by Gaja J. Kos
By some odd grace of fate, I didn’t pass out.
Unfortunately, the rest of my problems refused to dispel quite as easily. My magic was sitting at a dangerous low, and every muscle in my body ached to the point of agony. Groaning—and whimpering slightly—I forced myself to sit up, then untied the damned knot at long last. Martin’s apartment snapped into place the instant I cast the oppressive fabric aside, and I was relieved to find that there was only a slight fuzziness loitering in the edges of my vision.
My gaze drifted across the spacious room, taking in the bookcases that lined the northern wall and the two comfortable armchairs positioned in front of the fireplace. I let out a shuddering breath.
Safe. The apartment was safe.
At least for now.
Sucking in a breath, I went through the agony of pushing myself off the floor. My power was too drained to even scan the place for the familiar trace of a fellow necromancer, so I opted for something far more mundane to lure Martin out.
“Mart!” I shouted. Then shouted again when he didn’t answer.
A string of curses greeted me from the bedroom.
I half smiled at the sound of his voice, and padded across the room, wincing with every step. Though dragged was probably more like it, since I barely crossed one third of the distance when Martin emerged.
His dark skin created a stark contrast to his wavy, almost pale blond hair, but it was his eyes that caught my attention. Even when made somewhat smaller by the sleep I’d just ripped him from, the pure sapphire practically brimmed with his own blend of necromancy, marking him as other as much as the electric blue strands did me.
He was perfectly human. Perfectly normal. Save for those magnetic eyes, speaking of his everlasting bond with the dead.
Martin opened his mouth—undoubtedly to tell me off for waking him—when his entire demeanor changed so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t been staring at him so intently. Obviously I must have looked just about as shitty as I felt.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked, placing both hands on my shoulders to keep me still while he raked his gaze up and down my body, taking in my injuries.
I sighed and answered every one of his questions to reassure him that, with rest, I would heal just fine, but my lips nonetheless pulled into a soft smile at the sight of his genuine concern. Friends were hard enough to find as it was, but having someone who went from moody to attentive in a blink of an eye—well, I still had a hard time believing I had someone like that in my life. I gripped his hand.
“If you can give me a couple of aspirins, a cup of coffee, and something to eat, you’ll get as many dirty details as you wish.”
By the time I finished telling Martin what a shitty evening I had, I’d wolfed down an entire microwaved pizza. The painkillers managed to dull my headache a bit, even if not so faint echoes of it lingered, and any notions of sleep I might have had were now long gone.
In a way, sitting out on Martin’s secluded patio and talking the night away reminded me of old times. Except that back then, there hadn’t been killers lying in wait in my godsdamned apartment. Or cloaked figures potentially stalking me inside my own bloody bar.
“Lena is still out of town,” I concluded. “I’m not entirely certain if I have the luxury on waiting for her to come back.”
“You can’t reach her?”
I shook my head. “She always goes AWOL when on a hunt.”
“What about Liva?” Martin asked. “Couldn’t she use her influence and bring some of the Fae here?”
She certainly could since she was High Lady of the Court of Earth, but given that she and her mate, Cian, had had some cleaning up to do after an usurping attempt of a foreign court, I couldn’t bring myself to drag my sister away from her people. Not when they still needed her.
“It’s just us at the moment,” I replied, then threw back my head, gazing at the stars scattered across the night sky. “Besides, I have nothing to go on. The hooded bastard disappeared before I managed to corner him, and I doubt my charming attacker left any traces for me to pick up in my apartment. Fuck, he—he didn’t even move when I burned him, Mart. That suggests training. And a whole fucking lot of it.”
Martin nodded when I met his gaze. He was one of the new people outside the demonic circles who knew the full extent of my powers. Had seen and felt them with his own eyes and skin, per his request.
He knew I was right.
Yet the look he was giving me suggested he’d also thought of something I hadn’t.
I drank the rest of my coffee and cocked my head to the side. “What?”
“You were right. I do know someone who might help.” He hesitated, sapphire eyes turning a shade darker. “But you aren’t going to like it.”
Unease slithered through me. He didn’t issue warnings lightly, but it wasn’t as if I were in a position to rebuff aid, whatever its form.
I sighed. “Who?”
Martin thrust his hand into his curls, his voice unusually hard as he spat, “The top dog of the local gang.”
My blood froze in my veins. Surely he couldn't mean...
“Alin.”
Chapter 4
“No fucking way,” I all but exploded as the name left Martin’s lips. My knees bumped against the table set between us when sheer outrage propelled me out of my seat, but luckily, there was no more coffee left in our mugs to be spilled.
That, however, was the only good thing about this whole situation.
I swore. Then swore some more.
To say I didn’t like Martin’s solution was the understatement of the year. Alin—shit, Alin wasn’t only the head of the gang that basically ran the unsavory side of Maribor. He was a bloody demon lord, his power easily rivaling my mother’s. In strength and darkness alike.
And Mart… He knew it.
He waved his hands in apology, sapphire eyes drilling into mine. “Just hear me out, Lana, okay?”
I cut him a poisonous look but settled down in the chair nonetheless, then crossed my arms and nodded. That much, I could give him.
“I understand why you wouldn’t want to involve yourself with a demon lord—”
“A demon lord who has kept my family on edge for the past three centuries, you mean.”
Martin inclined his head, but other than that, skipped my comment. “Alin’s gang has eyes and ears all over the city. Now, you know that I have my sources and like to stay informed.”
Another understatement. This night just seemed to be full of them.
“But compared to the net Alin has spread out, I’m a downright rookie.” He sighed. “I swear, no one as much as farts in this town without him catching whiff of it.”
A chuckle slipped from my lips despite my sour mood—precisely what Martin intended. I rolled my eyes and motioned him to continue.
“You said it yourself, you don’t have anything to go on. But Alin—he could find out who’s behind the attack. As well as the identity of your hooded stranger, if they really are two different people.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. Damn it, he was right. Turning to Alin for aid was the obvious—if not even my only—choice. But he was still one of my mother’s enemies, and that thought had all kinds of chills crawling through my body. I wanted nothing to do with that particular bunch of power-ridden individuals. Besides, I prided myself in owning one of the few non-gang related businesses in town, and I desperately wanted to keep it that way.
Sadly, as much as I wanted to, it was impossible to ignore the cruel fact that I simply couldn’t run The Night Hag if I were six feet under.
I let out a long, heavy breath, and groaned. Maybe my association with Alin wouldn’t muddy my business too much… Maybe, though not likely.
“All right,” I said, my voice dry with the severe lack of enthusiasm. “Where do I find the bastard?”
A bitter smile cupped Martin’s lips. “Get some rest, Lana. I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”
Tired and cranky, I didn’t dare
ask what his ominous comment meant. I simply dragged my ass into his spare bedroom, stripped down my ruined clothes, and crawled under the covers. Sleep washed over me mere seconds later, but it was fitful, filled with dreams of fire and death, its phantom fingers tightening almost lovingly around my neck.
Slightly more rested and freshly showered, I slipped into one of the spare outfits Tara, Martin’s younger sister, kept here for those rare occasions when she crashed at his place after a long night of partying. Since we were of a similar build, the white sundress fitted me perfectly, although the fabric did strain a little across my bust, drawing the eye to the sweetheart neckline and the goods it showed off.
Wonderful. Just what I needed for my meeting with a gang-ruling demon lord. I blew out a breath.
If he even deigned to see me.
Alin kept his location ridiculously secure, making it impossible for anyone to track him down unless he answered that person’s summons. And the way he’d gone about it was awe inspiring, to say the least.
Every demonic child had their own place of power—a lair that kept us alive during our first year on Earth, then served as almost a kind of refuge, eternally linked to its owner by a unique, special bond no one else could tap into. Even my sisters, although unable to take particle form at will, could shed their human skin whenever they wished to enter their lair via the ethereal umbilical cord. The connection between a demon and their place of power was simply that strong, surpassing any and all limitations the individual might otherwise have.
But it wasn’t only the ethereal link that couldn’t be breached. No one could enter the physical space without permission. Without entering the Shadow World first and seeking out the specific door to knock on, hoping for an invitation.
But Alin—Alin had somehow managed to reconstruct that sacred bond and twist it into a bell. You didn’t knock on his door. You sent a pulse of power down the artificial umbilical cord, then waited to see if he deigned to answer.
While a part of me was impressed by the level of skill such a measure demanded, it still wasn’t enough to override the dominant emotion slithering through my mind—annoyance. With just a slight undercurrent of fear thrown into the mix.
I squared my shoulders and checked myself in the mirror, more out of habit than anything else. My electric blue hair was pulled into a high, bouncing ponytail, a few of the shorter cut strands hanging loose and brushing against my jaw. Save for a dash of mascara—another one of Tara’s things I borrowed—my face was free of makeup, and I was suddenly very glad I’d inherited my mother’s spotless skin. Much to my surprise, even the dark circles that had pooled beneath my eyes like the promise of a—very tired—storm the previous night were now entirely gone. Briefly I wondered if Martin had spiked my coffee with some of those supplements he took to keep his own strength up during somewhat more strenuous times.
All in all, I looked about as good as I could given how little I had to work with.
I snorted at my reflection. Why the fuck was I even worrying about my appearance? I was pretty sure Alin was used to dealing with all sorts of people in his line of work, and it wasn’t like I was fishing for compliments, exactly. Those days had long since passed.
Before I could dwell on the matter any longer, I slipped on Tara’s flip-flops—luckily just a size larger than mine—and strode out of the bathroom. The spacious living area was bathed in warm sunlight when I crossed the threshold, but it was the sight that slowed my steps.
Martin had been busy while I was dolling up. He’d cleared away the furniture, the lovely wooden floor now boasting a triple-rimmed circle drawn in chalk instead of the usual lush rug.
His sapphire eyes met mine when I strode up to him, and he motioned to the design taking up the middle of the room. “You have to do the rest yourself in order for this to work.”
I nodded then took the offered chalk, my uneasiness growing by the second. I knelt by the circle, mindful not to smudge the white line, and started to draw a flaming triskelion with a simplistic, yet elegant skull in its center—the symbol of Alin’s gang.
“Good.” Martin’s voice washed over me once I finished.
I stood, handed him the chalk, then blew out a long breath. “Here goes nothing. Mourn for me if I don’t come back.”
Without giving my hesitation any more time to find purchase, I took that dreaded step into the summoning circle. The chalk flared red the moment I entered.
Like a bloody traffic light, I thought bitterly, but admiration still stirred someplace deep inside me.
Why was it that talent couldn’t be something only the good guys were granted?
I knew I was walking a thin line between light and dark for most of my life, but that only proved my point. Martin, for all his skill, was still a lesser necromancer than I was, although a far better man. Somehow, it just didn’t seem fair.
I bit my lip and shoved away that small voice that kept telling me the gap between his light and my darkness was only about to get bigger.
As if sensing my thoughts, the circle glowed blue.
Martin’s gaze met mine, and I sucked in a breath as I read the silent confirmation from his sapphire eyes. Alin was contemplating whether I was worth his time or not.
With startling clarity, I could feel a foreign presence licking at my skin. It reminded me of a heated gaze raking up and down my body, only far, far more intimate. Pretending not to notice the unseemly warmth that bloomed between my thighs at the ethereal touch, I exhaled and squared my shoulders, staring intently at the blue light radiating beneath my manicured feet.
It seemed to grow more vibrant with every unnervingly placed lick of magic, until, all of a sudden, my body was blasted into particles. I flew down the artificially constructed umbilical cord with a swiftness I never thought possible, then reformed the instant the power spewed me out on the other side.
I landed on shaky feet, the light chill of the space washing away the brief disorientation, and took in my new surroundings.
Underground. I was underground.
But despite my efforts to follow Lena’s advice of immediately scanning each new location I found myself in, I simply couldn’t force my gaze to land anywhere but the shadowed figure, sprawled in the dark leather armchair. Actually, make that more of a kind of small throne.
He pushed up, his mass of bulging muscles rippling gracefully beneath the tight black T-shirt he’d plastered to his skin, and shed the shadows he had worn around himself like a cloak. Russet hair shone under the gentle touch of light, falling around his rough-hewn, yet infuriatingly handsome face in perfect, polished strands that brushed just past his chin. But it was his eyes that made my breath catch in my throat.
Emerald green and brimming with undiluted, brilliant power.
The eyes of a demon lord.
Alin.
Chapter 5
I licked my suddenly dry lips, unable to peel my gaze from the demon standing before me. I had no idea what I’d expected Alin to look like, but it certainly wasn’t this.
He lacked that air of pretentiousness most demonic lords of his power rank liked to display, lacked the flair for theatrics my mother always turned to when dealing with her subjects, too. Understandable, given that the rest preferred to reign in the Shadow World while his business was far more earthbound. Yet, at the same time, I couldn’t exactly fit him into the gang-running lot either. In a way, Alin seemed more military than criminal. All that honed muscle, the combat pants gripping the hard columns of his thighs, and the T-shirt stretched across his hard chest and chiseled abdomen…
Why that surprised me, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if criminal masterminds couldn’t look as if they bench pressed cars for laughs.
And yet his presence stunned me out of my words. I swallowed, rather audibly, and forced my gaze to meet the emerald of his. Wrong, wrong move.
A blush crept up my bare cheeks before I could stop it, and the impulse to groan at myself became almost impossible to ignore. Why, of all days, was
this the one my skin didn’t have a nice little layer of concealing foundation on it…
Whether Alin noticed my involuntary reaction or not, the demon lord didn’t let it show. I was just about to thank the gods for small mercies when his voice cut through the silence of the room, shattering the brief moment of gratitude.
Rich, deep, and practically dripping with power, it slithered around my body until I was slick with its flavor. Only his words didn’t match the alluring sound.
“For a moment, I considered letting you stew in the summoning circle.” A cool smile touched his lips. “But how could I pass up the opportunity to see who was bold enough to contact me through means only my associates should be aware of?”
Despite the trepidation running through my limbs, I made a mental note to skin Martin if I managed to leave this place alive.
“Oh, I know you’re not one of my men’s liaisons. I wouldn’t have forgotten a face such as yours,” Alin went on. “Or a body that holds such intriguing power, Lana Ambrose.”
Great. He knew who I was. Knew who my mother was, too, given he just used her last name instead of my father’s—the one my legal documents carried.
“So,” he purred, emerald eyes meeting the near black of mine, “what brings you here, Nightwraith?”
He didn’t offer me a chair, simply retook his position on his would-be throne, now devoid of the demonic shadows, and stared at me precisely like a lord listening to his subject. A vine of anger uncoiled within me, but did nothing to override the fear pooling in the depths of my stomach. A bead of sweat rolled between my breasts, disappearing below the neckline, and Alin’s gaze followed the languid movement with heated interest. The bastard.
I swallowed, pretending my cheeks didn’t feel as if they were aflame. Easier said than done when his gaze still bore into my skin.
“Someone tried to kill me last night,” I started, reminding myself that the sooner I uttered those words, the faster I could get out of here.