceful, ancient blue of Liam Colebrook’s gaze.
The half-human, half-beast creature before me didn’t even have eyes. Just two black pits oozing with foul blood, carved into a bashed-in skull that was covered in a patchwork of tattered flesh and bloody, matted fur. A long, crooked muzzle extended out beneath the pits like a door loose on its hinges.
He snapped his jaw, revealing a series of rotten, infected holes where his pseudo-vampire fangs should’ve been. And though he couldn’t speak, the haunting words of the past slithered into my memory, filling my mouth with the taste of bile.
Leaving the shadows already, Sunshine?
It seemed the twisted monster who’d been hunting me for a decade had caught up with me once again.
Eight
GRAY
My brain checked out, leaving my instincts in charge. I lunged, slamming Jonathan’s deformed hybrid body to the ground and straddling him. My hands wrapped around his neck, fingers breaking through the loose skin and sinking into the flesh, right down to the brittle bones beneath. I swallowed back a gag as his putrid blood spilled over my hands, but still, he writhed and bucked beneath me, some unnatural force giving him superior strength.
In a blur, he shoved me off and rolled on top of me, pinning my arms at my sides with hands that were part human, part monstrous paw, tipped with razor-sharp claws that pierced my skin. Blood from his neck wounds dripped onto my face, and I closed my mouth and turned my head, trying to look for something in the grass—anything—to hit him with.
No rocks, no sticks. I had no weapons but the dinky lighter in my pocket, which I couldn’t get to… and my magic.
Jonathan lowered his head and nosed my cheek, my jaw, my neck, inhaling my scent. The smell seemed to make him tremble, and something in his lower body—I didn’t even want to imagine that deformed thing—hardened against my thigh.
I bit back another gag.
Oh, hell no. This is definitely not happening.
He shoved his cracked, bleeding muzzle into the curve where my shoulder met my neck and licked me, his tongue like sandpaper, his hot, sick breath coming more frantically. His jaw opened, and he bit down hard.
I braced for the pain that never came.
He had no teeth. No bite. Nothing but festering, stinking gums that smelled as rotten as the rest of him.
I took a deep breath through my mouth and closed my eyes, willing my heart rate to slow. I was in my own realm, surrounded by my own magic. Everything here was connected to me, including the Shadowrealm on the other side of the forest. This beastly thing might’ve had strength left in his body—hell, he might’ve been immortal, for all I knew—but he couldn’t hurt me here. Not really.
In that moment, the truth blazed inside me like its own sun.
Jonathan was evil and repulsive. His appearance alone was enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, never mind the stench.
But I was no longer afraid of him.
He had no power over me.
A sense of utter calm descended on me like a heavy blanket, and I stopped struggling against his hold. Instead, I redirected my energy and sent a gentle call to my sacred place, pulsing my magic into the earth, sending it deep beneath the surface. I felt it trickle down through the grass like water after a rainstorm, slowly seeping into the dirt, through tangled roots and loose rocks, past earthworms and beetles and the decaying bodies of creatures long since buried. There were layers of bedrock, each colored band marking the passage of an eon, and the skeletons of creatures that no longer existed. It was a mirror of the earthly plane, one of many dimensions that touched and overlapped and called us home.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but I felt it the moment my magic reached the source. The energies connected instantly, warming me, and the deep, ancient magic of this place twined with mine, inviting me to draw it upward, inward.
We are part of you, blood of Silversbane, came the whisper in my mind. As you are part of us.
My skin began to glow. The magic simmered inside me, heating my blood.
It was time.
There was no force, no explosion of sparks and violence, no out-of-control burst that shattered glass and splintered wood. Only a gentle nudge, and Jonathan was flat on his back, the air rushing back into my lungs in the absence of his crushing weight on my chest.
Unhurried, I slowly got to my feet, wiped my face on the bottom edge of my T-shirt, and searched the area for a piece of wood or a stick. I finally settled on a thick, foot-long chunk of tree bark near the forest’s edge, wrapped in dried moss that seemed perfect for kindling. Certain it hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier, I glanced up into the shimmering tree branches and smiled, sending the woods a silent thank-you.
A muffled grunt behind me alerted me to Jonathan’s presence again, and I turned to face him, scrutinizing the sockets where his eyes used to be. “Why won’t you just die?”
He shook his head in response, but I couldn’t translate his answer. Maybe he didn’t want to die, and haunting my realm would be his final stand. Maybe he did want to die, and just didn’t know how. I couldn’t imagine anyone—even a piece-of-shit hunter like Jonathan—would want to remain trapped in that form.
It wasn’t a life.
It was a mistake.
Well, I certainly didn’t owe him any favors, but if death was what he wanted, I’d be more than happy to put him out of his misery.
I fished the lighter out of my shirt pocket and lit the mossy end of the bark, blowing the red-hot embers to a flame.
“I’d cut off your head, half-vamp, but I didn’t bring a blade. So, fire it is.” I held up my makeshift torch, my own magic surging inside, warming me as much as the fire. “Fair warning… This might sting a little.”
I lunged for him again, but he spun away out of my reach and dashed into the forest.
Using the torch to light my path, I chased him. He’d haunted me for far too long. This needed to end. With light, sure steps, I charged into the forest, hopping over tangled roots and fallen limbs, dodging sharp branches, ignoring the pounding of my heart as I hunted the hunter.
When I finally broke free of the thick, tangled trees, I found myself in a peaceful meadow. Jonathan was gone. I’d lost him.
But what I found instead more than made up for it.
Tears sprung to my eyes, and I extinguished and dropped my torch, blinking rapidly in the darkness until my vision adjusted, bringing them back into view.
“Emilio,” I whispered. “Liam.”
In the meadow before my white stone altar, Liam was on his knees beside my wolf. He looked as if he’d been there for hours, and now he stretched out a hand toward me, beckoning me forward.
“Hurry, Gray,” he said, the urgency in his voice turning my blood cold. “There isn’t much time.”
“Time?” I crept closer, my muscles suddenly stiff with fear. Why wasn’t Emilio moving? Was that… was that fresh blood on the ground? He still appeared to be trapped between his human and wolf forms, just like he had been at the warehouse. Why hadn’t he shifted fully?
Why hadn’t he healed?
Wordlessly I knelt down beside Liam and reached for Emilio’s hand. He looked just like he had earlier tonight—gravely injured, caught between forms, carved up and poisoned by Orendiel’s silver blade. But the face that had writhed in pain before had long since gone slack, and his skin was cold and clammy. His eyes were open, but they were glassy and vacant,
holding no sign of the man I loved. No spark of life.
“Time for what?” I pressed, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. My stomach was already twisting at the possibility, heart thudding in my throat.
Liam turned to me, human but for the glowing blue eyes and a faint pulse of silver-blue light emanating from his skin.
A soul, I realized. He was holding Emilio’s soul.
Tears filled Liam’s otherworldly eyes, and he reached for my face, touching it so sweetly and gently, it almost shattered my heart. He shook his head and closed his eyes, and the words came out slow and strangled. “It’s… time to say goodbye, little witch. I’m so sorry.”
Nine
DARIUS
Ronan had nearly worn a groove in the living room floor with his incessant pacing, and if there weren’t so many warm bodies in the way, I might’ve joined him. It’d been hours since Gray and Haley had sequestered themselves in the guest room, and other than a muffled conversation early on, we’d heard nothing. Saw nothing. No news. No updates. No sign of success or trouble but the iridescent glow of magic leaking out beneath the gap at the bottom of the door.
A trickle of worry crept down my spine, but I refused to let it take hold. Refused to show even a fraction of outward concern. The others wouldn’t understand; in the wake of my memory loss, their claim on her heart felt much more legitimate than mine. But while my mind was unable to remember her presence in my life, some deeper part of me did remember. I felt it more and more the longer I spent in her presence.
And right now, that part of me wanted nothing more than to break down the bedroom door.
I glanced at the closed door down the hall, but the sentinel posted outside of it shook his head. Asher had taken Gray’s demands seriously; he and the hounds would maim anyone who attempted to disturb her.
“Perhaps she’s traveled to her realm,” I reasoned aloud. “It’s the most logical explanation, is it not?”
Ronan grunted something that might have been an agreement, though I couldn’t be certain. “That thought doesn’t bring me any peace,” he said. “The freakshow hunter who’s tried to kill her at least a dozen times already is supposedly running wild out there. She may as well have a target painted on her back.”
“Liam will protect her.”
Another grunt. “I don’t like it. We should be there with her.”
“Hmm.” I rubbed my fingers over the stubble on my jaw. “My recollection is a bit hazy, but it’s my understanding that the last time we tracked her to another realm, things went a bit sideways on us.”
He stopped pacing long enough to glare at me, clearly not appreciating my attempt at humor.
“Regardless,” I said. “We all know that when Gray sets her mind to something—”
Ronan’s grunt turned into a growl, his eyes blackening as he stormed past me on his hundredth trek across the hardwood floor. “Don’t tell me what I know, vampire. You can’t even tell me what you know.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate your tone, demon.”
“No? Then why don’t you take your smug face and your perfect little accent and go… I don’t know. Go shove a scone up your arse.”
“Ronan. Darius.” Deirdre emerged from the kitchen, her presence stopping me from putting Ronan into a wall. “Why don’t you redirect some of that toxic male aggression and help me with the coffee.” She made her way around the room with a tray of steaming mugs, handing out coffee to the witches, some of whom had curled up together on the couch and chairs, others in smaller huddles on the floor. As exhausted as they must’ve been, no one had dared nod off. Not while Gray was unaccounted for and Emilio’s fate still unknown.
“And if you can’t make yourselves useful,” the old woman continued, “at least make yourselves quiet. The last thing Gray needs is to come back and referee a pissing contest between—”
“You’re something else, you know that?” Ronan shook his head, a look of utter disgust twisting his features.
“Ronan,” she said, her eyes imploring him, “we will discuss our personal differences another time.”
“Differences?” he snarled. “Differences?”
I felt the spike in his aggression mere seconds before his eyes turned demon black.
“So,” he continued, “do you want to tell them about these differences, or should I?”
Deirdre visibly stiffened, but her eyes blazed with a new warning. “Now is not the time.”
“You’re right, witch. Twenty years ago was the time, but you failed. You made a bad call then, and every day you keep your secrets, you’re making it a hell of a lot worse. For Gray, for yourself, and for everyone else.”
“I had my reasons,” she said. “As did you.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you come over here and remind me of them.”
“Careful, demon. I’m not as old and docile as I look.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, moving to stand between them. As much as I would’ve loved to see a brawl between a powerful old witch and a crossroads demon with an ax to grind, Deirdre was right. Now was not the time.
Fortunately, I was spared from having to intercede further by the opening of the front door and the sudden and rather grim entrance of the fae prince. His face was red with cold, his eyes full of something that looked a lot like fear. Real fear.
“I’ve finally made contact with my sister,” he announced.
“Kallayna?” One of the witches on the couch asked. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s… a long story,” Jael said. “But the short version is that she’s infiltrated the Darkwinter contingent in Blackmoon Bay under guise of a romantic relationship with one of their knights, and has been transmitting intelligence through a secured fae channel ever since. I hadn’t heard from her in some time, but she finally managed to get a message out tonight, and the news isn’t good.”
Deirdre handed him a mug of coffee, which he accepted with a small bow. After taking a few sips, he pulled one of the dining chairs into the living room and took a seat.
“After the surprise attack and ensuing defeat in Raven’s Cape tonight,” he said, “Orendiel and the remaining Darkwinter Knights, along with the hunters still loyal to the cause, retreated to Blackmoon Bay to regroup.”
“We figured that might happen,” Ronan said, the argument with Deirdre seemingly forgotten in the presence of a far greater foe. “As far as we know, the Bay is still under their control.”
“Yes,” Jael confirmed. “But I fear the situation back home has taken a turn for the worse.”
“How can that be?” I asked. “They’ve just suffered massive casualties and the loss of their most valuable prisoners. They retreated, presumably to lick their wounds.”
Jael shook his head. “Apparently they’ve called in reinforcements. According to what Kallayna was able to uncover, two hundred additional knights have been dispatched to the Bay, and that’s not counting the hundred or so already in place.”
“Another two hundred?” Ronan let loose a heavy sigh. “We saw what they could do with less than half that number at the warehouse. It took all of us working together, with powerful magic and the element of complete surprise, just to survive the night. And not all—”
He cut off abruptly, but I knew what he’d been thinking.
And not all of us had survived.
I glanced down the hallway, hoping for a sign from Gray, but there was only Asher and the hounds, as still as marble statues. Asher’s eyes were alert as he listened to our conversation out here, but he wasn’t moving from his post for anything.
“There’s more,” Jael said, his face going a shade paler. “The Bay has been locked in a brutal winter storm for several days. White-out conditions, heavy accumulation, frigid temperatures.”
“What?” Ronan asked. “But we never get weather like that. I can’t even remember the last time it snowed there.”
“Precisely,” Jael said. “Kallayna believes the weather was conjured by Darkwinter. She has
n’t found proof, but the timing and nature of the storm is too suspicious to be anything natural.”
“To what end?” I asked.
Jael closed his eyes and sipped his coffee, lingering over every drop. He seemed to be avoiding the question, but just before I could press him again, he finally lowered his mug and met my gaze. “According to the official news reports, which are of course controlled by Darkwinter now, the storm has resulted in the closure of the two main bridges into and out of the Bay and all ferry service to and from Seattle and the surrounding areas. Without access to the city, vendors cannot deliver necessities like food, bottled water, medical supplies, and gasoline. Prior to announcing the road and waterway closures, Darkwinter Knights—with the backing of the law enforcement community that’s also under their influence—seized control of the city’s grocery stores and gas stations and began rationing out food and supplies.”
“Holy shit,” one of the witches—McKenna, I’d heard someone call her—said. “It’s like martial law.”
“Yes,” Jael said. “Under guise of protection from the dangerous conditions of the storm, they’ve instituted a mandatory travel ban and curfew.”
“And no one in the Bay has questioned this? Not even the humans?”
“Everything has been designed to look like a genuine emergency, including the extreme response,” Jael said. “For the first few days, people were calm and orderly, trusting that the storm would pass, that the city officials would deal with any issues. But my sister tells me that panic has started to set in. Because of the curfew and restricted travel, many people—humans and supernatural alike—have not been able to go to work or open their businesses, and there have been reports of widespread looting and property damage. The Knights could easily quell this, but we believe it’s all part of their plan to destabilize the city. Children are being kept from school. People can’t get medical care. Sanitation services have been suspended, so garbage is piling up, and the water supply is now at risk. Boats have been frozen in the marinas, bringing the local fishing industry to a grinding halt. There are intermittent power outages, many of the older Victorian homes and original buildings do not have modern heating systems, and now the people are almost out of food. Rations or not, that is a terrifying proposition.”