Page 11

Kit

T he last thing I wanted to do was set up camp right inside the treeline but we’d have more shelter from the wind there and logically, it made sense. Lemeraties returned to the boat several times. It had drifted closer to the island and gotten caught up on the rocks so a fair amount of our gear was salvaged before the craft sank too far into the water. She came back with some of our gear, including a large, empty ruck sack Damon was able use to stow the life raft in.

Thanks to how methodical Chang was and the concise directions he’d made sure to impart to the yacht’s owner, we were able to tell her where to find the camping gear that had been stowed on the craft. Damon and I had a decent tent.

There was a smaller, spare one we turned over to Frankie.

Lemeraties had told me she would stay on patrol all night.

“If I don’t manifest, it takes little energy for me to watch over you, Kitasa,” she said. Her lips pursed, face uneasy. “Something here feels…different. I won’t leave you unguarded.”

“I’m not picking up on anything.” Damon scowled as he looked around.

“You have never been here, feline,” Lemeraties replied with a hint of amusement in her eyes. “You have no basis for comparison.”

Frankie glanced at us as she came out of her tent but said nothing, moving to a small, smokeless fire I’d built to cook the fish Damon and I had caught. It was banked now, offering heat from the smokeless coals and little else.

“Will they pick up on the fire?” Damon asked.

“Not with the way the wind is,” I told him. “They don’t do patrols this far out because of the island’s protections—there’s no need. They stay in the interior and that’s a good ten miles in. There’s no smoke and even though we have a sharper sense of smell than humans, it’s not enough to pick up on the smell of food from there.”

“The island doesn’t look that big on maps,” Frankie commented.

“Looks are deceiving.” The magic barriers protecting the island did a number on physics but I had no way of explaining it and right now, I wasn’t too comfortable talking to Frankie. What little she’d told us was still trying to settle into my skull.

Damon acted as if she hadn’t spoken.

Lemeraties did the same.

Frankie was aware of how displeased both Damon and Lemeraties were with her being around—she was too intuitive not to be, but she showed about as much concern as I’d give a gnat.

“I’m going to…” Lemeraties frowned, expression turning inward. “I want to walk around and see what I can learn about the land, find what it is that has me unsettled. What is the word I’m looking for, Kitasa?”

“You’re going to scout?”

She considered it, then nodded. “Yes, I’m going scouting.” Her eyes met mine, then slid to Damon’s.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Damon said, with emphasis on we’re .

Neither of them looked at Frankie but they might as well have.

Lemeraties disappeared in front of us and when I glanced up, I saw Frankie staring at the spot where the revenant had been.

“When did she die?” Frankie asked.

“Almost two thousand years ago,” I told her.

She’s also my aunt, many times removed, and according to her, we’re related to Alexander the Great. Also, we might be on the famed island of a cruel warlord who imprisoned a legendary weaponsmith. And according to you, that warlord might be your father. But I didn’t mention any of that.

“And your grandmother—or the one who is pretending to be your grandmother…did she send her revenant out to kill you or kidnap you?”

“Lemeraties was just her attack dog,” I said. “She was a distraction, there to throw the city into an uproar and cause chaos. I was the target. One of my aunts was in the city, looking for a way to get her hands on me, but it turns out I wasn’t as easy a target as they’d expected. My aunt got dead and Lemeraties snapped the compulsion spell binding her to Madae—distance makes the spell-casting harder or something like that.”

Frankie nudged one of the coals with the toe of her boot.

“If it is Arsay you’re after her, it’s not just her you’ll have to face, Kit.”

Damon stretched his legs out next to me. I put my hand on his knee. “I don’t care if she’s Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Boudica and Zenobia all wrapped up in one with all the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding at her side,” I told her. “She stole my fucking cousin and if I don’t get to him— soon —I won’t be able to save him. She’s wearing him like a dress and I’ve got to find a way to boot her out of him.”

Damon covered my hand with his.

Frankie covered her face with her hands and sighed. “She’ll have already run to her father—to my father. To Azazel. It’s what she does when she finds herself in a bind and he’ll help her because she kisses his ass and tell him it tastes like candy. And if he learns that kid has a connection to Zimri…?”

Damon’s thigh muscle went hard as stone under my hand and I looked at him from under my lashes. Frankie hadn’t explained much about Azazel.

“I take it there’s no love lost between Chang and this Azazel guy,” I said.

Damon took my hand and twined our fingers, his gaze dropping to stare into the flames of the fire. “Azazel is the one who killed his sister, Kit. Azazel and his daughter…who I guess is the bitch that took your grandmother over. Madae. Arsay. Whatever her name is. Azazel was one of the original fallen, and the only one Chang was never able to hunt down.”

The original fallen. Panic seized me by the throat.

“If that bastard learns who Doyle is…”

Damon tightened his hand on mine. “Doyle is tougher than he looks and he looks pretty damn tough. Neither Chang nor I go by names Azazel would recognize. And you’ve got an uncanny way of figuring things out—don’t forget that.” His expression softened as he studied me. "We already knew we were going to be facing somebody connected to Azazel. Nothing's really changed."

But it had . He'd recognized Arsay's name as an ancient deity—that meant she'd been around far longer than we'd guessed. How did that not change things?

"Kit." Damon touched my chin. "If Chang didn't think we could save Doyle, he would have left and gone to handle it himself."

I wanted to take comfort in his words.

But I couldn’t. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but this was so much bigger than I'd realized.

Tugging my hand from his, I rose. “I’m tired. I’m going to go lay down.”

They both knew I was lying.

Neither bothered to call me out, though. I guess when you realize one of your few family members is in mortal danger, you’re allowed a few white lies.

Turning my back on them, I headed for the tent.

I hoped the two of them didn’t try to kill each other.

The dream came fast.

No sooner had I laid down than I was falling into it—or calling it to me. I couldn’t tell.

“Kit, what are you doing here?”

Doyle looked up at me from the bed where he lay. He was draped in some ridiculous gauzy robe that would have looked more at home on a male model and curled up next to him were two different females, one on each side.

“We’re dreaming,” I told him in a flat voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”

He scowled. “I didn’t sleep with them. I told them to go but they started crying—apparently, if they don’t stay the night, they get beaten. What was I supposed to do?”

I had no response to that. Curling a finger at him, I turned and walked away from the bed. I couldn’t have a serious discussion with him while he was lounging on a bed looking like he was pondering an orgy.

I stopped by a window and looked outside.

The city spread out before me looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it.

“Where are we?” I asked Doyle.

“I don’t know.” He sounded grim and when I looked at him, his expression was shuttered. “Nobody tells me shit and if I ask too many questions, I end up getting dosed with Night—usually via an air dart somebody fires at me from behind.”

“Do they speak English?”

“Yes. Perfectly. But I’m pretty sure we’re not in the States. Save for a couple of others, I’m one of the few white people around.” He gave me a haunted look. “Are you coming for me?”

“Yes.” I took his hand and squeezed. “Hold on, Doyle. Just hold on.”

“I’m trying.” He squeezed back, his hand oddly cold. “I hear somebody’s voice in my head…all the time. It’s a woman and when she talks, it’s like she’s trying to push me out.”

“You can’t let her.” Facing him, I grabbed onto his arms. “Fight her back. You can’t stop fighting her.”

“I won’t.” He gripped my wrists and the icy burn of his flesh sank into me, a shock to my senses. Vaguely, I sensed Damon stirring as he lay on the pallet next to me, there in the real world while I was here in this dream state with Doyle.

Don’t wake me up…don’t wake me up…

I had to stay calm. The dream paths didn’t hold if I panicked. Tuning Damon out, I focused on Doyle.

“What’s going on, Kit? Who is she?”

A laugh echoed all around us—a cold, feminine laugh…and it sounded familiar . Instinctively, I cringed and the scars on my back seemed to writhe and burn. No, no, no…

A hand touched my shoulder. Through a veil, I heard Damon murmuring my name. No!

“Oh, fuck,” Doyle said, his eyes flashing gold as the tiger within peered out. “It’s her. “

“Stay calm,” I told him, tightening my grip on him even as I heard Damon saying my name again, trying to pull me out of this dream. “Stay calm, Doyle. She can’t hurt you in these dreams, okay?”

His jaw tightened and the way he looked at me told me he didn’t believe me.

Panic made my heart pulse faster and brought a bitter taste to my mouth. Lemeraties, where are you ?

“Who are you talking to, meddlesome boy?”

I sank my nails into Doyle’s wrists and shook my head.

“Don’t answer,” I mouthed at him.

Eyes wide, he stared at me before whispering, “It won’t matter!”

“No, dear child…it won’t.”

The voice wrapped around us now, sinuous as a snake’s coils.

“Lemeraties!” I shouted her name. I might have screamed it in my sleep—I certainly screamed in the dream, shouting it right in Doyle’s face even as he started to fade in front of me.

Damon’s voice grew louder as the dream started to fall apart.

I held onto the dream with everything I had.

“Doyle, listen to me,” I said, desperate now. “She’s…fuck, she’s a demon…sort of. But her physical body is dead. She’s more like a parasite now but she’s always gone after the weaker-willed or those who were messed up in the head. That’s why she tried to break me —it should have made me easy prey for her. You are not weak. You never have been. You can beat this. Just keep fighting —”

“Well, well, well… it is you.”

The dream snapped back into sharp clarity.

Damon’s voice faded.

Goosebumps raced down my spine and I twisted around just in time to evade the hand shooting out to grab me.

I didn’t recognize the woman.

She wasn’t Fanis.

She wasn’t Madae.

She was taller, more powerful, with broader shoulders and longer limbs. Her features were more smoothly cut and at a glance, she would have been awe-inspiring.

But a longer look meant you had to look into her eyes.

And I recognized those eyes.

The malice and derision—I’d seen it shining on me regularly as I grew up on the very island where my physical body now rested.

Taking a gamble, I said, “Arsay, I presume.”

Surprise flickered in her eyes and slowly, she smiled. “I haven’t heard that name in more lifetimes than you can recall.”

“Yeah, well, considering you outlived your lifespan quite some time ago, that’s not surprising,” I said sourly.

“Beings like me don’t adhere to the rules that dictate the lives of…things like you.” She curled her lip and she said it, making clear what she thought of things like me .

“Weird, since you seem to need things like me to walk around out there in the real world, I don’t know why you think you’re anything special, Arsay.”

It took a moment for the insult to penetrate but when it did, she jerked back as if slapped—and she turned around and repaid the favor, although her blow was literal.

It sent me flying into the stone wall of the palatial-like stone wall and I hit my head. Had we been awake, that blow would have cracked my skull open like an egg. If I’d been conscious, the pain would have left me numb with shock.

But a lifetime of dealing with brutal injuries had taught me to react—and react fast. I was already rolling to my knees and as I did so, my body was sending out messages that made no sense. I wasn’t hurt. At all.

“What…does the truth hurt? Sorry.” With a wide grin, I shoved upright and smiled at her. “Was that supposed to do anything?”

“We’ll try this then.” An ugly smile curled her lips and she surged forward. She didn’t walk. She didn’t run. It was like the floor under her turned to water and carried her on waves to my cousin, shoving her toward him with eerie fluidity. She grabbed onto him, hands turning to claws.

He screamed .

It was a sound of unbearable torment. The urge to clamp my hands over my ears was unbearable, but instinct took over. Lunging forward, I struck—and instinct drove that action, too, because I called for a blade that shouldn’t have done any good at all in a dream.

But the blade was there , in my hand. There was a weight to it that felt far more profound than it should for this strange dream that was more than a dream.

And it wasn’t my sword, either.

It was Death . His cold, maniacal presence was a vicious laugh at the back of my mind and I heard his voice.

“Finally…”

Oh, fuck.

I had the presence of mind to think that, and then I was fighting for control of my own body because through his connection to me, Death sensed Arsay.

“Give her to me!” he demanded and his voice was so… real I wouldn’t have been surprised if others heard him.

I shoved him back. “ We can fight her, but we do it together. You don’t get to claim my body.”

I felt his surprise. That worried me because he had never felt this aware— nor had he ever felt so hungry. He fought for several long moments but with teeth-gritted determination, I shoved him back until I was once again in control of my mind, and body.

“ You want vengeance,” I told him. “ I want justice. She 's the reason my mother is dead. She took my cousin. We can both get what seek but only if we work together. Do we have a bargain? ”

There was a slow, ponderous sense of waiting and I could sense him turning the idea over. This was more than just a painstakingly crafted weapon but I shoved the chill of the idea away. I couldn’t think about that now.

“ Yes, ” he murmured softly. “ Together. ”

Fuck, I hoped this was only a dream.

And then I pushed everything else aside and lifted the sword I knew as Death.

As I brought him down, Arsay turned her head to look at me.

There was shock in her eyes.

And the blade cleaved flesh—I felt the impact, smelled the blood.

With a seismic punch I felt all the way through my soul, Death shrieked out, “ Vengeance… ”

No.

Oh, hell, no.

This was not just a dream.

Arsay jerked backward, flinging Doyle from her with a snarl as her eyes locked on the blade called Death.

“Where did you get that blade?”

Rotating my wrist, I let it dance through the air between us and smiled.

“Do you like it, Grandmother ?”

She hissed and bared her teeth at me.

I lunged, bringing the blade down in a diagonal cut across her torso.

She darted and evaded but not quick enough. Thick, dark red blood oozed from the gash bisecting her torso and smoke wisped upward from the injury.

“I’ll peel your skin from your bones,” she promised.

“You’re getting redundant.” Just behind her, Doyle shoved to his feet, his face pale. He wavered in and out of focus, like a hologram dying out.

“Just you wait,” she promised. But she didn’t approach, eyes on the blade before me, watchful. Almost wary.

“Doyle,” I snapped, hoping he could hear me. “Call your axe!”

The tension punched up in the air. It rose and rose and rose—

And then I saw the powerful battle axe in his hands, the one he’d called before I’d realized who—and what —he was. And he looked more solid.

Our eyes met over Arsay’s form and I shouted, “Now!”

Arsay lunged for me.

Doyle and I moved as one, he with his axe and I with Death.

Something white flashed between us as my blade pierced her side and as the battle axe Doyle had first called years ago punched into her from the front.

And I heard a voice. A woman’s voice.

“Kitasa, move !”

Something about that voice was painfully, achingly familiar but I couldn’t place it. It was so faint…so faint …

There was another voice—and this one was not faint.

Lemeraties, in a voice as cold as the grave and just as unrelenting, in a clear, commanding tone, “I told you, crone , I’d find a way to stop you. Boy… move .”

Doyle flung himself away and I caught his arm.

The two of us backed up, holding onto each other.

There were holes in the thing I now knew as Arsay and light spilled out of her. Those voices grew louder and louder until she clapped her hands over the tears in her belly, tears ripped into her by Doyle’s axe and she hissed, spinning to face us.

The lights swirled around her, faster, thicker. The lights swirled around Arsay and I heard wails and screaming.

Lemeraties stood between Arsay and us, an unyielding wall of stone.

“Madae,” Lemeraties in a deliberately mocking voice. Derision dripped from each word like filthy rainwater as she continued, “Or should I say Arsay ?”

“Get out of my way, carcass.”

Lemeraties laughed. “You don’t even have a body to call your own. At least I know where my bones lie. Why don’t you give it up and die already?”

The twists of white light swirled around the creature tighter, moving more swiftly when the Deathless tried to advance. It was almost as though they were binding her— hurting her.

Arsay’s face tightened and she jerked back.

Lemeraties laughed. “I’ll bleed more of them out of you, you sorry sack of putrid flesh. I know the dream paths. You don’t.”

Eyes flashing with hate, the female flung back her head and screeched.

I tightened my hand on Doyle’s—but he didn’t feel so solid now.

“No!” I tried to hold on. “Doyle…stay with me!”

But he was gone.

And I was lost—abruptly, I realized he’d been anchoring me to this dreamscape and without that anchor, I was lost.