“Bloody fucking hell, that bastard is beneath the abbey!” Ryodan exploded.
“What abbey?” Roison said.
I shot him a dark look. “When Balor woke up, he never left. He stayed put in the one place he knew the Fae would never come, building his army, absorbing power, right beneath our bloody feet. That’s how he got our sidhe-seers. They weren’t abducted at Elyreum. He either took them on their way back in late at night or simply came up and grabbed them while they slept. That son of a bitch planned to get strong enough to destroy us all, while being protected by us, then kill us and go after the Fae!”
“But wouldn’t you have heard the chanting and screaming?” Roison said.
“Not as deep as our underground city goes, no. I’m not even sure we would have heard him in the cavern the Sinsar Dubh once occupied, if the door was closed. Everything is solid rock and most of it dozens of feet thick.” Damn the Shedon for not letting us explore the Underneath! I thought as I yanked out my phone and fired off a text to Kat:
GET EVERYONE OUT OF THE ABBEY. WE THINK BALOR IS BENEATH IT
“I’m coming, too,” Roisin said instantly.
“You’ll slow us down,” Ryodan said curtly.
I agreed with him on that score and told her so. “Sit tight and wait. I promise to text you the moment we kill him. We’ll find your family, Roisin, I promise.”
I didn’t tell her I was afraid there was nothing we could do for them once we did. The feeling I’d gotten from Balor was once you lost your soul, it was a done deal. Souls weren’t pickles that could be stuffed back into a jar. Especially not as brutally as he’d tried to wrench mine from my body. Then there was the whole annihilating of personality facet once he had them. He’d felt like a massive pulping blender, breaking down souls into fundamental nutrients to fuel himself as if humans were his protein powder.
As we stalked from the flat, Ryodan shot off a text to Christian, a second to Lor, telling him and the others to meet us at the abbey, and a third to Barrons, though I doubted he’d be joining us. Protecting Mac from Fae attack was paramount.
We had this. One way or another.
You promised. You’re the last resort, Dani, Ryodan reminded tightly.
I nodded.
I heard that, he snapped.
I smiled faintly. Did not. I didn’t say it. Boundaries, remember?
You fucking felt it.
We’re going to have to make a few more rules, I said lightly. One of them is you can’t hold me responsible for my feelings if I don’t voice them. What he’d picked up was my unshakable sense of inevitability. As if this day, whatever was about to happen, had been aimed at me, trying to collide with me for a long time, and it was…well, I don’t believe in fate but I do believe in actions and reactions. Years ago I’d made an action. The repercussions from it were bearing down on me like a cat-five hurricane whose course couldn’t be altered.
I was ready. Whatever happened. Next adventure.
Fearless as always. I felt his warmth, his respect, his constant, steady love.
It’s all I know to be.
You’re like us in that. Becoming a beast was meant as a curse. But if I could go back to that day and choose again, I’d do exactly the same. Live forever like this? Fuck, yes.
I gasped. He’d never spoken to me of anything to do with his origins. Does that mean one day you’ll tell me?
Tell me something you missed about me, he evaded.
Everything, I admitted finally. Half the colors vanished from my world and I couldn’t breathe right until you returned.
Say it, Stardust. I want to hear it.
I love you, Ryodan Killian St. James. Any name, any form. Always.
Pure joy blazed inside my soul, warming me to the core.
* * *
π
Tucked beneath a base molding in the living room of the flat, one of countless roaches flooding every nook and cranny of Dublin retracted its antennae and sent a silent message back to its counterparts in the cavern, letting Gustaine know the auspicious news that the woman Balor sought had been located.
And was headed straight for him.
I curse the stars that take you away
BALOR HAD ALREADY TAKEN the abbey by the time we got there.
We’d originally headed for the main gate but, a half mile away, we heard the chanting of thousands of Balor’s zombies and circled around to the back. We’d abandoned the Hummer behind a tall labyrinth of hedges where we now crouched, with Lor and the rest of the Nine who were already in beast form.
We eased around the side of the fortress toward the battle raging on the front lawn. It reminded me too much of another battle, between the Fae and us, when I’d melted down and raced back into the burning abbey to save a stuffed animal. The night Ryodan had charred himself to the bone to save me.
The lawn was filled with nearly a thousand sidhe-seers battling ten times that number of Balor’s zombies, slashing and hacking their way through the crowd. It was horrific, humans fighting blank-eyed humans, and I knew every sidhe-seer out there was fighting their own innate instincts to do it. We’re programmed to kill Fae and protect humans. Yet these humans were tightly controlled killing machines Balor had loosed on us with instructions to destroy.
Balor himself was on the lawn—bloody hell, he was enormous! Over twenty feet tall, clad in billowing black—lumbering through the crowd, mask shoved up on his head, that terrible, enormous eye revealed as he bent, snatched sidhe-seers into the air by an arm as if they were dolls, drank their souls, then flung them to the ground like broken toys.
I snarled, hands fisting. There was no way I was staying out of this fight. I lunged forward, only to feel Ryodan’s hand close on my wrist like a manacle.
You promised.
My sisters are dying!
Give us a chance.
“Kill him!” Ryodan snarled. He surged forward, transforming effortlessly, and eight beasts melted into battle, determined to take Balor down.
Scowling, hands fisted, I stayed melted into the side of the abbey, holding my breath, feeling raw power roiling inside me, demanding to be used, demanding that I do what I was born to do.
I heard that, he snarled. Stay put.
Then the Nine exploded out of nowhere, vaulting airborne, landing on the titanic god, ripping with lethal fangs at his flesh.
I knew which one was Ryodan, I could feel him now, and, as I watched, he hurled himself into the air and went straight for Balor’s face, primal jaws wrenching impossibly wide, closing on the god’s flesh, fangs sinking deep.
Balor roared, kicking and swatting at the many beasts tearing into him, howling with rage and pain. Abruptly, he focused solely on Ryodan, closing enormous hands around his throat and squeezing.
My heart clenched. I could feel Ryodan’s pain as those massive fists closed tighter and tighter. Felt like I couldn’t breathe, too. Could feel that whatever Ryodan usually did to kill the Fae wasn’t working on Balor.
Get off him now! I thundered inside Ryodan’s head. Get all of the Nine off him. It’s not working!
But Ryodan sank his fangs deeper into Balor’s face, despite the horrific sense of strangulation I could feel him suffering, ignoring me, and I suddenly understood he was trying to drain the life-force from the god, the way Barrons had sucked the Sinsar Dubh from the Unseelie princess’s body, and I knew at the precise moment he did that it wasn’t working. Whatever gods were made of, it wasn’t the same as Fae.
The Nine couldn’t kill them.
It didn’t surprise me. I’d had a strange unshakable sense of fate riding me like a bitch all day.
I was willing to bet I could.
I inhaled deep and slow, embracing my power, calling to the Hunter within, beckoning, welcoming it. Fill me, take me, I’m ready, I willed. Whatever the price.
Energy slammed into me like a fist to my heart and my entire body bristled electric. I couldn’t get a shot at the god with the beasts in the way without taking one of them out, and although they’d return if Balor killed them, there was a good chance they wouldn’t if I hit them with a Hunter bolt.
Get everyone off Balor, I snarled at Ryodan. Now, I said!
I could feel every emotion he was feeling. Fury, grief, rage, sorrow, denial.
He didn’t say I’ll miss that beautiful body of yours, although I felt it.
And I didn’t say I’m afraid you won’t keep loving a dragon, although he felt it.
We’re both too pragmatic for that. We do what needs to be done.
As the Nine dropped away, as Ryodan tore himself from Balor’s grasp, I quit being the wallflower I simply can’t be and strode into battle with fire in my blood, war in my heart, and extreme high voltage in my veins.
My first lightning bolt caught Balor in the chest, slamming him backward, nearly taking him off his feet.
The power inside me felt so much bigger now! And I knew with soul-deep knowing that there was no coming back from it this time. No second chances. I was going to be a Hunter when this was through.
Roaring, Balor spun to face me, stabbed me with that lethal soul-sucking gaze and began to tug at my soul.
To my surprise nothing happened. I couldn’t even feel him trying to take it. I’d moved beyond his reach. Guess I wasn’t quite human anymore.
I saw the look of astonishment on his face and laughed as I stalked nearer, shoving his zombies out of my way. I slammed him with bolt after bolt, in his chest, in his face, singeing and charring him, yet that damned eye remained unaffected.
Then the bastard dropped the mask back down over his eye and I heard Ryodan say, It’s not enough, Dani. You’re not letting go. You have to let go of everything. Become the next thing. He didn’t say Let go of me, but I heard it and he was right. I was still resisting with a tiny part of me, not wanting to become something that would forever separate me from the people I loved.
I had to embrace the transition fully, accept that I was dying, so a new me could be born.
Love you, Stardust. Always. Across space and time. No ending. New beginnings.
Sorrow welled inside me. This was not what I’d planned. This was not the life I’d wanted for myself. I wiped angrily at tears icing my cold black cheeks.
New beginnings, I sent back along our bond, with a wordless expression of how I felt about him. How I’d always felt about him.
He inhaled sharply, and cursed, Fuck. Shit. Goddamn, woman. You show me that now!
It was now or never. Every second I wasted was potentially another sidhe-seer’s soul. I flung my head back and threw my hands up to the sky, calling down power from the heavens. I poised on the brink of becoming something else, something so alien I couldn’t even fathom it. But it was time and it was my destiny and the stars awaited. I AM HUNTER! I roared silently. I ACCEPT. I WANT THIS. I COMMIT.
My body raged with raw high voltage, I became high voltage, I quivered electric with unspeakable power, focused and hurled it all at Balor’s eye in one furious bolt.
The god’s head exploded in a shower of—
I would always open up the door, always looking up at higher floors
STARS.
Millions, maybe trillions of them glittering on a vast, eternal black palette.
I was soaring at superluminal velocity, headed straight for a fantastical pink, gold, purple, and orange cluster of nebulae.
This time was different. In the past I’d always felt oddly disembodied.
I didn’t now. I flexed my hand and glanced down. I had a hoof of sorts with black talons. It was steaming like dry ice, leaving a trail of sparkling frost in my wake. I glanced back over my shoulder and simply stared for a long moment.
I had the body of an enormous black, leathery skinned and scaled, icy, majestic dragon.
Holy hell, I was a Hunter.
I glanced right and left to see my beautiful wings. Though I’d known it was going to happen, knowing wasn’t the same as seeing.
I was no longer human. And never would be again. This was my body now.
I focused on curving one of my wings. It not only obeyed, it nearly sent me into a tailspin. I snapped it rigid and pulled out of it moments before crashing into a small meteor sailing by.
Oh, God, I was in space.
I was a Hunter.
It was too much to process. I’d been too quickly ripped out of one reality and crammed into another.
My body was gone. My red hair, my arms, my legs, all of it. Just gone. Forever. I would never lace up sneakers on my feet again. Never slip into a sexy dress and high heels. Never gorge on Pop-Tarts, or access my brand of the slipstream. Never pet Shazam with a hand.
They say we deal with death in stages. I always thought I’d belly up a laugh and plunge into it fearlessly, but now I felt appallingly normal for the first time in my life, as I flashed instantly to denial. “I can’t be this. Send me back!” I protested. My words came out as a deep, resonant gonging, not words at all. Where were the Hunters? They’d come in the past. Why weren’t they here now?
Anger reared its fiery red head. “You can’t do this to me! I had a life!”
Silence.
In case they were nearby, listening, I moved to the next stage: bargaining: “Please! I just need to see Ryodan one more time, and I need to tell Shazam what happened! I’m not ready!”
You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.
The voice echoed inside my head and I turned to find a great black Hunter dropping into flight pattern beside me.
A huge Hunter! Twenty times my size. I was tiny in comparison.
It chuffed with laughter. You’ve just been born. What did you expect? It will be eons before you’re fully grown.
I blinked, suffering a mind-bending disconnect. Part of me was still human, back on Earth, torn from battle, desperate to know if I’d succeeded in killing Balor, desperate to see Ryodan and Shazam, to know which of my sisters I’d lost. Another part of me was simply stupefied, trying to process and accept that I was a Hunter now. I had a new body that, fortunately, seemed to understand instinctively how to fly itself.
“Where did my other body go?” I boomed.
The Hunter snorted a tendril of fire. Silly question. Part of you.
“I need to know if I killed—”
Balor is dead.
“How do you know?”
I’ve been watching you.
I turned my (dragon!) head and peered into its fiery orange gaze. “Why?”
Protecting you. We nest our eggs.
“I’m not an egg,” I said indignantly.
You were. Now you’re Hunter.
“You mean because I stabbed one? Is that the deal—if someone kills a Hunter, they have to become one?”
Have to? Hardly. Hunter is a privilege. We don’t birth children. We choose them. Our chosen must then choose to become one of us or not. You could have walked away at any point. You chose not to.
I blinked, pondering that, unable to argue. I have a fatal flaw: more weapons to protect my world seduces me. I’d hungered for the gargantuan power of a Hunter. I’d been enticed by the possibility of such astronomical adventures. In a deep, wordless place inside I’d been insatiably curious about what was happening to me. It’s always been one of my downfalls, leading me from one extreme situation to the next.
During the past two years when I’d been so alone, I’d have plunged headlong into the transition.
But my family was back. I was in love. I had a life and a world and a Hel-Cat that needed me.
Each time you turned black, you didn’t reject it. You found it curious, intriguing. When you began to transform, you welcomed it, always staring
up at the stars. That’s what I felt in you the day you stabbed me. You’re made of stardust, destined for the skies. You belong here, with us.
I gaped at the giant Hunter that seemed somehow feminine to me. “You’re the one I stabbed?”
She turned her head and smiled, thin black lips peeling back from saber teeth and bobbed her great leathery black head. I am Y’rill. I have been waiting to see if you would become one of us for many years. Keeping you alive when I could. If a dragon could look abashed, Y’rill did then. I broke many rules for you, Dani O’Malley.
“I thought I killed you.”
Can’t. We die only if we choose to become the next thing.
“What?” I demanded suspiciously, wanting to know just what was in store for me next.
It is within us to one day become planets. Your Earth was once a Hunter. You, Dani O’Malley, are one of our chosen. It is a great honor.
But my people! I peered down through space, seeing only unfamiliar moons and worlds. No sign of Earth. I had no idea where I was, no real concept of up or down. It was disorienting in the extreme.
It will soon feel natural. And they are still your people if you wish, Y’rill said.
“You mean I can return and live among them as a Hunter,” I clarified. I fully intended to.
You may also live among them as a human. Half the time.
I have no idea what I did then because I didn’t have the hang of my new form, but I gave an explosive whole-body jerk and suddenly I was rocketing through space in a dizzying tailspin, head over tail—Holy leaping lizards, I had a tail! A long black leathery one!
Stop fighting it, Y’rill said, chuffing softly. You can’t muscle things up here. Easy, smooth movements, small one.
I tried, I really did. Focused on merely the tips of my wings, but I was tumbling so fast and out of control that every move I tried to make generated intense friction and I couldn’t—
Dragon teeth plucked me out of freefall by the nape of my neck. Like a kitten or something, I thought crossly. Good grief, did I really have to be a child all over again?