Nuallan ordered the chief and Hank to remove Aaron’s body from the cold bag and carry him into an empty exam room. Liz and I took up space along the wall and watched. There was no way in hell any one of us was leaving her alone with Aaron.
On the floor Nuallan drew a circle, but this one was not of salt but of ashes. “Ashes from a corpse,” Liz leaned over and whispered as Nuallan held the container and slowly poured out her circle. I didn’t ask how she knew that, just gritted my teeth and tried to remain emotionless.
Nuallan stepped inside the circle and made a seven-pointed star. Once she was done, she set the urn outside of the circle and then turned to Hank and the chief, motioning them to place Aaron’s body in the center. After they’d finished and stepped back to the wall, Nuallan faced us with a smug grin and satisfaction lighting her eyes.
I knew then that something terrible was about to happen, that Nuallan Gow was about to exact her price.
“To halt the Dark Mother from taking back what is hers, one must offer a trade in return. A sacrifice.” Nuallan pulled a ritual dagger from her bag and twirled it expertly in one hand. In her cocktail dress, heels, and perfectly coiffed chignon, the image was disconcerting. “Someone here must give of themselves. A body part will do nicely.” The knife twirled around and around. “A toe. A finger. An ear.” Her gaze met mine. “A tongue, perhaps?”
I cocked my head and shot her my best you’re-an-asshole look.
Hank stepped forward. “I’ll do it.” He bent over and began to remove his shoe. “What’s one toe, right?”
I blinked. My chest felt funny as I stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and awe. He’d already given up something of great value to him; I wasn’t about to let him give anything else.
“What?” he asked me, glancing up, hair falling into his line of sight.
“Nothing. I’ll do it. I owe him.”
“Yes, Charlie will do it,” Nuallan said, cutting off Hank’s argument. “How noble. I knew you would. What’s it going to be, Detective? The Dark Mother has a special love for tongues and nipples.”
My blood pressure rose, and my pulse began a slow, heavy drum in my ears. I drew in a deep breath, my face growing hot. Nuallan cocked her head, watching me intently. “Better yet … how about your hair?”
“My hair is not a body part.”
“A sacrifice does not always have to be in blood. It is very much a part of you. She will accept it because it’s something you love.”
That’s it? We went from body parts to my hair? My eyes narrowed, and I had an epiphany that Nuallan wasn’t doing this for the goddess she worshipped, but for herself. To shame me somehow, to take something she thought I held dear, to make me feel less me in some way.
Fuck her. I stepped into the circle, pulled out the band, and shook out my long hair, letting the wavy mahogany length fall. I did love my hair, but she could shave me bald. I didn’t care.
Her hand shot out as she stepped aside. She grabbed my hair, wound it around her fist, and yanked me back against her, baring my throat. A sinking feeling swept through my gut. The others instantly tensed, eyes widening in realization.
And then The Bitch cut my throat.
The sting of parting flesh followed the path of the razor-sharp dagger. I shouldn’t be surprised, yet I was, and that, coupled with her quick reflexes, left me momentarily stunned.
Hank and the chief leapt forward, but as soon as they hit the circle a wall of protection flew up, blocking their path. A wall of smut. They banged against it repeatedly. The chief fired a few nitro rounds and Hank summoned his power, placing his palms on the smut and sending arcs of muted blue power into the barrier, but nothing broke a Master Crafter’s circle.
The scent of warm iron wafted to my nose as blood slid down my neck and over my collarbone. Nuallan used the dagger to roughly saw off my hair. As the last few strands were cut, she angled me around and shoved me toward Aaron’s body.
I landed hard, dazed, chest-to-chest with the corpse of my friend as a wave of nausea bloomed in my belly. Nuallan knelt down beside us. “Turns out I didn’t even need this.” She held up my large clump of hair before dropping it in a heap beside me. “Don’t move. Stay on him and bleed.”
My eyelids fluttered, brain scrambling out of the dumbfounded haze her actions had put me in. I was still breathing and not choking on my blood. I coughed, feeling a small trickle of it sliding down my throat. She hadn’t pressed deep enough.
Nuallan rummaged through her bag and produced a short beige candle, marbled with thin red lines. “This is a candle made from human tallow. Liposuction is such a wonderful thing, much more convenient than butchering and flaying to get to the fat.”
The candle lit with the snap of her finger. She made a nest on the floor with my hair, set the lit candle in the center, then picked up the ritual dagger and gave a quick slice to the pad of her middle finger, milking the black blood—she definitely wasn’t human—and letting it drop randomly on the candle and my hair. Her red lips moved, and the chant that came from her throat was soft and unintelligible.
She flung her hand, flicking her blood all over me, Aaron, and the circle. “Sit up,” she ordered, eyes taking on a faint grayish glow.
The smut in the circle grew denser, choking me as she drew on the dark power of Charbydon and filtered it through her corrupted soul. The power was indifferent, as was the natural energy found in Elysia. Both could be drawn here, and both could be manipulated and used in black crafting. Charbydon’s energy, however, seemed to lend itself better to the dark arts, easier to bend to the will of the user, especially if that user was natively Charbydon.
Nuallan Gow, with her black blood and glowing eyes, was not human. What the hell was she? And what the hell had we gotten ourselves into?
My hands were covered in the sticky pool of my own blood—I was always amazed at how quickly the life-giving substance turned cold. I gathered my strength and pushed against Aaron’s chest, sliding off him. I sat up near his hip, facing Nuallan as she sat on the other side.
“Take my hands,” she commanded, reaching over the body, not looking, mouth continuing to move in her soft chant. “Now!”
I grabbed her hands, my blood squishing between our palms, as she squeezed painfully. Her power leaked into me, creeping up my arms like millipedes hunting food. I shivered and swallowed, the movement causing the sting and ache in my neck wound to hurt fresh.
Her chant grew faster, more demanding. A thin cloud of darkness formed from the link of our hands, spreading out over Aaron, enveloping him and then easing down, settling over him like a shroud.
A wave of dizziness flooded my brain and stole my vision. I swayed, knowing I was losing too much blood. I struggled to stay conscious, blinking hard a few times to force the fog away, my vision returning as I lifted my heavy eyelids.
Nuallan’s face shifted like a TV losing its satellite signal. I squinted, unsure of what I was seeing. Her human face shifted again, this time a fraction longer and giving me just a brief glimpse of another face—sallow skin, graying in the dips and shadows of sharp bone structure. Bald. Long, pointy ears. Thin, pale lips drawn back from a mouth filled with two tiny rows of sharp teeth on her upper and lower jaw. Eyes that were round and as black as pitch. She looked like a skull with skin and teeth.
A ghoul.
Nuallan Gow was a ghoul.
A moment later, the hideous face was gone, and the Nuallan I knew and hated stared back at me. She dropped my hands, snaked a finger out, and dragged it through the wound in my neck before I had a chance to prevent it. I gasped at the sudden pain as she with-drew her finger, and with my fresh, warm blood, drew a complex symbol on Aaron’s forehead—one I’d never seen before.
“And so we halt death …” she said solemnly, her attention on the corpse. “It is done.”
The gray shroud of black crafting power lay over Aaron, the symbol of my blood bright on his forehead, but dimming as it sunk into his skin.
Nuallan stood, snuffed out her candle by pinching it with her thumb and the bloody middle finger, saying what seemed to be some kind of thank you or prayer to the Dark Mother in Charbydon, took her ritual dagger, grabbed her bag, and then shoved her expensive pumps through the circle of ashes. The barrier of smut dropped immediately and she stepped out, stopping in front of Hank. “Leave him on the floor.”
And then she left, the Master black crafter of Atlanta. A very powerful, very deadly, very unpredictable monster.
There weren’t many ghouls in the city, most preferring their homeland in Charbydon, but some of the more enterprising of the species had come to our world where they lived in the shadows and maintained a quiet, mysterious existence.
Hank entered the broken circle and bent down to help me to my feet. His scent swirled around me and my mark gave me a fresh zing of energy, but it didn’t stop me from swaying on my feet, everything going blurry. “Heal yourself, Charlie,” he commanded through tight lips.
My throat burned. I tried to speak, but now it hurt too badly.
I was aware of him and the others helping me out of the room, and of the cool air at the back of my neck where hair should’ve been, of the newly cut ends brushing against my jaw and curving under my chin as my head dipped forward.
“Get her up on the table,” I heard Liz say amid the sound of footsteps and metal clanging. Hands slipped under my armpits as I was helped onto a cold, hard table. Then I was being lowered onto my back. Somewhere in the haze of my mind, I realized they’d put me on a stainless steel autopsy table. Nice, guys, real nice.
The voices of Hank, the chief, and Liz became lower and more distant until they blended into a low hum and finally silence. My muscles relaxed, and I gave in to the oblivion waiting in the wings.
A surge of heat from the mark on my shoulder, followed by a cool breeze floating over my neck wound and winding its way inside of me, slowly restored my awareness. My mind began to process things again, and after a few tries, I was able to open my heavy eyelids and keep them open.
Hank stood over me, one hand over my wound and the other palm underneath my shoulder blade on the mark we shared. I knew what he was doing—giving me his healing energy, and replacing some of my pain with those feel-good hormones from the mark.
I felt drunk. My lips worked, trying to speak, though I didn’t know what I meant to say.
“Better?” Hank asked.
I nodded, testing my throat with a swallow to see if it hurt. Yeah. It hurt. But not as badly as before. “Getting better,” I rasped out.
“Good, because you know I’m not the best at healing others. Why don’t you help me out and start healing yourself?”
“Okay.” I could do that. “If you tell me what Malakim means.”
“It’s just a generic term, a greeting from one Elysian to another. Nothing important. Heal yourself, Charlie. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“You’re so full of it,” I slurred. But, yeah, he was right. Whatever the term meant, it wasn’t important. Not now, and I wasn’t even sure why that question had popped into my head to begin with. I drifted into that cool place of healing, thinking of smiles and laughter and my kid, all the good things that sent a familiar hum of pure light energy into all the nooks and crannies, into the places that still burned, and snuffed out the fires …
“Charlie. Charlie, wake up,” a voice echoed in a singsong tone while a gentle hand shook my shoulder. “Time to kick some Adonai ass.”
Those words made me smile.
I woke from what was a very typical healing state—very similar to sleep—to see my partner shaking his head in an amused way. “I thought that would get you up.”
It took a few tries, but I managed to ask in a scratchy voice, “How long was I out?” The weight in my eyelids dissipated as I pushed to my elbows, one hand going carefully to my throat. Tender. A little squishy as the wound had sealed but not yet scarred over. Otherwise I felt okay. I sat up all the way and swung my legs over the autopsy table, giving myself a minute to regain my equilibrium before sliding off. “Don’t ever put me on that table again.”
Hank tossed me an extra Hefty. “We should double up.”
“I take it you raided the armory again. Where’re the chief and Liz?” I shoved the extra Hefty in the waistline of my jeans.
“Liz is in with Aaron, getting her stuff ready for the ritual, and the chief is on the phone with DC and the Adonai reps. Now that they know about Llyran, we won’t have to worry about them accusing the nobles.”
“Yeah, we have enough to worry about,” I muttered.
I went to twist up my hair, reaching back and not finding it there. Ah, yes. My unnecessary payment to the Dark Mother. The ends were still long enough to pull back into a barrette or a very, very short ponytail that would stick straight out, but I didn’t have any of those handy.
“It looks cute,” Hank said. “Makes you look young and innocent and sweet.”
My eyes rolled. “Yeah, just the image I want to convey to all the bad guys out there.”
Unable to stand the curiosity, I stepped to the small mirror hanging over the sink. My brow shot up. The person staring back did not look like me. Same face, of course, but somehow made softer, a little kinder-looking with my mahogany waves falling just past my chin, the front longer than the back where Nuallan had made her cut. I shoved one side behind my ear, the other side falling over my eye.
Gold and copper glinted in my narrow, calculating gaze as I stared at the younger and—dare I say?—peppier version of me. This could work to my advantage. The badasses I hunted would underestimate this version of Charlie Madigan even more than they did the old one. I’d have an edge, and those fuckers would never know what hit ’em.
I shrugged and spun around. “Let’s go.” Confidence and determination settled over me like a comfortable old blanket as I strode toward the door, but it was quickly tempered by the enormity of what we were about to do: find Llyran, get Aaron’s soul back, and stop the star from being raised before dawn. We needed some serious backup if this was going to work.
Once we made it out of Station One and into the parking lot, I grabbed my cell and placed a call.
“The clock is ticking, Detective,” came Pendaran’s version of a hello.
“Save it, Druid. I need your help.”