Blood Promise (A SkinWalker Novel #4) (A DarkWorld SkinWalker Novel) (11 page)

I knew the way but I followed her gesture, taking a left to the waiting room outside Lady Kira's library. Then I dropped my messenger bag on the rich mahogany coffee table and sank into the dark leather of the sofa, prepared to wait.
 

Lily, on the other hand, took her time joining me, studying each painting and artifact along the route.

"Do you know what
that
is?" she said, pointing a finger over her shoulder at what looked like an old pottery relic. Her voice, low and breathy, trembled with awe.

"What?" I asked, not really interested.

"It's the remains of the one of the oldest death talkers," she whispered.

I rolled my eyes. "Lily, they wouldn't have their predecessor's remains hanging around in here. It's not as if it's a mausoleum."

Lily narrowed her eyes and set her rucksack on the floor beside me. "It said so on the card."

"What card?" I asked staring at the door to the library. Was Kira going to make me wait as long as she had on my last visit here?

Lily pushed my shoulder to get my attention. "The card in front of the urn. It said the name of a death talker ancient." She shivered dramatically.

I sighed and aimed a pointed glare at the library door. "Can we talk about burial urns later?"
 

"Sure," she said, flicking the urn a watchful look over her shoulder. "But you have to admit it is
muy
creepy."

"
Muy
creepy?"

Her mischievous grin flashed out. "Anjelo is back."
 

I smiled, then ignored her.

Thankfully, a mere ten minutes later the library door opened and Nerina came out. Her expression said she wasn't very far from hugging me breathless.

Okay, then.

"Only you may enter, Kailin." She spoke softly, her expression apologetic.
 

As I rose to my feet I felt Lily tense. I didn't recall telling her she'd actually meet Kira with me. I'd only asked her to come along, and even that had been simply to placate Logan.
 

I glanced at her, a question in my eyes. Lily shrugged, nonchalant now she saw I wasn't bothered by Kira's demand.

I took my messenger bag and followed Nerina inside the large high-ceilinged library, and got my first surprise.

Kira was not alone.

The dark-haired high-priestess stood near floor-to-ceiling windows, and was flanked by two more death talkers.
 

Kira's pitch-black eyes stared down at me, cold and arrogant, but since the last time we'd met I'd grown thicker skin against the woman's barbs and feline insults.

"Welcome, Hunter," she said.

What? No cat insults?

I inclined my head.

She ignored my lack of verbal greeting and gestured at the woman on her left. "This is Gaia, High Priestess of the European Council."
 

Gaia smiled, her pale eyes glinting with a hint of blue. She was tall and thin and seemed a thousand times nicer than Kira.

"Well met, sister Hunter." Gaia dipped her head in a shallow bow and I did the same.

"And this is Sini." Kira allowed no time for more social conventions. "She controls the African Continent."

Sini, a dusky woman, was wrapped in gray cloth too, but she wore what appeared to be a turban. The cloth wrapped around her head and hung loose about her face to hide her features.

She cast her honey-dark eyes gaze over me and her smile was tight. Only when I returned it did she relax. Maybe Kira hadn't given her much of a welcome either.

"So," I said, to help move things along. "I take it something bad happened."
 

Kira arched a pencil-thin eyebrow. "Hence your summons."

That put me in my place. "Summons? Don't you mean your request? I need no compulsion to honor a promise freely given." I wasn't about to let her walk all over me.

Gaia smiled and so did Sini, so it was probably a good thing Kira didn't glance sideways. I wasn't clear on death talker hierarchy so any one of these three women could be the highest ranking.

"Nerina, if you please?" Gaia's soft tones managed to fill the large room. When Kira kept her lips in a thin line, saying nothing about Gaia taking over, I wondered if Gaia ranked higher or if the women were working to a common plan.
 

When Nerina came to a stop at my side, Gaia said, "Kailin, in order for you to fulfil your blood promise, we wish for you to see an incident through the eyes of the deceased."

I blinked.

Nerina slipped her hand into mine and drew me to a long leather sofa. Sat me down. Held out a tiny cup.
 

"May I ask that you drink this? It is Elven Mead. It will assist in the mind-meld, allowing you to relax to a level which most humans are unable to access."

I glanced at Gaia, but her encouraging nod bolstered my courage. I took the cup and sniffed the contents; a silvery-grey drink that looked like mercury and smelled of copper and ozone.

Weird.

I dipped the tip of my tongue into it. It tasted cool and minty, like icy spring water steeped with peppermint.

More weird.

Finally, I drank it all in one gulp and handed the cup back to Nerina realizing too late that I hadn't asked how much to have. Her calm expression told me I'd done the expected thing.

She placed the cup on the floor at her feet then sat beside me and took hold of my hands. He skin felt smooth and cool. She smelled of mint--or was the mint the taste in my mouth affecting my sense of smell?

"Now keep calm, relax." Nerina's voice slipped through my thoughts. "Just lean on my energy and I'll take care of you. Afterward you may feel a little ill so we will leave you to rest." Her fingers tightened on mine. "Ready?"

I gave a tiny nod and then felt a strange pull on my energy as whatever Nerina was doing sucked all the strength from my body, all the breath from my lungs.

My heart stuttered in my chest as I closed my eyes. It took real effort to force myself to calm down, to heed Nerina's warning.

Calm
.

Shapes danced in my vision, shadows that coalesced to form furniture and people, like a strange dream.

A street.
 

My ears caught sounds, laughter, a car roaring past. A tin can skittering on the blacktop.

A large room came into view, what looked like a bar stripped of its furniture and booths. A bunch of kids. A pool table. A game with colored balls set up on the playing surface. Not a single pool cue in sight.

A girl stood by the side rail, her short aquamarine hair tipped with bright green, her slim form covered in silver-studded leather that matched the dog-collar around her neck.
 

She leaned over the table, swayed her butt from side to side drawing a few whistles and more raucous laughter. I got the sense it was all good-natured because she smiled, rested her elbow on the side rail, aimed, and sent a burst of energy at the eight ball. The eight ball hit the black with a
crack
and then both of them spun over the playing surface and into the far corner pocket.
 

As shouts roared through the room, cheers and jeers alike, a taller, spiky-haired man drew closer to her. Smiled a sensual smile.

"Are they all here?" His silvery eyes were oddly colored and didn't mesh with his olive skin.

The strangest this was I could see each individual feature and yet when I tried to get a picture of his face, it just blurred, as if the viewer had gone cross-eyed.

The blue-haired girl tilted her head and looked over the man's shoulder as another couple of people entered from a shadowed back door. "Now they are."
 

She pulled her attention back to him and tipped her head to study his face, a frown creasing her smooth brow. "So what was it you wanted us all here for? Something you wanted to tell us?"

He nodded and looked around at the gathered people.
 

There were about a dozen young adults, a mix of races, but I sensed all paranormal or fae. The girl used energy. At the back a short Asian boy bounced lightning in his palm while his friends nudged him to stop. A second girl, reed thin and pale, glowed a soft blue.
 

It was only then I registered that my view of the room had adjusted. I'd become one of a crowd shifting toward the rest of the group as instructed. From where I now stood, I could look the silver-eyed man in the face.

He gestured for the girl to join her friends and though she frowned she obeyed. She hadn't even turned around before he straightened to his full height, locked his knees, he drew his hands forward, palms out and then flung a bolt of energy directly into the crowd.

Screams shattered the air around me, ripped the insides of my ears. Pain ripped my flesh and eyes. I smelled ozone and fire, and white-hot power.

And then it all went black.

I
ROCKETED
TO
MY
FEET
, gasping for breath, my brain throbbing with the drumbeat of my pulse and my mouth tasting of metal and vomit. I wanted to run but I was surrounded by mist and shadows. Surrounded by enemies. Blind.
Helpless
.

"You are safe," said a calm voice from the mist. "Breathe."

Nerina.

"Breathe," she said again. "Slowly, Kailin. In. Out. In . . . "
 

I breathed, wrapping an arm around my midsection, as if the mere gesture would encourage my churning gut to settle.

A few moments passed before my vision cleared enough for me to recognize the hazy blotch in front of me as Nerina's face. She must have jumped off the sofa when I did.
 

She seemed unaffected by the vision. I, on the other hand, was a twisted, confused wreck.

"What the
hell
was that?" An inane question. I had a pretty good idea what I'd witnessed.
 

Nerina took my shaking hand and guided me back down to the sofa cushions. "I apologize," she said when we were both seated. "I know what it feels like to see such a thing for the first time."

I wasn't troubled by the vision itself, just the content. "Why couldn't I see his face? I know what he looks like, even his eye color, but his face . . . It was indistinguishable."

Nerina nodded. "We also found that strange. We think it may be a type psychological block. Perhaps Kira blocked it out. The trauma . . ."

"Did they all die?"
 

Nerina nodded. "We were able to see what happened in the room well after what you were shown. Death talkers have a greater awareness of the world, even after death, giving us greater flexibility with what we can see. After he killed them he simply left. It seems he was certain enough that were all dead."

"How many?" My voice still shivered. Much more to death talkers than I'd ever hoped to learn. Right now my head hurt too much to think about the specifics of mind-melding.

"Twelve."

"Hunter."

The word vibrated with tightly-controlled fury.
 

"Yes, Kira?" I blinked and the rest of the mist cleared away.
 

What the hell?

She stood before me now with dark circles under her eyes, and slight tremor rippling through her stiffly-held frame. She looked as though the last few minutes had sucked out her arrogance and strength and left behind a fragile shell.
 

"You have had enough time to recover," she said, and no matter what her body looked like there was nothing frail in that granite voice. "Now I will have your word. You will find that monster and kill him."

I stared at her, my ears ringing. She wanted me to assassinate someone? Given what I'd seen the killer do I was inclined to hunt him down anyway. But having Kira--anyone--use a Blood Promise to force me to kill was a different thing entirely.

Before I could tell her so, Gaia came to her side and slid an arm around her shoulders. "Come. I think it's time you rested a little. You need your strength."