Page 29

Chapter 29

Dyre

W armth.

I expected death to be cold, but there was nothing but warmth and… love.

For a moment, I swore I saw eternity. And it wasn’t the terrifying hell I had imagined for myself since being born into my twisted family and turned into a necromancer. No. Eternity felt like a golden glow. Like a pair of strong arms around me, solid and eternal as stone. It felt like the warmth of a crackling fire in the fireplace, a warm, calming drink at my side, the low thrill of a forest hunt, sweet dreams that kept all the nightmares away, the warm rumble of a contented cat curled up in my lap… it felt like home. Not the home of my childhood, which was cold and painful, full of struggle and fear. This felt like the home I had found, the one I had created.

But something was missing.

I missed the soaring, limitless darkness of the night sky, a darkness so black that night itself wondered at the beauty and color of the stars, and so fiercely loyal I knew I would never be afraid again. And I missed…growing things and honey-gold energy, fierce stubbornness layered over softness that would enfold me and shelter me from the world… and which I would happily die to protect….

The darkness returned first, cool but welcome, a presence that I simply didn’t feel whole without.

You are still alive, the darkness said, and I felt both its surprise and its relief.

We communicated silently in the warm stretch of eternity where I languidly floated, disembodied, but safe. Always safe, with the golden glow that held me like a lover, gently, and cherished, and safe.

Am I? I asked the darkness as it reached questioning tendrils toward whatever I was here.

I wasn’t afraid of the tendrils of darkness. They were beautiful like the hush of night. Like my love of the night sky. Was I really alive? I had been certain I was dead, that this place was heaven… or wherever souls went when they were finally free from the struggle that was life.

More alive than you have been in two hundred years, the darkness informed me. You are… changed.

I thought about that—if one could think when one didn’t seem to have a body or a brain to process thought. I feel changed.

The angel has somehow restored your soul, the deep, multilayered darkness whispered. You no longer have need of me to keep the small remnant of your life spark anchored in your mortal body.

Oh. That was nice, wasn’t it? And yet, for some reason… I didn’t like that.

I’ll be alone? I asked as I floated in warmth. And in that moment, the first hint of discomfort I had felt since coming here started to filter through and tickle at the edges of my being, plucking, worrying at the edges of what was left of me.

You have no need of me, the darkness whispered again, fainter, as if it were retreating. I will go.

The feeling of discomfort surged, growing stronger, becoming something more like panic. No!

No? The voice of dark night was closer than it had been, but still so far away. So full of doubt.

You can’t go, I insisted, everything that I currently was reaching for that dark presence. I felt like a frightened child reaching for a parent. Or a jilted lover begging for their world to return to them. I need you.

You do not need me to live.

I do! I need you. You are a part of me.

I do not belong here.

You belong with me. With us.

With the energies I could feel starting to bloom around me. With the warmth, and the fire, the nature, and stone, the water, the dreams, and the primal one. The darkness belonged here. Belonged to this thing that felt like home.

You would invite me to stay? Voluntarily?

I didn’t try to reply. I didn’t need to. “Speaking” wasn’t really necessary here in this space. I simply let the strong emotions flow through me as the memories returned, as hazy impressions became more. As I remembered the life Sunshine had granted me after my family turned me into an abomination in their quest for power and nearly killed me in the process.

There had been fear at first. Resentment. Hatred—of the wraith and of myself, of the monster I had become. There had been loneliness, and suffering, chills and hunger, and the danger of being hated, of being hunted and burned alive by the witches who had once been my own kind.

But there had also been wonder—the childlike wonder of an ancient being seeing colors for the first time, understanding emotions, feeling love… figuring out that people were more than simple-minded livestock to be terrified and devoured. Eventually, there had been…camaraderie between us. Friendship. And, yes, love. The loyalty of a prisoner who had started the role involuntarily but who had grown to know me, and to become my fierce protector. Sunshine was a part of me.

Us. I hadn’t truly been me in hundreds of years. I was us. We. Necromancer. Abomination. Two living, feeling beings sharing one cramped, gangly, fleshy home.

I love you, Sunny. The thought was startling. Absurd. And utterly true. I cared for the wraith, and because of the wraith, I had started to love myself as well.

I do not want to leave, he admitted into the rippling warmth that surrounded us here in the afterlife. Or whatever it was. I do not want to leave you, my witch. I think you have damaged me somehow. No self-respecting ancient power such as I would hesitate to be free of this imprisonment.

I chuckled. A shock rippled through me, as I realized I had just felt that laugh. For a second there, I felt my body. I was waking up. Returning to the real world, the warmth of this place fading around me. I reached for Sunny again. Not with physical hands, but with my mind, with my energy.

I was relieved to feel him reaching back, the dark tendrils of his incorporeal brushing my aura, like the open arms of a long-lost lover.

I woke with a start, sitting up and sucking in a gasping sob of breath. My hand flew to my chest, pressing against the center, where my heartbeat seemed so much louder and stronger, after so long without a body. Warm, strong arms held me, and I turned my head to find brilliant blue eyes staring at me from the most handsome face I had ever seen. Light suffused my vision, angelic wings encircling me. “Elijah,” I breathed, still feeling confused and off kilter. His name anchored me. Elijah. My creation . The man who permanently carried a part of my essence inside him. Mine . Ours, Sunny’s thoughts echoed alongside my own .

“Hello, Dyre. Welcome back,” the angelic revenant whispered, a relieved smile curving his chiseled lips seconds before they brushed my forehead. “You’re safe,” he said as he pulled back to press his forehead to mine. “I was worried I would lose you, maker.” His strong arms squeezed me so tightly I had trouble breathing. Then again, that might have been because of his words. His relief. The love and adoration that shone from every atom of his being. Maker. I never thought I’d enjoy that so much.

His light was too bright. Too perfect for an abomination like me. And yet. At that moment, I couldn’t care less who or what the world saw me as. I was just happy as hell to be back in my physical body, solid, grounded, and… warm?

“I’m warm!” I said abruptly, scrambling out of Elijah’s lap to kneel on the rough ground and rub my hands up and down my long, skinny arms, marveling at the change. Still starved and scrawny. But warm. I hadn’t felt truly warm to my marrow in so long that the sensation was completely foreign to me. Uncomfortable, almost. Too hot. And everything was too bright. Too colorful and present.

Because I was no longer hosting an ancient evil inside me. Because I wasn’t being constantly drained of energy and barely clinging to the last scrap of my life force. Because…

I met Elijah’s eyes. He gave me an embarrassed smile and rubbed the back of his neck. “Um… Sunshine told me to keep what was left of your soul anchored to your body. I panicked. I was so afraid to lose you. I may have… overdone it a bit.”

I held my hands out in front of me, turning them over, staring at the pinkness of them. At the lack of dark blue nails, the lack of bluish undertone and exaggerated traces of blue veins beneath my no longer paperwhite skin. Then I looked up at Elijah again.

“You…”

“Somehow called back every last scrap of your lost soul energy and anchored it into your body with a little extra angelic magic lingering behind? Maybe.” He shrugged.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The deep bark of laughter escaped before I even realized it was coming.

I had been nearly dead for two hundred years. And Elijah was looking embarrassed because he accidentally reunited the sundered parts of my soul?!

The realization was closely followed by a heart-rending shot of panic. “Sunny!”

I had heard his voice just seconds before, but I couldn’t feel him inside me, the way I always had. The darkness of the disembodied wraith was still there when I reached out my magical senses, lingering somewhere between the mortal realm and the in between space inhabited by ghosts and other terrors that mortals only dreamed about. I am here.

But he was fading, being called away. To whatever plane wraiths inhabited when they weren’t feeding on mortal terror and souls.

“Sunshine?” I said again, my voice cracking.

Are you sure, Dyre? You have your life back. What the angel has done has strengthened you. But were I to remain, I could not help but feed from you. There will be a cost. To both of us.

“Your freedom and my lifeforce?” I murmured, fully aware that I sounded like I was taking to myself. No one else could see Sunny. They might be able to sense him, but only as a vague, lingering sense of primal fear.

Something like that, Sunshine replied to my question. You could be free, witch.

“I wouldn’t be whole without you,” I said truthfully. Sunny was a part of me now. And I didn’t just mean in a physical or energetic sense. “But I know you have always felt trapped.”

The darkness caressed my newly restored aura, and I shuddered. I do not feel trapped now. But I do not feel… free. I too am changed, Dyre. I am not what I once was. You are a part of me. I think this might be what mortals mean when they say they feel like they are missing a limb.

I nodded, confirming his assumption. It was a very accurate description of what I was feeling right now, and I knew he could sense the wealth of acknowledgement and acceptance in the gesture. “Come home,” I whispered. “Please?”

Insanity. Madness. The only kind of witch who voluntarily welcomed a possession of this magnitude was one with a death wish. Or someone who stupidly overestimated his own strength and importance, and ended up being devoured by the being inside him.

And yet, I didn’t struggle, didn’t resist as the wraith settled inside me, altering my aura, dimming the world, and chilling my body by a few degrees in the process. I didn’t mourn as my nailbeds turned faintly blue again, and the tinge of ancient darkness merged with my aura. No, I didn’t fight; I simply stepped aside and welcomed him in like a long-lost friend.

As Sunshine settled inside my being, I realized the other thing that had been missing had also been restored without my noticing it. My lifebond with Andy hummed with strength and life. My connection to her and my sense of her were stronger and more invigorating than ever before. And with it… I swore I felt a bunch of multicolored threads that had never been there before. My connection with Elijah wasn’t just a maker’s bond anymore. And I could feel all the others as well, as if we were all lifebonded…. But how?

A sudden tug at the invisible cord tying me to Andy nearly knocked me over, and a shockwave of magic rippled out from where she lay prone beside me. The color rapidly returned to her skin and hair, like special effects in a human movie, as the magic of the curse that had held her down shattered like shimmering shards of smoky dark glass.

Andy gasped and sat up suddenly, her gray eyes opening and magic swelling around her again, like an oncoming tidal wave. Somewhere behind me, I heard a matching feminine gasp. But the second sound was one of shock and terror, rather than one of life and relief.

It was the gasp of a certain cultist who had probably just seen her life flash before her eyes. Sunny curled inside me, coiling restlessly like a massive, deadly black serpent ready to strike.

It is time, the wraith murmured in my mind, his words laced with a large dose of wicked anticipation and hunger. Finally, it is time.

People were about to learn what happened when they messed with our family. The reckoning was long past due.

I pushed myself to my feet, feeling stronger than ever before, even after my brush with near-death and my reacquisition of an ancient evil entity inside me. As the others gathered round, Andy reached out and took my offered hand, letting me help her to her feet.

Her magic was overwhelming, the strength and depth of it obvious to everyone connected to her—and probably to anyone with even a hint of magical awareness within miles around as well. Whatever had just happened, it had fully blown open the doors she usually kept closed between herself and that deep, staggering Lovell magic.

So many, many people were about to die. And that thought sent a primal wave of yearning through me, that I knew wasn’t entirely from Sunshine.

I tore my gaze away from my lifemate just long enough to glance around at the others, to confirm that they felt what I was feeling. The deep, dark surge of ecstasy. Then my gaze was riveted on Andy again, as her eyes began to glow, and her green hair lifted from her shoulders to float on a breeze that didn’t exist on this plane. I shuddered as I drank her in. The most powerful witch I had ever seen. The world was hers. We only waited for her word. One signal from Oleander Lovell, and we would unleash hell on all who had wronged us.