Dark Swan Comic 1-4

  Once free of him, I turned on the next one who came at me. He was smart enough to strike out at my gun hand, attempting to neutralize that threat. I slashed at him with the other hand, the one holding the athame. He flinched at the feel of iron, and I used that momentary weakness to grab him and shove him into the wall with my elbow. He collapsed to the floor, and a sharp kick to the gut made sure he stayed down.

  I saw the spirits engaged in battle nearby, shoving and fighting with a strength that was literally inhuman. Two other men had been subdued or killed by them, and they now fought a third. That left two. One lunged at me, and I shot him, the gun’s report loud in the small room. He fell backward, and I fired again, still not trusting gentry healing on their own turf.

  I started to look for the last guy when I heard a small whimper on the far side of the room. I turned, pausing. It was her. Jasmine Delaney.

  She was smaller and slighter than I’d thought she’d be. A long white gown covered her body, and she wrapped its voluminous folds around herself as she huddled in the corner. Lank, reddish blond hair nearly covered her face, but it couldn’t hide her eyes. They were enormous and gray, filled with fear. They stood out sharply against her pale, gaunt face. Seeing my gaze upon her, she cringed further.

  Anger boiled within me. And pity. I knew she was fifteen, but in that moment, she looked about ten. She was a child. And she was trapped here, taken against her will. Hotter and fiercer my rage grew. I needed to make her captor pay, to let him know he couldn’t just—

  My moment of emotion cost me. In those seconds I’d spent staring at her, I’d lost the last man. I felt a blade at my throat and realized I’d let him sneak up behind me.

  “If you want to live,” he said, “drop your weapons and call off your servants.”

  I didn’t really think I’d live if I did that, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t if I didn’t. So I did as he asked.

  Yet, it wasn’t entirely clear to me what this one guy could really do alone. A moment later, I had my answer as another man entered. Immediately, I knew he was Aeson. For one thing, the others had been dressed in a sort of uniform. He was not. He wore deep burgundy pants tucked into thigh-high boots made of black leather. A shirt of black silk clothed his upper body, billowing and gleaming. His gray-streaked brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, and a circlet of gold sat on his head. His face was long and narrow, with a mouth destined for good sneers. Arrogant or not, Dorian had never worn a crown in his own keep, I realized. There had been no need. His kingship was obvious to all.

  Two guards followed Aeson, and upon seeing the situation, he sent one for backup. And here we’d been doing so well in evening the odds.

  “If I’d realized you would decimate my men in minutes, I would have had the whole garrison up here,” Aeson remarked. He leaned toward me, touching my cheek. “It really is you. Eugenie Markham. I can’t believe I finally have you.”

  I tried to squirm from that touch, but I had nowhere to go, not with a blade at my throat. My minions waited, tense, willing to do whatever I asked. Yet, I feared unleashing them might put Jasmine at risk—and my own throat.

  “You have her,” said a shaking voice from the hall. “I did what I said. Now give me Jasmine.”

  Moving my eyes, I stared in astonishment. Wil floated in the doorway. He must have followed us after all. He looked at Aeson expectantly. An uneasy feeling built up within me, and everything clicked into place.

  “You traitorous son of a bitch!”

  Ignoring my outrage, Wil turned pleading eyes to Aeson. “Please. I brought you Eugenie. I kept my part of the deal.”

  “Yes,” said Aeson without even looking at the other man. “You did. And I will keep my word—momentarily.”

  He kept studying me like I was some kind of treasure or artifact. Like I was the eighth wonder of the world. I appreciated the boost to my ego, but the look in his eyes was actually kind of creeping me out.

  “Aeson—” tried Wil again.

  “Shut up,” snapped the king, still staring at me. The hand on my cheek slipped down and cupped my chin. He smiled, but it was a cold smile, one that didn’t meet his eyes. In the corner, I heard Jasmine make a distraught sound. “After all this time, after so much waiting, I can finally beget the heir.”

  The statement was so ludicrous as to simply bounce off of me without comprehension. “Either kill me or let me go. I hate these idiotic soliloquies.”

  The entranced look on his face suddenly sharpened, and he blinked. “You…you have no idea, do you?” When I didn’t answer, he started laughing so hard, I thought tears would form in his eyes. “I’ve tried so hard to get you, and you never even knew. You really don’t know.”

  “Know what?” I asked impatiently.

  “Who your father is.”

  I didn’t really appreciate the Star Wars–esque routine. “Roland Markham is my father. And the next time I see him, we’re going to come back and kick your ass together. If I don’t do it now.”

  “The next time you see him, you should ask him for the truth about you and Storm King.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with Storm King.”

  “He’s your father, girl. Roland Markham is a murderer and a thief. How could you not have known?”

  He might as well have been speaking a foreign language. “Maybe because you’re insane. And because I’m human.”

  “Are you? Funny. You function in this world as easily as one of the shining ones. I’ve never met a human who could.”

  “Maybe I’m gifted.”

  I had on my bitch-bravado face, but his words were sneaking into me. I’ve heard that the soul often recognizes truth when it hears it, even if the mind does not. Maybe that was what was happening. My logical self was still being stubborn, but something…something in his words tickled the back of my mind. It was like some image lay there, covered in a black veil, waiting for me to lift it.

  “You are gifted. More than you know.” He brushed my hair out of my face. “Soon I will give you the greatest gift of your life. I’ll redeem you for being a blood traitor.”

  “Shut up.” The keres had called me a blood traitor too. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why do you look so pale? Admit it. You’ve always known. You’ve always been alone.”

  “Everyone feels alone.”

  “Not like you do. Rest easy, though. You won’t be lonely much longer. I would have taken you to my bed even if you were ugly, but now that I’ve seen you—”

  There were a lot of ways to have your maniacal tirade cut short, but being attacked by a fox was a new one. I didn’t even know where it came from. One minute, Aeson was babbling on about having his way with me, and the next, a red fox was leaping out at him, claws and teeth bared. I’d never thought of a fox as a really dangerous animal, but this one looked lethal. It was the size of a German shepherd, and it hit Aeson like a tank. Its claws left scratches on his face.

  The guard holding me released me to help his master, and I retrieved my gun. I fired on him just as he was about to pry the fox from Aeson. It wasn’t a killing shot, but it distracted him, halting his progress. I grabbed the wounded guard and threw him as far as the difference in our body weights would allow. He collapsed into a pile, and I shot him again. I turned toward Aeson to check the fox’s progress, but the fox was no longer holding the king down.

  Kiyo was.

  My mouth dropped open. Kiyo. The black hair curled behind his ears, and I could see his muscles straining as he struggled with Aeson, his hands wrapped around the king’s throat. Fire flared up from Aeson’s fingertips, and I heard Kiyo grunt in response. I started to go to him without conscious thought, but he yelled at me to get Jasmine.

  Jasmine. Of course. The reason I was here.

  I dragged my eyes from the face I’d been obsessing on for the past week and approached the girl in the corner. I didn’t think she could move any farther against the wall, yet she seemed to do so with ea
ch step I took.

  “Jasmine,” I said, leaning over and trying to sound gentle despite the panic coursing through me. “I’m a friend. I’m here to help you—”

  With those pathetic eyes and worn features, I’d expected some difficulty in getting her on her feet. What I did not expect was for her to suddenly leap out and flail at me with both hands.

  “Noooo!” she screamed, her shrill voice grating against my ears. I recoiled, not because of the threat she represented but because of the damage I could potentially cause her. “Aeson!” She ran to the struggling men and started beating fists on Kiyo’s back. I suspected they had about the same effect as a fly landing on him. He transformed into a fox, and her blows fell on Aeson instead. I reached for her in that moment of surprise, but she was too small and too fast. She slipped away from me and everyone else in the room, and ran out the door before any of us could stop her.

  “Jasmine!” I yelled, my cries echoed by Wil as I ran to the door. Kiyo and Aeson still fought, and some distant part of me noted how Kiyo slipped in and out of fox and human forms as Aeson used fire magic against him.

  “Eugenie,” gasped Kiyo, “get out of here. Now.”

  “Jasmine—” I began.

  “The girl is gone, mistress,” said Volusian. “The kitsune is right. We need to get out of here. Cut your losses.”

  “No.” I stuck my head out the door. Jasmine was not in sight. Over a dozen or so guards running down the hall were, however.

  “Eugenie!” It was Kiyo again. “Run!”

  “Yes, Storm Daughter,” laughed Aeson, blood running out of his nose. “Run home. Ask Roland Markham who your father is.”

  “You bastard—” I wanted to lunge at him, to help Kiyo, but Finn grabbed me.

  “Jump now. Back to your world.”

  The pounding boots in the hall were almost upon us.

  “I can’t. Not from here. I don’t have an anchor.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He glanced over at Wil, who hung there, translucent and utterly useless. If it had been up to me, I would have left Wil and his betraying ass here to be destroyed, but suddenly he had a purpose.

  Seeing my uncertain look, Kiyo said, “I’ll go as soon as you do. They’re here!”

  And they were. Men pouring into the room. I probably shouldn’t have cared what happened to Kiyo, but I did. I wanted him to get out of this alive. I wanted to find Jasmine and bring her away. But the best I could do now was save my own skin.

  Invoking Hecate, I shifted my senses away from this world, reaching out to my own. While doing so, my will grabbed ahold of a startled Wil, dragging his spirit with me. A hard transition like that, without a crossroads or thin spot, theoretically could have dumped me anywhere in the human world. But I had Wil’s spirit in tow. It had no choice but to snap back to his physical body, out in the Sonora Desert. If I was strong enough.

  “Follow!” I yelled to the minions. Or maybe it was to Kiyo. I didn’t really know.

  The world shifted, my senses blurring. Crossing worlds in a convenient spot was like crossing through a wall made out of plastic sheeting. It was thin, and it took some struggling and clawing, but you could eventually get through. Jumping without a normal crossover spot, however?

  Well, that was like breaking through a brick wall.

  Chapter Eleven

  Someone was screaming in the desert, and I didn’t realize it was me until Tim raced over and grabbed my shoulders.

  “Jesus! Eugenie, what’s wrong?”

  I broke from him, dropped to my knees, and threw up into a convenient shrub. That soon gave way to endless dry heaves, my body’s distress too strong to stop. When I finally finished—it seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes—I ran my hands over my face. It felt like I had shoved my head through a window, cutting my skin to shreds. Yet, when I pulled my hands back, there was no blood.

  Apparently convinced I was done bringing up everything in my stomach, Tim carefully handed me a bottle of water. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then drank greedily. When I started to hand the bottle back, he shook his head. “Keep it. What happened?”

  “Transition shock,” came Volusian’s flat voice. “You came through the worlds too hard and too fast, mistress.”

  “You should be dead,” added Nandi. “Or at least segmented.”

  “Segmented?” asked Tim.

  I nodded and drank again. “If you’re not strong enough to make it work, only your spirit will get back here. The body stays in the Otherworld.”

  He stared. “Will that kill you?”

  “Worse.”

  “What’s worse than death?” asked a new voice. Or not so new.

  Wil. I’d forgotten about Wil.

  I leapt to my feet and spun toward him, gun drawn. Some part of me wondered if I even had bullets left. I’d changed the cartridge once in the Otherworld but couldn’t recall how many times I’d fired at Aeson’s men.

  Tim’s mouth dropped open. “Eugenie, put that away!”

  “You don’t know what he’s done. He’s a fucking backstabber.”

  Wil, sitting on the blanket he’d gone into trance on, froze, too afraid to move. But not too afraid to speak.

  “I had to. It was the only way to get Jasmine.”

  “Yeah, it worked pretty well, huh?”

  He sounded near tears. “I’d gone a year without any chance of getting her. Then that sprite cut me the deal. Said if I got you to go over, they’d give me Jasmine back. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t move the gun. “I was your only chance to get her back. If you hadn’t led us into that trap, we’d be back here with her now.”

  He groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I just wanted her so badly.” He looked back up at me. “What happened? Why did she run away? Was she scared?”

  “Maybe. Or it could be that…what’s that called? Where people help their kidnappers? Stockholm syndrome?”

  “What, like Patty Hearst? No. Jasmine wouldn’t do that.”

  I wasn’t so sure. She was young and impressionable, and Aeson struck me as a very forceful figure.

  “He’s too pathetic to kill,” observed Finn after studying Wil for a moment.

  “No harm in doing it anyway,” said Volusian. “Kill him and enslave his soul.”

  Wil’s eyes widened farther.

  “Eugenie!” Tim stared at me like I was insane. “You aren’t seriously considering that.”

  Probably not. Sighing, I lowered the gun. “Get out of here, Wil. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  He scrambled to his feet, face falling. “But Jasmine—”

  “You lost your chance. You blew it. Get in your car before I do something stupid.”

  Wil hesitated, his face pleading and upset. Then wordlessly he headed toward the trail that led out to a makeshift parking area. I watched him leave, bitter anger boiling up within me. In the distance, thunder rumbled.

  “Eugenie…” began Tim hesitantly. A slight wind ruffled his hair.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Take me home.”

  We gathered up his things and walked in the direction Wil had gone.

  “Meet me back at my house,” I told the minions. They vanished.

  Tim had enough sense to leave me alone on the car ride back. I leaned my head against the window, liking the feel of the cool glass against my fevered cheek. So many things had happened tonight, I had no idea what to fixate on first. Jasmine? Wil’s betrayal? Aeson’s stupid accusation? Kiyo?

  Yes. Kiyo was probably the safest, which was saying something. My heart had leapt at seeing him again. It was stupid, considering the way he’d used me, but my emotions didn’t appear to realize that yet. Why? Why did he have this pull on me when I barely knew him? I didn’t believe in love at first sight.

  And what about the fox thing? I knew of no gentry who could do that, but I did know shape-shifters filled the Otherworld. I’d fought some before but never
a fox. Seemed like a weird choice. Perhaps that explained why he hadn’t felt gentry. He was something else, not gentry but still Otherworldly. Not much of an improvement.

  I left Tim as soon as we got home, seeking out the solitude of my room. Well, as much solitude as I could get with the three spirits waiting for me. I threw myself onto the bed, leaning into the corner where the bed sat against the wall. Exhaustion ran through me, and I did and said nothing, staring into the darkness. Thunder rumbled again but seemed fainter now, like the storm had changed its mind. The spirits simply waited and watched me.

  “Tell me what just happened.”

  “Um, which part?” asked Finn after a minute.

  “Any of it. Tell me what Kiyo is. The fox.”

  “Oh.” Finn seemed relieved to have a question he could answer. “He’s a kitsune. Japanese fox spirit.”

  “Roland taught me hundreds of magical creatures. Never heard of a kitsune.”

  “You don’t find them around here much,” explained Finn. “And they’re not really dangerous.”

  “He looked dangerous enough to me.”

  “They carry animal traits into human form,” said Volusian. “Strength. Speed. A certain sense of aggression.”

  I thought about sex with Kiyo. Yeah. That had been pretty aggressive. I closed my eyes.

  “Why would he mark me and then follow me?”

  “I do not know.”

  It figured.

  “Anything else I should know about him? About them?”

  “They’re usually female. Men are rare. Perhaps his human blood affected that,” said Nandi in her emotionless voice.

  “Half-human? Oh. His mother was the kitsune,” I mused, recalling him talking about his parents.

  “Yeah,” agreed Finn. “The women are supposed to be pretty hot. Like sirens. Real seductive. Men can’t stay away from them.”

  “Like a drug,” added Volusian.