7
IT WAS DARK. The world had been reduced to shapes lacking definition so that everything took on a menacing demeanor. My eyes strained, desperately trying to give meaning to my world, but it was useless. Any light that crept into the room was quickly swallowed up in the great maw of blackness that enveloped me.
I stretched out both hands, determined to use my remaining senses to figure out where I was, how I had gotten there. My fingers hit cold, damp stone. Dirty grit crusted under my fingernails and embedded itself in the fine grooves of my fingers as I slid them along the rough surface. The wall beside me was composed of giant stones, while the floor beneath my feet seemed to be made of the same uneven rock. The room curved slightly, as if it were circular rather than square.
There was no sound beside the soft scrape of my fingers along the stone wall and the scuff of my feet on the floor. My heart pounded in my ears, frustrating me. Was I alone in this room? Was someone else here, tracking me by my thudding heart and shuffling feet? Would it kill me? Help me?
Footsteps broke through the silence. I froze, waiting in the stillness as they grew steadily closer. The tread sounded even and familiar. A friend? The footsteps stopped close, followed by the clang of metal on metal and then scraping, like a key turning a rusted lock.
Light surged into the room, blinding me. I fell back against the wall, throwing my arms up in front of my face to protect myself from the sudden invasion. Shrinking back, I squinted and blinked, willing my eyes to adjust to the brightness rather than stay frozen and helpless.
“Come along!” snarled an angry voice that chilled the blood in my veins.
I moved shaking hands from my face, praying that I was wrong, but I wasn’t. Simon Thorn stood in the open doorway, a magical ball of white light hovering above his shoulder. This wasn’t right. Simon was dead. I’d killed him months ago. Simon had to be dead.
But if Simon was dead and trapped in the underworld, did this mean I had died as well? Had I passed during the night, called by Lilith to pay the year I owed magic for killing Simon? I couldn’t be dead. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and the cold seeping from the stones through my thin shirt. I wouldn’t feel these things if I was dead, right? Was I dreaming? Remembering? Both?
In the bright light, I stared down at my hands to find them smaller than I remembered. My arms and body were smaller and thinner, while Simon was taller. It all seemed wrong, but my mind kept stumbling as if the wheels in my brain were slipping as they tried to puzzle out this problem.
“Now, boy, or I’ll drag you by your hair,” Simon said, pulling me from my internal struggles.
As if willed by some unknown force, my body obeyed his command and I pushed away from the wall. On shaky legs, I crossed the small stone cell and followed my mentor down the long, narrow hall marked by other heavy doors in front of silent rooms. There were others behind those thick doors, huddled in the darkness, cold and wounded.
At the end of the hall, we turned left and walked down a wider hall until we came to a large circular room. There was more light here, created by torches and little balls of magical light. A pair of witches and a warlock stood near the back of the room, silent and grim. I stopped just past the threshold and looked around, taking in the bleak gray walls. This room was familiar, creating a cold chill in my mind. I’d been here before and it hadn’t been a pleasant place.
Simon roughly grabbed my shoulder, his thin fingers biting through the ragged cloth of my shirt to pinch muscles and nerves. “Get in there,” the warlock said. He gave me a hard shove and I fell into the shallow circular pit in the center of the room. My knees hit the hard compact dirt, sending a sharp pain down to the bone.
Placing my hands against the dirt floor, I pushed back to my feet and my eyes fell on Bryce. Oh God. Now I remembered why this place seemed so familiar. The young boy lay on his side, his breathing ragged as the air slipped between split lips in short, quick gasps. Dirt and blood crusted his face. His clothes had been taken away, revealing an all-too-thin frame covered in ugly bruises and long, festering cuts. Pain glazed his eyes, making me wonder if he was aware of where he was and that I was near him.
I backpedaled until my back slammed into the wall of the dueling pit. Turning, I looked up at Simon. My hands were on the chest-high rim, ready to climb out of the arena. I couldn’t do it. I knew why I was here and I couldn’t do it.
Simon stepped directly in front of me, blocking my escape. “This is your third and final chance to finish this. You kill him and we will move on with your training, or we will keep him alive indefinitely, locked in constant pain. Kill him or I kill you.” Placing his foot on my shoulder, the warlock shoved me backward, away from the wall and into the center of the pit.
I stumbled, but managed to stay on my feet. Swallowing back the bile in my throat, I looked down at the wounded apprentice again. Three days ago, Bryce and I had been placed in the dueling pit. We had both been learning curses used in fighting, and our mentors had decided that the best way to prove we were proficient was a duel to the death. I won the duel, but refused to kill Bryce. I had been locked in a cell, while Bryce had been beaten and tortured as they waited for me to submit to their wishes.
Shaking my head, I tried to backpedal again when I heard Bryce give a little whimper. His head moved so that he was now looking up at me. Pain cut heavy lines through his young face, sweat glistened on his brow. His lips moved, forming the words Help me but he lacked the strength to put sound to it. There was only one way to help him, to remove the pain and the fear.
My hands were trembling when I raised them, gathering together the energy I needed. I kept repeating in my head that if I did it quickly, Bryce wouldn’t feel more pain, he wouldn’t have a chance to be afraid.
“No!” Simon’s harsh voice sliced through the silence. A wave of energy swept through the room, pushing the magic I had pulled from my fingertips. I twisted around to look at my mentor in confusion. “You had your chance to kill him with magic and you threw it away. You’ll kill him with this.”
Simon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out something that he tossed into the pit. I looked down and my stomach lurched. At my feet was a small wooden dagger. The tip was sharp, but the blade was dull. There would be no saving Bryce from pain.
Slowly, I bent down and picked it up. It was incredibly light and smooth. It didn’t feel like a weapon, but a toy I might have used when I played pirates with my brother in the backyard so many years ago. You couldn’t kill someone with a toy. It wasn’t right.
“Do it! You have until the count of three or I will kill you!” Simon shrieked, his voice cracking in his growing rage. “One!”
“Gage.” A woman’s voice gently drew my attention back to Bryce.
My head jerked up and I saw Lilith lying on the ground next to the pain-filled apprentice. She was on her side in a languorous pose with one arm curled around his head. “Send him to me, Gage. He’s in such pain. Set him free.”
“Two!”
“Set him free, Gage. Help your friend.”
“Three!”
I screamed, my voice hammering against the cold stone walls as I charged across the pit toward Bryce. The wooden blade was jerked over my head as I fell to my knees next to his prone body. All I saw were Bryce’s brown eyes widening in terror so that I was nearly drowning in them as I brought the knife down. The boy screamed in pain as the blade broke through his chest, but I had to bring all my weight down on the knife to push it through his heart.
Blood splashed over my hands and I remember thinking that it wasn’t as warm as I thought it would be. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I watched the light fade from his wide eyes.
A cold hand cupped my cheek and I looked up to stare into the dark pools of nothing that composed Lilith’s eyes. She was smiling at me. “I’ll be coming for you soon, Gage. And you’ll set me free.”
I screamed, the sound ripped out of my throat like a banshee’s wail. Something shook me hard and I jerked upright to find myself sitting on my bed with my brother kneeling on the edge, his hands braced on my shoulders. He said something, but I didn’t hear it past the pounding in my ears. As I gasped for air to scream again, my stomach lurched.
Shoving him aside, I jumped off the bed only to get tangled in the sheets. I fell to my hands and knees, but managed to crawl the final few feet across the room to the small wastebasket before I started heaving my guts up. Bile burned its way along my throat and my lungs locked up, crying out for air. I couldn’t purge my mind of the memory, but my body could purge the contents of my stomach. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I doubted it was because of the vomiting.
When the spasms stopped, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and fell to my side near the basket. I sucked in deep breaths, willing the shakes to stop as I lay there with my eyes closed. My skin was clammy and covered in a cold sweat, while my entire body hurt as if I had pulled every muscle.
I hadn’t had a nightmare about my time in the Towers for years, and never one about Bryce. I had suppressed that bitch of a memory until I had forgotten about it completely. I had been thirteen when Simon first took me to that damned dueling pit. Bryce looked like he was no more than ten or eleven at the time. We had never met before that day, but I could still remember that nervous smile he had flashed me before we found out what we were expected to do. I remember thinking that he seemed like an okay kid and that if I had met him at home, he would have been someone I would have ridden bikes or played wiffle ball with. Instead, I killed him.
Looking back nearly fifteen years later, I wasn’t sure what had spurred me on to kill him. I wanted to say I had been saving him from more pain and torture. Oh God, I wanted that to be the reason. But a slick and horrible voice whispered in my ear that I had killed Bryce because I had been afraid to die.
“Gage?”
I flinched at Robert’s voice despite its soft and gentle tone. The old wounds were suddenly fresh and the memory was raw in my mind. I was having trouble climbing back into the present, where I was free of Simon and the Towers.
“What time is it?” My voice was rough and hoarse as it escaped my injured throat. I lay on the floor with one arm thrown over my eyes, blocking out the world a little longer. I wasn’t ready to look at my brother when I could still see Bryce’s wide brown eyes in my mind. Even more, I didn’t want my brother to look at me.
“A little after one.”
“Could you start some coffee? I’ve got to jump in the shower before I head to the parlor.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” He didn’t move for several seconds and I think he was debating whether to ask me something, but he must have decided against it because he left my bedroom without speaking.
When I was alone again, I moved my arm from my eyes and looked around my messy bedroom. The heavy curtains were pulled over the two windows, blanketing the room in a thick darkness that was broken only by light pouring from the open door. Clean and dirty clothes were strewn everywhere along with all the other bits of flotsam accumulated in the normal course of a life. The familiar helped to push back the swell of ugly memories from the Towers and the pain dulled to a throbbing ache that sank in to become a part of my soul.
Around three in the morning, Robert and I had come back to my apartment, where we watched a movie before he crashed on the couch. I made it to my bed, where I slipped into a sleep that left me dead to the world and the trouble that was brewing.
Wincing, I shoved to my feet, but paused as my eyes caught on the bed. I rarely dreamed about the Towers and that was the first time I had ever dreamed about Lilith. Was it a nightmare brought on by the stress of Robert’s news? Maybe my mind demanding that I confront something that I refused to think about—my dwindling time until I paid my debt. Or was the nightmare a warning? Was my time almost up? Would I soon have to pay for the year that I owed magic?
Shaking my head, I grabbed a pair of clean boxers, jeans, and a T-shirt without looking at them and headed for the bathroom. Fear curled in my queasy stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave Trixie and Bronx in the lurch if I suddenly died. If all went well, I’d be back in a year. I was afraid of facing Lilith for that year in the underworld. As keeper of all visiting souls, she was going to make my year an undead hell unless I found a way to set her free so that she could visit the land of the living on a more permanent basis.
And this world had enough to deal with. It didn’t need someone like her running around.
Stripping off my dirty boxers, I turned on the water and jumped into the shower, not giving it time to warm up. The cold water cleared away the last of the fog and got my brain working past the old memories and horrors. If Reave was threatening to bring the world to war and put my brother in the dead center of it all, I needed to be thinking clearly. The only problem was that I didn’t have a f*cking clue as to what I was going to do, but I needed to figure it out fast. Preferably before the Towers learned that the puny mortals were plotting something.
As the water warmed up, I grabbed the shampoo and lathered my hair, wishing I could wash my mind clean just as easily. The bathroom door opened and I stilled for a second before ducking under the spray to rinse away the soap.
“Gage?” Trixie’s voice rose above the rush of water, pushing away the last of the tension.
Wiping the water from my eyes, I pulled the curtain back and forced a smile on my lips. “Want to join me?” I teased, but I had no interest in sex. Just the sight of her helped to ease the pain in my chest. For once, I simply wanted to hold her and let her presence chase away the last of the ghosts from my past.
She shook her head, smiling at me, but I still saw the worry in her eyes. “Not this time.” Leaning forward, she gave me a quick kiss before stepping away so that I couldn’t pull her into the shower with me.
I closed the curtain again and grabbed the soap. “Give me a minute. I’m almost finished.”
“It’s okay. I just stopped by to tell you something.”
There was a long pause and I froze in the process of spreading soap over my chest. Her voice didn’t sound like it was going to be a happy something.
“You’re here to tell me that you’re pregnant and want to run away with me so we can be broccoli farmers in Montana,” I said, trying to get her to laugh.
“Do they grow broccoli in Montana?”
“I have no idea.”
Another long pause twisted in my tender gut. I dropped the soap and jerked the curtain back again. “Are you pregnant?”
Trixie scowled at me. “No, I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh. Good.” I closed the curtain and quickly finished rinsing off. “Then what’s up?”
“The Summer Court is in Low Town.”
I turned off the water and jerked the curtain completely open. Trixie’s eyes skimmed over the entire length of my naked body before rising back to my face.
“Nice,” she murmured with a grin.
It was my turn to scowl at her. I grabbed a towel hanging opposite the shower and started to dry off. “Have you spoken to your brother?”
“Not yet.”
“Have the king’s men made another grab for you?”
“No.”
I stopped drying off and stared at her in confusion. “Then how do you know?”
Her lovely mouth twisted up into a frown. “I just . . . know. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it. Summer elves know when the Court is near. This isn’t just a few of my people. Both the king and the queen are in the area.”
I nodded, wrapping the towel around my waist before stepping out of the shower. “Fine. Then we have to be careful.”
“I trust my brother. He’ll be fair about this. He’ll send word as to whether the queen will meet with us before he comes after me again.”
“All the same—”
“All the same,” she interrupted with a knowing smile. “I’m going to stay with Bronx this afternoon until my shift and then I’ll be at the parlor with you until we go on our little adventure tonight.”
“Shit! That’s tonight?” I groaned.
My nightmare had completely wiped my memory of the fact that I was scheduled to conduct a little larceny with Trixie this evening. I wanted to strangle the king of the Summer Court. He had been hounding Trixie for three centuries, trying to force her to be his consort after it was discovered that he and his wife couldn’t have children. If he made another grab for her, I was afraid that Trixie would bolt and I didn’t want to think about living without her.
“I’m going, Gage,” she warned. “I’ll agree to extra precautions, but I won’t stop living because of the bastard. So you can get that look off your face.”
“What look?” I tried for innocent, but knew she wouldn’t believe it.
“The one that says you plan to lock me in a room and guard it with a thousand trolls.”
I grinned at her. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Trixie leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “I’ll see you tonight and I’m still going.” The elf quickly slipped out of the room before I could grab her, leaving me with only the haunting scent of her floral perfume.
With a sigh, I finished getting ready and met Robert in the kitchen, where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He stepped out of the way as I grabbed a mug and filled it.
“Everything good?” he asked from the doorway as I took my first sip.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh as my grumbling stomach accepted my peace offering of heat and caffeine. I’d appease it with actual food when I made my way to the parlor.
“How long have you two . . . ?”
Robert’s voice drifted off and I smiled. I had never let myself imagine this day. I never thought I’d see him standing in the kitchen with me while we drank coffee. I never thought we’d talk again.
“I’ve known Trixie for a couple years, but we’ve been dating only a couple months.”
He grunted and took another drink of his coffee. Last night he’d told me that he was divorced and had no kids. We had learned odd facts and collected strange stories about each other’s life, but there were big gaping holes in his past that I was waiting to have filled in.
“I want you to stay in my apartment,” I said before draining the last of my coffee.
“Why?”
I walked over to the faucet and rinsed out my mug before putting it in the sink. “It’s safer. I don’t know who else knows about the information Reave’s trying to move or if anyone knows you’re involved. We need time to think and plan. No one knows we’re related, so they won’t think to look here.”
Robert frowned at me, looking as if he was ready to argue.
“Just for a few days. It won’t be bad. I’ve got cable, Internet, video games, and food in the fridge. You can spend the day eating, gaming, and watching Internet porn for all I care. Just stay here.”
“Can I at least go back to my place and get some clothes?”
“Fine. Be quick and don’t make any calls. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” he grumbled, leaning against the counter across from me.
I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a spare key to my apartment. Tossing it to him, I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. “I’ll be at Asylum until dark and then Trixie and I have to run an errand. I should be back here near midnight,” I said as I picked up my keys, wallet, and cell phone from the coffee table and shoved them into my pockets.
“Anything else, Mom?” he asked with a sneer.
“Yeah, don’t do anything stupid.”
Robert flipped me off, but he was smiling when he did it. I flashed him dual birds in return and then headed for the door. I needed to get to Asylum. I did my best thinking in the parlor.
“Hey, Gage.”
Robert’s voice stopped me as I pulled open the door. I turned to look back at him and frowned. He looked genuinely uncomfortable and for a moment I thought he was going to tell me to go on.
When he spoke, his voice was gruff and halting, as if he was afraid to speak. “That nightmare you had. Was it about when you were in the Towers?”
I quickly glanced out into the hall and was relieved to find it empty. My nosy neighbors didn’t need to know I was an ex-warlock.
“Yeah,” I said on a sigh.
“Was . . . was it bad there?”
My eyes fell closed for a second. Robert and I had never discussed my time in the Towers. I never discussed it with anyone. They were dark, ugly memories, for the most part filled with pain and screams and someone somewhere dying.
“Yeah, it was bad.”
“I’m sorry. When you were taken, I made all kinds of plans on how to rescue you. But I guess after about three years, I finally figured out that I couldn’t rescue you. No one could.”
I smiled weakly at my brother. He was leaning against the wall, his hands fisted at his sides as he stared at the floor, lost in the pain of an old memory. “The Towers are a bad place, but I don’t entirely regret it. If I hadn’t learned to control my powers, I could have hurt you or Meg without meaning to. I could never have lived with that.”
Robert nodded, but remained silent. I waited, not sure if he had anything else to say. I felt like we were both treading on eggshells. A sigh escaped me as I started to leave again.
“When I came in, you . . . you kept saying ‘Bryce.’ He a friend?” Robert asked, stopping me.
“No,” I said, looking away from my brother to stare out into the hall. “He was a kid I knew a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
His words cut like razor blades across my flesh rather than the balm he meant them to be. I grunted and then pulled the door shut behind me. By his tone, Robert knew Bryce was dead. But he’d never know that his baby brother had killed the boy.
If there was any justice in this world, Bryce was at peace, away from all the pain, fear, and misery. And if he was, a little part of me envied him and hoped he forgave me.