Chapter 12
Fay jolted upright with a gasp. “Nebiru!”
She looked around wildly. The foreign room, white and sparse, produced no information about where she was or who had taken her. It wasn’t the Underworld, which she supposed ought to be a mercy, and as she closed her eyes, she felt Abe’s link to her. She relaxed a little and tested out her movements; first, by swinging her legs across the bed; then, by standing. She wobbled a little on her feet, catching herself on the cold wall.
Her head swam but she pushed past it, willing each step forward defiantly. Bit by bit her head cleared and her steps grew stronger, though every couple or so she stumbled. That crippling exhaustion sunk deep claws into her skin, dragging her down. She fought it all the way to the door and with a groan yanked it open. It probably weighed very little but it felt like it was made of solid metal. Still, it yielded and opened slowly, revealing a long, modern hallway of a house. She eyed the pale polished wood, fine finishes and expensive artwork on the walls, wondering again where she was – mainly, however, where Abe was. Whatever their past, however mangled that was, he was her partner and no one took him from her. No one hurt him. If something had happened to him she’d tear the place apart – and the fool who took them both.
She stumbled down the hall to a winding staircase down to the floor below. Clutching the hand rail, she slowly made her way down, trying to summon the magic she’d mustered before – any scrap of it that might obey. Nothing happened. So, she tried to call on her hellhound form; claws, teeth, sharper sight. No response but the dull stirring within. It wasn’t gone but she was too weak to shift. It made her hesitate, feel weak and mortal, and not at all like she was used to. If she got into trouble she had no way to fight and she felt any hand-to-hand training Abe gave her wouldn’t amount to much in her present state.
Still, it was Abe, and onwards she went until she reached the ground floor. She paused for a moment, straining over every sound she detected; the house breathing around her, the soft chatter of voices somewhere close by, and the hissing of a kettle at boiling point. There was a hum of magic on the ground floor, too, skittering across her skin like a cold breeze. Not at all like the magic she was used to. She tried to pin the source but it felt like it was coming from everywhere at once, oozing from the walls and the ceilings, whispering up from the floor.
Instinctively, she drew closer to the voices, to the girl’s, whose voice was familiar. Within clear earshot she knew who it was and froze, though just for a second. A rising fury propelled her forward, strengthening her strides. She made it to the threshold and froze again. A new voice had come into the conversation. Her feet carried her into the open.
“Abe?”
He looked up suddenly, shock on his face. “You’re awake.”
“You’re alive,” she stated, stunned, a little sceptical. “You look fine. So, why do I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train and you look like you’ve had the best sleep of your life?”
Fay took stock, briefly, of Mel sitting on the couch, watching her with guarded eyes. She might’ve said something to her but, propelled by her words, Abe closed the space between them and drew her into his arms. Unlike before, where it had been firm but controlled, the hug was fierce, squeezing her, as if he was afraid to let her go. When she returned the hug in kind he tightened his grip, not painfully but relief danced through their bond. For whatever mess lay tangled between them neither wished each other harm, not intentionally, anyway. Abe broke away first, stepping back. He gestured to Mel, his way of introducing her.
“Mel called, said you’d been dropped off her by Nebiru. I came here as soon as I knew,” he said, glancing at Fay with a measuring look. “Do you remember anything?”
“I remember a little; saving the girl, fighting and magic-“She cut herself off and looked up, stunned. “I have magic. I made a Shadow prison – oh, shit, I wonder if that poltergeist is still there.”
“Do you remember anything else?” He pressed.
She frowned. “It gets a little hazy. I think I remember Nebiru standing over me – over us – and then I woke up here. Why? What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” he said a little too easily. “Thought you might remember something about Nebiru. I don’t trust him.”
Liar, her demon whispered in Fay’s ear. You’re a pretty liar, aren’t you?
“I don’t either,” she reminded him. “What about you? Last I saw you were passed out on the beach, near dead.”
“When I woke up Toka was there. She’d healed me, I think. I’m not sure. Anyway, you were gone and I’ve been looking for you all day,” he said, though Fay had the distinct impression that wasn’t the whole truth.
Fay stared sceptically. “The wraith who warned me off Jackson and Lilian? That Toka?”
“Yes, that Toka,” he replied evenly.
Anger flashed through her but she swallowed it and looked away, right to Mel. Someone she could focus on instead of Abe.
“Did Nebiru say anything we dropped me off?” Fay asked, folding her arms.
Mel glanced to Abe, then back to Fay, shaking her head. “He just said to take care of you. Frankly, I was all a little freaked. He was the second hellhound I’d seen in a day and he bore the mark of Hades, the insignia of someone high ranked. I wasn’t about to argue.”
Fay blinked. She knew Sirens bore origins with Calypso, their creator, but reports indicated that they’d very much kept away from the Gods. Still, Mel didn’t strike her as someone who knew about a group as rare as Hades’s hellhounds, as well as to recognise a high-ranking hound. She eyed the girl with new interest, whom stared back, unsure of Fay. It was the look of prey as it stared at a predator, wondering if today was the today they’d die.
She glanced back to Abe. “We should get ready and head off.”
“You just woke up,” protested Abe. “You should rest.”
That anger kindled within her a fiery hiss, her eyes flashing ice blue. “I’m fine.”
The car ride was uncomfortably silent. Normally, Fay liked it. It let her think, mull over things. She hated it at that moment because she had questions; some for Nebiru, a few more Mel and a lot for Abe. He was hiding things from her and she would’ve pressed but she had her own secrets to guard. Answers she needed. So, she wrestled with her own conscience, the maddening demon that it was.
When they pulled up at the front of the house Fay turned to Abe, just as he turned to her, as if to say something. Both fell silent, staring, mouths slightly parted. Abe’s hands twitched, one still resting on the steering wheel, the other hovering just above the arm rest. Like he was about to reach for her.
“I’m afraid,” she said suddenly.
“Of what?” Abe asked quietly, drawing back a little.
She turned in her seat and stared out the front. “Remember our first mission? You fought hard to stop me from coming. You didn’t I was ready. Then we got cornered and I saved your ass? You looked up at me with that look in your eyes, like you were afraid. Not of me but of what I did. What I might actually be capable of. It scared you, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t really know what a hellhound could do until that night,” he confessed. “I saw how you danced to the edge, taunted it with a grin, and that scared me. What would happen if you went over that edge?”
She glanced at him. “I did go over that edge, though and last night…”
“You said you didn’t remember anything?”
A low, frustrated hiss burst from her. Her hands clenched in her lap. Slowly, she unfurled her hands and forced them flat against her legs. She stared down at her feet, not willing to look him in the eye, not when she felt so exposed, hovering at the edge of a vast abyss.
“I don’t but I feel different. Something happened last night. There’s a power inside of me which I think has been there the whole time. Abe, what I remember of it was just a feeling – it was like I was unstoppable. The worst part was I felt whole, like I’d embraced something side of me. The only question is what exactly did I embrace?”
When she dared to look at him his eyes were dark, shadowed. He shifted in his seat and looked out the front, then over at the house.
“When I first met you in that cemetery I sensed a power in you that I’d never felt before – stronger than anything. For a moment I even thought it’d be strong enough to take someone on like Thanatos but you never showed any aptitude for magic. I tried.”
She laughed, softly. “I remember. I felt so stupid.”
“It made me feel so relieved,” he said quietly. “That kind of power I thought I saw is the kind that the Gods don’t like. I knew someone like that, once long ago, and the Gods tore her apart because of it. They didn’t like the idea that she threatened them. Ironically, in the beginning, they just tore her life apart. They thought it’d break her. It didn’t. She fought back but it wasn’t enough. They slit her throat and just like that she was gone.”
Fay glanced at him, stunned. Never in their partnership had he disclosed anything about his past. It had been a wound he hadn’t opened for her, which had stung at the start but she’d grown used to it. She owed him enough, so she didn’t pry his secrets open. So, the revelation sent her off balance.
“I’m not her,” Fay said, reaching for his hand. He looked up. “I am me. Your partner. Got it?”
Something caught his eye, and he pulled his hand away. Fay followed his gaze to a car that pulled up across the road. Ryan climbed out the car, flanked by Tarryn and, weird enough, Lillian. Fay frowned. The girl hadn’t smelt like a werewolf. It must’ve thrown Abe, too, whom shot her a questioning look, like she was meant to know what Lillian was doing with the wolves.
Fay climbed out and took her place beside Abe, standing in front of the house. The sun was warm against her back but she scarcely felt it. Those old, raw wounds, festering and thick with salt, sharpened her focus as the three arrivals walked across the road. In the corner of her eye she swore Abe inched a fraction closer to her. His hands crackled with feint threads of energy. Fay reached out subtly and brushed her hand against his, absorbing his energy. His hand stilled.
Ryan stopped in front of them, nodded his head in what was actually a respectful greeting. Tarryn followed suit but Lillian glanced between Abe and Fay, her eyes skittish like a deer. She regarded Fay differently than she had when they first met. There was a look of fear in her eyes.
“Can we talk inside?” Ryan asked, his voice low and restless, like he was in the last place he wanted to be. The second he crossed inside he’d be in their domain, completely at the mercy of a warlock and a hellhound.
Abe glanced at Lillian. “Going by her expression the human knows exactly what you are. Does she know what my partner and I am? Because I thought I was very clear on secrecy.”
“She came to us with valuable information. So, as I said, can we talk inside?”
There was a surprising sharpness to Abe’s eyes, an edge Fay had only glimpsed briefly back at Ryan’s house. Fay had her hatred but it felt different with Abe, more so as Ryan stood there, a few feet away. She just couldn’t place how it felt different.
Fay flicked a hand to the house and set off to the front door. “Well, come on in. Abe, the wards?”
Abe came up beside her and with a flick of his hand he broke the ward keeping wolves out. Then he went in first, stalking like a kind of predator, restless and caged. She stepped back as the three went inside, Lillian in the middle, then followed them inside. In the living room they all sat around, perched on the couches, uncomfortable as they could be. It was funny for Fay, whose demon side crowed and danced with pleasure, especially with Abe hovering. His thick arms were crossed across his chest and he flicked a hard glance to Fay. Something about the whole event had flipped Abe’s behaviour on a dime and she knew something was burning inside of him. Something volatile. The calmness inside of him wasn’t there, so she had to take control and bury her own fury – for the moment. Their jobs at the Bureau, which kept the both of them fed and employed and protected, depended on it.
Later, they’d talk.
Fay sat down across from them, extending her claws just enough for them to be seen. “So, what news do you have?”
Tarryn and Ryan exchanged long looks but it was Tarryn who leant forward and spoke first.
“First, we want to say thank you for what you did at the lake. We found the girl you saved and she’s recovering well.”
“She was a wolf?”
“One of Peter’s adoptive kids.”
Fay held back the urge to ask about her adoptive father. She hadn’t seen him since she was run from the pack. How he’d stood there, watching. She’d held his gaze, begging for him to step in but he never moved an inch.
“The second bit of news?” Fay pushed.
Tarryn cleared her throat. “We found a house at the northern edge of our lands. By accident, really. Some young wolves were off playing where they shouldn’t. Anyway, they smelt a lot of blood. Ryan, myself and two other high-ranking members looked into it. There were markings on the floor made of blood, plus a lot of stuff we didn’t recognise. Do you think it might be where the poltergeists were summoned?”
Fay glanced grimly up at Abe. She knew the land in which Tarryn spoke of. It was the werewolves’ version of a burial ground, and for the less savoury of their kind, too. Corrupted souls but ones that should’ve been sent to the Underworld. So why hadn’t they crossed over long ago? How the hell had someone summoned them?
Fay glanced to Ryan. “Please tell me you’ve still been burying people there. That this hasn’t been abandoned?”
Ryan stared back, frowning. “No one has been buried there in almost fifty years.”
From behind Fay Abe cursed. He knew what it meant. That the souls, as old as they, and in such numbers, given their strength, meant that they’d been taken from the Underworld. Souls inevitably dissolved after a decade or so; the rare few that lived on became demons, twisted souls bound to houses or vessels. None that she’d seen were bound like that. The ones in town had a master but who and why? For their twisted souls to fester to their worst and then to harvest their divinity dust?
She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed, then glanced to Lillian. “So, how do you play into all of this?”
Lilian held out her hand and opened it. A tendril of light bloomed in her hand. Abe stepped forward, the magic drawing him from his brooding.
“You’re a witch.”
“Yes,” she said carefully. “But I broke from my coven. I wasn’t what they wanted. I kept to myself until one of your agents came to town – Amber, the exorcist. She sought me out, thought I might be able to help. She and I were at the house when we were attacked. When I woke up Amber was gone and I was back home. A friend had grabbed me, made sure I was safe but made me keep clear of Amber. I couldn’t help anymore.”
Fay laughed softly. “I met your friend. She’s charming.”
“At the lake, however, I knew the problem was getting worse, so I went to the wolves to see what they knew. They brought me to you. I want to help.”
Fay shook her head. “Protocol dictates we can’t involve you. Amber may have done that but she was liked well enough to get away with it. I’m not.” She shot Ryan a pensive look. “Amanda is a werewolf, isn’t she?”
For a moment Ryan’s hard face betrayed nothing; then, that flickering look to Tarryn. When his eyes darted back to Fay the carefully erected cracked. Tension suddenly tightened up in his shoulders, as though he was bracing for a fight.
“She’s human.”
Shock pulsed through Fay. “A human is your heir? How the hell did that happen?”
“She was in the line of succession before anyone realised the truth, that her mother, my aunt was actually sterile and had adopted in secret. Amanda found out a year ago but we spoke with her and she agreed that when she turned sixteen she would be turned. If she backed out she’d simply have to step down and leave the pack, which she was fine with.”
Fay’s gut twisted at the decision that had been thrust on Amanda. Be turned and stay or be forced to leave everything she knew just to stay human. She swallowed, hard, and rose to her feet.
“We’ll contact you shortly with a time to visit the property.” Fay looked down to Lillian, who seemed to be a little irritated now that she’d been denied. “I’m sorry but we can’t work with you.”
It was an awkward, tense goodbye as they left. When the door closed behind them Fay wandered back into the living room where Abe leant against the wall.
“Well, thoughts?” Fay asked quietly, taking a seat back on the couch.
Abe unfolded his arms. “We’ve got a God or Goddess from the Underworld here in town, maybe gathering ingredients for the Immortal Elixir. I’d say we’re getting in way over our head.”
Fay said nothing.
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