Gabriel's Hope (#1, Rhyn Eternal) (8 page)

“So you let Gabe touch you but not me,” Rhyn said, bristling.

“Gabe didn’t knock me up,” Katie replied archly.

“Trade you an iPad for your mate,” Gabe replied. He tried to grab the iPad with his other hand. Rhyn yanked it away.

“Take her. Keep her, until she’s normal again,” Rhyn growled.

Katie ignored him. Gabe lifted his chin towards Rhyn in a silent request. She winked.

“What color are her eyes?” she asked. “Can you tell yet?”

Gabe used his magic to communicate with the small life.

“Silver, like Rhyn’s,” he said.

“Well, I guess you’re right, Rhyn. It is your kid,” she said with a sigh. “I wasn’t sure there for awhile. Kind of a blur. Nothing memorable.”

“Nothing memorable?” Rhyn shifted his attention to glower down at his mate. The edge in his voice and the flash of his eyes made Gabe hide a smile.

Sensing his dangerous mood, Katie leaned into Rhyn and gazed up at him. He wrapped one arm around her instinctively.

“I’m having a mood,” she said.

“Gods. What now?” he snapped. “Cheeseburgers? Ice cream? Another fucking week on the couch?”

“More like, you give Gabe the iPad and take me upstairs,” she murmured. “Now.” As she spoke, she pulled the iPad loose and handed it to Gabe. She tilted her head to the side, exposing the delicate skin on her neck in an unmistakable invitation to the demon side of her mate. Rhyn made no attempt to reclaim the iPad, attention fully on her.

“I’ll find you later, Gabe,” he said, his fangs growing.

Gabe didn’t waste time. He silently thanked Katie and grabbed his gear. With Rhyn nuzzling Katie’s neck already, Gabe sensed they weren’t going to make it to their bedroom a few floors up.

He returned to his underworld, reading the information on the iPad as he walked. The talking points Kiki had given Rhyn told him nothing aside from the name, date the Immortals found her and the human-Immortal blood percentage. She was ninety eight percent human.

He flipped to the next page as he emerged near the palace, agitated at realizing he’d get no privacy, not with the hundreds of assassins loitering. Instead of taking a portal to his cabin in the Everdark forest, he hiked through the woods. A trail formed in any direction he wanted to walk. The branches of the trees slithered overhead while brush and bramble scampered out of his way.

His cabin was tiny, two rooms, with the walls lined with weapons he’d collected over the years. He stretched out on his back on his bed. The picture of Deidre almost made him throw the iPad, but he forced himself to flip through the various surveillance pictures Rhyn’s Immortals had collected. Until he saw the one of her kissing someone.

Then he set down the iPad, reminded of how often past-Deidre teased him by taking other assassins to her bed.

He couldn’t think straight. Nothing made sense. The Deidre he’d spent the night fucking was not the same as the goddess who tormented him. And yet they were. The deity had purposely left the underworld in shambles then gone to the mortal world, probably knowing her reincarnated human form was his mate.

His
mate.

It was too much. By Immortal Code, he was obligated to claim her and protect her as Rhyn had Katie. Seeing her made him want to explode.

Her scent lingered on his skin. Gabe hated her yet couldn’t escape the memory of the compassion and spirit that made him take a stranger to bed last night.

Death lets you see the stars and the moon instead of how dark the night is.

He heard the unquenchable life in a dying woman. Her words touched him on a level he didn’t expect, one he thought was dead, destroyed by past-Death.

She was alive. She was
his.
She was dying.

He sank into stormy contemplation, clueless how to handle the latest of his challenges. Thousands of years of love-hate memories left him conflicted. How did he follow the Code, when it felt like it was betraying him? He’d never resented the Code before. It was his life, a sense of comfort and structure. This time, it was suffocating him.

The forest outside his windows grew dark, and he forced himself to his feet. Sitting around wasn’t going to solve any of his problems. Whenever he was frustrated by her before, he went back to doing what he did best: his job.

He pushed Deidre out of his mind. Composed enough to handle his duties, Gabe left his cabin. Wired energy made him edgy and his step quick. Harmony met him in the woods, coming from the direction of the palace.

“What’s broken?” he asked.

“The portals are working.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We tested them. Soul radars are still broken, but we can at least travel to the mortal world.”

Instead of being cheered by the news, he was annoyed. He didn’t know why they broke in the first place or how to fix them if it happened again. She was waiting for him to tell her what to do.

“That’s good,” he said at last. He rubbed his jaw. “Send half of the assassins to the mortal world. Have them positioned at the Sanctuaries and at Rhyn’s. I’m not taking chances this happens again.”

“Will do. Are you alright, Gabriel?” she asked.

He hadn’t thought twice about running into her in the forest. It was past dark, and she’d come to his cabin most nights for the past two months. Gabe realized she was coming to see him for pleasure, not business this time. And he had a mate, one he refused to touch but who now kept him from finding solace with any other woman.

“I’ll survive,” he said, waiting for her to get the joke. When she continued to gaze at him, he sighed. “Get it? I’m Death, and I said I’ll survive?”

“Interesting,” Harmony said.

The Deidre from the beach would have appreciated it. She’d laughed hard when he murmured to her about
famous last words
. He’d found it funny for his own reasons. By the end of their conversation, he understood why she laughed, too.

Anger building again, Gabe strode forward. Harmony followed.

“Is the hole in the sky sealed at least?” he asked, referring to the entry the demons had made into Death’s underworld prior to his takeover.

“Sealed this morning. The last of the demons are dead-dead.”

“Good. I’m going to see someone about something that might help our radars. You know how to find me.” He didn’t wait for a response but opened a portal and crossed into the mortal world.

It was daylight here, and he instinctively assessed it was still Sunday on this side of the world. Time passed differently in the underworld than the mortal world. Sometimes, a night in the underworld was equal to seconds in the mortal world, sometimes a night and sometimes, a few nights. A few hours had passed since he left Deidre’s bed this morning; it was early afternoon in the mortal realm.

He strode through the crowded Egyptian street market, the Khan al-Khalili, one of the oldest markets in the world. Gabe made his way through the narrow alleys and disjointed walkways that wound like a maze through the market. Tourists and locals alike bartered with vendors, and he entered a tiny silver shop, where he sensed the Immortal he sought.

“Tamer,” he said to the small man behind the counter.

He pointed to a set of narrow stairs. Gabe climbed them, forced to go sideways to make it up to the top.

“If Rhyn sent you…” Tamer, Rhyn’s half-brother and one of the four surviving members of the Council That Was Seven, growled from across the room.

“He didn’t.”

“You here for me?”

“No.”

The largest of the brothers in size, Tamer’s temper most closely resembled Rhyn’s. The two were always at each other’s throats, and Gabe had witnessed their decision making skills on the Council. Rhyn always won, but Tamer got his punches in. Lounging in a pillowed corner of the room, Tamer resembled a cross between a lion at rest and a desert Bedouin with his muscular form and loose garb. His skin was dark, his eyes turquoise, as their father’s had been. He drank hot tea from a glass.

“You’re my last resort,” Gabe started.

“Great way to start a discussion. I feel motivated to help you.”

Ignoring the acid tone, Gabriel sat in the chair a few feet from him. He pulled off the compass and held it out. Tamer studied it. After giving him a moment to examine it, Gabe spoke.

“Two questions. One, can you read the symbols?”

“They’re archaic. They predate anything I’ve ever seen before. I might have a later text with similar symbols I can use to trace the roots of the writing,” Tamer answered. “What’s the second?”

“Can you duplicate whatever this is?”

Tamer’s eyes took it in expertly before he rose. “Come on.”

He strode through a curtained doorway in the corner and down a long hallway almost too narrow for either of them to fit.

Each of the brothers on the Council was gifted in some way. They’d never trusted one another enough to share, and their father made things worse by compartmentalizing the Council’s business and pitting the sons against one another long before he was killed. Gabriel knew the secrets of all seven from interacting with them over the years. There were things Immortals told Death – or Death’s messengers – they dared not tell anyone else. Who better to keep a secret?

Tamer’s gift: He was the keeper of the Immortal histories, records not even Rhyn knew about, that only Tamer could read with his magic.

“Shouldn’t you know this shit? Since you’re Death?” Tamer asked over his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you be in the Alps with Rhyn?” Gabe returned.

“I was
granted
leave. I need goddamn permission to take a piss.”

 As much as the brothers hated one another, Rhyn and Tamer were too similar for Gabe to feel anything but amused by the open hostility. They emerged through a back door into a massive foyer made of white marble and limestone with ancient carvings on the walls and statues positioned throughout. Tamer continued to a locked door on the other side of the foyer. It led down another hallway lined with wooden doors, each marked with an Immortal symbol.

He pushed open the fourth door, walking into a large room stacked from floor to ceiling with ancient tablets, manuscripts, and books. In the center was a table stacked with more of the records.

 Gabe paced as Tamer climbed a ladder to tablets stacked at the top of one limestone shelf. His thoughts kept straying to a certain pink-haired woman whose scent on his skin was driving him crazy.

“You’re making me edgy,” Tamer snapped.

Gabe stopped and crossed his arms. Tamer descended, one cracked tablet in hand. He tossed it on the table with a thud then set the compass on top.

“Some similar,” he said, pointing out the symbols.

Gabe frowned. Whatever Tamer saw, he did not. The writing on the tablet was too faded to make out, and the symbols he did see looked nothing like those on the compass. He sensed magic, though, and understood the Immortal was able to access the tablet in a way Death had no need to.

“The writing on this is from the time-before-time,” Tamer said, motioning to the compass. “Before the last great demon raid. Maybe even before the
first
demon raid. It’s an interesting piece. Not an original, but probably kept to spec.”

“How old is the compass?” Gabe asked.

“Compass? That would’ve been nice to know.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might. Its function could determine the meaning of the symbols, since the most ancient Immortal writing is based on a complex system of symbolic context. A letter in one place might mean something completely different somewhere else,” Tamer explained. “This compass is only a few thousand years old. I can spend time researching it or I can try to duplicate.”

“Duplicate,” Gabriel replied. “I’ve got an army of bored assassins on the verge of killing off the wrong souls. I’d rather fix that first. If you can duplicate, I’ll need as many of those as I can get.”

Wariness crossed Tamer’s face as he realized what the compass did. He stepped back from the desk, as if fearing the compass would claim his soul right there.

“The magic binding it is Death’s,” he said. “If I can piece it together, I’ll need your help to test it.”

“Easy.”

“And of course, I’m a businessman.” Tamer smiled. “This’ll cost you.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t dream of charging past-Death.”

“She wasn’t best friends with Rhyn.”’

“I’ll owe you a favor of your choosing, if you can make these work,” Gabe said.

“Nice. Deal.” Tamer held out his hand. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have something for you.”

Gabe shook on it, satisfied he at least had the right person looking into the issue. Tamer pulled out his cell phone and scowled. Gabe saw the screen light up with a text message.

“Rhyn says to send you his way when you’re done here. Didn’t think deities took orders from half-breeds,” Tamer said, shoving the phone back in his pocket.

“Thanks.” Gabe left the library. He called a portal when in the hallway and walked into the shadow realm, stopping in place.

The gray door to his underworld was gone. It denied entrance to its own master. Gabriel’s temper was close to boiling over, for the umpteenth time since he inherited the responsibilities of Death. If his week was any indication, this was not about to fix itself as easily as the portal shutting out his assassins.

Immortal Code, Rule 22: Only deities can interfere with the duties of another deity.

He suspected Fate was done with smiley faces and polite invitations. Locking him out of his underworld wasn’t a summons Gabriel could ignore.

Determined to fix what he’d fucked up, Gabriel drew a deep breath then strode towards one of the sunny portals to the mortal world.

Rhyn stood beside a lake on the property the Immortals owned around the castle in the French Alps. The shade of the forest where Gabe emerged was cool, the spring sunshine warm. The scent of pine and blooming flowers was thick in the air. He sensed the presence of his assassins nearby, relieved a few had made it out of the underworld before the portal disappeared.

“Notice anything out of place?” Rhyn asked, peering into the lake.

Gabriel joined him and cursed. The bottom of the lake glowed with souls. The green gems reflected the sunshine, shimmering through the clear water.