“What is it?” Bodhi asked. “Do you really have that bad an aversion to music?”
“No . . . I just . . . something . . .” I stammered, trying to find a way to explain the things I saw without alarming them.
“You see the shadow that’s making me sick, don’t you?” Susannah said. “It doesn’t care for the music, does it?”
“You know about it?” I asked, glancing between her and the hound.
She slowly shook her head. “All I see is a shadow. Thought it was the angel of death, waiting for me to expire. If the damn thing wants to kill me, I wish it would get on with it and stop with this halfway shit. I feel sick in my soul, girl.” She pressed a fist to her abdomen, directly over the spot where feathery threads of violet energy seeped from her and traveled to the soul hound. “Music’s the only thing that lifts me up anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s an angel of death,” I said. “For one thing, it doesn’t have wings. But it definitely wants something with your soul. The music keeps it from getting what it wants, though. Bodhi, start playing again.”
Bodhi plucked at the strings once more, this time playing a more energetic tune. Within seconds, Susannah’s aura brightened, her soul flared with fresh energy, and the hound’s link weakened.
How do you like that, you little shit? I crossed my arms and glared at the beast.
A sense of relief washed over me at having made so much headway within such a short span. It had been three weeks since I arrived and discovered these beasts leaching the life out of two members of the bloodline.
I’d agonized for the first week over returning home with this discovery and asking for help, despite the fact that I really didn’t want to face my family again after all that had happened. But I knew if someone else actually died because of my lack of action, I’d have never forgiven myself.
I couldn’t have helped the earlier victims—these beasts had been active for a lot longer than the last three weeks—but until we sent the message to the bloodline, no one had been aware of any danger.
The fact that only two humans had been afflicted since the message was a bit of a saving grace. I could easily keep track of them. If I could figure out how to handle this on my own, maybe I could earn some long overdue respect from my family.
Finally I’d found a way to defend these poor people, and it seemed music was the key. If only I could figure out a way to control the hounds themselves, to get them the hell away from the bloodline entirely.
There was one thing I needed to try, though I was loath to do it. I had lied to Susannah; I did sing. I loved to sing, but I hadn’t so much as hummed a bar since I left home three weeks ago.
I had a complicated relationship with music. More accurately, I’d had a couple relationships that were complicated by my music. Singing to a man tended to get me in trouble, and after the spark I’d felt with Bodhi in the cafeteria, I hesitated to belt out a song with him in the room.
But this woman’s life might depend on me flexing my vocal cords again.
At the refrain, I took a breath and joined in, picking up the female lines of the duet Bodhi was singing with his mother while his grandmother listened. Maddie trailed off, smiling and letting me take over. Bodhi’s eyes brightened, his voice picking up more energy and his big shoulders swaying in time while he played the last verse. These two people didn’t deserve this heartache. They deserved love, and freedom from pain, just as much as I did.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the edge of the room for any change in the soul hound’s behavior. Despite the interruption in its link to Susannah, it wasn’t growling and irate the way it had been. Instead its glowing violet eyes were fixed on me.
Outside the sliding glass door, the other hound stood stock-still, staring at me. A shiver passed down my spine under their intense scrutiny, and I feared what would happen now that the song was coming to an end.
Susannah’s tether to the beast had all but disappeared when Bodhi coaxed the last few notes from his guitar, but when the last bit of air left my lungs, I heard the growls.
The second before they leapt, I yelled a warning, but there was no way for Maddie or Bodhi to defend themselves. They couldn’t see the hounds, much less fight them off. I stretched my hands out, willing my minuscule powers to do something to protect these two people who now had shadowy beasts on top of them.
The guitar fell to the floor with a dissonant clatter as Bodhi seized, arching violently. The yellow-streaked hound had sunk its teeth into the center of his abdomen, incisors puncturing the glowing orb of his soul. His mother had collapsed onto the bed. Susannah wrapped her protectively in her arms, pale and stricken and trying her best to sing the song that had refortified her energy earlier.
I pushed with all my might, willing power through my limbs, but only ineffectual sparks flickered at my fingertips, and waving my hands around did nothing to fend off the attacking beasts. I found myself shoved aside suddenly by several nurses who went to work, completely oblivious to the attack as they checked Maddie’s and Bodhi’s vitals, but the damage had been done.
One of the nurses backed me unceremoniously out the door and closed it in my wake. I stood in shock, staring through the window at their inert bodies and the vibrant trails of energy linking them to the pair of soul hounds that now stood on either side of me. One of them made a melodic warbling sound that vibrated in its chest and looked up at me, its gaze bright and its blaze flickering as though seeking my approval.
“You are not my friend,” I snapped at it. “And as soon as I figure out how to get rid of you both, you’re gone.”
The door opened and a nurse rushed out. I stepped aside to make way for a gurney a pair of orderlies was rolling in. Together, they lifted Maddie onto the stretcher and rolled her away. A few moments later, another pair of orderlies appeared with a second gurney for Bodhi. The doctor on call had arrived and was barking orders to the nurses to have tests done.
“You should leave,” the head nurse said, giving me a cold stare. I swallowed and nodded, making my way across the ICU toward the exit.
I paused just outside the room of the man who had been brought in shortly after Susannah, the one I’d been unable to visit. The hound with the boots who had marked him trotted in and hopped up onto the bed, made its familiar warbling, resonant growl, and pressed its nose into the center of the man’s chest as though checking on the marks it had left there.
I could clearly see the man’s damaged soul, but its wounds no longer seeped energy. The beast’s tongue curled as it lapped at them, then it made a snuffling noise and lifted its nose into the air.
“Get the fuck off him,” I muttered under my breath. The beast whipped its head around and huddled over the man, baring its teeth and growling as though protecting its kill.
“It’s got to him too, hasn’t it?”
I turned, surprised to see Susannah at my elbow hanging onto her IV stand for support. She was staring at the spot where the hound stood as if she could see something, though I knew there was no way it was visible to her.
The hound spied Susannah and blinked, made an odd purring noise that sounded like satisfaction, and hopped off the bed. It paused once to look back before trotting off in the direction the orderlies had taken Bodhi and his mother.
I glanced back at the man in the hospital bed. He didn’t move, save for his chest rising and falling in the artificial rhythm dictated by the machines keeping him alive. I’d been able to learn that he had no next of kin who were local, yet my link to the bloodline told me he at least had children somewhere in the world. I said a silent prayer of gratitude that they were far enough away to be safe from these beasts, unlike Bodhi and his mother.
Looking back down at Susannah, I saw that, just like the man, the glow of her soul had been restored. The bite marks were clearly visible, but no longer leaking soul juice. I glanced behind her, but didn’t see the other hound. My stomach lurched. They’d moved on to two new victims.
“There
are two of them, Susannah,” I said. “I need to go find Bodhi.”
“The doctors will take care of him until I get my strength back and can get him and his mother out of here. No sense staying when they can’t fix us.”
“They can’t fix him either,” I said softly, looking in at the man. His ashen skin might have been a rich gold, had he been healthy, and he was crowned with thick salt and pepper hair and a matching unkempt beard. The name on his chart read “John Doe,” which I’d come to learn meant they had no idea of his identity. Despite his link to the hound having been severed, he hadn’t woken up.
Susannah gripped my hand and squeezed. “You’ve got soul, girl. You’ll figure it out.”
My spine tingled. If she only knew.
I shook my head, weary of my self-imposed solitude and grateful for her acceptance and her faith. I squeezed her hand in return.
“That’s the thing, though; I don’t actually have a soul at all. But you do . . . You and Bodhi and Maddie and this poor man all have souls, and they’re beautiful things that need to be protected from these creatures.”
Susannah let out a little huff and shook her head. “I don’t believe for a second that you don’t have one—not with a voice like the one you’ve got. Something happened when you sang, something that made those things powerfully pissed off, and that’s a good thing, because it means they’re afraid of you.
“Now you go find my girl and her boy. Thanks to you, I have an idea how to help that man in there. I have a feeling you’re not finished with trying to fix us all. Come back when you figure it out, yeah?”
I looked down into eyes the same gray-green as Bodhi’s and Maddie’s. “I don’t know if they’ll let me in this ward after tonight.”
As if summoned by the suggestion, the night nurse gave an exasperated hmph. “Mrs. Dylan! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You need to get back to bed.” She shot me a glare. “And I told you to leave.”
Susannah’s back went rigid and she turned to face the nurse. “I want Miss Rainsong on my approved visitors list, you hear me? She’s to be permitted to see me and my grandson and daughter if she comes. Now tell me where you lot took my family.”
The nurse pressed her lips into a thin line. “If it’ll get you back into bed, I’ll make it happen. Now will you come? Your daughter and grandson are off getting tests done. I’ll let you know when they’re finished.”
Susannah nodded and left, turning once to look back and wink at me. “You go do what you need to do, girl. I trust you.”
3
Deva
I stepped into the women’s restroom outside the ICU and glanced in the mirror. My shifter powers hadn’t manifested yet, so I couldn’t shadow myself or change my appearance the way other members of my family could. I could do a couple simple things, at least, which would help disguise me for my next task. I’d have tried this before, but after hanging around the ICU for three weeks, there was no way the nurses there would fall for it.
Taking a deep breath, I focused my dragon nature, dispelling my conjured clothes and summoning sky-blue scrubs and a white coat. At the same time, I added heat to the process, cleansing my skin of the last day’s worth of grime. Hanging around the hospital wasn’t exactly a strenuous ordeal, but I liked to stay presentable, especially if I was going to impersonate a doctor.
Had I been a full-powered member of one of the higher races, I could have gone even further, changing my skin color and even my gender to elicit the maximum level of respect from the other employees. Three weeks of observing social dynamics around the hospital was more than enough time to grasp that human social norms were far different from those of the higher races. The most powerful creatures among us were invariably females who resembled me in some fashion: robust and curvy with dark skin and hair. But humans somehow always seemed to defer to gray-haired, pale-skinned men. My dragon father, Aodh, would have found this task a cinch, but my surrogate mother, Vrishti—an ursa female who arguably possessed more power than either of her immortal mates—would have been ignored.
I was banking on something in between. The white coat would earn me some level of deference from the techs I was about to face, but being a dark-skinned woman made me forgettable to most of the humans I encountered—at least the ones who weren’t part of the bloodline, which accounted for the majority. To them, I may as well have been invisible, and I could use that to my advantage.
After securing my thick, black hair into a ponytail, I took a breath and closed my eyes, reaching for the threads of energy that signified the bloodline. Ever since the Spring Equinox three weeks ago, I’d been linked to the web of brilliant souls that made up the bloodline, so it was second nature now for me to find them, even if I lacked the power to communicate with them telepathically again.
The very first moment I linked to them, I had experienced the radiance of all those souls connected. In a way, I had fallen in love with every last one of them, and the act of reaching out to them during the ritual had been more intimate than what I’d been doing to reach that level of power.
I supposed the experience had left me with a sense of responsibility to ensure their protection. Even though the message the higher races had me deliver promised protection, they hadn’t seemed interested in actually following through.
Not that they had any evidence that suggested there was a reason to. As far as my family was concerned, there was nothing wrong, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. They couldn’t look at the bloodline the way I could, see the lights of a million souls happily blinking against the velvet backdrop of existence as they went about their lives. And they couldn’t have seen that moment when I’d first connected to the bloodline and dozens of those lights flickered and died.
The hounds had to be the cause of those lights being snuffed out—I was sure of it—but since I’d arrived, it hadn’t happened again. Still, it was clear that the bloodline was in danger, and two of the souls I’d promised myself I’d protect were somewhere in this hospital being tested for human ailments when what afflicted them was magical in origin.
I stuck my head back out the door, checking for observers. Seeing no one at this early hour, I slunk out and tried to look like I belonged, walking with purpose in the direction of the two souls that needed saving most right now.
There was only slightly more activity in the imaging lab when I got there. A weary-looking on-call doctor eyed the scans and shook his head, muttering something about them being inconclusive. Bodhi and Maddie still lay unconscious on their separate gurneys in the wide hallway. The hounds were nowhere to be seen, though, which meant it must be close to dawn. I wondered if they had an aversion to sunlight or if any fire would do to repel them—or, dare I hope, kill them.
Their absence hadn’t halted the steady seep of soul juice from their pair of victims, however. It trickled out, fading into mist as it reached the air and floating in a faint stream across the hallway and clear through the wall. A person’s soul essence didn’t seem to follow the normal laws of physics, and I knew if I could pick up the trail and follow it, it’d lead me to those beasts’ den.
I’d take care of that soon, but for now, I needed to make sure Bodhi and his mother were safe.
The doctor was still hunched over the tech’s shoulder, shaking his head and gesturing at the scans. The tech was getting defensive about his skill with the machine, assuring the doctor that it had been calibrated and was working the way it should.
I cautiously stepped into the control room, hoping I’d picked up enough hospital lingo to make my request sound plausible.
“Doctor, if you’re finished with the tests, I’ll take the patients up and get them admitted.”
The doctor glanced at me. He made a noncommittal noise of gratitude and waved his hand.
As I stepped back out, I shook my head and muttered, “You just keep looking at that scan like there’s something you’re missing. Don’t mind me.”
Within moments, I had both Bodhi and his mothe
r wheeled around the corner into an alcove by the stairwell.
Once we were out of sight, I slipped up to Bodhi’s head and bent low with my mouth close to his ear.
My musical talent was one of the few things I could truly be proud of. I’d been told all my life how much potential I had as a hybrid of all four higher races, but I had yet to see any true evidence of that. Singing I could do, though, even if it had no power but to strengthen someone’s soul. In this case, that was all I needed.
Keeping my voice low, I sang the simplest of the love songs I’d heard repeated over the hospital sound system for the past three weeks. As I gazed at Bodhi’s damaged soul, I was gratified to see his aura solidify around him and the link to the soul hound who had bitten him grow weak.
A heavy breath gusted against my neck as Bodhi exhaled, the sensation sending a shiver of desire through my body. My awareness suddenly filled with him: his solid presence and warmth; his salty seawater scent; the bright, beautiful glow of his damaged soul.
I stopped singing when I realized the words to the song had morphed into something different, something instinctual that I knew better than to let out again. I could wake the man up just fine without singing him a mating song.
His chest rose, stretching the threadbare fabric of his t-shirt across his sculpted muscles. I stood up and was happy to see his eyes were open, studying me. He swallowed and glanced around, then sat up, groaning and holding his head.
“What the hell happened?”
“You were attacked when we stopped singing,” I said. “The hounds apparently weren’t too keen on losing the sustenance they were getting from your grandmother, so I think they took it out on you and your mother instead.”
“Hounds . . .” He squinted at me. “The . . . shadow thing. Strangest fucking thing. It was like it appeared out of thin air, latched onto me, and wouldn’t let go. What the hell is it?”
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