House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (57 page)

And then she’d knelt on the crumbling stone steps, the river mere feet behind her, the arches of the bone gates above her, and waited.

The Under-King, veiled in black and silent as death, had appeared moments later.

It has been an age since a mortal dared set foot on my isle.

The voice had been old and young, male and female, kind and full of hatred. She’d never heard anything so hideous—and beckoning.

I wish to trade my place.

I know why you are here, Bryce Quinlan. Whose passage you seek to
barter.
An amused pause.
Do you not wish to one day dwell here among the honored dead? Your balance remains skewed toward acceptance—continue on your path, and you shall be welcomed when your time comes.

I wish to trade my place. For Danika Fendyr.

Do this and know that no other Quiet Realms of Midgard shall be open to you. Not the Bone Quarter, not the Catacombs of the Eternal City, not the Summer Isles of the north. None, Bryce Quinlan. To barter your resting place here is to barter your place everywhere.

I wish to trade my place.

You are young, and you are weighed with grief. Consider that your life may seem long, but it is a mere flutter of eternity.

I wish to trade my place.

Are you so certain Danika Fendyr will be denied welcome? Have you so little faith in her actions and deeds that you must make this bargain?

I wish to trade my place.
She’d sobbed the words.

There is no undoing this.

I wish to trade my place.

Then say it, Bryce Quinlan, and let the trade be done. Say it a seventh and final time, and let the gods and the dead and all those between hear your vow. Say it, and it shall be done.

She hadn’t hesitated, knowing this was the ancient rite. She’d looked it up in the gallery archives. Had stolen the Death Mark from there, too. It had been given to Jesiba by the Under-King himself, the sorceress had told her, when she’d sworn fealty to the House of Flame and Shadow.

I wish to trade my place
.

And so it had been done.

Bryce had not felt any different afterward, when she’d been sent back over the river. Or in the days after that. Even her mother had not been able to tell—hadn’t noticed that Bryce had snuck from her hotel room in the dead of night.

In the two years since, Bryce had sometimes wondered if she’d dreamed it, but then she’d look through the drawer in the gallery where all the old coins were kept and see the empty, dark spot where the Death Mark had been. Jesiba had never noticed it was gone.

Bryce liked to think of her chance at eternal rest as missing with it. To imagine the coins nestled in their velvet compartments in the drawer as all the souls of those she loved, dwelling together forever. And there was hers—missing and drifting, wiped away the moment she died.

But what Sabine had claimed about Danika suffering in the Bone Quarter … Bryce refused to believe it. Because the alternative—No. Danika had deserved to go to the Bone Quarter, had nothing to be ashamed about, whether Sabine or the other assholes disagreed or not. Whether the Under-King or whoever the Hel deemed their souls
worthy
disagreed or not.

Bryce ran her hand through Hunt’s silken hair, the sounds of his breathing filling the room.

It sucked. This stupid fucking world they lived in.

It sucked, and it was full of awful people. And the good ones always paid for it.

She pulled her phone from the nightstand and began typing out a message.

She fired it off a moment later, not giving herself time to reconsider what she’d written to Ithan. Her first message to him in two years. His frantic messages from that horrible night, then his cold order to stay away, were still the last things in a thread that went back five years before that.

You tell your Alpha that Connor never bothered to notice her because he always knew what a piece of shit she was. And tell Sabine that if I see her again, I will kill her.

Bryce lay down next to Hunt, not daring to touch his ravaged back.

Her phone buzzed. Ithan had written,
I had no part in what went down today
.

Bryce wrote back,
You disgust me. All of you
.

Ithan didn’t reply, and she put her phone on silent before she let out a long breath and leaned her brow against Hunt’s shoulder.

She’d find a way to make this right. Somehow. Someday.

Hunt’s eyes cracked open, pain a steady throb through him. Its sharpness was dulled—likely by some sort of potion or concoction of drugs.

The steady counterweight that should have been on his back was gone. The emptiness hit him like a semitruck. But soft, feminine breathing filled the darkness. A scent like paradise filled his nose, settled him. Soothed the pain.

His eyes adjusted to the dark enough to know that he was in Bryce’s bedroom. That she was lying beside him. Medical supplies and vials lay next to the bed. All for him, many looking used. The clock read four in the morning. How many hours had she sat up, tending to him?

Her hands were tucked in at her chest, as if she had fallen asleep beseeching the gods.

He mouthed her name, his tongue as dry as sandpaper.

Pain rippled through his body, but he managed to stretch out an arm. Managed to slide it over her waist and tuck her into him. She made a soft sound and nuzzled her head into his neck.

Something deep in him shifted and settled. What she’d said and done today, what she’d revealed to the world in her pleading for him … It was dangerous. For both of them. So, so dangerous.

If he were wise, he’d find somehow to pull away. Before this thing between them met its inevitable, horrible end. As all things in the Republic met a horrible end.

And yet Hunt couldn’t bring himself to remove his arm. To avoid the instinct to breathe in her scent and listen to her soft breathing.

He didn’t regret it, what he’d done. Not one bit of it.

But there might come a day when that wouldn’t be true. A day that might dawn very soon.

So Hunt savored the feel of Bryce. Her scent and breathing.

Savored every second of it.

63

“
I
s Athie okay, BB?”

Bryce rubbed her eyes as she studied the computer screen in the gallery library. “He’s sleeping it off.”

Lehabah had cried this morning when Bryce had trudged in to tell her what had occurred. She’d barely noticed that her leg had no pain—not a whisper. She’d wanted to stay home, to care for Hunt, but when she’d called Jesiba, the answer had been clear:
No
.

She’d spent the first half of the morning filling out job applications.

And had sent each and every one of them in.

She didn’t know where the Hel she would end up, but getting out of this place was the first step. Of many.

She’d taken a few more today.

Ruhn had picked up on the first ring, and come right over to the apartment.

Hunt had still been asleep when she’d left him in her brother’s care. She didn’t want anyone from that fucking legion in her house. Didn’t want to see Isaiah or Viktoria or any of the triarii anytime soon.

Ruhn had taken one glance at Hunt’s mutilated back and gagged. But he’d promised to stay on the pills-and-wound-care schedule she laid out for him.

“Micah went easy on him,” Ruhn said when she stopped by at lunch, toying with one of his earrings. “Really fucking easy. Sabine had the right to call for his death.” As a slave, Hunt had no rights whatsoever. None.

“I will never forget it as long as I live,” Bryce answered, her voice dull. The flash of Micah’s sword. Hunt’s scream, as if his soul was being shredded. Sabine’s smile.

“I should have been the one to shut Amelie up.” Shadows flickered in the room.

“Well, you weren’t.” She measured the potion for Ruhn to give Hunt at the top of the hour.

Ruhn stretched an arm over the back of the sofa. “I’d like to be, Bryce.”

She met her brother’s gaze. “Why?”

“Because you’re my sister.”

She didn’t have a response—not yet.

She could have sworn hurt flashed in his eyes at her silence. She was out of her apartment in another minute, and barely reached the gallery before Jesiba had called, raging about how Bryce wasn’t ready for the two o’clock meeting with the owl shifter who was ready to buy a marble statuette worth three million gold marks.

Bryce executed the meeting, and the sale, and didn’t hear half of what was said.

Sign, stamp, goodbye.

She returned to the library by three. Lehabah warmed her shoulder as she opened her laptop. “Why are you on Redner Industries’ site?”

Bryce just stared at the two small fields:

Username. Password.

She typed in
dfendyr
. The cursor hovered over the password.

Someone might be tipped off that she was trying to get in. And if she did get access, someone might very well receive an alert. But … It was a risk worth taking. She was out of options.

Lehabah read the username. “Does this somehow tie in to the Horn?”

“Danika knew something—something big,” Bryce mused.

Password. What would Danika’s password be?

Redner Industries would have told her to write something random and full of symbols.

Danika would have hated being told what to do, and would have done the opposite.

Bryce typed in
SabineSucks
.

No luck. Though she’d done it the other day, she again typed in Danika’s birthday. Her own birthday. The holy numbers. Nothing.

Her phone buzzed, and a message from Ruhn lit up her screen.

He woke up, took his potions like a good boy, and demanded to know where you were.

Ruhn added,
He’s not a bad male.

She wrote back,
No, he’s not.

Ruhn replied,
He’s sleeping again, but seemed in good enough spirits, all things considered.

A pause, and then her brother wrote,
He told me to tell you thanks. For everything
.

Bryce read the messages three times before she looked at the interface again. And typed in the only other password she could think of. The words written on the back of a leather jacket she’d worn constantly for the last two years. The words inked on her own back in an ancient alphabet. Danika’s favorite phrase, whispered to her by the Oracle on her sixteenth birthday.

The Old Language of the Fae didn’t work. Neither did the formal tongue of the Asteri.

So she wrote it in the common language.

Through love, all is possible
.

The login screen vanished. And a list of files appeared.

Most were reports on Redner’s latest projects: improving tracking quality on phones; comparing the speed at which shifters could change forms; analyzing the healing rates of witch magic versus Redner medicines. Boring everyday science.

She’d almost given up when she noticed a subfolder:
Party Invites
.

Danika had never been organized enough to keep such things, let alone put them in a folder. She either deleted them right away or let them rot in her inbox, unanswered.

It was enough of an anomaly that Bryce clicked on it and found a list of folders within. Including one titled
Bryce
.

A file with her name on it. Hidden in another file. Exactly as Bryce had hidden her own job applications on this computer.

“What is that?” Lehabah whispered at her shoulder.

Bryce opened the file. “I don’t know. I never sent invites to her work address.”

The folder contained a single photo.

“Why does she have a picture of her old jacket?” Lehabah asked. “Was she going to sell it?”

Bryce stared and stared at the image. Then she moved, logging out of the account before running up the stairs to the showroom, where she grabbed the leather jacket from her chair.

“It was a clue,” she said breathlessly to Lehabah as she flew back down the stairs, fingers running and pawing over every seam of the jacket. “The photo is a fucking clue—”

Something hard snagged her fingers. A lump. Right along the vertical line of the
L
in
love
.

“Through love, all is possible,” Bryce whispered, and grabbed a pair of scissors from the cup on the table. Danika had even tattooed the hint on Bryce’s fucking
back
, for fuck’s sake. Lehabah peered over her shoulder as Bryce cut into the leather.

A small, thin metal rectangle fell onto the table. A flash drive.

“Why would she hide that in her coat?” Lehabah asked, but Bryce was already moving again, hands shaking as she fitted the drive into the slot on her laptop.

Three unmarked videos lay within.

She opened the first video. She and Lehabah watched in silence.

Lehabah’s whisper filled the library, even over the scratching of the n
ø
kk.

“Gods spare us.”

64

H
unt had managed to get out of bed and prove himself alive enough that Ruhn Danaan had finally left. He had no doubt the Fae Prince had called his cousin to inform her, but it didn’t matter: Bryce was home in fifteen minutes.

Her face was white as death, so ashen that her freckles stood out like splattered blood. No sign of anything else amiss, not one thread on her black dress out of place.

“What.” He was instantly at the door, wincing as he surged from where he’d been on the couch watching the evening news coverage of Rigelus, Bright Hand of the Asteri, giving a pretty speech about the rebel conflict in Pangera. It’d be another day or two before he could walk without pain. Another several weeks until his wings grew back. A few days after that until he could test out flying. Tomorrow, probably, the insufferable itching would begin.

He remembered every miserable second from the first time he’d had his wings cut off. All the surviving Fallen had endured it. Along with the insult of having their wings displayed in the crystal palace of the Asteri as trophies and warnings.

But she first asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Lie. Syrinx pranced at his feet, showering his hand with kisses. “What’s wrong?”

Bryce wordlessly closed the door. Shut the curtains. Yanked out
her phone from her jacket pocket, pulled up an email—from herself to herself—and clicked on an attached file. “Danika had a flash drive hidden in the lining of her jacket,” Bryce said, voice shaking, and led him back to the couch, helping him to sit as the video loaded. Syrinx leapt onto the cushions, curling up beside him. Bryce sat on his other side, so close their thighs pressed together. She didn’t seem to notice. After a heartbeat, Hunt didn’t, either.

It was grainy, soundless footage of a padded cell.

At the bottom of the video, a ticker read:
Artificial Amplification for Power Dysfunction, Test Subject 7
.

A too-thin human female sat in the room in a med-gown. “What the fuck is this?” Hunt asked. But he already knew.

Synth. These were the synth research trials.

Bryce grunted—
keep watching
.

A young draki male in a lab coat entered the room, bearing a tray of supplies. The video sped up, as if someone had increased the speed of the footage for the sake of urgency. The draki male took her vitals and then injected something into her arm.

Then he left. Locked the door.

“Are they …” Hunt swallowed. “Did he just inject her with synth?”

Bryce made a small, confirming noise in her throat.

The camera kept rolling. A minute passed. Five. Ten.

Two Vanir walked into the room. Two large serpentine shifters who sized up the human female locked in alone with them. Hunt’s stomach turned. Turned further at the slave tattoos on their arms, and knew that they were prisoners. Knew, from the way they smiled at the human female shrinking against the wall, why they had been locked up.

They lunged for her.

But the human female lunged, too.

It happened so fast that Hunt could barely track it. The person who had edited the footage went back and slowed it, too.

So he watched, blow by blow, as the human female launched herself at the two Vanir males.

And ripped them to pieces.

It was impossible. Utterly impossible. Unless—

Tharion had said synth could temporarily grant humans powers greater than most Vanir. Powers enough to kill.

“Do you know how badly the human rebels would want this?” Hunt said. Bryce just jerked her chin toward the screen. Where the footage kept going.

They sent in two other males. Bigger than the last. And they, too, wound up in pieces.

Piles.

Oh gods.

Another two. Then three. Then five.

Until the entire room was red. Until the Vanir were clawing at the doors, begging to be let out. Begging as their companions, then they themselves, were slaughtered.

The human female was screaming, her head tilted to the ceiling. Screaming in rage or pain or what, he couldn’t tell without the sound.

Hunt knew what was coming next. Knew, and couldn’t stop himself from watching.

She turned on herself. Ripped herself apart. Until she, too, was a pile on the floor.

The footage cut out.

Bryce said softly, “Danika must have figured out what they were working on in the labs. I think someone involved in these tests … Could they have sold the formula to some drug boss? Whoever killed Danika and the pack and the others must have been high on this synth. Or injected someone with it and sicced them on the victims.”

Hunt shook his head. “Maybe, but how does it tie in to the demons and the Horn?”

“Maybe they summoned the kristallos for the antidote in its venom—and nothing more. They wanted to try to make an antidote of their own, in case the synth ever turned on them. Maybe it doesn’t connect to the Horn at all,” Bryce said. “Maybe this is what we were meant to find. There are two other videos like this, of two different human subjects. Danika left them for
me
. She must have known someone was coming for her. Must have known when
she was on that Aux boat, confiscating that crate of synth, that they’d come after her soon. There was no second type of demon hunting alongside the kristallos. Just a person—from
this
world. Someone who was high on the synth and used its power to break through our apartment’s enchantments. And then had the strength to kill Danika and the whole pack.”

Hunt considered his next words carefully, fighting against his racing mind. “It could work, Bryce. But the Horn is still out there, with a drug that might be able to repair it, coincidence or no. And we’re no closer to finding it.” No, this just led them a Hel of a lot closer to trouble. He added, “Micah already demonstrated what it means to set one foot out of line. We need to go slow on the synth hunt. Make sure we’re certain this time. And careful.”

“
None
of you were able to find out anything like this. Why should I go slow with the only clue I have about who killed Danika and the Pack of Devils? This ties in, Hunt. I know it does.”

And because she was opening her mouth to object again, he said what he knew would stop her. “Bryce, if we pursue this and we’re wrong, if Micah learns about another fuckup, forget the bargain being over. I might not walk away from his next punishment.”

She flinched.

His entire body protested as he reached a hand to touch her knee. “This synth shit is horrific, Bryce. I … I’ve never seen anything like it.” It changed everything.
Everything
. He didn’t even know where to begin sorting out all he’d seen. He should make some phone calls—
needed
to make some phone calls about this. “But to find the murderer and maybe the Horn, and to make sure there’s an afterward for you and me”—because there would be a
you and me
for them; he’d do whatever it took to ensure it—“we need to be
smart
.” He nodded to the footage. “Forward that to me. I’ll make sure it gets to Vik on our encrypted server. See what she can dig up about these trials.”

Bryce scanned his face. The openness in her expression nearly sent him to his knees before her. Hunt waited for her to argue, to defy him. To tell him he was an idiot.

But she only said, “Okay.” She let out a long breath, slumping back against the cushions.

She was so fucking beautiful he could barely stand it. Could barely stand to hear her ask quietly, “What sort of an afterward for you and me do you have in mind, Athalar?”

He didn’t balk from her searching gaze. “The good kind,” he said with equal quiet.

She didn’t ask, though. About how it would be possible. How any of it would be possible for him, for them. What he’d do to make it so.

Her lips curved upward. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

For a moment, an eternity, they stared at each other.

And despite what they’d just watched, what lurked in the world beyond the apartment, Hunt said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She toyed with the ends of her hair. “Hunt. You kissed me—at the medwitch’s office.”

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was ten kinds of stupid, but he said, “What about it?”

“Did you mean it?”

“Yes.” He’d never said anything more true. “Did you want me to mean it?”

His heart began to race, fast enough that he nearly forgot the pain along his back as she said, “You know the answer to that, Athalar.”

“Do you want me to do it again?” Fuck, his voice had dropped an octave.

Her eyes were clear, bright. Fearless and hopeful and everything that had always made it impossible for him to think about anything else if she was around. “
I
want to do it.” She added, “If that’s all right with you.”

Hel, yes. He made himself throw her a half smile. “Do your worst, Quinlan.”

She let out a breathy little laugh and turned her face up toward his. Hunt didn’t so much as inhale too deeply for fear of startling her. Syrinx, apparently taking the hint, saw himself into his crate.

Bryce’s hands shook as they lifted to his hair, brushed back a strand, then ran over the band of the halo.

Hunt gripped her trembling fingers. “What’s this about?” he murmured, unable to help himself from pressing his mouth to the dusky nails. How many times had he thought about these hands on him? Caressing his face, stroking down his chest, wrapped around his cock?

Her swallow was audible. He pressed another kiss to her fingers.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen—between us,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, kissing her shaking fingers again. He gently unfurled them, exposing the heart of her palm. He pressed his mouth there, too. “But thank fucking Urd it did.”

Her hands stopped shaking. Hunt lifted his eyes from her hand to find her own lined with silver—and full of fire. He interlaced their fingers. “For fuck’s sake, just kiss me, Quinlan.”

She did. Dark Hel, she did. His words had barely finished sounding when she slid her hand over his jaw, around his neck, and hauled his lips to hers.

The moment Hunt’s lips met her own, Bryce erupted.

She didn’t know if it was weeks without sex or Hunt himself, but she unleashed herself. That was the only way to describe it as she drove her hands into his hair and slanted her mouth against his.

No tentative, sweet kisses. Not for them. Never for them.

Her mouth opened at that first contact, and his tongue swept in, tasting her in savage, unrelenting strokes. Hunt groaned at that first taste—and the sound was kindling.

Rising onto her knees, fingers digging into his soft hair, she couldn’t get enough, taste enough of him—rain and cedar and salt and pure lightning. His hands skimmed over her hips, slow and steady despite the mouth that ravaged hers with fierce, deep kisses.

His tongue danced with her own. She whimpered, and he let out a dark laugh as his hand wandered under the back of her
dress, down the length of her spine, his calluses scraping. She arched into the touch, and he tore his mouth away.

Before she could grab his face back to hers, his lips found her neck. He pressed openmouthed kisses to it, nipped at the sensitive skin beneath her ears. “Tell me what you want, Quinlan.”

“All of it.” There was no doubt in her. None.

Hunt dragged his teeth along the side of her neck, and she panted, her entire consciousness narrowing to the sensation. “All of it?”

She slid her hand down his front. To his pants—the hard, considerable length straining against them. Urd spare her. She palmed his cock, eliciting a hiss from him. “All of it, Athalar.”

“Thank fuck,” he breathed against her neck, and she laughed.

Her laugh died as he put his mouth on hers again, as if he needed to taste the sound, too.

Tongues and teeth and breath, his hands artfully unhooking her bra under her dress. She wound up straddling his lap, wound up grinding herself over that beautiful, perfect hardness in his lap. Wound up with her dress peeled down to her waist, her bra gone, and then Hunt’s mouth and teeth were around her breast, suckling and biting and kissing, and nothing, nothing, nothing had ever felt this good, this right.

Bryce didn’t care that she was moaning loud enough for every demon in the Pit to hear. Not as Hunt switched to her other breast, sucking her nipple deep into his mouth. She drove her hips down on his, release already a rising wave in her. “Fuck, Bryce,” he murmured against her breast.

She only dove her hand beneath the waist of his pants. His hand wrapped around her wrist, though. Halted her millimeters from what she’d wanted in her hands, her mouth, her body for weeks.

“Not yet,” he growled, dragging his tongue along the underside of her breast. Content to feast on her. “Not until I’ve had my turn.”

The words short-circuited every logical thought. And any objections died as he slipped a hand up her dress, running it over her thigh. Higher. His mouth found her neck again as a finger explored the lacy front of her underwear.

He hissed again as he found it utterly soaked, the lace doing nothing to hide the proof of just how badly she wanted this, wanted him. He ran his finger down the length of her—and back up again.

Then that finger landed on that spot at the apex of her thighs. His thumb gently pressed on it over the fabric, drawing a moan deep from her throat.

She felt him smile against her neck. His thumb slowly circled, every sweep a torturous blessing.

“Hunt.” She didn’t know if his name was a plea or a question.

He just tugged aside her underwear and put his fingers directly on her.

She moaned again, and Hunt stroked her, two fingers dragging up and down with teeth-grinding lightness. He licked up the side of her throat, fingers playing mercilessly with her. He whispered against her skin, “Do you taste as good as you feel, Bryce?”

“Please find out immediately,” she managed to gasp.

His laugh rumbled through her, but his fingers didn’t halt their leisurely exploration. “Not yet, Quinlan.”

One of his fingers found her entrance and lingered, circling. “Do it,” she said. If she didn’t feel him inside her—his fingers or his cock, anything—she might start begging.