Hands. So many hands, grasping, yanking.
They’d pulled at her, caught in her hair, her clothes, bruising her limbs. Below and behind her a murky darkness had spread. Before her and in front of her had been lighter, like she’d been submerged in water and was looking toward the surface of the lake. The owners of the grabbing hands had been moaning and purring in her ear to give up, let go, and allow them to carry her soul over the twilight threshold of life and death to the Netherworld. To death. She hadn’t been able to resist them. She’d been so tired, so weak.
She was going to die soon and Gabriel Cionaodh Marcus Mac Braire, somehow, someway, would be the catalyst.
THE
man stood flickering in the image his soul took to the living—gray and softly glowing. A shimmering silver cord rippled and pulsed from his back, reaching to the Netherworld, where his place already waited for him. All he needed was for the Wild Hunt to show him the way. The elderly fae’s expression was a mixture of sorrow and pain as he gazed down at his still-living wife, who lay sleeping in bed beside his motionless and silent body. The wife probably wouldn’t realize her husband had passed until morning.
Gabriel regretted her discovery and her impending grief, but this was the natural pattern for all living things. No one was immune. He was only a ferryman, imbued by some unknown cosmic force with the ability to escort the departed to the afterlife.
Only himself and his host could see fae spirits. He guessed there were probably a few others beyond his circle with the ability, but he’d never met any. Gabriel wasn’t sure if his skill extended to human souls. He’d been born outside Piefferburg, but he’d been a child and not yet Lord of the Wild Hunt during those few, short years of freedom. Since he’d probably die in Piefferburg, he’d probably never know.
The torch of the Wild Hunt had passed to him nearly two hundred years ago. In those two hundred years Gabriel had seen every type of soul there was to see. Some left their life with a peace and acceptance that was beautiful to behold. Some were angry and fought to stay earthbound. Some did remain earthbound.
But most of them were simply sad to leave those they loved and were reluctant to sever their attachments. Sometimes it was hard to get souls to take that final ride with him, a ride that would usher them forward to their next life—whatever that was. Gabriel wasn’t privy to the secrets of the world that lay beyond this one, despite his job servicing it.
His host waiting outside, Gabriel reached out a hand to the soul. “It’s time to go now.”
The man looked at him, then turned away and knelt at his wife’s side. Clearly he needed some time to say good-bye. Gabriel was always willing to give it. If the man’s wife woke while Gabriel was in the room, all she would see were shadows. All she would hear were murmurs and whispers. Magick protected the hunt’s true identity and had since the dawn of time.
Though she would perceive the Wild Hunt, the woman would not be able to see her husband. She would probably presume that the Wild Hunt had killed him. The trooping fae, who lacked the gentle spirituality of the wilding fae and the knowledge of the nobles, believed that the hunt was evil.
Gabriel gave the man until dawn began to edge slowly over the horizon. “Come. Your life is done here and another is waiting for you. Your wife will grieve you, but her journey on earth isn’t finished yet.”
The man ignored him, gripping his wife’s hand like he would never let go.
Most of the souls he collected seemed to understand that it was time to leave. Some did not. He kept track of every soul he couldn’t collect, returning periodically to see if he could entice them into passing. Fae souls didn’t have magick anymore, but they could still hurt others if they wanted to badly enough. A powerful enough necromancer could even make them into weapons and kill people with them. Luckily there were no necromancers in Piefferburg.
The man finally moved away from his wife and toward Gabriel. Silently, they walked out of the small house in the
ceantar láir
and back to the waiting host. They had a full collection tonight. Five other souls were mounted on the horses.
Once the man was secure on a jet-black mare, the hounds led them off once more, toward one last soul to retrieve.
“NOT
again,” Aislinn mumbled and turned over, pulling the blanket over her head. It was almost dawn and she’d finally managed to fall back to sleep after convincing herself that the dream she’d had was just a dream and not prophetic.
It was a lie she
had
to believe. She couldn’t function any other way. How could she look Gabriel in the eye thinking anything else? How could she do the job that the Summer Queen had given her believing Gabriel was somehow a trigger for the events that would lead to her death?
Finally, after she’d managed to divert her mind from the grasping hands, she’d fallen back to sleep. Now she was awake again and someone was watching her, looming over the side of her bed. It was a feeling she was familiar with . . . one she selfishly wanted to ignore right now.
A soft whisper.
Shuffling feet.
The psychic press of a soul in need
.
Aislinn rolled back over and confronted the soul that stood at her bedside. She sat up and her breath came out in a shocked whisper. “Elena?” She was one of her mother’s friends. The cord that anchored her in the Netherworld shimmered a soft peach color. “No. That’s impossible. You’re too young to die.”
“I’m already dead, dear. Watt syndrome,” Elena whispered in that gentle, breezy way that souls spoke in. “It lay dormant in me for close to a century then finally sank its claws in.”
Watt syndrome was a fae-specific illness that was mostly under control . . . but not quite. It had decimated the fae races, both during the years of the Great Sweep and in the preceding years when Piefferburg had been newly born. Those left behind after the illness had burned through were either naturally immune or had developed immunity to it. The disease itself was magickal in origin—which was why most believed the Phaendir had created it—but no countermeasure for the illness had been developed, not for a lack of effort. Watt syndrome still claimed victims occasionally, even after so many years.
Apparently Elena had been one of them.
Aislinn had noticed Elena had often kept to her apartment lately and hadn’t been participating in the social events that dominated the Rose Tower calendar. She’d seemed grayish in color, had lost weight, and seemed tired most of the time. Elena had said she’d simply had some sort of bug.
Mostly it was souls whom Aislinn hadn’t known in real life who came to her, ones who had no one close to them in life—no family, no friends. They simply wanted someone to see them, talk to them, ease their fear of the unknown. Sometimes they had a message to pass on to those they left behind, messages that she tried to deliver without endangering her secret.
A dark shadow appeared in the corner of the room, diametrically opposite the rising sun from the other direction. Aislinn blinked. More shadows appeared behind the first. There were a total of five indistinguishable forms near her door now.
She sat all the way up with a jerk of surprise.
The Lord of the Wild Hunt and his host? It had to be. They’d come to collect Elena.
Lady
.
Never in her entire life had she been with a soul when the Wild Hunt came to collect him or her. She’d wondered about the odds of that, considering how many souls sought her out in the dead of night. Yet it had never happened. Secretly, she’d longed for it. She’d wanted a single glimpse of the group of people in all of Piefferburg who might understand her gift.
Suddenly a horrible thought occurred. She looked down at herself to make sure she wasn’t out of her body and ready to be collected herself. No. She was still corporeal. The prophetic dream that she was going to die soon hadn’t come true . . . yet.
Elena gazed at the hunt, her ageless face unlined and serene. “They’re here for me.”
Aislinn clutched her blankets to her and stared. She’d watched the Wild Hunt take off from the top of the Unseelie Court so many times; it was hard to believe they were standing in her bedroom.
The first tall and broad shadow—the Lord of the Wild Hunt—stepped forward and an unintelligible whisper echoed through the room. All the hair on the back of Aislinn’s neck stood up. The furious host appeared as little more than shadowy smudges.
“I’m coming in a moment,” Elena said in answer to the whisper, then turned her head back to Aislinn. “I felt your ability as soon as I passed,” she said. “I was drawn to it immediately. It was a comfort to know I could come to you. No matter that it’s Unseelie dark, don’t let your skill languish, Aislinn. It’s a gift.”
“I-I won’t.” She wished she didn’t have to.
“Tell your mother she was always a good friend to me and I’ll miss her.”
“I will.” Aislinn paused, steadied her voice, and said, “Good-bye Elena. Good travels.”
But Elena was already crossing the room toward the large shadow’s outstretched hand. Together they left the room, the other shadows forming a procession behind her.
Aislinn leapt from the bed, grabbed her robe, and ran to the window in the living room. A few minutes later and the host lifted off from the roof, clearly laden with many collected souls on the backs of horses. Together the host flew off into the pinkish dawn, then seemed to explode in a glittery sunburst.
Then there were just the shadows, horses and hounds. The souls were gone. The Wild Hunt headed back to the Unseelie Court.
FOUR
ONCE
back on the roof of the Black Tower, Gabriel slid off Abastor and stared into the dawn-lightened sky behind the Rose Tower, his jaw clenched.
Aislinn. That had been Aislinn they’d just seen. And she’d clearly been able to see and talk to the soul they’d been there to collect.
“You okay?” asked Aeric beside him.
Gabriel blinked, trying to wrap his mind around the situation. “Yeah.”
“That was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?”
“Wow. Someone in the Rose who can see souls.” Melia slid from her mount with Aelfdane’s help. “She’s got Unseelie blood. That woman shouldn’t even be there. I can’t imagine how alone she must feel, having to conceal a secret that big every day.”
The Shadow King had said Aislinn was a relation; so of course she was displaced Unseelie. That part wasn’t what had shocked him so much. In almost two hundred years of leading the Wild Hunt, Gabriel had never come upon someone who could communicate with souls. Tonight, he had. And that person happened to be
Aislinn
, the woman he’d only just met, the woman he’d been tasked with luring to the Black of her own free will.
The odds had to be infinitesimal, which meant it hadn’t happened by chance. Gabriel didn’t believe in coincidence, but he couldn’t discern the reason for this.
One thing was for certain: Aislinn didn’t belong in the Rose Tower. Even aside from the Shadow King’s demand she defect from the Rose and come to the Black, her people were the Unseelie, not those fancy imbeciles across the square.
No matter how this had happened tonight, whether it had been a result of pure chance or the work of a higher power, he’d been given a gift.
Since his charm as an incubus didn’t seem to be working, he could use this new information to tempt Aislinn to the Black.
WAS
it possible she was a necromancer?
Gabriel slouched in one of Aislinn’s armchairs and watched her from across the room. It didn’t seem likely. Hells, it seemed impossible. Yet the skill to communicate with souls usually went hand in hand with the power to call and control them. And there were necromancers in the Shadow King’s lineage, though the king had called Aislinn a “distant” relation and the necromancers of his line were direct—the power running through the maternal side of his family. Perhaps Aislinn wasn’t as “distant” as the king had claimed.
But why would he lie?
Necromancers were powerful, dangerous Unseelie. As Lord of the Wild Hunt, Gabriel had the ability to call the sluagh—the horde of unforgiven dead from the Netherworld—but he lacked the ability to direct and control them. A necromancer couldn’t call the sluagh, but she could control them. It was sort of a cosmic safeguard since the sluagh were capable of such utter destruction.
A necromancer played yin to the Lord of the Wild Hunt’s yang.
Even without the sluagh, a necromancer could wreak complete chaos, with the ability to call any soul she wished from the Netherworld, command the soul to take corporeal form, and then use it as a weapon if enough emotion could be engendered in that soul.
Gabriel frowned and rubbed his chin, deep in thought. In the kitchen, where Aislinn puttered, doing what Danu only knew what, she hummed to herself—a light, pretty little ditty. He tried to imagine her commanding an army of the unforgiven dead.
Nah, Aislinn wasn’t a necromancer.
His lower lip twitched in a brief smile. She may not be a lightweight shallow ball of fluff like the rest of the women in this court, but she was no magickal heavyweight, either.
No
. No way could she wield power over the dead.
She must be what the Shadow King said she was—a distant relation. Perhaps she had a breath of the talent inherent in his direct line, but only a breath. Just enough to let her communicate with souls.
A cupboard door in the kitchen slammed. She was stalling. For the first time in his life a woman was actually
stalling
to put off attending a social function with him.
She entered the living room, the skirt of her long gold gown swinging with her movement. Her long silver blond hair was swept up in a chignon at the very attractive nape of her neck, a sensitive part of the body for most women. He wondered what kinds of sounds she’d make if he gently nipped her there. She wore a minimal amount of makeup, just enough to accentuate her liquid silver-gray eyes and her rosebud of a mouth. Her lower lip was much fuller than the upper, made a man want to suck on it. She wore little jewelry, too. Just two diamond earrings and a matching gem in the hollow of her throat.