Authors: Jocelynn Drake
And now that Aurora was free, the killing would only grow worse. Her only desire was to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth, freeing the planet from a deadly parasite. The queen of the naturi had yet to make her move, but it was only a matter of time. She would strike, and I feared that the nightwalkers would not be strong enough to combat whatever she threw at them. We had underestimated their determination at Machu Picchu. Now they were more numerous and more powerful with Aurora at their side.
Gaizka was an entirely different matter. I hadn’t expected to ever be faced with the bori that held a chunk of my soul. It had allowed me to slaughter a nightwalker and an innocent human he was using as puppets. One woman had her throat torn out simply because she associated with nightwalkers in what was possibly a scheme to expose the nightwalkers to the rest of the world. And now it was chasing after a young girl simply because she had the unique ability to spot the creature.
The girl. She had slipped from my mind in the chaos that was swirling around me whenever I was near Mira. I needed to find the girl. It was only a matter of time before the bori either possessed her or finally killed her out of frustration. She was running out of time. We all seemed to be running out of time.
Upon reaching the sidewalk, I shoved my hands into my pockets and crossed the street into the small square in the center of the small neighborhood. A plaque at the entrance to the park revealed that it was Monterey Square. The park was veiled by a mix of live oaks and magnolia trees. A large white temple flanked the park to my left, while the infamous Mercer House lay on my right. In the center of the square was the Pulaski monument.
The night was quiet except for the scrape of dried leaves across the sidewalk as a breeze began to stir. The night was growing colder, so that my breath fogged when I exhaled. In the distance, the steady hum of cars rushing down some of the main streets could be heard. It felt as if the world had fallen asleep around me, and yet I didn’t feel as if I was alone.
Standing with my back to the monument, I slowly turned, my eyes scanning the area for the being that I knew had to be close. I was summoning my powers to complete a more thorough search of the area when a creature rose to its feet from where it had been sitting at the base of an oak tree. The thin figure seemed to rise out of the shadows themselves as if it were made of them.
I took a step backward and palmed the knife I kept at my lower back, allowing the silver blade to catch some of the light thrown down by a nearby streetlamp. It failed to deter the figure as it continued to approach.
After a couple feet, he finally stepped through a shaft of light and I clenched my teeth. It was a naturi. He had brownish-blond hair and green eyes that shone like gems in the bit of light. The naturi gripped a small blade in his right hand and grinned at me, his smile stretching over his sharp, angular face like a mad jester.
“You can’t keep her safe,” he called when we were separated by only eight feet of open air. He stopped walking and stood with his hands out to his sides as if encouraging me to finally attack him.
I said nothing as I stood watching for him to make the first move. He wouldn’t leave this square alive, but I wasn’t about to be the one who started this fight, not when he might first feel the need to talk.
“We’ll have the Fire Starter eventually,” he proclaimed a couple seconds later, when I had yet to speak. “She’ll not escape us again.”
“You’ll not have her so long as I am in the city,” I replied in a low, even voice.
“You?” The naturi snorted. “How could you possibly hope to stop us, hunter? Far from killing her, you’ve become her lapdog as she leads you about the city.”
It took a moment for me to unclench my jaw so that I could reply. This naturi was well informed, which was more than a little surprising since I hadn’t been able to sense a single naturi within the city all evening.
“How have you gotten into Mira’s thoughts?” I demanded, struggling to ignore his far-too-astute comments.
In response, the naturi’s smile widened even further, reminding me of Nerian’s. It was the same exact smile the insane naturi wore when he laid eyes on Mira for the last time. The smile sent a chill down my spine and seemed to cool the blood in my veins.
“Seeing things, is she?” the nameless naturi taunted. “Feeling somewhat haunted? What a pity!” The naturi let out a laugh that seemed to skip about the small park before dancing off among the trees. However, the smile seemed to slip off his face like a flash of lightning, leaving me staring at a grim mask. “But we’re not the only ones messing with the Fire Starter’s mind. Oh, no! She’s found herself a new plaything,” he continued. “You should never have allowed it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, lifting my empty left hand as if I were reaching for him. “You’re done tormenting her with shadows.”
Reaching deep within my chest, I tapped into the power that was coiled around my soul. The beast inside awakened and roared with joy in my mind. It was far too rare that I used my unique ability, the danger was too high and the risk to my own soul was too great. But tonight, I was willing to make an exception. This dark creature had found a way to torture Mira with images of naturi, leaving her fearful and uncertain within her own domain. He was part of a race that had taken joy in torturing the nightwalker, leaving her scarred on the inside and out. He was part of a race that sought the extermination of the entire human race. I needed no more excuse.
A deep cold breath filled my lungs as I sent my powers out from my body. But nothing happened. I reached deeper and sent more energy out from my body until my fingers began to tremble and beads of sweat traced lines down my face from my temples. Nothing happened. Finally, I scanned the park and came up with nothing. Despite the fact that the naturi was standing just eight feet away from me, I couldn’t sense him.
A dark, evil laugh rose up from the naturi as he took a step closer to me. I dropped my left hand back to my side and raised my knife as I took a step backward. My heart hammered in my chest and thundered in my ears.
“You can’t kill me, hunter,” he mocked. “And you can’t save her unless I allow it. You have until tomorrow night. Then I will be back and you will do as I say or I will destroy the Fire Starter and her lovely domain.”
“What are you?” I demanded, tightening my grip on the blade in my hand. It was neither human nor nightwalker, lycanthrope nor warlock. I couldn’t sense the creature and yet there was a heavy weight of magic in the air.
“Just think of me as an old friend of the family,” the creature mocked.
“Gaizka!” I snarled, which only caused the creature’s smile to return to its sharp, angular face.
“I’m the least of your worries, Danaus. There are naturi within Mira’s domain and you need to use your powers combined with the Fire Starter to destroy them all. Rid the world of their kind and save humanity,” Gaizka said smoothly, starting to circle me. The creature finally stepped into a block of light, showing that he was still translucent. The bori couldn’t take a solid form unless he was possessing someone, and I had a dark suspicion that it couldn’t possess a naturi even if it managed to convince one to allow it.
“Why are you so anxious for Mira and me to combine our powers?” I demanded.
“Because it’s the only effective way to destroy the naturi. Surely you’ve discovered that for yourselves. You both were quite efficient while you were in England last summer,” he purred.
“No.”
“I don’t recall giving you a choice in this matter,” Gaizka said. At the same time, I felt a force wrap around my chest and pick me up. My arms were pinned to my sides and I struggled to free myself. The energy picked me up and flung me through the air, slamming me into the trunk of a massive tree. Pain exploded through my frame, knocking the wind out of my lungs as I heard the cracking of at least three ribs. I fell to the ground in a heap, but laid there for only a second before the energy wrapped around me again. It dragged me across the ground, knocking me headfirst through a park bench before slamming me into another tree.
My vision blurred and doubled until I could barely see the faint outline of the bori in naturi guise. My skull was cracked and my left shoulder had been dislocated. Pain wracked my body in sickening waves. I lay limp on the ground, struggling to breathe. I had but two powers at my disposal—the ability to sense other creatures and the ability to boil blood. Both were useless against this creature. I couldn’t kill it because it had no body for me to wound. I was trapped, hanging at the mercy of a creature that could easily snap me in half. My only hope was that it still needed me alive to complete whatever task it wanted. However, that didn’t mean it couldn’t spend the rest of the night torturing me.
The sound of my heart pounding in my head, throbbing at the same rate as the wound in my skull managed to cloud my thoughts, making it hard to focus. A low moan escaped me as the energy once again wrapped around me and pulled me up so that my toes were scraping against the cold ground. My head lolled to the side and it was a struggle to draw a lungful of air. Gaizka walked over to where I hovered helpless in the air.
“I did not spend your lifetime preparing you to fight me in this moment,” Gaizka calmly stated. “Don’t fight me on this matter, and I won’t be forced to destroy you and everything that you care about.”
With a wave of its hand, the creature tossed me aside. I slammed into the pavement and rolled several feet before my back crashed into the Pulaski monument in the middle of the square. A cry escaped me as fresh pain exploded in my frame.
With a grin, the naturi turned and walked back toward the shadows he had risen out of. With a shaky hand and a soft grunt, I threw the knife as hard as I could. The blade flew straight and true, glinting faintly in the moonlight. It passed straight through the back of the naturi and hit the ground with a heavy thud just before he completely disappeared from sight. Gaizka was right. I couldn’t kill it, which left me with no way of protecting Mira or the humans of Savannah.
I lay on the ground for several minutes, blood oozing from my skull, waiting for the worst of the pain to subside so that I could drag myself back to Mira’s town house. Yet, as the pain slowly slipped from my fractured frame, it was replaced with a deeper sense of hopelessness that I couldn’t push aside. We weren’t going to win this battle.
TWENTY-FOUR
S
tifling a yawn, I rubbed my left eye with the heel of my palm as I slowly trudged up the stairs to the police station. The sun had been up for only a few hours and I was running on less than five hours of sleep. It had taken me the better part of an hour to drag myself through the streets the previous night and into bed in Mira’s town house. My body was healed, but still somewhat tender.
But a slim shred of hope lingered as I slowly mounted the concrete stairs to the police station. Daniel Crowley had woken me from a dead, healing sleep to inform me that he had a potential witness; someone who actually saw the murderer leave Abigail Bradford’s apartment building. So far, all the detective had been willing to tell me was that I had to hurry if I wanted the chance to talk to her.
Still bleary-eyed, I was shuffled through the building until I landed before Daniel’s desk. The detective looked exhausted, having already worked past the end of his shift. The sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt had been rolled up past his elbows and his tie dangled like a worn noose around his neck. Papers, files, and used paper coffee cups cluttered his desk in a growing pile, until it appeared the mountain would soon spill off the edge.
“I guess it’s a good thing you’re around, or Mira would have missed this opportunity,” Daniel said by way of a greeting. “I’ve got to take her over to Family Services before I clock out for the night.”
“Family Services?” I repeated dumbly, my brain still trying to function without that first cup of coffee.
“Yeah. She can’t be more than thirteen, though you can hardly get a straight answer out of her.” Daniel paused and ran one hand over his face as if to clear his thoughts. “She lives on the streets—runaway. We’ve picked her up a couple times before. She won’t stay in any of the homes that she’s placed with.”
“How did you get her?”
“She came to us. Scared out of her mind. Don’t think she’s slept in days,” Daniel said with a heavy sigh as he pushed himself out of his chair.
“Did you get a description of the killer?” I asked, following him down the hall past a series of interrogation rooms.
“She spent most of the morning with a sketch artist,” he confirmed, and then paused, his hand on the doorknob. “I was just going to send a copy of the picture over to Mira, until she said that the guy’s eyes glowed red. It could have been a trick of the light, but I thought it best if one of you people talk to her first.”
I flinched at the “one of you people” comment and gave a soft affirmative grunt. I wasn’t a vampire or lycanthrope, and Daniel knew that. However, I doubted that he was aware that I wasn’t fully human. He simply lumped me with them because I associated with Mira.
“We had one other strange development,” Daniel admitted as he took his hand off the interrogation-room doorknob. “We had a floater turn up this morning.”
“A floater?” I inquired, my brain struggling to keep up.
“Dead body in the river, down by the shipyards,” Daniel replied.
“And you think it’s linked?” I was surprised that there was no mention of the man who had been cremated on Factors Walk. Of course, the body might not have been found yet or it wasn’t being listed as a strange death similar to what Daniel was accustomed to seeing with Mira’s crowd.
“Possibly. Archie already called. Says the teeth aren’t human, but animal fangs. The jawbone has been completely shattered. And from a rough description, it appears this guy matches the kid’s description,” Daniel explained.
“So the killer has been found,” I said. I should have felt overwhelming relief, but instead all I felt was growing fear. “What did the man die of?”