Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (12 page)

"All I want is the chalice."

Whimpers and choking sobs echoed around the interior. A shaking hand held the cup up from the back seat through the opening she'd kicked in. Tian took it and the sigils exploded in her skin, bursting like black and gold road flares on contact. The occupants in the vehicle stared at her in terror.

"What is that smell?" she heard someone from the cab whisper.

"Me."

She jumped off of the car and started jogging in the opposite direction. If they were lucky, the incident would look enough like a car accident that no one would question it. If they weren't, she wouldn't be the poor bastard who got stuck giving an explanation.

Tian ran three miles and then waited for the latest motorist to bounce before ducking into the exterior bathroom of a local gas station. She locked the door behind her, dropped the Chalice on the floor, and gripped the sides of the sink. It was still early, so she didn't have to worry about getting stuck out on the fringes of the city. She did, however, have concerns about the hot mess staring back at her from the mirror. If she'd been built to be anything better than cannon fodder she would have been able to pull enough faerie glamour to make this pit stop unnecessary.

She cranked the faucet, stripped her blood soaked motorcycle gloves, and began the arduous process of cleaning the shit out of her hair with the institution blue antibacterial hand soap available. It took a long time. Her face was next and she scrubbed the healing abrasions in her skin until they opened up and stung for all they were worth. There was a murky line between being violated and the violation of another. Hard to tell what tainted a soul worse.

Tian wrung out her still damp gloves and shoved them back on. Methodically she wiped down the space. She sighed and picked up the Chalice. Dropping it on the floor had been disrespectful.

Should have tossed it in the toilet instead.

Tian slipped back out into the darkness and sprinted the rest of the way to the train. It took her six minutes to get there. It took thirty-seven minutes of uneventful jostling to get back to Powell Street Station. By the time she hit Geary Street her stomach was rolling with knots of dread in anticipation of the customary welcome from the Black Gate.

She sped up, slipping the doorman a wad of hundreds as she got to the glass doors in front of the hotel. She started shucking her clothes the second she hit the lobby, dumping them in a pile in the corner of the fireplace. Tian lunged head first into the beckoning aether of the portal and a swift death.

She should have been hoping for an expedient resurrection. When it happened, the glacial darkness gnawed at her from the inside out. It bit at the ends of her howling nervous system as she was wrenched piecemeal into existence and vomited onto the floor of the Oracle's Temple. Tian choked, spewing ichor from too many disturbing orifices to count. Desperation had her clutching the Chalice until her hands bled black where her nails dug into her palms. She was shaking so severely she thought the muscles would snap her bones. Barbarous unyielding hands tore at her, shoving past the rigor in her limbs as she struggled not to pass out under the torture of the new assault. The Oracle grabbed the Chalice and shook her, jerking her around like a pit bull with a squirrel. He was repeatedly chanting the phrase, "Miserable cunt mongrel" under his breath like it had become his new favorite mantra.

She convinced her broken hands to let go to stop the abuse and uncurled a few fingers. It was enough. The Oracle wrenched the Chalice free with a victorious curse. Tian squeezed her eyes shut, still expelling large streams of blood tinged acid darkness in starts and stops. She dragged in shallow breaths during the rare non-vomiting moments in between. The Oracle, who seemed to have forgotten she existed, was muttering to himself several feet away.

He may have been relieved to have the cup back in his possession, but he didn't sound happy. Tian leveraged herself onto hands and knees, sitting back on her heels because she was incapable of holding herself upright. The Oracle turned as if the movement had once again made her a target for his attention. She froze. He held the Chalice loosely in one hand and worried the filigree length of his pipe between the thumb and middle finger of the other.

"If you could have anything you wanted, breed, what would it be?"

Oblivion.

She didn't answer right away. He wasn't looking at her when he'd posed the question. Those reptilian eyes of his were calculating, distant.

"I would beg your permission to return to the mortal coil, Oracle," Tian answered. She averted her face and stared into the mist as not to incur any more of the psycho's wrath.

He laughed and the sound echoed off the vast acoustics of their surroundings. "Oh, you'll have that. I will, however, require one more thing before you go."

Tian looked up as the slender tube from the Oracle's pipe slammed through the front of her torso with a pop. Her jaw dropped. He worked the delicate cylinder deeper into her chest until she was impaled, punctured on one side like a juice box.

"I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner," he said. "What better receptacle than an immortal mutt with no gift or ability to draw power."

He leaned down and filled the Chalice with the shifting liquid at his feet. Mists rolled off it in colors Tian had never seen before. The Oracle smiled maliciously. Her chest burned around the point of insertion, the pain reasserting itself with every subtle shift of his arm. He lifted the cup to his lips and the metal went dark, consuming the light around itself as he began to drink. Oracle's eyes glinted, cycling through the spectrum a fraction of a second behind his mutable skin. When he spoke his voice came out distorted, metallic, and warped. Rusted.

"I am slave to none, Little Death. Least of all
her
." The Oracle wrapped his lips around the end of the pipe that had been drooling her blood all over his chest and pushed.

Suddenly she was weightless, formless, aware of everything in infinitesimal detail. Tian was filled to bursting by a wave of vast incomprehensible power. The long lost Goddess flared to life, unfurling in bright streamers of ecstatic pain; trailing satin barbs of sensation in the wake of her consciousness. The deity's joy in the newly forged connection was visceral and as much as Tian wanted to hate it, she couldn't. Possession, homecoming, it was the same, comforting and deeply disturbing. The only way out was in.

The lost Goddess Danu's presence grew beyond the edges of infinity, consuming, feasting, and giving back until Tian couldn't separate herself from the otherworldly presence in her skull. Long extinct emotions rattled through cells, clicking into empty places like tumblers in a lock, making whole that which had been torn asunder.

It hurt.

It hurt more than death. More than resurrection.

Tian screamed with the Goddess's golden voice ricocheting through her skull.
She screamed until the sound lost its meaning and until the mists coalesced around her like a shroud. Tian screamed, and didn't stop until she was sucked back into the portal, and the racket was drowned in the infinite darkness of The Black Gate.

Xavier was out of his mind with anxiety and it was a good goddamned thing the feeling wasn't a frequent occurrence. He sat piss drunk in the last armchair she'd been in, and worried at the star-spun alloy of the Angel Blade across his lap. The broadsword was a crutch. He cleaned it every time he got himself fucked up like this. If he were a normally anxious prick, Heaven's Middle Finger would be a nub by now.

He strained to hear Royal's soft conversation over the curtain of classical music the demon had blaring in the room next door, and got nothing. The bastard didn't even like classical music. He only listened to the shit because he knew how irritating it could be. It was the icing on the cake that made the utter torture of the last twenty minutes twofold. Problem was, Xavier had no right to complain. He didn't have the balls to send Tian into an unknown situation that had the potential to destroy her soul...even if it gave her an equal shot at her own salvation.

He loved her too much, had been in love with her for too long. It was a problem. The thought of losing what little was left of her made him selfish, squeamish, which was why the demon was the one doing the deed. Because as much as he couldn't bear the risk, it had to be done. She deserved the chance.

The soft click of the door latch was a gunshot. Xavier wrenched his head up as Royal walked into the room.

"Well?"

*You were, perhaps, imagining an outcome in which Tian would decline to repay the debt she so recently incurred? Don't be stupid.*

"I wasn't imagining anything. Get out of my head, Royal."

The demon laughed and lowered himself down onto the couch. "Alcoholism doesn't suit you."

"No? Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough." Xavier took another swig that dribbled down his chin. The demon was right, he was sloppy. "You tell her about her client's kid brother?" he asked.

"A rogue Mage preying upon the human populace isn't a Fae matter."

"Sounds like a no to me."

"I told her that the issue was resolved. Which it was. The youth is as stable as he is ever going to be, which is why she agreed to our request. You're pathetic right now. I hope you know that."

"I'm not the asshole that has minions who moonlight for the Guardian."

A placid expression stayed plastered on Royal's puss, but the electric green shimmer around his irises indicated that a nerve had been tweaked. "An issue that will be rectified soon enough. Tell me, Xavier, which do you think you will regret more, Tian's loss or your own?"

"Sometimes I really fucking hate you."

Royal laughed. It came barreling out of him before he could suck it back; the sound was choked and brittle. The metal in his face gleamed wickedly in the firelight.

The demon's thought echoed through Xavier's skull as if he'd screamed it.

*That makes two of us.*

****

The music in the club pounded like a bad porno. Tian hated Polk St. The hellish red lights made the hipsters with their martinis look like wraiths. She moved through the crowd with all the inherent gentleness to which she was born. She was a wrecking ball. The progeny marks in her wrists burned as she closed in on her target. The hollow ache in her torso was absent for the first time she could remember, and given the passenger she was toting, she wasn't about to start second guessing. From what Avery had said she'd been near catatonic for days after she'd gotten back.

Get in, kill the succubus, get out, and sleep for a week.

Assassination of a rogue demon was one thing, but she didn't want to deal with the Guardian that Royal had intimated were involved. Guardian wizards were a cult of sanctimonious hypocrites and vindictive bigots. Unlike the covens that looked to emulate them, each member had more than enough individual power to make themselves a nuisance. Tonight they should have been some other schmuck's problem. Instead they were hers.

"Sea and stars, I wish they had butlers," Ceyla said, surveying the masses as she downed a shot from the closest server. "It's always the sodding butler."

"The closest thing you're going to get around here is a bathroom attendant," Avery told her.

"No bathroom attendants on Polk, luv, just portals, graffiti, some vomit, and a whole mess of used condoms."

"Classy," Tian said, trying to ignore them and focus on the progeny spell's burn.

"Entertaining," the shifter countered with a full body stretch. He and Ceyla had insisted on accompanying her to repay the debt she'd incurred on behalf of the house. It was likely they still thought she was unstable, but had too much good sense to mention it.

"Hey now," a random human murmured.

Tian ignored him. They'd been in the place two minutes and already they were garnering unwanted attention. It was still furtive only because Avery was atypical when he was unshifted. When he wasn't trying to look like anything the skin-walker was a good natured tank, all blocky physique, wide planes, and wild hair in the shape of a matted clown wig stuck halfway between dreadlocks and curls.

Ceyla grabbed Avery's arm and gestured toward the bar to the right of the dance floor. "No mate, that is entertaining. That one is well fit."

Tian glanced in the direction the other female had indicated. Her perception grew fuzzy. The goddess sign grew in her chest until it was unbearable. It was a liquid feeling with a metallic edge. Living things, swarms of ravens, tested the limits of her skin from the inside. The sensation stretched through her system, leaving room in its wake for the gnawing desire that defaced the void in the seconds following. Tian grabbed a glass off the nearest table and threw back the contents without tasting them.

"Hey!" came the irritated response from the nearest seated bystander.

"Fuck yourself," Tian said. She didn't recognize her voice as it came out.

"Relax," Ceyla told the girl, throwing around a little glamour to sooth her words. "We'll get you another one."

"What just happened?" Avery asked.

"Hell, if I know," Ceyla said. She turned, all inquiry and wide eyes, toward Tian, who was fighting the naked need polluting her bloodstream and clutching the cup like it was a lifeline.

"You alright?"

"No, I need another drink."

"You don't drink," Avery said. He removed another full glass from the table and handed it over. Tian took it and downed something that tasted syrupy and pink. The aftertaste lingered. So did the image of the last time she'd seen the man standing at the bar. The effect he had on her hadn't lessened with time, torture, or rationale. He accepted a drink from a hovering vulpine bartender. The other woman flashed a predatory smile laced with glistening white teeth and a jolt of recognition ripped through the sigils at Tian's wrists.

The succubus oozed against the bar, displaying a substantial amount of cleavage. She must have pulled out the stops because several humans turned to stare at her, eyes glazed over and wanting. The sex demon leaned farther to finger the enticing angle of his jawline. Tian growled. She discarded the glass and made a move forward, only to be grabbed around the waist and hauled off her feet by one of Avery's thick arms.