Rising Darkness (A GAME OF SHADOWS NOVEL) (30 page)

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.”

He kissed her hand. She curled her fingers along the lean edge of his cheek, hating how he looked so haggard, so worn. His physical wounds would be exhausting enough. Coupled with those worrisome fractures in his energy, he seemed drained of all vitality. He opened the passenger door for her, and after she had slid in, he walked around the car and eased into the driver’s seat.

They shared a quick, tense glance. She whispered, “Come on, start.”

He turned the key.

The engine purred into life with smooth perfection. It was such a mercy she could have wept. “Now we need to make tracks,” he said. “We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”

She eased the seat belt around her aching body. “‘Miles to go before I sleep.’ That was a Robert Frost poem, right? It was some poet anyway.”

“Whoever it was,” he growled. “I’ve got a bone to pick with him.”

“At least we’re alive and together,” she pointed out.

He shifted the car in gear and pulled onto the gravel drive. “And at least we get another day or two. Maybe more.”

“A veritable wealth of minutes.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “A staggering fortune in seconds.”

Struck by a thought, she said, “Hey. You never did steal any flowers for me, you know.”

“I’m with a woman who is developing a memory like a steel trap.” His lips pulled into a real smile. “I’ll have to get right on that.”

They drove off, into the morning’s falling light.

Epilogue

HE DROVE AWAY
from the cabin in a white heat.

Out of his whole elite strike force, he was the only one that had escaped.

As the armored black limousine roared down the highway he made a rapid series of cell phone calls. His first call insured that Mary and Michael became fugitives from the Michigan state police. Then he called for reinforcements to meet him at a designated place. He was still raging when he hung up several minutes later.

Dead or alive, he’d told his people. Dead or alive. He would rather wait for the conflict to come to a head in another lifetime than risk them reuniting with Astra in this one.

Damn them,
damn them
,
GODDAMN HER.

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, he had nursed such pretty hopes. With a little effort and experimentation, he believed he could alchemically change Mary’s spirit. He wanted to weaken it in all the right places so he could take over her will. He had intended to turn her into a drone, so she would be as obedient as his human servants and yet still retain her healing abilities. He had wanted her as his insurance policy against accidental death or intentional harm.

Living a high-roller life meant he enjoyed some juicy perks, but there were a lot of risks too. It made sense to maintain a personal physician. What better physician than one of their own? Besides, he had also imagined such lovely hypothetical scenarios of getting at Michael through her. He might even be able to control Michael in a way that no one else ever had managed before.

So today, what did he do? He’d let that old acquisitive lust take over his judgment. He had panted after Mary like a stallion after a mare in heat, when a part of him
knew
he should have ripped apart the bird he’d had at hand.

In that one dazzling moment, when he had Michael’s spirit straining toward a fractured dissolution, the victory had felt too quick, too easy over the cunning bastard who had so plagued him throughout the ages.

He hadn’t wanted Michael destroyed in the work of a few moments. That seemed too much like premature ejaculation. He had wanted Michael to suffer while he turned Mary into his creature, a pet obedient to his beck and call.

But now it was abundantly clear that she had become more trouble than she could ever be worth.

Phantom pain shot through his chest. He had existed for so long without suffering more than the brief discomfort entailed in changing host bodies, or the ache he felt as those bodies wore out. The memory of the heart attack still shocked him. He pounded the steering wheel.

“This is my world,” he growled.

Mine.

He had been the one to discover this world. He had been the first one of their kind to learn how to transmigrate from his original self and come here to lay claim to it. Yet the closest he had come to fulfilling his vision of conquest had happened thousands of years ago when he had killed the soul of a princely fetus.

He had entered that tiny body while it was still in the womb and drifted through the long months of gestation with dark patience. He had suffered through the primitive birth and early childhood, his old soul watching the world through young eyes as he plotted and laid his plans. His mother, the queen, had sensed the infanticide but had not understood what had really happened. She claimed lightning had struck her womb. His father, the king, had been overjoyed.

When he was twenty, he had the king assassinated and he ascended the throne, and he consolidated his power by murdering all his other rivals. Then he reinforced his borders, crushed rebellions, and he swept through the Persian Empire with the unstoppable force of a juggernaut. Asia Minor, the Levant, Syria, Egypt, India—he made them all bow down when he took his rightful title as King of Kings.

His cadre of bodyguards had been specially trained. The group had been unable to get close to him. Rather than using direct force, they had killed him by using subterfuge and trickery. They had bribed a caravan trader who persuaded his cook to serve him poisoned dates as he summered in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Babylon.

Those early defeats always come back to Babylon. Once he had loved the city with its legendary beautiful hanging gardens. Now he loathed it. His memories were filled with betrayal and vomit, and the claustrophobic defeat from that earliest life when he huddled deep in the city’s catacombs and choked on the dust of the dead.

Now that little bitch
all on her own
had forced him into another ignominious retreat. She had forced him to leap into the body of a soldier that he did not want. Sure it was strong enough, but its strength was ugly, coarse and brutish. He preferred his cruelties and his hosts to embody more elegance, and preferred to live his life with some sort of refinement. This body was little better than an ape. He looked at the meaty hands in disgust. It had hairy knuckles, for Christ’s sake.

His rage needed an outlet. Pounding the wheel just fed a sense of futility. He had been working too close to his limits anyway. The battle had left him feeling too stretched thin. He had also lost twenty highly trained drones. Now he had to call in all his reserves.

Worse, much worse, Mary and Michael were still free.

He needed a quick infusion of energy, and he craved the bitter taste of violent death that was so like a dark chocolate liqueur. His gaze roamed the passing scenery with restless hunger as the black limo purred along the roads toward his rendezvous point.

At last he came upon a roadside establishment named Northside Restaurant, twelve miles northeast of Wolf Lake. He counted eight vehicles in the parking lot. The nearest buildings were two gas stations, easily fifty yards away.

This was perfect.

The limousine rolled to a smooth stop. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he checked that the drone’s handgun was in place in his shoulder holster. Then he strolled into the restaurant, his energy compressing in anticipation like a snake coiling to strike.

He stood just inside the doorway and counted the humans inside. Look at them, as lovely and vulnerable as a herd of gazelles. It was too bad he didn’t see anyone that would be suitable as a new host. He would have been happy to get rid of the ape suit. There were two waitresses, a short order cook (he might have to slaughter that greasy little man from a distance), a father and son, a couple of men lounging on stools at the counter, and a trio of bored teenagers.

Teenagers: young wanton, chaotic energy. Delicious.

“Mine,” he whispered to them. “You are mine.”

Look at them, living their lives in such ignorance. They should all bow down to him, the King of Kings.

One of the waitresses, a leggy woman in her forties with dyed blond hair, gave him a bright smile as she whisked around the end of the counter with a coffeepot. His gaze dropped to her name tag. Her name was Ruth. “Sit anywhere you like, hon,” she told him. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He smiled back and shook his head. “No, hon,” he said, in the drone’s coarse, husky smoker’s voice. “You’ll be with me right now.”

Her quick stride faltered and her smile faded. “Excuse me?”

After compressing his energy, he released it outward. Filled with the force of his pent-up rage, a psychic storm slammed into the restaurant. Napkins, condiments, dishes, glasses, cups and cutlery flew through the dining area, tossed airborne by the blast. The doors slammed shut. He walked to the leggy blonde, wrapped one of his disgusting hairy hands around her neck and jerked her toward him.

Her brown eyes filled with uncomprehending panic. She dropped the coffeepot. It shattered. She struggled against his hold. He put a hand at the back of her head, fastened his open mouth over hers in a travesty of a kiss and, in one long luxurious inhale, he drained her of her life’s energy.

It was like sucking nectar from a flower. Her traumatized spirit, separated so abruptly from its body, hovered near the ceiling of the restaurant before it fled with a wail.

He let go of her neck. The leggy blonde body collapsed to the floor.

Smiling, he looked around. The other seven occupants were too shocked by the poltergeist activity to have realized something terrible had just happened to Ruth.

A couple of teenagers pounded at the front doors, trying to get them open. The father had shoved his son underneath a table. As various items flew through the air, the father batted them away with his hands. Hissing smoke billowed from the kitchen. The short order cook screamed as boiling liquids splashed over him. A steak knife struck one of the men at the counter. The wounded man yanked the knife from his neck. Blood jetted from the puncture. The other man slapped the counter towel over the wound in an effort to staunch the bleeding.

Yes, it was self-indulgent of him. He supposed he shouldn’t succumb to temper tantrums. You could look at it as a waste of energy when he was already stretched too thin. Still he felt that, given the strength of his anger, he’d restrained himself rather admirably. Besides, Ruth’s life force sang in his veins, a potent aperitif. And he had more than enough victims in the restaurant with which to replenish himself.

He had always identified with the fox in a henhouse. Like the fox, he might be able to satisfy his need with just a couple of chickens, but once he got going he preferred to slaughter the whole flock for the sheer frenzied love of murder.

After he had slaked his appetite, the silence of a tomb fell in the restaurant. He pulled out his gun and shot the bodies. Then he called one of his drones at Quantico. Soon Mary and Michael would become the FBI’s prime suspects in the Michigan massacre, which would be discovered by a passing state patrol car within the next half hour.

It always paid to have corruption in high places.

Mary and Michael will return in the sequel

Falling Light

Coming from Berkley Sensation in February 2014!

Turn the page for a special preview of the next Novel of the Elder Races by

THEA HARRISON

Coming in November 2013 from Berkley Sensation!

ARYAL SPUN AND
floated in the wild dark night.

She didn’t mind living in New York as some other Wyr did. The city was edgy and raw in a way that appealed to her. But this lonesome realm that hung high over the top of the world—this was her true home. This was where she came to think, or brood, or fling her fury into space.

She flew so high that the air felt almost too thin for even her powerful lungs. The clouds lay below her, air castles of shadowed ivory, and the stars above her whirled in their dance of constellations, their lights telling ancient tales of places from unimaginable distances. At this altitude, the stars were so brilliant she almost felt as if she could leave the shackles of gravity behind forever and fly into them.

Almost.

There was always that one moment when she reached the peak of her ability to fly, that one instant of perfection as she hung weightless in the air, no longer straining to rise but simply existing in flawless balance.

Then gravity would reign supreme and pull her back down to earth, but she always carried with her the memory of how she could touch that one perfect moment.

Tonight, she didn’t fly for pleasure. She flew to brood in solitude.

She had two hates. One, she held close and nurtured with all of her passion. The other, she had to release.

Her first hate was Quentin Caeravorn.

As soon as she could figure out a way to do it without getting caught, swear to gods, she was going to kill him.

She would prefer to kill him slowly, but bottom line, at this point, she would be happy to take any opportunity she could get.

It was bad enough when Quentin’s friend and former employee Pia ended up mating—and marrying—Dragos Cuelebre, Lord of the Wyr. Once Pia had been a thief who had stolen from the most powerful Wyr the world has ever seen. Now she was his wife and the mother of his son.

When Pia had moved into Cuelebre Tower, the gryphons had gone bat shit gaga over her; they all thought she pooped sparkly rainbows or something.

The Wyr in general had a more reserved—sane—response to her presence, especially since she continued to refuse to reveal her Wyr form, which Aryal thought was not only a shortsighted decision but a rather wretched one. How could anybody expect the Wyr to accept or follow her when they didn’t even know what the hell she was? The very fact of her existence made Aryal’s teeth ache.

Outside of the Wyr demesne, however, Pia’s popularity had skyrocketed. Her daily mail had gone from a trickle of letters and cards into an avalanche that required a separate office and its own small staff. Pia even took Dragos’s last name, an old-fashioned move that had Aryal rolling her eyes. Now she was Pia Cuelebre.

Last names . . . they were like word parasites. They attached to people in strange ways, moved across cultural and political lines, traveled the world and reattached to others, certainly at whim and seemingly at random.

Why didn’t anybody else see how creepy last names were? They labeled a person as coming from a particular class or geographical area or linked their identity to another person, as if someone’s identity had no merit on its own unless it was latched on to another. Aryal refused to pick a last name for herself, as so many of the first immortal Wyr chose to do, nor would she ever take anybody else’s.

Pia was her second hate.

Earlier today, Aryal finally, grudgingly,
painfully
conceded she was going to have to let go of her snerk over Pia. That was a bitter pill for her to shove down her own throat. It was sugarcoated by the most lethal weapon in Pia’s armory to date: the unbelievable sweetness in her newborn son’s face.

After Pia and Dragos had gotten married, they had gone on their honeymoon, where Pia had given birth unexpectedly. Yesterday, she and Dragos cut short their trip to upstate New York to return to the city. When they arrived back at the Tower early last evening, everybody had to see, touch, hold and/or coo over the baby.

The other sentinels acted like Dragos had conquered all of Asia overnight, while Dragos radiated a ferocious pride. Almost seven feet tall in his human form, with a massive, muscular body and a brutally handsome face, he would always carry in his demeanor a sharpness like a blade. But Aryal had to admit, she had never seen him look so . . . happy.

As for her, she refused to go anywhere near Pia and the rug rat. She didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t lasted long.

Less than twenty-four hours, to be exact.

Earlier today, when she had charged around the hall corner outside of Dragos’s offices, she nearly mowed down Pia, who pushed some kind of ambulatory, complicated-looking cart with the sleeping baby tucked inside of it.

Pia looked tired. Her pretty, triangular face was paler than usual and her ever-present blond ponytail was slightly lopsided with wisps of hair trailing at her temples. One of her new full-time bodyguards was with her. The mouthy woman, Eva. Eva thrust herself between Pia and Aryal, her bold features and black eyes insolent with hostility. She stood as tall as Aryal, a full six feet in flat boots, dark brown skin rippling over toned muscle.

“You’re a menace just walking down the hall,” said Eva. “Do you know any speed other than one that might get someone hurt?”

“You and me,” Aryal told her on a surge of happiness. “We’re gonna go someday.”

“Let’s make that day today,” said Eva. “We can go right down the hall to the training room. With or without weapons. You pick.”

“Lower your voices,” Pia said irritably. “If you wake up the baby, I’ll take you both down.”

Eva’s expression softened as she looked at the occupant in the cart. Before she could stop herself, Aryal looked too.

And found herself snared irretrievably.

She was astonished at how tiny the baby was. His entire face, in fact most of his head, was smaller than the palm of her hand. He was wrapped tightly in a soft cloth. It looked restrictive and uncomfortable, but she knew absolutely nothing about babies, and he seemed content enough.

Aryal sidled a step closer, her head angled as she stared. Eva made a move as if she would block Aryal, but Pia put a hand on her bodyguard’s arm and stopped her.

The sleeping baby carried a roar of Power in his soft, delicate body. Aryal shook her head in wonder. She hadn’t sensed any of it before now. How had Pia managed to conceal that much Power when she had been pregnant?

The baby opened his eyes. He looked so alive and innocent, and as peaceful as a miniature Buddha. He had dark violet eyes like his mother’s. The color was so deep and pure it seemed to hold all the wildness and mystery of the night sky.

Some vital organ in Aryal’s chest constricted. Her hand crept out to him and hovered in midair as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pia twitch.

Comprehension clipped her like an uppercut to the chin.

Pia wouldn’t trust her anywhere near the baby as long as Aryal held on to any lingering resentment or hostility. She wouldn’t teach Aryal how to hold him, and she sure as hell wouldn’t ever leave him in Aryal’s care. Nobody would, which was hideously unfair because Aryal would cut off her own hands before she would do anything to harm a child, no matter who its parents were.

As she struggled with the realization, the baby worked an arm loose from his straitjacket and stuck his fist in one eye. Surprise and confusion wobbled over his miniscule face. With a Herculean effort he managed to jerk his fist to his mouth. He started to suck on it noisily.

That vital organ in Aryal’s chest—that was her heart, and she lost it to him forever.

“Okay,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“What exactly is okay, Aryal?” asked Pia.

Aryal looked at her. Some sort of suppressed emotion danced in Pia’s gaze. Triumph, maybe, or amusement. Whatever it was, Aryal didn’t care.

She said without much hope, “I don’t suppose you would at least consider cutting off the cheerleader ponytail.”

Pia said gravely, “I will consider it. Not very seriously, but I will.”

Aryal met her gaze. She asked straight out, without posturing or bullshit, “May I come visit him?”

Pia studied her for a moment. “Yes, you may.”

Aryal looked down at the baby again and a corner of her mouth lifted. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” The baby started to burble plaintively. Pia said, “I think he’s already hungry again. I’d better take him back upstairs.”

She pushed the contraption toward the bank of elevators that would take her up to the penthouse at the top of the Tower. Eva followed Pia, walking backward.

“Don’t you fret none, chickadee,” Eva said in a gentle voice to Aryal. “We still gonna go one day.”

Aryal balanced back on one heel and beckoned her with both hands. Bring it, baby.

She laughed when Eva made a face before spinning to follow Pia and the little prince onto the elevator. Then Aryal turned toward Dragos’s offices and came to a standstill. She couldn’t remember why she had been going to see him in the first place.

Behind her, she could hear the two other women’s whispers clearly just before the elevator doors closed. Pia said, “Behold the Power of the peanut. His body mass may be small, but his influence is mighty. The last holdout in the Tower has officially fallen to him.”

“If you say so.”

Eva sounded skeptical, but Pia had called it. Aryal had fallen in love with that mysterious new person.

For his sake, Aryal released the last of her resentment into the night.

After all, Pia had only stolen once. While Aryal had been more stubbornly suspicious than anybody, even she had to finally admit that Pia had no real knowledge of Caeravorn’s activities, so it wasn’t as if Pia had actually ever been a career criminal.

Granted, Pia’s theft had been a bad one, but
Dragos
had not only forgiven her, he had mated with her. And Dragos was not known for his forgiving personality.

If a dragon could do it, so could a harpy, right?

Giving up her hate on Pia for the sake of the baby was one thing, and that was hard enough.

Quentin Caeravorn was an entirely different disaster.

Aryal turned her attention back to her first hate, the one she held close to her own breast and nurtured with all of her strength.

Caeravorn
was
a career criminal. He was also a “triple threat,” a rare and Powerful mixed-breed creature who was part Wyr, part Elven and part Dark Fae. Aryal didn’t have the details of his family history, but one of his parents had to be full Wyr, while the other parent was a half-breed, because his Wyr side was strong enough that he could change into his animal form. That gave him all the status and legal rights of a full Wyr in the demesne.

Because he had the legal rights of a full Wyr, and he hadn’t been convicted of any crime, he had been eligible to enter the recent Sentinel Games. He had fought his way through to become one of Dragos’s seven sentinels, who were the core of Dragos’s governing power in the Wyr demesne.

And he had accomplished that because, in spite of almost two years of investigation and several months of concentrated digging before the Games began, Aryal couldn’t pin a single goddamn thing on him.

She knew he was dirty.
She knew it.

Her leads had turned into dead ends and her sources had dried up. She would track down somebody only to find out that they had moved out of the Wyr demesne, or maybe they had died accidentally (and didn’t
that
get investigated thoroughly too). Or they weren’t directly involved in any illegal activity connected to Caeravorn, they had only heard of things—hearsay and rumors that dissipated into thin air when she tried to nail them down into concrete evidence.

Caeravorn was a magician, surrounded by a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors while he stood at the center of it all, untouched.

Dirty.

He had gained access to the very heart of the Wyr demesne, and all because Aryal couldn’t get him.

Her mood blackened. While she thought back to the events that had happened two months ago, in January, she flew higher then dove just to hear the wind scream in her ears. The sound matched the scream of outrage in her head.

* * *

SHE HAD WATCHED
Caeravorn’s fights at the Games, absorbing every detail. He was killer-fast and elegant, and highly, superbly trained. Normal civilians didn’t train to fight to that extent. Why the fuck didn’t anybody else have a problem with that?

A few times he had chosen to fight in his Wyr form, a huge black panther with electric blue eyes that gleamed under the white-hot lights. In his human form, he had kicked ass. As a panther, he was sinuous, muscular and moved like lightning. He had owned every inch of that fight arena and had captured the imagination of almost twenty thousand spectators.

Directly after the Games were over and Dragos had presented his new sentinels to the Wyr demesne, Caeravorn had strolled like a conquering hero into the great hall at Cuelebre Tower along with the other seven sentinels. Aside from Quentin, there were the five who had re-won their places—the harpy Aryal, the gryphons Bayne, Constantine and Graydon, and the gargoyle Grym—along with the other new sentinel, the pegasus Alexander Elysias.

It was a hell of a party, like a hundred years of New Year’s Eves all rolled into a single night. There was endless liquor, and loud music from famous bands, and gourmet food and confetti, and a general stampede at all of them, but especially at the men who were all buff and reeking of testosterone and victorious swagger.

It was a night of triumph for every sentinel—for Aryal as well, and she had her fair share of propositions too—but she couldn’t let go and enjoy any of it since the night had also been her failure.

She held herself aloof, bitterness a hard, heavy knot in the pit of her stomach while she watched Caeravorn laugh as someone upended a bottle of champagne over his head. He was six-foot-two, with a long, lean body and a cat’s quick grace, spare graceful features and dark blond hair he had once worn longer. He had cut it very short for the Games, and the severe style lay close to the strong, clean lines of his head.