“Yes.”
She ran her fingers over the pulse in his neck, reminding him that she was here to stay. “And?”
“I could shift in the womb. I’ve never spoken of it so freely before—”
“You can always speak freely with me.”
He ran his clever hands down her spine to cup her bottom again. “It seems too good to be true.”
“Is that so?” She raised herself on her arms over him. Her nipples peaked, and she brushed them across his chest on her way to his mouth. “I see I might have to remind you.”
He swallowed as her breasts traced the edge of his lips. She straddled him. His hands clasped her thighs and moved higher. “Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 4
An hour later, still short of dawn, Alice led the way out of the tree canopy with her dragon at her tail to find a smoke-filled horizon. What had happened? With a burst of speed, she raced toward town. Every mile seemed like ten. Closer in, she caught sight of the flames that painted the clouds a dull red. Seattle burned.
Her heart dropped into her stomach. What about their homes? Their livelihoods? The bustling city that her father had dreamed of?
She clawed through the choking smoke and landed in the middle of Front Street. Not caring who saw, she Changed, while the wooden buildings burned around her. Men rushed to save what goods they could. Fire hoses lay abandoned in the road. The water pressure wasn’t strong enough to fight the blaze. The wooden pipes burned right along with the buildings.
“By the Lady,” she whispered.
Brand had Changed too, and he wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said. He kissed her hair. “What can I do?”
“Who caused this?” But there were scorch marks that looked suspiciously like thunderbolts on the nearby ground. Deep clawed grooves raked the mud.
An earsplitting roar sounded above, and they looked up to see two Thunderbirds chasing a dragon through the smoky sky. Wide-eyed humans rushed past. Shock and disbelief warred in their faces.
“Seize him!”
Alice heard her brother’s voice and spun to shield Brand. A second later a thunderbolt tore through the air. With a wild push, she threw what Aether she could influence against the force coming at them. The thunderbolt jarred a hair, smashing with a rumble and a shower of sparks into the building behind them. The wood groaned and collapsed beneath the hungry flames.
“Frost blight you!” she shouted. “What have you done? What madness is this? The town is lost!”
“Get your filthy claws off my sister,” Emory ordered. She’d never heard such ice in his voice. Static zinged through the air with the force of his anger. A Thunderbird stood behind him, as if Emory were in charge. Both were covered in soot and sweat. “Come out and fight like a man.”
“Stay out of this, Emory.” She wrapped her arms around Brand. “You can’t hurt him. He’s kin now—”
“The hell he is,” Emory swore.
“I won’t fight you, brother.” Brand held out a hand in peace.
“Just because you’ve turned Alice into a whore doesn’t make you blood.”
“Watch your tongue,” Brand snapped.
“What’s this about?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“You tell me,” Emory said. “Father’s men were attacked. They went to meet with the
Unktehila
and were ambushed.”
“No.” She didn’t want to believe it. She pulled away from Brand to search his face. “Did you know?”
He shook his head. Lines of strain bracketed his mouth. “I swear I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” Emory yelled. “There was no negotiation. No treaties. Nathaniel escaped to warn us, and we found you gone, Alice. And now you show up with the enemy. Ruining yourself with that soulless demon-kind. How could you?”
“I love him.”
Emory’s mouth curled in a sneer. Behind him, Nathaniel made a choking noise. Another Thunderbird screeched through the sky and fell, injured, into the street. He Changed and pulled himself to his feet. She recognized Will, bloody and limping.
She planted her feet, side by side with her lover, and raised her chin. “Where is Father now? What does Norgard want?”
“I don’t know,” Emory said.
“What are we going to do?”
Will limped closer. “Your father is dead.”
“No. No, he can’t be.”
“He is. The Raven Lord is dead.” Will raised his hand and pointed at Brand. “And now I’m going to do what we should have done from the first: exterminate every last one of these damned lizards.” A thunderbolt coalesced between his fingers, and he hurled the bolt at Brand.
Alice screamed. She dove in front of Brand, but it was too late. The thunderbolt hit him in the chest. It burned a hole straight through him. Blue lightning flared out over his frozen limbs, and his beautiful golden hair shot out. He was like a terrible, fiery angel, lit from behind by the burning town, lit from within by white hot sparks. His eyes rolled into his head, and he collapsed into the dirt.
Fire burned the back of her eyelids. Her throat felt scorched. She found herself in the dirt by his side, screaming his name, running her hands over his still-warm flesh, willing the Aether to return to his unmoving chest and pump his silent heart. But her gift wasn’t strong enough. No Kivati could bring back the dead. “Heal him!” she screamed at Emory. “Lady, please! Heal him!”
Emory’s voice shook. “I can’t, Ali. I don’t know how.”
“You ask the forbidden,” Nathaniel said.
“I don’t bloody care! Do something. Please! Oh, gods!” Her skin overheated from the burning buildings, but inside pain lanced ice shards through her soul. She wanted to go with him, wherever his kind journeyed after the long good-bye. She didn’t believe he could simply cease to exist; the Lady wouldn’t be so cruel. If he had no soul, she would give him one of hers. She would give him the very thing that made her Kivati: her totem, her sacred half. He could fly on Owl’s wings to the great beyond and keep watch with the spirits of her ancestors until she joined him again.
There, where there was no misery, no bloodshed, no war, they would finally be free to love.
“Alice, come away from him.” Will tried to pull her up.
“Get off of me!” She sent her anger through the Aether to shove him. “How could you?”
“He is an abomination—”
“I love him! There is nothing wrong with our love. You are the damned one, if even love cannot move you!”
“You’re talking nonsense, Alice,” Emory said. “Let’s get you away from this heat—”
“No! How many must die before you are satisfied? Hattie? Will? Me? Will you throw open the Gate? Let the rivers run red with the blood of our people? What cost is your hatred?”
They had no response.
There, beneath her fingers, the hole in Brand’s chest seemed to shrink. His strange blue-black blood oozed over the ragged edges of the hole, and when she wiped it away she found unbroken skin. Sweat glistened on his sculpted chest. Beads formed and slid down his front. Movement. She felt movement. His chest shivered. It rose and fell, growing stronger. Breath returned to his lungs.
“Blessed Lady,” she whispered. His eyelids fluttered. She gripped his hand and held on tight. He squeezed her fingers. A moan escaped from his lips. “Brand? Love? Can you hear me?” His eardrums would have burst from the thunderbolt, but if a hole in his chest could knit, then his healing was surely capable of more magic.
“Alice?” His lips barely moved. His voice was a whisper.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“Never.” She swore it with the full force of her gift. The Aether reverberated with her oath. His eyes opened, and she stared into his beloved blue gaze.
The edge of his mouth quirked. “Never is a long time.”
“An eternity won’t be enough.”
“Alice, move aside!” Will ordered. But some of the anger had left him.
She ignored him. Ignored the burning town, so many dreams floating away into the smoky night. Ignored the Thunderbirds and humans and dragons alike who fought the flames and each other. She helped Brand stand, and even though he quickly regained his strength, she kept her arm firmly wrapped around his waist.
Emory watched her with arms crossed. “I won’t lose my sister to those monsters—”
“Your hatred did that. Come on, Brand. Let’s leave this place.”
“Stop, Ali.” Emory raised his chin. “I order you to—”
“Order me? Order me? Is it such a cold day in hell?”
“Father is dead, so—”
She closed her eyes against the sharp pang. “If Father is dead, there is nothing left for me here.”
Will stepped forward, one hand out. “Wait, Alice. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“The woman knows her own mind.” Brand bent his head to hers. He kissed her, strong and full and brimming with life. “Lady Alice, the only way to kill me is to slice out my heart. I’ve never felt so vulnerable with my heart flying around outside of my body.”
“I’ll keep it safe,” she whispered. “But only if you’ll do the same.”
“Forever,” he said.
“And always.”
Epilogue
Alice and Brand left Seattle and never looked back. They settled in the north, where they were free to hunt through the uncut wild forests and fly. They left a town burnt clear to the ground. Upon that foundation of ash and hatred, a new city was born. The inhabitants razed the streets and built over the bones of the past. Sven Norgard took his Deadglass and founded his city of Ballard a few leagues to the north the next year. Halian Corbette’s dreams died alongside him in the battle. The Kivati scattered to the four winds. Halian’s son, Emory, wrested control of what was left and, swearing to wipe the Drekar from the face of the earth, continued to fight. With an iron claw, he rebuilt the Kivati into a severe warrior caste. The war moved to the shadows, where it was hidden from the humans.
Over a century later, the blood of both sides soaked the cursed earth. The Gate between the worlds buckled beneath the onslaught of ghosts, setting the stage for a final betrayal. It will take two stubborn hearts to save this city of darkness.
Keep reading for a sneak preview of
Hearts of Darkness
,
the first Deadglass Novel by Kira Brady!
Available in paperback
and as an e-book in August 2012.
“These shores will swarm with the invisible Dead of my Tribe. The White Man will never be alone. Let him be kind and just to my People, for the Dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a Change of Worlds.”
—CHIEF SEATTLE,
Washington Territories, 1854
Seattle, Present Day
The drowning world was gray through the riflescope. From the exposed rooftop across the street, Hart watched the Seattle morgue. Charms to guard against the dead were woven into the cyclone fence. They whistled in the harsh March wind—a low haunted noise, like the keening of spirits.
Hart hunched in his worn bomber jacket. Rain sliced his skin and pummeled the broken asphalt far below. Soggy leaves and cigarette butts raged through overflowing gutters toward distant Puget Sound. Wiping the water out of his eyes, he watched a woman come into view. She fit the profile of his target: midtwenties, short, curvy, with smooth latte skin, generous eyebrows, and a high forehead. She shivered in a thin jean jacket that did nothing to shield her from the rain. Did she have the necklace with her? Her body tensed when she caught sight of the morgue. She wrapped her arms around herself, hesitating momentarily as she took a shaky breath.
She pushed the thick brown hair out of her face, and he saw her eyes. Framed with wet-clumped lashes, they were golden brown and red from crying. Nothing special, and yet for a moment he forgot himself. Forgot his stiff aches and his cold fingers. Forgot the job and the madness and the constant stench of blood on his hands. Forgot his one driving goal: freedom.
Then she turned her head and the moment was lost. He felt the rain again beating on his face and the familiar burning in his chest. He tamped it down before it consumed him, before the thing inside him clawed out of his skin.
She continued down the sidewalk. Her generous ass swayed in the soaked jeans plastered to her body. Hart swallowed.
Around her, the Aether roiled—a sure sign she was not alone. The shining water that surrounded all matter didn’t take kindly to ghosts on the wrong side of the Gate to the Land of the Dead. Spirits were supposed to pass peacefully through those Gates, leaving this world to the living, but the Gate in Seattle was busted. Dark spirits slipped free through the crack formed by Chief Seattle’s curse to wreak havoc among the living.
Hart pulled a small spyglass out of his pocket. Holding the Deadglass to his eye, he adjusted the cluster of gears to focus the glittering cut-glass lens. The murky sight that emerged sent a jolt of fear to his gut. His lips peeled back, baring his teeth, and the beast inside him sat up and growled.
He knew the spirit world was alongside him, but it was another thing entirely to see it with his own eyes. The damned souls who refused to pass through the Gate swarmed around the woman on the street below. Her grief attracted them like moths to the flame. He could almost taste their hunger. The ethereal forms floated around her. Craving her touch. Coveting her senses.
She unconsciously waved a hand in front of her face as if brushing away fog, but was unaware of the danger. Why did humans choose to ignore their instincts?
For some reason the sight of the woman trapped by the wraiths affected him more than it should have. His beast strained forward, trying to catch her scent across the waterlogged street. Energy tingled through his core. Fur rippled beneath his skin. He hung on to his human form, snuffing out the glow that preceded the Change. Sweat broke on his brow. His pulse raced. With three days until the full moon, he should have more control.
The crows chose that moment to show up and distract him, which for once was a good thing. Gossiping in their guttural tongue, they landed on the telephone wires and rooftops. Watching. Waiting. Spying on him for their Kivati masters.
Lady be damned.
Kivati sentinels couldn’t be far behind. An ancient race of shape-changers, the Kivati were legends in their own right: Raven, Cougar, Coyote, Thunderbird. Wolf. They once protected the land and humankind. Still did, officially. But they did little to prove it, too caught up in a bloody war with the Drekar to waste time on humans.
At least the Drekar’s intentions were honest. Cursed with no souls of their own, the dragon-shifters fed on human souls. They weren’t always careful to leave their food alive. Who cared how many humans died, as long as there were enough to feed on? Better the weak were culled from the flock, leaving the strongest souls to provide sustenance. The Kivati felt honor-bound to defend humans, and the Drekar gave as good as they got.
It was a secret war, carried out in the shadowed alleys and boardrooms, behind the backs of the humans. The battles might be hidden, but the damage was everywhere. Outright neglect as resources were diverted into the war. A failing power grid as ghosts fried electrical circuits. Midnight explosions made to look like accidents. The shining skyscrapers deteriorating as soon as the last nail was hammered in. People disappeared and murder splashed across the nightly news, but humans chalked it up to gang violence. Other major metropolises had similar problems of urban decay and crime. It was the high price of city living. Those who didn’t like it were welcome to leave, and they did.
The damage accelerated every time some damn fool tried to open the Gate, cracking it farther, letting more ghosts and demons slip into the living world. The last time, it caused Mount St. Helens to erupt. Next time, who knew? From his vantage point on the roof, Hart could count three more volcanoes just waiting to blow their tops.
He could take care of himself. Always had. He aimed his rifle at the north end of the street where Kivati sentinels were sure to appear. Their crow scouts gave them away. Odds were good they were here for the same necklace he was. He had to get it first. Norgard wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Once Hart completed this job there was a single task left to pay off the blood debt that bound him. He could taste his freedom on the bitter north wind. After fifteen years in Norgard’s service, Hart’s soul was a dark, twisted thing, but it was his.
Down on the street, the woman glanced briefly up at the cackling crows, before stepping through the fence gate. The whistling charms that hung from the wrought-iron bars kept the dead from following her. Too bad the Kivati weren’t so easily put off. She climbed the steps, heaved open the morgue’s heavy iron door, and slipped inside.
Hart didn’t have time to follow and interrogate her about the necklace. All he could do was train his rifle on the two black jeeps that screeched to a halt on the street below. Black titanium scales plated the sides and tops of the vehicles. Two long tailpipes trailed from the undercarriage, one puffing black smoke from the firebox, the other a cloud of white water droplets. The Kivati had kept their old technology and adapted it to the new era. Though the large armored vehicles resembled modern cars, they ran on steam.
The Kivati sentinels moved with the grace and speed of their animal counterparts. Six tall, muscled men untucked themselves from the cramped vehicles and spilled onto the sidewalk, long black dusters swinging in the wind. Even though the sun hadn’t been seen in a good week or more, they wore dark sunglasses—the better to hide eerie violet-ringed pupils. The Kivati believed in secrecy at any cost. Humans could never learn of the monsters that battled for control of their city.
Hart recognized the Fox and his usual crew of hotheaded young Thunderbirds and Crows. Rudrick was shorter than the others, with the lean build of a runner, red-streaked hair and a tuft of fur at his chin. Cocky too, as he wore no glasses. The look in his beady black eyes was crafty and calculated, his inner Fox brought to the fore by the pleasure of the hunt.
Hart had a clear shot of the sidewalk and anyone trying to walk past the fence to the morgue front door. He raised his rifle, aimed at the ground in front of Rudrick, and fired. The bullet nicked the concrete. The sentinels scattered, dodging his bullets as they ran behind their jeeps for safety.
The bastards might not have time to pull their own guns, but they weren’t without weapons. From the sky, a crow swooped, talons extended, straight at Hart’s face. He shot it. On the ground, a sentinel cried out as his mental connection to the bird was severed.
The other birds attacked, slashing and clawing. Razor-sharp beaks aimed at Hart’s eyes.
He was too quick. He rolled onto his back and came up blasting. The guns he kept strapped to his waist settled into his grip as if he’d been born with them instead of hands. Black feathers rained down. Screams like rusty violins filled the air. A few crows slipped past his bullets, and he felt his scalp tear and blood splatter his cheek.
He relished it, though it wasn’t a real battle, just a game. A bit of professional courtesy between one killer and another:
This target’s mine.
Message received, thank you.
Crow blood sprayed his tongue, bitter and warm and disgustingly familiar. More and more came until the sky was black and beating wings obscured his vision. His ears rang with the blast from his guns.
The attack stopped all at once, after a single mental command from their Kivati masters. The birds—the survivors—limped off to sit on the telephone wires and clean their wounds. Hart’s jacket had held up well against the assault, shielding him like a tough leather skin, but his face and hands stung with talon marks. He rolled onto his stomach and pulled himself to the edge of the building so that he could look down on the street and assess the damage.
Behind the cover of the jeeps, the sentinels waited with firepower ticking in their hungry fingers. One man clutched his right shoulder; blood welled slowly from a hole shot through the black wool coat. Another lay moaning on the cold, wet ground, hands pressed to his temple, his consciousness ripped apart by the loss of too many crows. Mental wounds were hard to stitch up.
Sucked to be him, but what did the man expect, connecting himself to another being like that? Kivati felt the death of their familiars like the loss of a limb, keen as a knife to the heart. Dumb bastards. Attachments were weakness. Hart would give his left nut—hell, both nuts—to be rid of the crazed beast inside him.
The rain washed the blood from his skin and swept broken feathers into the clogged gutters in the street below. In the distance, beyond the stormy Sound, sunlight broke over the Olympic Mountains.
To Hart’s surprise, the Kivati gave up. With an order from Rudrick, they loaded into the jeeps and drove off in a cloud of smoke, the chug of the steam engines echoing in the empty, waterlogged street.
Strange. Either they weren’t here for the necklace after all, or they didn’t want it as badly as he’d thought. Maybe it was only sentimental junk, but he doubted it. His instincts said Norgard was holding out on him, as usual. Norgard wouldn’t lift a claw to save his own mother.
Dead crows lay where they had fallen along the rooftop and the asphalt below. Hart pulled the Deadglass out of his pocket and held it to his eye. Through the glass he watched shadows pull away from the small broken bodies. They condensed and solidified, feather by translucent feather. A pathway through the Aether began to shine, guiding the way home. One by one, the spirit birds flew into the sky and disappeared beyond the shimmering veil.
Rising, Hart shouldered his rifle. He slipped the Deadglass into his pocket, slid down the fire escape, and headed to the morgue. Nothing could keep him from finding that necklace. No Kivati. No wraith. He’d earn his freedom if he had to fight hell itself.
Kayla entered the dimly lit morgue and bit her lip to keep from crying. She had to hold it together. If she allowed the swelling sorrow to shatter her into a million bits, there would be no one left to pick up the pieces. Seattle, this godforsaken, desolate city, had stolen everyone from her. Her mother in a violent “accident” that Kayla only vaguely remembered. Her father from the heartbreak of it years later. Now her sister, who was shockingly, mysteriously dead. A yawning chasm opened in her chest, threatening to suck her down into the black abyss. She couldn’t let it.
Instead of harsh fluorescents, the Seattle morgue was lit with soft gaslights. A fire hazard, but the warm glow was strangely comforting. It made everything seem less real, like she’d stepped back in time.
A skinny, middle-aged woman with sallow skin manned the welcome desk. Her shirt had a vaguely Edwardian air with a short collar and lightly puffed sleeves. She was filling out forms by hand, holding the pencil awkwardly with her long pink nails. She didn’t look up when she asked for Kayla’s name. Too tired to care, perhaps.
“Friday,” Kayla said, proud that her voice didn’t shake, “Kayla Friday. I’m here to identify my ... sister.”
The woman set the pencil down and raised her head. She was younger than she had first appeared. Her salt-and-pepper hair and the weary sag of her shoulders were deceptive. “I.D.?”
Kayla fumbled with her purse to pull out her driver’s license and handed it over.
The woman eyed the Philadelphia address. “Long way from home.”