Promises to Keep

chapter 22


JAY BECAME INCREASINGLY grateful for Brina’s odd conversational style as they began their hike. The more out of breath Brina became, the more she communicated in mental images instead of speaking aloud, and the clearer it became why she was an artist. A simple s’mores granola bar triggered a deep, meditative analysis of the various tastes and textures.

Her mental energy gave him hope. Her joy at the way the sun sparkled on the snow made the impressions he received from Rikai and Xeke easier to bear.

The comfort Xeke had experienced as a result of Rikai’s work was now fading, and was being replaced by hunger and restlessness. Her rewiring made it possible for him to keep control, but he couldn’t ignore the spicy heat of the witch’s blood, or the coppery tang of Brina’s human blood, or even the syrupy sweet lure of Rikai’s blood—though the last would be poison to him.

Rikai was still shielding her mind, but Jay suspected she was keeping pace with the rest of them out of sheer stubbornness. The only thought she let slip through to him was that she considered Brina’s presence a boon because she could be used as a human sacrifice. She expected him to be reasonable if it came to that.

Jay chose not to comment.

Unlike the woods behind Xeke’s and Kendra’s homes, this forest was vast, teeming with the life one would expect in untouched wilderness. As the group moved farther away from human civilization, Lynx pointed out territorial markers left behind by cougars, bobcats, and other lynxes. He caught a snowshoe rabbit, and lorded it over the rest of them that he had hot, fresh meat while they settled in for a night of dried, packaged foods.

The tent was snug with the four of them, even though Rikai sat cross-legged in a trance instead of sleeping, and Jay had decided that it would take less energy to keep people warm with his power than it would to lug bulky subzero sleeping bags.

That logic had seemed sound, right up until the moment when he had Xeke spooned against his back, Brina snuggled against his chest, and Lynx keeping his feet warm. He had been worried that Brina’s ladylike manners might make her balk at the sleeping arrangements, but she accepted them as part of the ongoing quest.

Jay was the one who had some qualms, mostly about the vampire nuzzling at his neck and not-so-idly recalling their first conversation.

Was it was safer to give a little blood and risk being weaker in the morning, or to leave the vampire hungry? This is only the first night. What about tomorrow?

“Fire is bound in blood, but earth is bound in flesh,” Rikai said, making Jay jump. “I can’t entirely block the blood-hunger, because that comes from Leona’s seeking power, but all he needs to be able to sustain himself is to be able to touch you, as he is now.” That was … unsettling. Rikai added, “He should not be able to draw enough power from you to be a danger, but I will keep watch just in case.”

And you care so much about my well-being. Rikai kept Jay with them for the same reason she tolerated Brina: she thought he would be useful. Knowing that wasn’t the same as actually trusting her.

A restless night led into an even longer day in which their off-trail hike became increasingly challenging. Jay’s irritation only grew as his foot skidded on an ice-slicked rock and he fell into a winter-stripped thornbush.

As he extracted himself, he felt a burst of triumph from Brina. Throwing herself down to look more closely at the bush, she exclaimed, “Look!”

She frowned up at them all when they failed to respond, and then touched a reddish bulb growing at the end of one branch. “Rose hips,” she said, as if that should have been sufficient explanation.

“Are you craving tea?” Rikai snapped. Rose hips were the fruit left behind after a rose’s blooms fell.

Brina stood up and announced, with what sounded like genuine disappointment, “It took Rhok nearly a century to breed a rose that blooms so dark it appears black to human eyes, and you look at it like it’s a dead bush.”

“It isn’t blooming at the moment,” Xeke pointed out.

“And it hasn’t been eaten,” Jay replied as he examined the bush more closely. Long-stemmed formal roses generally couldn’t survive in darkly canopied forests. This one not only had, but the rose’s fruit hadn’t been touched by any of the numerous animals who should have enjoyed it as a delicious snack.

“Silver’s line is the one known for black roses,” Xeke said.

“When Silver’s line took over after Midnight’s fall, they made the symbol their own,” Brina replied. “I know this place. See these stones, here, and here?” It took a great deal of imagination to see anything more than random rocks strewn amidst trees and brush, but Brina recognized something, and through her Jay could see the plaza that had once been in that place.

“This was a freeblood market,” Brina said, one gloved hand lingering on a stone with faint vestiges of etched letters, its message long lost to lichen and moss. “All the shapeshifter nations traded their best goods here. We should be less than a day from Midnight proper.” With a slight pout, she added, “There used to be a road.”

“Well, there’s no road now,” Jay replied, more sharply than he’d intended. He glanced down at the stupid GPS, which informed him that they had overshot their destination … suggesting that the coordinates they were using hadn’t been correct in the first place.

“Let’s try that path,” Xeke suggested, pointing.

“That’s a deer trail,” Rikai replied.

Jay turned toward the unremarkable break in the woods. He wouldn’t have noticed it if the vampire hadn’t pointed it out first, and it still didn’t seem a likely prospect. It wasn’t even going in the right direction.

Lynx gave him a mental poke, saying, You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. How can a direction be wrong?

Pondering that insight, Jay stepped closer, and realized the path was wider than he had first thought. The closer he moved to it, the more he realized his eyes were playing tricks on him. This wasn’t a deer trail.

“I think we’ve found your road,” Jay said to Brina. “Xeke, I’m going to need you to tell me if you see forks … or anything dangerous, come to think of it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you saw this and I didn’t.”

“Where—” Rikai paused, closed her eyes, and tilted her head as if listening. At last she said, “The spells here are old but still powerful. And very discreet, designed not to be noticed even by a witch.”

Especially a witch who normally carries a hunter’s blade, I’d bet, Jay thought, lamenting the loss of his usual weapon.

“Once we get to Midnight proper,” Brina said as she led the way up the old road, “there is another path, traveling nearly due east, that should take us into Shantel land. Then it is simply a matter of—”

Blackness.

Pain.

Jay opened his eyes to find himself sprawled in the snow, with Brina kneeling next to him. Xeke looked concerned, but Rikai’s face simply held contempt.

Flames, like the fires of hell. Flesh scalding—

“Guard your mind,” Rikai suggested belatedly.

Jay turned his head, trying to see the mind he could feel so clearly. Brina gripped his hand, crushing his fingers, and he knew she saw it too: a semitransparent shape, almost humanoid, but—

“Ghosts, nothing more,” Rikai said. “Unless you invite them into your brain, they are harmless.”

What most people called ghosts were just impressions left behind by strong emotions. Jay had encountered them before, but never this powerfully. The pain this ghost was radiating was beyond Jay’s comprehension. It made his bones ache as he forced himself to stand and keep moving.

The farther they traveled up the road, the thicker the impressions became.

When Jay was a boy, his history lessons had included stories of Midnight. As for its fall, that had been described in simple terms: on September 22, 1804, Midnight burned to the ground. No one knew who was responsible, though everyone had celebrated the destruction, which had been so complete that the slave trainers had not been able to gather their power fast enough to re-subjugate the witches and shapeshifters before they could raise arms to defend themselves.

Those lessons were made real in the early twilight as the forest spat them onto the carcass of what had once been an empire’s terrible heart.

Nature should have taken over in the last two centuries, but it hadn’t been allowed. Magic had salted the ground in this clearing, leaving it a dead zone inhabited by nothing more than what might have once been stone—now twisted and melted as if torn from a volcano—and the ghostly impressions of those who had once lived in this place. Sheets of ice, gritty and black from ash, ringed the area, but the ruins themselves glowed hot like coals under the darkening sky.

Jay could hear the memories wail in fury, and pain, and helplessness, and—more than anything else—confusion. Why? they asked.

Rikai crept close, even though that meant crawling on the ice, until she could hold her hands above the glistening coals and say in a voice that sounded half hypnotized, “They say every major power in the world was involved in bringing Midnight down. They poured their magic into this spot. I can feel them.…”

“Jay, I do not wish to camp here for the night,” Brina said, her voice seeming oh-so-distant as Jay struggled not to hear the screams of the dead.

“Agreed,” Xeke said.

Lynx hissed, and Jay realized that he couldn’t hear his longtime companion over all the other voices pressing against him. Brina reached down and stroked Lynx between the ears, while looking up at Jay with concern.

“East, you said?” he asked her. Was he shouting?

She nodded, and caught his shoulders to physically turn him until his back was to the setting sun. They all wanted to get as far away as possible.

Almost all.

“Rikai?”

“Come here!” Rikai called, her voice breathy. “This is incredible. I think—”

Jay heard Xeke trying to reason with the Triste, but he didn’t wait for her response. He needed to get away from this place. The others would have to catch up.