I turned around, and a memory assaulted me.
The blow knocked me to my feet, blood at my lip and buzzing in my ears. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong, and I couldn’t seem to give the right answer—
I struggled out of the mind of some nameless slave who had died many years before at the hands of an angry master or mistress. I had not picked up enough to know the particulars of the death. I didn’t want to.
See how the blood flows.
I turned away from that memory, too.
They had put my hands in the blood. I had been taught what a blade could do to flesh. What the slender, seemingly soft leather end of a whip could do. Worse, I had learned what words could do, words that could slice the psyche deeper than any dagger or blunt instrument could ever reach. Trainers liked to teach, and I hadn’t been able to resist learning, even when the lessons were horrible.
Life in the Obsidian guild was hard. Winters were cold, and empty bellies were common. A wrong step meant potentially being caught by serpiente guards and marked by the blade, executed, or sold. And what I could never explain to Farrell, what I would never have the nerve to say to anyone, was that making choices, being wholly responsible for myself every moment of the day, was exhausting. I believed in the Obsidian guild’s creed, I really did…but it was hard to live by.
No matter what I saw in Midnight, it wasn’t until the victims were my own flesh and blood that I had found the resolve to leave for good.
IT WAS SO cold. Shkei’s stomach was empty, and his muscles were aching. He didn’t shiver; serpents could feel cold, but their bodies did nothing to alleviate it. Instead, the chill seeped into his blood and his bones, leaving him without even the energy necessary to rub his hands together.
He craved warmth as much as he craved light. How long had it been since he had seen the sun? Or heard a voice—of any kind, gentle or not? The slaves who delivered his meals did so in silence. Even the trainer hadn’t bothered to speak to him, and though Shkei knew that was probably a good thing, he was starting to feel so desperate, he almost wished the vampire would just do something already.
He had no way to tell the passage of time. He didn’t know how long Misha had been gone, or whether she was alive or dead.
The door opened to admit a woman who at first was simply a blur against a halo of light.
Shkei flinched, because normally when that door opened, pain followed, but this time it slammed shut again quickly, leaving darkness…but warmth. His serpent’s senses could feel another form in the darkness, one putting out constant heat.
He could feel the vibration of her shivers in the air.
“Hello?” he said softly, desperately.
Was this another trick? Another trap? Another seeming gift that was going to be snatched away at the last moment?
“He-hello?” she stammered in reply. “Who’s there?”
Her voice was like music to him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, because if she wasn’t one of them, then she had to be as terrified as he was. “What’s your name?”
“Alasdair.”
—
When I heard Gabriel Donovan’s voice, it took me a minute to realize it was here and now, not in the memory of my brother’s last days. I looked up in time to see the trainer walk by the cell I was in, seemingly deep in conversation with another trainer, Jaguar.
“I have a meeting now about a possible acquisition or two from Ahnmik,” Jaguar was saying. “Are you sure you don’t want to join me?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I just took in a new project here, in addition to a major investment to expand my shipping company. I won’t have time for a falcon any time soon.”
New project. I shook my head in disgust at the way Gabriel referred to Hara, so impersonal. I also made a mental note to ask Nathaniel about Jaguar’s falcon when I saw him. When falcons sent criminals to Midnight, they normally bound their power tightly to keep the vampires from using it, but there was still a possibility that he or she could be recruited as our ally…as long as I wasn’t directly involved. Falcons hated mixed-blood individuals like myself.
There was another powerful magic user we might be able to enlist to help us take down Midnight, and if Jaguar was going from here to a meeting she would be unguarded: the Shantel sakkri. Ever since Kadee and Vance had told me their tale, I had wondered if the sakkri had deliberately manipulated events so she would end up here. Why else would the most powerful figure among the Shantel let herself be sold as a slave? This seemed like an excellent opportunity to get my question answered.
I retraced my steps, and returned as quickly as I could to the west wing. The door to Jaguar’s room was locked, but that meant nothing to me; a little magic turned the mechanism, and then I stepped inside.
It was only as I reached for the latch to the back cell that I realized how wrong I had been.
The sakkri wasn’t in the cell, as I expected, but sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main room with her head bowed as if in meditation. I had walked right past her at first, because she had barely registered with my power. She was hollow.
It’s been less than a month, I thought. How had the trainer done this much damage, so quickly?
“Sakkri?” I asked.
She didn’t respond. I reached for her with my magic, and found a void where hers should have been, like the hole left behind when a storm rips a tree up by the roots.
I knelt in front of her, touching her hand to try to get her attention. Her eyes opened and she looked at me placidly.
“Sakkri?” I said again.
“No.” I frowned, puzzled. “I was,” she said, “but I severed my connection to the land. Three times. In blood, in land, in name.”
“I don’t understand.” Kadee had said something about the sakkri attacking a member of the Shantel royal house, despite being forbidden from violence and bloodshed, in order to force them to sell her to Midnight. Could that have burned her power from her?
“I am where I need to be,” she said. “Please…don’t ask me for anything else.” Her voice broke on the last words, revealing emotion for the first time.
She closed her eyes again, and I obeyed her wishes, backing out of the room as a chill settled over me.
In the hall, I just stood and stared at Jaguar’s door, trying but unable to make any sense of what I had just seen. One thing I was sure of: it wasn’t just an act for the trainer’s benefit. The sakkri might not be broken yet by Midnight’s standards, but her own power had gutted her.
I shuddered, and my gaze moved to the next door down the hall. I sensed no vampire behind it, but knew that the victims of my sins were surely there: the hawk, and the cobra. Helplessly, I reached for the knob. I didn’t think about what Gabriel would do to me if he found me in his rooms, only about how I needed to know what was left of the first woman I had sold, my brother’s last companion.
Hara was probably locked away in the back cell. Alasdair, who the trainer now called Ashley, was curled up asleep in bed with her aureate hair pooled on the pillow around her porcelain face. There were no bruises visible on her flesh, but most of her was concealed beneath blankets. Besides, I had seen plenty of blows, plenty of her blood, through Shkei’s eyes. I didn’t need to see evidence now in order to know the extent of her suffering.
I stepped closer and her eyes fluttered open, golden lashes framing eyes an even deeper copper. She regarded me first with sleepy confusion, and then with fear as she sat up, holding the blankets around herself as she asked, “Can I help you?”
I want to help you, I thought in reply.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
I didn’t want her to, and I hoped she didn’t.
She looked at me, and frowned. I felt my magic waver, as something in her reached out, trying to focus. It was more than I had felt from the sakkri. After a moment, Ashley shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Should I?”
We did not get further before a strong hand gripped the back
of my neck hard enough to weaken all my muscles. As my knees collapsed, Gabriel flung me down so that my skull struck the marble floor.
Breath knocked from my lungs and my vision swirling, I was barely aware as he asked Ashley, “Are you all right?”
I did not hear her speak.
“Malachi, you should remove yourself from here,” Gabriel suggested.
I half crawled and half stumbled out the door without waiting for my vision to clear. I was foolhardy and often stupid, but even I knew that when a trainer was in a good enough mood to offer a second chance, you should take it. Otherwise he would need to make a point out of principle, and freeblood laws were much less protective once someone put himself in a trainer’s territory.
In the hall, I tried to make sense of what I had felt. In those few moments before Gabriel had interrupted, I could have sworn I could feel a free mind, not just the resignation of a broken slave.
Was that a fantasy, a self-deception? A lie my own power fed me to keep me from despair, as if saving this woman would undo all the sins related to her enslavement?
I knew her as a brave, powerful woman, both from my own memories and from the visions I had seen through my brother’s eyes after she was sold to Gabriel. That woman was long gone. She had to be; she had belonged to the trainer since last November, over half a year ago. What I was sensing was probably just an echo of my own visions and wishes.
I was still sitting against the wall of the hallway, struggling to catch my breath, when a pair of vampires approached. I did not go to my knees, but neither did I rise, and obligingly Jeshickah and her cohort ignored me.
“Kendra was not happy with the result of your last meeting,” the man reported. “She is threatening to move to Silver’s side.”
Jeshickah’s guest had similar coloring as Vance, dark skin with a rusty hue, and thick black hair. The resemblance was sufficient for me to guess at his identity: Theron.
Theron wasn’t Azteka, but had been born among the humans who called themselves the Mexica, from whom the Azteka had descended. He was a powerful figure in Midnight, one of the few mercenaries who had not been changed by Jeshickah and did not owe her any particular allegiance. He often spoke for Kendra’s line—that volatile group of immortal artists—and was regarded as someone who was more reasonable than most of his line, but not to be trifled with.
Jeshickah shook her head. “I hurt Kendra’s pride, and she is not a woman who tolerates that lightly, but Silver and his little castle will hurt her art, and she will not tolerate that at all. His line’s attempt to gain power is like an ancient feudal castle trying to control its serfs. It makes no attempt to trade, or communicate, or—” At last she glanced down at me to say, “Malachi, don’t clutter the hallways.” I pulled my legs closer to myself, sitting cross-legged so she would not need to step over me, and she turned back to her companion. “Kendra and her line are posturing. They think Silver’s offer is better because he proposes more freedom and fewer restrictions. Kendra thinks she can use that as a bargaining chip when she deals with me. She learned last time that she was mistaken, that is all. Come, let’s sit. Malachi, fetch us a platter.”
I considered objecting, but it wasn’t worth a broken rib. Besides, this sounded like a conversation worth overhearing. Who was Silver? Was there already someone in play who might be able to compete with Midnight? Was he the one who had hired Nathaniel? And more importantly, would he be any better for the shapeshifters than Midnight was?
I hurried to obey so I could return and continue listening. When it was Jeshickah and a vampiric guest, a “platter” meant a combination of fruit, chocolate, wine, and two slaves from the current feeding pool to serve it. Tasty foods appealed to the vampiric palate, but they did not provide sustenance. That came in just one form, and only ran through living veins.
“Brina?” Jeshickah was saying incredulously as I returned with the snacks. “Brina thinks new things are fun, but she will turn on them as soon as she realizes those ancients do not know what royal indigo hue is, much less where to acquire it.”
Now that I knew a conspiracy against Midnight was actively emerging, it was interesting to note that the leader of the most hated empire in existence still found the concept that people might turn against her utterly absurd. She clearly dismissed the shapeshifters as an insignificant threat on their own despite—or perhaps because of—recent unsuccessful assassination attempts, and had no doubts about the loyalty of her own kind. Surely there had been some hints, somewhere. Had Nathaniel been feeding Jeshickah false information to make her more confident? Or was she so arrogant that she ignored any signs of rebellion she saw?
Or was she right?
I took a seat on the floor next to the couch where Jeshickah sat, and continued to listen.
“She—” Jeshickah didn’t question my presence, but Theron paused, and said, “I don’t believe I’m familiar with this particular member of your staff, Jeshickah.”
“Malachi isn’t on my payroll,” Jeshickah answered. “He’s more like a stray cat who wanders in and out when he likes and doesn’t know better than to bite the hand that feeds him.”
Her guest’s face registered amusement. “Do you have many of those?”
“A few. They serve their purpose, and do no harm.”
“Except when they bite?”
“Especially when they bite,” Jeshickah replied, laughing. She reached down to pet my hair, just as she might reach toward the cat she had referred to me as. The contact—the barest acknowledgment—still had the ability to thrill me just a bit. A reflex; that’s all it was when my heart skipped a beat. A memory, from years when a gentle acknowledgment from this woman meant everything, meant I had a reason to exist.
“He isn’t human,” Theron observed.
“Half falcon, half serpent,” Jeshickah replied. “Unfortunately, the falcon magic didn’t take strongly in the product, and the father did not survive long, so I was unable to test other variations.” Did not survive long. My father had gone mad, as falcons tended to do even in the best of circumstances. He had nearly killed me and my mother both. It was one of my earliest memories. Jeshickah added, “He seems to have thrived better in the wild, so to speak, than he did in captivity. He has something of a leadership role in the Obsidian guild. They sold us a hawk last winter, and about a week ago they gave Nathaniel a cobra, essentially free of charge.”
The mercenary looked at me, and said, “Come here.” He was either intrigued because of my falcon heritage, or else he was accurately suspicious about my interest in their conversation—or both, of course.
Most people would have been concerned. Vampires could read thoughts.
They could read them even better when blood flowed, a fact that was not lost on me as Theron pulled me close and brushed the long strands of diamond-white hair back from my throat. He was gentler than most as he cradled the back of my head in one hand, guiding me to bare my throat.
“ARE YOU HURT?” Shkei asked, rising to his feet. “Physically, I mean.” Anyone in this place would be hurt in spirit and heart.
As he moved closer, Shkei realized that she was too warm to be human. She had to be avian, a bird shapeshifter, which meant that someone—probably someone she knew, maybe even trusted or loved—had sold her into this place. Yes, she had been hurt.
“I’m not injured,” she answered. Her voice was soft, precise, modulated, as if she had been trained how to speak. All avians were taught to control their emotions, but her lyrical cadence hinted at further education.
He touched her cheek and she jumped, so he drew back, reminding himself that avians didn’t touch casually or for comfort.
She followed, reaching for him in the darkness.
“I hate the dark,” she confided, the polished tone momentarily supplanted by something more honest. “I’m sorry. I never asked your name.”
“I’m Shkei,” he answered.
She leaned against him, so warm compared to the cold cell and loneliness. He tried n
ot to let her hear him sigh. It was pure evil that he felt even momentarily grateful that another living being had been put into this hell.
Grateful…and at the same time, full of hatred as he imagined the people who had put her here.
—
My shame as I felt my brother’s revulsion at what we had done to Alasdair far outweighed any discomfort I had about giving blood, though among freeblood shapeshifters I was in the minority.
Others often saw giving blood to be a shameful act, but it meant nothing more to me than sweeping a floor or cooking a meal in this place would have. It helped that, unlike most people, I had no reason to fear the mental invasion that often accompanied it. The particular mixture in my blood turned my mind to a swirling, hallucinogenic vortex—Jaguar’s description, from years ago—from which no thoughts could be read.
The pain was brief.
The pleasure of having one’s blood drawn was sweet, and seemed to last forever. The touch of the mercenary’s mind was enough to make it clear he was from the artists’ line despite his profession. He did his best to roll my mind, and I went into the haze willingly, letting myself drift in currents of music and light and color without concern.
When it ended, I regained myself quickly. A vampire’s hold could not begin to touch the whispers of a falcon’s magic, which I needed to navigate and ignore every instant of my life. Quite the opposite, since most vampires who tasted my blood tended to become incautious and impulsive afterward.
Theron fell backward into the soft, welcoming armchair, releasing me too late to keep me from toppling briefly onto his lap before I righted myself and found a seat on the floor instead. His hand followed me, as if seeking more, and I felt his fingers idly toying with my hair.
I leaned toward him with a silent sigh, justifying it as a means of further dulling his suspicions, though I had personal motives as well. Since Farrell had brought me into the Obsidian guild, I had been raised in a culture that valued touch, but when I was a child, skin-to-skin contact had always brought overwhelming visions. By the time I could control my visions, even newcomers to the guild viewed me as something different, a half-falcon prophet instead of a person, untouchable and remote.