“What shields her from our sight?”
He tried not to answer. He really did. Every ounce of his will steadfastly refused. “The mage god,” he said. His words betrayed him and his god.
“How?” the Nightmare Lord demanded.
Sartorun knew that nothing in the terran realm could shield a mortal from the sight of the Lord of the Nines. Only a god could save Raven Grey. Magus had known that nothing less would do, and in so knowing, he’d sacrificed his omniscience, dispersing his own divine essence to cocoon her and her brother in his protection.
For all intents and purposes, Magus was dead now. He’d become a Guardian, a god who died to protect a mortal. It was so rare an occurrence, it was barely more than legend. Yet, this is what Magus had done because he had faith in the chosen soul within the daughter of Malphas.
All hope rested with her. If she could not find the Phylactery and use it to reverse this war, Magus would never again rule the seat he’d once occupied, and everything would be lost.
Sartorun had known all of this the moment he’d spied the medallion around Loki Grey’s neck, yet he was sworn in that knowledge to keep it to himself.
“He… sacrificed himself,” he choked out. It was like watching someone else say these things, in some other body that wasn’t his own. His voice was beginning to fade, as was his vision, when he whispered, “He is… her… Guardian.”
The darkness took him, blessedly. But even as he slipped into it, he knew he would not be allowed to remain unconscious for long. Tantibus was far from finished with him. Sartorun had been the librarian of Trimontium. There were things he might know….
Lord Astriel should have killed me, he thought whimsically as he floated away. The elf king would have been wise to do away with such a source of knowledge, for it had now literally fallen into the wrong hands.
Chapter Eight
“Spriggans live in ruins like this,” said Loki, as he picked up his sword and eyed their surroundings with a careful wariness.
Raven looked from him to the remains of a set of buildings that must have been constructed thousands of years ago. Not much of the original minute detailing could be seen beneath the years of wear the ruins had suffered. Forest had more or less taken over the area, not only around the ruins, but atop them, and sometimes from beneath them, forcing foundations to rise and topple great distances from where they had originally been laid.
Holes in the walls revealed shadowy spaces beyond, and she had to admit untold beings might be waiting in those darknesses. “Why do you suppose we’re here?” she asked as they started toward them together.
“That’s a very good question,” came a new voice. It was deep and gruff, clearly coming from a set of large lungs. Raven indistinctly felt she recognized it.
“That’s no spriggan,” Loki whispered. He reached over his shoulder for the hilt of his sword.
Raven’s gaze narrowed on the shadows between two buildings as a deeper, darker shadow filled them. He stepped out from that darkness, a cast iron pan in one meaty grip, a piece of flint in the other. He’d clearly been interrupted in the process of building a fire, likely for a meal.
“Grolsch!” Raven exclaimed, unbelievably happy to see a familiar face in this unfamiliar place and time. She had recognized his voice!
He was dressed just as he’d been the last time she’d seen him, in brown leathers and padded armor, with silver rings along the outer rim of one ear, and some sort of tooth or claw pendant on a leather string around his neck.
The outfit was admittedly more worn than it had been a year ago. It was stained, and torn in some places. Grolsch had seen some action in the moons since they’d parted.
But when she addressed him, the green-skinned, six-foot-something ork narrowed his gaze at her, and dropped both pan and flint before his now-free right hand slid tentatively toward the handle of the massive axe he carried across his back.
Raven recognized that, too. It was one of the axes Loki had pulled from the wall in the temple of Haledon what felt like an eternity ago.
“How do you know me?” the ork asked warily, every muscle in his tall, green body visibly tensed.
“Come on, Grolsch,” Loki said, his voice a touch bewildered. “It’s us.”
Grolsch eyed him with keen distrust.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten us after all we’ve been through,” Raven said, confused.
“I haven’t the foggiest what in Abaddon you’re talkin’ about, but you’d best be explainin’ yourselves in a hurry,” the ork growled. He pulled the axe from the sling at his back to brandish it in the waning sunlight.
Raven glanced at the axe blade, noticing the reflections visible in its shiny metal. She could see two people dressed in black in that reflection; a man and woman. But neither of them were recognizable.
She almost smacked her forehead with the sudden realization, feeling very stupid, indeed. “Loki, he doesn’t recognize us. We don’t look like ourselves.”
Loki blinked. “Oh.” They’d both forgotten.
“Loki?” Grolsch’s gaze widened first, remained that way for a few seconds, and then narrowed further. The axe turned a little in his grip. “What game are you at?” he demanded, obviously recognizing their names, but as Raven had surmised, not recognizing either of them in their disguises.
Raven took a deep breath. “Grolsch, I’m Raven.” She gestured to her brother. “That’s Loki. I know we don’t look like ourselves, but there’s a reason for that. We’re in disguise.” She waited a beat for the information to sink in. Grolsch looked from her to her brother and back again, his fingers flexing on the hilt of his weapon.
“Magus is shielding us himself.” Loki pulled the medallion out from under his armor. “See? This is the Soul Stone of Magus.”
“You’ve got boiled maggots for brains if you think I’m believin’ any of this. You’re bounty hunters, an’ you’ve done your research.” The ork looked at their clothing, as if searching for something on their armor. “But you’re not of Tanith, I see.”
Raven’s heart skipped. “Tanith?” Was he talking about Drake?
“He means we’re not wearing the seal of the Bounty Hunters of Tanith. Magus disguised us as something else, but I’d wager there are more than a few Tanith Hunters in the terran realm right now,” Loki said. “It’s quite a bounty on your head.”
Grolsch considered them both in a new kind of silence before he seemed to come to some kind of decision. “Prove it,” he said. “Prove you are who you say you are.”
“What?” they asked together.
“You want me to believe you, give me reason to.”
Loki was becoming visibly agitated. “You’re not thinking, Grolsch,” he said. “What could we possibly gain by lying to you about this?”
The massive green man shrugged big shoulders. “Why, that’s easy enough. You’ve captured the bounty yourselves an’ you’re tryin’ to hide them from me.” He bared his teeth in a kind of silent warning. “Which would not be healthy for you.”
“Oh, for the love of….” Loki threw his hands in the air. “You want proof, fine. Grolsch, for one thing, I know your name. For another, I know where you got that axe, though I can’t imagine your reasons behind wanting to carry it. It’s one half of a pair of axes, and when they’re placed together, they look like the sun because they belong to the sun god, Haledon.” Loki stopped and took a deep, clearly frustrated breath, placing his hands impatiently on his hips. “You traveled with me straight into Nisse while I was carrying them.”
Then he looked at the ork askance. “Why are you using that thing, anyway? And where’s the other one? I left them on the wall of Haledon’s temple outside Trimontium.”
Grolsch straightened, and lowered the axe just enough to indicate he was considering Loki’s claims. “The temple was destroyed, as was the other axe. I found this one in a pile of rubble.”
This information had a visible impact on Loki. “Destroyed?” he repeated softly. ??
?Was anyone hurt?”
Grolsch’s big, bushy brows pressed together. “Of course,” he replied gruffly. “It’s a bloody war.” The words, “you daft imbecile,” were silently implied.
Loki’s lips parted, and his face blanched. “Summer….”
“Was there a woman by the name of Summer among the victims?” Raven asked, taking the conversation over to spare her brother the trouble.
“No women or children were harmed. Though enough were killed inside Trimontium, itself.” Grolsch twisted the axe in his hand and turned to Raven. “Answer me this,” he demanded in his deep, gravelly voice. “What’s the bounty on Raven Grey right now?”
Raven remembered the amount on the post she’d seen heading into Trimontium. “Five hundred thousand.”
Grolsch was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head, his expression softened, and he reached behind him to slide the massive axe back into its leather restraints.
“Bloody hell,” he breathed, scratching his head in something like fascination. “One last question for you then. Where in the nine circles have you two been for the last year?”
Chapter Nine
“For one thing, your bounty’s twice what you think it is now, but I figured that if you really were Raven, you’d only know what you’ve seen hangin’ on the old posts.”
Raven blanched. “You mean to tell me I’m worth –”
“A million gold,” Grolsch filled in with a crooked, toothy smile. “So yeah, there are quite a few Tanith Hunters out and about, just like you said.”
He pulled the animal he’d been cooking from the fire he’d built after all, and tore a chunk of meat off for himself before he offered the rest to Loki and Raven. Raven’s stomach churned at the sight; that Chosen Soul inside of her was still swimming around fully conscious, and it was still composed of the souls of countless animals just like this one.
“Um, thank you, but –”
Grolsch made a sound of recognition. “That’s right. I forgot. You’re squeamish.” He handed the meat to Loki, who took it without a word. Then the ork rose from the log he’d been sitting on and made his way to his bags where they rested against one wall of an abandoned, decrepit building.
Raven wagered he’d been here for a few days by the way he’d set things up. There were four saddle bags, an unrolled sleeping mat, two thick blankets, a leather tarp on wood beams over the mat to keep him dry while he slept, and of course the fire. He’d surrounded the fire with well-placed rocks, from the look of them taken from the walls of the ruins.
The ground around the camp was matted and trampled, and swept clean of debris such as small stones, sticker bushes, and anything that could be used as kindling. Part of the fallen roof overhead was blackened with the smoke of previous fires.
“You’ve been here a while?” Raven asked.
“A week more or less,” Grolsch replied, returning to hand her a loaf of baked bread wrapped in cloth, along with a small metal tin.
“Thank you,” she said. The truth was, they’d eaten in Trimontium; Sartorun had fed them, and they weren’t starving. But the truth also was, a year of not eating anything at all in Immeloria had stored up quite an appetite for them once they left it.
Raven thought she recognized the tin. “This looks like Drake’s,” she whispered. Once upon a time, the former bounty hunter responded to a bounty offered by the then-prince of the elves, Astriel. He’d captured Raven. And as they sat in a small clearing in the forest, he’d offered her strawberries from a tin exactly like the one she now held.
“It would,” Grolsch said as he re-took his seat. “It was his.” He turned to Loki. “You asked about someone named ‘Summer.’”
Loki nodded, lowering his food.
“By the time the armies arrived outside Trimontium, the priests had warned everyone they were coming, and the temples along the outskirts all cleared out but for the most stubborn acolytes. They got to die for their gods just like they wanted,” Grolsch told him.
“Summer’s alive, then,” Raven assured her brother. “She’s a smart girl. She probably relocated where everyone else went after the attack.”
Loki didn’t say anything, but he slowly took another bite of food, and chewed just as contemplatively.
Raven pulled the top off the tin box in her hands to reveal three plump, red, juicy strawberries. Memories flooded her.
“Raven, you should eat some of this.”
Her brother’s words cut through her thoughts, and Raven looked up. He was gesturing to a chunk of half-cooked meat in his hands. “You know you should.”
For an Abaddonian’s powers to replenish, the devil was required to feed. Feeding meant ingesting something that had been alive, with blood flowing through its veins. Raven knew from personal experience that it could also mean simply ingesting the blood itself. Either one would work, and one was far more enjoyable than the other. At least, for her. But it was complicated.
“Forget it,” Raven replied, feeling bile rise in her throat. “I’m not supposed to use my magic anyway.”
“Why’s that?” Grolsch asked gruffly before he stuffed a large piece of some random body part into his mouth.
“It draws attention to us,” Loki supplied, giving Raven a look of reprimand before he continued to eat. “The disguise Magus gave us won’t work against anyone with tremendous magical power, and anything Raven does to hint at who she is won’t help the situation.”
Grolsch contemplated that, then said, “Well you sure as hell don’t look like yourselves. You shouldn’t have too much trouble. Most of the people lookin’ for you don’t use magic. Bounty Hunters rely on speed and agility.” He paused. “Aside from Drake, that is. He was different.”
Raven felt a need move through her. It was deep and frightening and exciting all at once. She cleared her throat and, though she knew it would only make things worse for her, she asked, “How was he different?”
“He used speed and agility, alright,” Grolsch said. “But he wasn’t opposed to using magic too. Drake was a man of many talents. He never failed to bring in a mark. Not ever, until –” He cut off, suddenly, and his eyes shot to Raven.
“Until me.”
Grolsch shifted a little on his log and shrugged. “Everyone’s got a weakness.”
As the others continued to eat and drink, Raven was quiet, words and memories and an odd emptiness flooding her.
Finally, she shook herself free of their yoke and tore away a piece of the bread loaf. She was extremely pleased to see that it flaked and stretched when she did. That meant it was fresh. And Grolsch wouldn’t have even taken it out of his pack if she hadn’t refused the meat, so she considered it a stroke of luck. She could smell the bread too, and the tin Grolsch had borrowed from Drake offered all manner of fruit, which would change every time she closed and re-opened the lid.
Her stomach rumbled. She was secretly quite glad she was “squeamish.”
Chapter Ten
The mirror reflected his image with hellish precision, showing the King of the Nines things he didn’t want to see. Before him stood a man of indomitable stature, raven haired, tall and broad shouldered, wrapped in the garb of night, and chiseled into something dark and insurmountable by hellish experience and the summation of unparalleled powers. Intense, stormy eyes the color of melted mercury shifted into a fiery red and back again, sliding back and forth between a gaze that beckoned and one of stark warning.
There were shadows beneath those singular eyes, shades that hinted at a sleepless, mounting madness, and a desire so strong, it had become the very essence of need. More than air, more than blood, more than existence itself, was the strength of that privation. The precious object he craved and the faculties he put to work to attain it were all that defined him now. They made him who and what he was.
They drove him.
She drove him.
Into a ruthlessness that devoured the Nine Hells, chewed them up and spit them out, and laid them flat to cower before him in all o
f his dark, dark glory.
He smiled, and his reflection smiled back, baring fangs that throbbed and ached as much as the monster heart that beat in the chest of the beast that had become king. He yearned to the point of pain. He had for years.
He had every right to do as he did, be as he was. He was driven, after all.
But the image smiling back at him turned his stomach sour. Because it was something he’d never thought he would become.
The surface of the looking glass was smooth and polished. No matter how many times he laid into it, shattering it into painfully sharp fragments that sailed great distances, it put itself back together. Each miniscule shard, every tiny sliver, would slide back into place and melt into the picture he peered at now.
“Why do you keep looking, Drake, if you don’t like what you see?”
The voice was his own – and it was not. The lips in the mirror moved. But his own remained still. The reflection spoke on its own.
“I’m a stubborn man,” he replied softly, his deep, powerful voice carrying even in this whisper. This time, he formed the words, and his reflection did not.
That reflection laughed, and its silver eyes flared again with red, internal heat. “I know what you wish to do.” The image in the mirror wavered, disappearing for a moment to fade into fog and mist and nothingness. In that nothingness, another image formed. It was the one that haunted every miniscule moment of his wretched existence and slowly, painfully drove him mad.
She vanished as quickly as she’d appeared, and his handsome, despicable twin was back. “It won’t work,” he told Drake. “Fool me once, shame on you.”
Drake hadn’t tried to hide his intentions. It would have been pointless. He was not a single man living in one body; he was two. Darken knew, felt, and understood everything he thought about, everything he did. They were one in the same. So the half of himself that Drake gazed steadily at right now was well aware of what Drake was planning to do.
There were three things Drake had done in his life that he listed as the most difficult tasks he’d undertaken. The first and single most difficult was letting go the woman he loved.