Fated

  “Jason?”

  He lifted his head to find Aislin, arms out, as if she had been trying to steady him. His chest heaved. This . . . didn’t make sense. It made no sense at all. Slowly he straightened, his heart still galloping.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Did you—?” He rubbed his hands over his face and tried again. “Did you see anything?”

  “No. Did you do it right?”

  The laugh burst from him, broken and astonished. “There’s no other way to do it.”

  “Should we try again?”

  He held his hand up to ward her off, then jammed it in his pocket as she reached for it. “No!” He was reeling with what he’d seen—or rather, what he hadn’t. Sorrow was squeezing at his chest, realization making it harder and harder to breathe. “Aislin . . . I . . .”

  “Just tell me what you saw,” she said, her voice small. “Did you see me betraying you?”

  “No,” he replied, certainty strangling him. He swallowed hard and met her eyes. “I saw nothing at all.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “What does that mean?”

  Disbelief and defiance pushed back the constricted feeling in his chest. “Give me your hand.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I know what I said,” he snapped. “Just do it.” He couldn’t accept this. It had to be a mistake.

  Her hand shook only a little as she placed it in his. The blackness hit him again, but this time he was ready. He didn’t fight it, merely welcomed it like a rushing stream, letting it flow over him, past him, taking the blindness with it. Slowly, his vision cleared and sharpened, and he found himself looking at Aislin’s pale face, her high cheekbones and blue eyes. So fragile. So temporary. Unbidden sadness coiled around him once more, tightening like a noose.

  “Do you see anything now?” she asked, looking utterly confused. “I don’t feel anything except . . .”

  “What?”

  “You’re squeezing my hand very hard.”

  He opened his fingers and looked down at hers, red with the heat and tension of his grip. But instead of letting her pull away, his fingers closed over hers again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she murmured. “But you’ve worried me. I don’t know why this didn’t work.”

  “I do,” he said in a hollow voice. “I know exactly what it means.” He forced himself to let go of her hand as a bitter taste rose in his mouth. “It means you’re going to die.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  As soon as she closed the door behind Moros, all the strength she’d held on to in the last few moments evaporated, and her legs gave out. She hit the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of herself. A sudden stab of sorrow pierced her straight through, leaving her clutching her stomach and hunching over in pain.

  She’d expected to feel something like this after Moros touched her, but not for this reason. She’d thought she would be dizzy and reeling beneath the weight of her future. Instead, she’d discovered she didn’t have one.

  She wouldn’t have believed it, but Moros’s reaction had left no room for doubt. For some reason, he’d looked as stricken as she’d felt. He’d gone from smug to smoldering as soon as he’d pulled her close. She’d been almost sure he was about to kiss her, and she was embarrassed and surprised at how badly she’d wanted him to. But as soon as he touched her, all of that desire had fallen away, replaced by shock.

  She hadn’t wanted the pity of the Lord of the Kere. She’d wanted the moment before, when his red-flecked pupils had dilated with need, when his breath had been hot on her cheek, when she’d felt the unmistakable arousal of his body. For a few seconds, she’d pretended that they were two normal people about to become lovers, a secret fantasy she’d had to suppress too many times to count. She’d felt alive, every nerve thrumming and ready.

  Maybe that was how impending death felt. Like an overdose of life. Like everything hazy had suddenly come into sharp focus.

  “Focus,” she muttered. “That’s what you need to do.” Moros had told her that he didn’t know how much time she had left, but it couldn’t be long. Somehow, she would be stripped of her Charon’s Scope, and then she’d be mortal. She couldn’t bring herself to think of what would happen after that, but she could only hope the Keeper of Heaven would welcome her in. It hadn’t been how she expected their first meeting to go.

  She clumsily got to her feet, walked to her home office, and slid her finger across the screen on her desk, bringing up dossiers on every one of the board members, as well as several Ferrys who held powerful positions within the company. She was guessing the board was going to vote her out, and their next meeting was about twelve hours from now. Plenty of time to make calls and gather allies. She’d start with Rosaleen. Though her aunt’s support had wavered, it seemed possible to win her back. She’d been Aislin’s biggest advocate as she maneuvered to oust Rylan as Charon, and she was the only board member Aislin felt could take her place once she was gone. She also needed to call Cavan. His political acumen would come in handy, and the support of the Lucinae would make all the difference, no matter what happened.

  Her plan forming in her mind, she got out her phone just as she felt the pull of a soul in the Veil. More powerful than usual, it was like a sharp tug from a rope wrapped around her spine. She dropped the phone and grasped the edge of her desk to steady herself. Then it happened again, harder this time.

  Her phone began to ring. It was a general Psychopomps number. But just as she reached to answer, it stopped. And she felt another tug. Alarm growing, she pulled her Scope from her neck.

  She paused. Was this it? Whatever was happening—was this the beginning of the end?

  Stop it, she thought. That’s no excuse to stand still. Do your duty and stop thinking about yourself. She slipped a pair of flats on her feet, opened her Scope, and stepped into the Veil. Concentrating on the insistent tugs, she flipped the Scope and opened a portal to the soul calling to her.

  What she saw on the other side was absolute mayhem. Here in the Veil, at least a dozen dead were rising from their fallen bodies, which were scattered in the real world outside the Psychopomps tower, some floating in the canal, some sprawled across the sidewalk. Stunned, Aislin stepped through the portal at the same time Declan came out of one nearby. Her brother cursed as he watched one of their human guards rise from his shadowy, headless body. “What the hell is going on?” he asked as Cacia stepped out of yet another portal several yards away.

  Aislin squinted into the real world, because humans there appeared only as transparent apparitions to people in the Veil. Marked corpses lay everywhere, and fast-moving hunched shapes ran among them. As Aislin watched, one leaped toward a human getting out of an amphibious taxi and sank its teeth into her neck.

  “Those are Shades,” Declan shouted. “They’ve escaped from the Veil!”

  Galena stepped out of her Scope’s portal right next to him, and her green eyes went round as she took in the carnage. The Shades—and there were several of them—had already killed all the human Psychopomps guards and at least a dozen pedestrians. “How is this possible?” she asked as she opened a portal to Heaven for one of the dead guards. She pulled her Scope over his head even as she watched the Shades kill another shadowy man only steps away. “Don’t people have to be Marked to die?”

  “They are Marked,” Cacia said in a high, uncertain voice, pointing to the Mark of death glowing orange on the man. “But where are the Kere?”

  “Oh my God,” said Declan, grasping Aislin’s arm and pointing. “Look at that.”

  Aislin obeyed, her eyes shifting to the Shade attacking a woman getting out of the taxi. With its arm wrapped around her neck, it slapped her chest, and when its skeletal hand fell away, there was a Mark, glowing stark and clear in the Veil. It examined its handiwork for a moment before wrenching the woman’s head from her body.

  “The Shades,” Aislin said, disbelief making her numb, slowing e
verything down. “Someone’s turned them into Kere.”

  “How is that possible?” Galena asked, moving aside so Declan could use his Scope to guide another guard to Heaven.

  “Someone reached into their chests and took their souls,” Aislin explained. “That’s how a Ker is made.”

  “We have to stop them,” said Declan.

  Aislin looked over to see her brother open a portal to the real world. “Dec—”

  “No, Aislin. I know someone might see us coming out of our Scopes, but—”

  “Declan,” said Aislin. “I just wanted to say that I’m going with you.”

  Declan shot her a look, and Aislin knew exactly what he was thinking. Her younger brother had always been a brawler, keenly physical in every way. Cacia was the same, never shying away from a fight. And Aislin was standing here in her cashmere sweater and tailored slacks, looking like she’d never gotten her hands dirty in her life.

  “You don’t think I’ve ever chased a Shade through the Veil?” she asked. “I’ve been doing this since before you were born.”

  Declan smiled and flung his Scope even wider, gesturing for her to step through, but he touched her arm as she moved forward. “Be careful.”

  She squeezed his hand. I’m already doomed, she thought. “Thanks.”

  The clamor of the real world filled her ears, screams and sirens and vehicles crashing as panicked drivers tried to stop their amphibious vehicles in the canal. The Shade-Kere, skin peeling from their rotting skulls, clothes in greasy tatters, leaped onto roofs and clawed at hatches, trying to reach their intended victims. In the Veil, the Scopes had been their targets, escape their only motivation to attack. Now, these creatures were driven by pure bloodlust, making them even more vicious.

  “Galena, get back into the Veil,” shouted Declan as his wife stepped through her own Scope.

  “I’m covered,” she said, pointing at Tamasin and Nader, who had appeared on either side of her looking like they wished she’d stayed in her lab.

  Declan ran his hand through his ebony hair. Aislin could tell that he wanted to protect the woman he loved, but that he also had to respect her determination to do her duty. “Stay close to her,” Declan said quietly to Nader. Galena focused her attention on a Shade-Ker that was loping along the canal wall.

  Nader nodded curtly, and Declan charged forward, pulling open a portal to Hell and attempting to loop it over the head of one of the creatures before it saw him coming. But it turned at the last minute and, instead of dodging, disappeared into thin air, then reappeared behind Declan. Tamasin, still standing next to Galena, whirled and delivered a side kick that sent the thing flying into the canal.

  “They have all the powers of the Kere,” Aislin yelled as several other Ferrys stepped through their own Scopes, including Killian and Timothy, her personal guards, who Rylan had attacked. They were healed now, but she’d given them the night off so she could meet with Moros privately.

  Both men moved close to her, Killian giving her a worried look. “You sure you want to be out here?” he asked her. “It might be safer in the Veil.”

  Timothy let out a weak chuckle and ran his hand over his stomach. “You sure about that?”

  Killian blanched, probably thinking of Rylan’s claws.

  “These Shades can enter and leave the Veil easier than we can, so it doesn’t matter,” Aislin yelled as she ran toward a couple just pushing a stroller around the corner at the end of the block, two women chatting and cooing at their baby. When they realized they had walked into a war zone, they screamed, drawing the attention of two nearby Shade-Kere that had been finishing off their latest victims. “If they touch them, they’ll be Marked!”

  Aislin picked up speed, desperate to stop the monsters before they reached the women and the child. “Hey,” she barked, trying to draw the Shades’ attention. She scooped a phone from the ground, its owner lying with his throat torn out just steps away. With strength born of desperation, she hurled the thing at one of the Shade-Kere, managing to hit it in the back. It snarled and spun around, glaring at her with oozing eyes.

  Out of breath, Aislin stopped, even as Killian ran past her, pulling an electroshock baton from his belt and racing toward one of the monsters still pursuing the couple. Timothy was struggling with another off to her right, jabbing at it with his baton and trying to keep it from clawing him. Aislin stared down the beast she had clocked with the phone, her thumb pressed to her Scope and her teeth gritted. The world disappeared around her, narrowing as the Shade-Ker let out a rending wail and charged her. She forced herself to stay still, her hands at her sides, until the thing was only three steps away. And then, with experience drawn from years of corralling Shades in the Veil, she threw her Scope wide at the very last moment and stepped to the side as it dove for her. It flew headfirst into a fiery portal to Hell.

  Smoke filled the air as the thing screamed, an eerie sound that carried across their battlefield, echoing off the edifices of the buildings around them. The nearby Shade-Kere paused, staring at the portal as Aislin closed it tight around the beast, trapping it inside. Taking advantage of the distraction, Cacia threw her Scope open and got another Shade-Ker that had been hunched over a bleeding woman on the sidewalk.

  All of the Shade-Kere yowled with anger.

  And then they disappeared.

  Aislin flipped her Scope and tore it open, peering anxiously into the Veil. The Shade-Kere weren’t there, but several Ferrys were, guiding the dozens of doomed, the unsanctioned victims who weren’t meant to be Marked today.

  A hand closed over her shoulder. It was Declan, with Galena at his side. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said in a low voice, looking over the bodies strewn along the block, all dead. “This is a fucking disaster.”

  “I know,” Aislin said, breathing hard, her eyes stinging as they focused on one young woman, possibly not even eighteen years old, sprawled on the sidewalk, one of her fingers still hooked over the handle of her shopping bag, her reddish hair drenched in her own blood, her blue eyes empty. Rage pulled tight inside Aislin. “It’s an abomination.”

  A commotion behind her brought her around in time to see Hugh and his son Brian push their way through the revolving doors of the Psychopomps tower, both too late to be of any use. “My God,” Hugh said. Brian made a gagging sound and retched on the sidewalk.

  Hugh patted the young man’s back and turned to glare at Aislin. “I want an explanation,” he said.

  Aislin put a hand on Declan’s arm as she felt him tense beside her. “I will do my best to provide one,” she said in a steady voice. “After I help clean this up.” And with that, she opened her Scope and stepped into the Veil, because if she stayed there another moment, she would tell Hugh what a coward he was. He’d felt the pull of all these dying people, she was sure. No Ferry inside Psychopomps wouldn’t have. But he’d stayed safely inside the building until the Shade-Kere were gone, then dared to come out and act shocked. Her fury burned so hot it was making her sweat.

  The cool air of the Veil was a relief. So was the crowd of Ferrys already at work. Her family members were compassionately guiding souls to Heaven despite their own ashen faces and trembling hands. Aislin tucked a loose lock of her long hair behind her ear and walked forward to help, suspicion rising like a tide. Someone had turned all these Shades into Kere, probably the same being who was controlling Rylan. And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if it was one of the Fates. They were the only ones who, like Moros, served destiny. He’d said he didn’t believe Eris or his other siblings were capable of this. But if not them, who else could create beasts who Marked people for death?

  Her mind was a swirling frenzy of thoughts, about her Ferrys, about what would happen now, about how very much the scene in front of her looked like pure chaos.

  She shuddered. Chaos. Was this what it would be like? She desperately hoped Moros was strong enough to defeat him, to defeat all of them, to survive and triumph. Then she remembered she
wouldn’t be around to witness what happened—and realized she might never see him again. She had sent him away without saying good-bye.

  Her eyes shut as despair licked at the edges of her mind, threatening to close her in. But then her usual resolve pushed it away. Until the very last moment, she would do everything she could to beat back the threat, to ensure that what was meant to be actually happened. No time for pity. She would fight until her heart stopped.

  Judging from the carnage all around her, the battle had only just begun.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Moros arrived in the weaving room, both hungry for answers and full of dread. He wished he was wrong about Aislin, but he’d felt the nothingness before, so many times. And most often, he sought the feeling out. He chose the doomed carefully, women whose souls were ready to be reaped, who appealed to him physically, who were alone. Once every few years, he found the perfect woman. He appeared to her, her personal angel of death, to Mark her with the very first seductive touch. For those who were willing—and nearly all were—he gave them a simple one-night stand that always ended the same way. He could touch them without hurting them, give them ecstasy without pain, take his own pleasure from their willing bodies. Of course, they had no idea that making love with him would be the last thing they ever did, and he never told them. What good would it do to steal their last minutes of happiness?

  He always killed them quickly and painlessly—a sudden and devastating heart attack, a catastrophic burst aneurysm. Before they even knew they were dead, their spirits were sliding from their bodies in the Veil to greet their final fate.

  He had expected Aislin to cry when he told her the news. Or to fight, to rage against the sheer wrongness of it. Instead, she’d escorted him to her door with a polite good-bye, eerily calm. She’d seemed more willing to accept the idea of her doom than he was. But how could a Charon meet her fate so abruptly? How could her death be anything but a violation of what was meant to be? Would it be the Keepers? Eris? Rylan? Someone on her own board? Whoever would be responsible, however it would come, he wouldn’t be able to save her. Her fate had been foretold.