Page 26 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

When life brings you an immortal carnivore

Fi idled for a week. She spent every molasses-creeping second working on a plan.

Normally, she could burn a month after a job with nothing but bubble baths and chocolate pastries. Ice fishing with Aisinay. A weekend on the Summer Plane enjoying live music on a humid canal patio, dancing until the world reduced to starlight and the perfect clarinet solo.

Instead, she cocooned on her sofa and guzzled coffee while snow clogged her windows, waiting for automaton birds to flutter up every couple of days. All Boden’s messages read the same: Nothing new. Stay put.

Fi read between the lines. He wanted her out of the way while he fixed her mess.

How could she fix this, short of fighting a daeyari ? An immortal creature too swift and strong for any mere human to vanquish? Fi might as well throw herself onto a pike and deny Astrid the satisfaction.

Further annoyance came when her gramophone developed a stutter.

The internal conduits had to be rewired, but after several static shocks and a trainload of curses, she got her music playing with only occasional static.

She put on a record from her last Summer Plane sojourn: a seaside city of colorful porticos and bands on every other street corner, air muggy as soup and the best damn crayfish she’d ever eaten.

The bass line beat like a second heart. And there came that horn, nimble as a breeze.

Fi couldn’t fight a daeyari. Could Verne be distracted? Coerced? Tricked to fall into a very deep hole? No, that wouldn’t work, only because daeyari teleportation was bullshit.

Her foot tapped to the music as she spread a pile of empty glass capsules onto her table.

In the oldest stories of the Season-Locked Planes, mortals Shaped using only their internal energy.

Then daeyari taught them more demanding forms of Shaping, energy conduits and external tools.

Over time, humans developed tougher skin, though flesh could still burn from pulling too strong a current.

Their muscles built stronger reserves, but charging energy capsules provided useful external storage.

Plus, she could charge them in her downtime while she was well fed and rested, fuel for her furnace or future emergencies.

Not a hole to trap a daeyari. Some other binding, then? Astrid had trapped Antal with that energy cord… only for him to break loose minutes later.

Fi pressed her thumbs to the capsule. The current had to come slow, otherwise the glass would shatter.

Astrid had taught her that. They’d holed up in her room one night, Astrid grinning like a wildcat with a bag of empty capsules she’d swiped from her father at the energy plant.

They’d had no idea what they were doing, blew Astrid’s bed in half and got grounded for a month.

Fi’s fingers ached as she pinched the copper electrodes, cold shivering down her forearms as she Shaped silver energy out of muscle and into the orb.

Traps were probably a dead end. What if Fi poisoned Verne’s water? Did carnivorous Void immortals drink water?

A knock pounded her door. Fi swore as energy seared her fingertips, nearly cracking the capsule.

The knock sounded again. Intentionally few people knew where Fi lived.

Only one of them would bother hiking all the way up here to harass her.

Fucking Bodie. After shaking her hands out, she marched across the room, starved for company but equally set on giving her useless brother a piece of her mind for stringing her along all week.

“About time.” Fi yanked the door open. “Can’t even bother to warn me when…”

It wasn’t Boden who greeted her.

It was a daeyari. One specific daeyari she’d begged the Void to never see again, perched on her porch with a mild frown and tail flicking.

Fi sprang into defense. She shifted onto the balls of fuzzy-socked feet, brandishing a half-charged energy capsule ready to hurl.

“What do you want?” she said. “You won’t eat me that easily, fiend!”

Antal—former Lord Daeyari of this territory, immortal spawn of the Void between realities—swept a dry look over her flannel pajamas. The drift of music from inside. Last, and least impressed of all, the energy capsule leveled at his head.

“That seems unnecessary,” he said.

“Does it? Then why in the endless black Void are you—”

Fi grunted as he tossed a bag to her chest.

“These belong to you, I assume?”

Why was he here. Why was he here ? Na?ve, to hope she’d endured the last of him, that her sour-milk luck would allow her to focus on a singular crisis at one time. Fi dug into the bag, keeping the daeyari in one eye as—

Her fingers closed around something cool.

Metal. Fi yanked out the hilt of an energy sword.

Her energy sword, side nicked from a crossbow bolt in a sagebrush town on the Spring Plane.

She dug deeper, a thrill at the sight of her energy capsules, her transport stone, and…

bless the Void, her silviamesh. She nuzzled the light, scaled fabric to her cheek.

“Milana had them in her quarters,” Antal said.

Fi tore her attention away from his gifts. “You’ve been in Thomaskweld?”

“As much as I dare. Verne’s derived daeyari prowls the cliffs, though she tolerated me long enough to retrieve my clothes. So kind of her.”

He sneered at his dark blue shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.

He had, obnoxiously, neglected to fasten the top three buttons.

Why did a daeyari need to waltz around with half his chest showing?

His hair tousled blue-black between his antlers.

High-waisted trousers clung snug to his thighs.

Without the formalwear, the embroidered cuffs or iridescent fabric, he looked unsettlingly like a man out for a stroll in Thomaskweld.

Where he belonged.

How could Fi sleep, knowing a daeyari might appear in her home at any time? What if he decided to pop in for a midnight snack?

Though… he didn’t have to return her things.

“What’s the catch, daeyari?”

Antal’s nostrils flared, a muttered, “Veshri grant me patience.” Then, louder, “You don’t know much about immortals.”

Accurate. The nebulousness of this creature, combined with the sheer weight of her recent fuck-ups, did, in fact, make Fi want to curl into a ball. He didn’t need to know that.

“And?”

“Small favors, spread across a long life, aren’t to be overlooked. Any sensible daeyari knows that.” He stepped off her porch. “Consider your debt repaid.”

“Repaid?”

“I asked you to help uncover this plot. We did so. Our business is finished.”

“But what about… wait, wait, wait !”

For a moment, Fi had something akin to an out-of-body experience, observing in horror as she once again moved toward a daeyari of her own volition, hand raised, as if swiping at air could stop him from teleporting away. A daeyari like Verne would have flayed her on the spot.

But this daeyari paused, slitted red eyes and black sclera cast over a shoulder.

Maybe she ought to be more afraid of him. The squirm of adrenaline in her stomach certainly thought so. And yet as she pictured this lethal beast moping in her bathtub, recalled his fluster when she’d stood her ground before, her demands came easier.

“Verne’s taken Thomaskweld?” Fi asked. Boden’s messages said as much, but hearing the news in person stung. “What are you going to do?”

“Strange. It seems as if you’ve asked me that exact question, several times already.”

Smartass . “You’ve had a week to think about it.”

He fell quiet.

“Surely, you plan to do something ,” Fi said. “I came to this territory to get away from Verne. You aren’t great, but at least you’re better than her.”

Antal muttered something else, foreign syllables Fi couldn’t translate.

“I’ll speak with Tyvo,” he said.

The name rolled off his black tongue like split ice. Verne, Antal’s neighbor to the east, was a tyrant. Tyvo, his neighbor to the north, was… a predator, straight out of the folktales. Reclusive. Unyielding.

“How will that help?” Fi asked.

“Daeyari territories are strict agreements. Verne has overstepped hers. My other neighbor might be agreeable to keeping her in line.”

This was the best idea Fi had heard all week.

Better than Boden’s waiting game. Better than Kashvi itching to point her crossbow at a daeyari skull.

Better than any of her half-baked plans.

Let the immortals settle their feud, get Antal back in power, Verne gone.

Then things could return to normal. Best case, Antal resumed his policy of ignoring Nyskya.

He might be more likely to do so if Fi helped.

She didn’t want to. By the endless Void, she’d rather shut her eyes and hope for someone better than her to sort this mess. But it was her mess.

“Do you want help?” she asked.

The daeyari’s head tilted. He surveyed her from tip to toe, the baffled part of his mouth slowly sinking to a frown.

“From you ?” he said.

“Yes, from me. I’m more useful with an energy sword.”

“Your debt is repaid.”

“I heard you. And I’m offering to help.”

“I thought you were eager to be rid of me?”

“I’m eager to get you back where you belong.” She pointed over the trees in, vaguely, the direction of Thomaskweld. “But the last time I saw you confront another daeyari? Things didn’t go well. So do you want backup, or not?”

Antal stared at her so long, it felt like an intimidation tactic.

His facial expressions came and went like river ice, jaw tight and focus fierce enough to send a chill down her neck.

The tail, though. It swayed behind him, shifting from sharp arcs into something smoother.

Contemplative. Fi played the only card she had: chin up, no hint of surrender.

The act came easier with strangers, those who didn’t know her well enough to spot the lie.

“If you wish,” he conceded.

Fi’s heart skipped with triumph. And a sliver of terror. “When?”

“Now. I suppose.”

“ Now? ” She considered her flannel pajamas, the tangled hair she’d forgotten to brush that morning. “Wait here. Don’t leave without me.”

His eyes were arrows through her ribs. Not for the first time, Fi struggled to interpret his scowl as seething annoyance… or bafflement.

“And risk your ire, Fionamara?” he said, flat. “I would never.”

If Fi were feeling bold, she might admit some satisfaction in flustering this daeyari. A life raft, when otherwise she’d be drowning.

She ducked inside. If she had to confront another immortal, she’d do it armed this time.

Her silviamesh bodysuit slipped on like a second skin, slate gray fabric with purple lining to accent her curves.

She donned her boots, a wool coat, transport stone in her pocket.

And her sword. Fi kissed the hilt then clipped it to her belt.

A kind gesture, returning these to her. Fi had to be cautious thinking such things. The daeyari had fangs, even if they weren’t eager for her throat at the moment.

Testament to her frazzled state, she nearly left the house like this.

On further thought, she swung by her mirror to apply a quick eyeshadow and dark lipstick.

Wrapped her Void-and-rainbow hair around energy-heated fingers to refresh the curls.

When she stepped outside, cold pressed her silviamesh-coated calves.

Aisinay had wandered from the trees to inspect their visitor. Antal held glacially still as the Void horse smelled him, tail low by his ankles. Aisinay nibbled his collar.

Traitor.

Antal broke his narrowed gaze from the horse, turning an even narrower look over Fi, slowing a moment too long over the curves hugged by her bodysuit. A crack in his stone facade.

“Did you… curl your hair?” he accused.

“Thanks for noticing. Never underestimate the importance of looking fierce. Not that you have to worry, born with claws at the ready.”

Something tight crossed his face, before snapping back to impassive.

He offered a clawed hand. Fi recoiled.

“Do we have to teleport?” she complained. “I’m a Voidwalker, we can use Curtains.”

Antal huffed. “You’re not a Voidwalker. A silly mortal name. Your version is more a… Shardwalker.”

Fi tipped an indignant brow. “I walk on Shards. Through the Void. That’s literally Voidwalking.”

“You walk on Shards. That’s literally Shardwalking. You don’t walk through the Void.”

“No one can walk through the Void.”

“Veshri can.”

Fi’s brow migrated higher.

“Veshri,” Antal said. “The first immortal daeyari. The First Voidwalker, who wove a new body out of—”

“So Voidwalking is, what, the daeyari term for teleporting?”

Antal huffed harder. “Teleporting and Voidwalking aren’t the same.”

Some really annoying immortal semantics was all Fi heard.

His hand stayed extended.

If Fi helped this daeyari reclaim his territory, how was she any different than Astrid serving Verne? This option, at least, would hurt fewer people. That had to count for something.

Fi grabbed his palm, cool against her hand, that restrained brush of claws as he held her tight.

Then the world lurched into black.