Rogue Soul (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 3) (30 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Guilt tugged on Logan’s conscience, strong enough that he pulled his Range Rover to the side of the empty mountain road and leaned his head against the steering wheel. This wasn’t his business. He had shit to do that was more important than whatever mess his uninvited houseguests had gotten themselves into.

He’d dropped Ana off at the bitch Druantia’s place a couple of hours ago. The idea of Druantia noticing his Range Rover in the street had him driving off immediately, wishing Ana the best. She was a big girl. A goddess no longer, but in the world of myth, it was each Mythean for himself. A law he lived by.

He couldn’t help but feel for her, though, heading into the lair of that harpy he’d been stupid enough to sleep with for a few weeks. His brain had followed his dick, though it wasn’t until he’d seen some of the weird shit that she’d been into that he’d finally left.
 

With a groan, he swung his car into a U-turn on the empty highway and headed back toward Druantia’s place. Ana probably knew what she was getting into, and fate knew his ass had been on fire to get away. But he couldn’t fight the nagging guilt. Druantia probably wasn’t as fucked up as he suspected she was. But what if?

Two hours later, he stalked through the door of her shop. Empty, but the eerie feel of the place made him shudder. He hadn’t felt it when he’d first started sleeping with her, but over time it had begun to give him the creeps.

“Druantia!” he yelled when she didn’t appear in the archway from the back room as she usually did.

Fuck it, he wasn’t going to wait around for her. Maybe she had helped Ana, but he’d driven all this way on a hunch and a dinged conscience, and he was going to at least have a search around.
 

Her back room was empty, as was the little kitchen and sitting room. She lived above the shop, and he’d turned toward the stairs when a narrow door caught his eye. He’d skipped it when he’d walked through the room, figuring that it was a closet, but no stone unturned and all that shit.

The doorknob didn’t twist under his hand.
Locked.
And suspicious as hell. So he yanked on the knob hard enough that the lock broke and the door swung open to reveal a larger space than he’d expected.
 

Ana’s collapsed form lay on the floor.

Shit. He was kneeling at her prone form in seconds, her blood soaking through to his knees. He gently tugged at her to roll her onto her back.
 

Dead.
Fuck.

But how? A demigod shouldn’t be able to die from sliced wrists. Yet the shard of glass next to her body confirmed that she’d indeed killed herself.

Whatever the fuck had happened here, it had happened because he’d dropped Ana off with Druantia, ignored any niggling concerns he’d had, and hightailed it away. Druantia had some kind of stake in this, but it was beyond him to determine.

But it was his fucking fault that Ana lay dead, covered in blood. She’d been this desperate to go after Camulos? He hadn’t spoken to Camulos in nearly a thousand years, not since he’d been a god. But he’d liked Camulos, who’d been a decent enough fellow.

Decent enough that he didn’t deserve what happened to gods who ran from Otherworld. Logan could empathize with that desire and felt like shit that the guy might end up chained in the Celts’ miserable, archaic punishment. It was a fucked-up system. And now Ana had run off to Otherworld after him in the only way she knew how.

Logan heaved a disgusted sigh and climbed to his feet. There was nothing he could do for Ana’s body—not that it mattered, anyway—but he could try to help her in Otherworld.
 

He made it out of Druantia’s shop without being noticed and drove all the way to the first abandoned patch of gravel along an empty Highland road. Private enough, he figured, so he climbed out of the car.

 
Mountains rose on either side of him, low and sloping in this part of the Highlands, and empty of mortals. Already regretting his decision but tugged by his conscience, he shed his mortal form for that of a black falcon.

Once the rippling pain of the change had faded, the lightness of being and the wind beneath his wings made his heart fly even as his mind dreaded what was likely to come. He soared through the air, higher and faster, until his mind freed itself from the shackles of earth and he entered the aether, and through it arrived in Otherworld.
 

He couldn’t aetherwalk as other Mytheans could, but he could travel in one of his alternate forms. Shapeshifting had always been his gift, and as the black falcon, he could travel through the aether.

After flying over Otherworld for hours, alternately over mountains and pastures, he neared the desolate land that had to be Blackmoor. It lacked the beautiful sweeps of colored heather and waving grass that dotted the other moors. He spied a flock of black birds circling over a tor and sped toward them, wind whistling past him.

Camulos. As he had feared. The man lay chained to the rock, eyes squeezed shut and struggling as if he were living out a vision within his mind. Poor bastard.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ana gasped and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly to regain her sight. When her vision cleared, she looked around and realized that she was kneeling in the same grove of oaks that she’d arrived in two thousand years ago when she’d come here to kill Cam.
 

Fitting.

 
She looked at her wrists. Two scars now. A grim smile stretched across her face. It was a macabre way to travel, but she was lucky that it had worked.
 

Gracefully, she rose to her feet, no longer burdened by her mortal body. Though it didn’t feel the same as godhood, it was certainly better than being mortal.
 

Her fist closed longingly around air, and she wished she had her bow. It was still in Druantia’s creepy shop, gone forever because she’d never escape Otherworld to retrieve it.

She shook away the pang of grief. At least she wasn’t an unfeeling automaton like she’d feared. And there were bigger things to worry about, such as getting through the forest and out onto Blackmoor without any of the gods realizing she was here. Luckily, despite the vast size of Otherworld, she was only a few hours from Blackmoor. She’d learned every patch of Otherworld in the centuries she’d been trapped here.

She set off through the oaks until eventually she stood at the edge of the tree line, warily eying the vast, open expanse of the moor. If the gods were still out there, it would be easy for them to find her.
 

But she was so close to Cam she didn’t want to wait.

Her eyes scanned the rolling hills, barren brown with ever-dead heather. Great granite tors punched up through the ground, hulking over the horizon as the sun set behind them. It lacked the beauty of Otherworld’s other moorland, but for good reason. This was the place of punishment.
 

In the distance, she caught sight of a flock of birds circling a tor and set out toward them. The sun had nearly sunk beneath the horizon, and the coming dark would shield her as she walked across the too-open space. She couldn’t wait any longer for dark, not being as close as she was now.

She set off at a jog, slowly because of the deceptively boggy and uneven ground. About halfway to the tor, one of the birds cut away from the rest and joined her. A pitch-black falcon—feather, beak, and eyes. Strange looking, but prophetic.
 

By the time she reached the base of the large hill that supported the tor, it began to rain. She picked up her pace, sprinting now that she was out of the boggy valley. So close. Her heart pounded and cold fear raced along her skin.

The tor was a jumbled pile of massive granite rock, too complex to identify an outline of Cam in the low moonlight. But he was here—he had to be. She climbed, scrabbling for purchase on the smooth surfaces. The falcon veered left and she followed, climbing to reach the highest point of the tor.

There.
She sobbed in relief when she spotted the barest outline of Cam only ten feet in the distance, straining violently against the chains that bound him to the rock. After a last mighty effort to heave herself onto the top of the tor, she fell to her knees at his side.

“Cam.” She grasped his thrashing head. The chains had rubbed his skin raw, and blood seeped beneath him to soak the granite. Great circular bruises dotted his battered muscles, purple and blue and black.

“Ana.” A tortured moan escaped his mouth.

He wasn’t here. Not mentally, at least. She stroked his face, his neck. “Shh. Shh. I’m here. It’s me. I’ll get you out of here.”

She turned to the chain and jerked at it, pulling with all her might.
 

It wouldn’t budge. In her haste and fear, she’d forgotten that she was merely mortal. Just one soul among thousands, with no special powers. If she had any hope of getting him out, she’d have to leave and find help. Tools—or her brothers, if she could convince them. Anything.
 

Cam’s moan tore at her ears. Could she leave him like this? He was going crazy. Her head whipped around, searching futilely for help, and she caught sight of the same black falcon. It sat near Cam’s side, its eyes rapt on them.

Her brow furrowed as she watched it, her mouth dropping open when it pecked at the chains with its black beak. It was no normal falcon, for the chain began to shatter beneath its blows. Finally, the chain snapped. Grateful beyond measure, she pulled the chain away from Cam’s chest as the falcon pecked at the others.
 

Within minutes, she was pulling the last of Cam’s bindings away. She turned to the falcon, only to see it fly off into the distance.

“Thank you,” she whispered, awed by her strange luck. She turned back to Cam.
 

“Come on, Cam, you have to wake up.” She smoothed her hands over his face and chest, watching gratefully as his wounds began to knit with godly speed now that his body wasn’t fighting the chains.
 

He moaned, a pained exhalation that tugged at her heart, and finally opened his eyes.

“Ana.” Confusion wrinkled his brow as he reached up to touch her face. His eyes were vacant, the way one’s were after a dream. “But you—you’re dead.”

Dead? She frowned at him. Mytheans didn’t use that term. Death or dying, maybe, to talk about crossing over to the next life. But few people were ever truly dead, their souls blinked out of existence.

“I’m in Otherworld with you. My mortal body is gone, but I’m here.” And here, she looked and felt as if she were flesh and blood. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

Cam shook his head hard and leaned up on an elbow. He looked up at her again, his eyes clear. He yanked her to him, burying her against his chest. “Fuck, Ana. How did you get here?”

“Same way I did last time.” She hugged him hard, then pulled away and held up her wrists, each now bearing two long scars. One for each time she’d come to Otherworld for him, for two vastly different reasons.
 

His big hands cupped the sides of her face, and he kissed her hard on the mouth and with so much gratitude that she could all but taste it. He stumbled to his feet, still weakened by his injuries.
 

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

She pointed west. “The closest cover is that way. A grove of oaks.”

He shook his head. “Out of Otherworld.”

Her heart plummeted. Of course. “I can’t leave Otherworld. The demigod potion didn’t work. I’m mortal. I’m stuck here.”

“You’re not mortal, Ana. At least, not entirely.”

What?
Before she could speak, he wrapped his arms around her and she felt the familiar pull of the aether.

When they appeared in Esha’s flat, Ana gasped. She’d never expected to make it back to earth. When a mortal went to an afterworld, they stayed there. No exception. “How? How am I here?”

Cam kissed her hard, then pulled away from her and limped toward the bedroom, presumably looking for Esha. “The gods cannot come here, right?”
 

“Of course,” Ana said. “The gods hold no sway at the university.”