The Chosen (22 page)

“It’s worth a shot.”

“We need to pick a destination and focus on it, then walk through to the other side.”

One of his brows rose as if to say, you simply must be mistaken; that’s too simplistic.

“If you don’t trust me, toss a rock through or something.”

Remington picked up a rock from the floor of the cavern and bounced it in his hand like a ball. “Just concentrate on a destination, huh?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it for a moment. His eyes snapped open, and without ceremony he tossed the rock into the dark glass-like surface, then flinched, expecting it to shatter.

Instead the rock disappeared, and the glassy surface rippled like a still lake hit by a stone. He opened first one eye then the other. “It worked!” There was the sound of shattering glass a moment later, but the surface of the dark mirror looked undamaged.

China sighed and shook her head. “What destination did you pick?”

Remington shrugged. “My law offices. Why?”

China snorted. “I think you may have just broken a window.” She grabbed his hand. “Ready?”

“Everything is an adventure with you, isn’t it?”

She gave him a wide smile. “At least you can’t say I’m boring.”

He gave the mirror a dubious look. At least they were going to his office. It was about as good a place as any to travel to when they were both still buck naked. Everyone knew he was gone, and he had extra clothes in the wardrobe there. “After you.”

China gave a heavy sigh. “After all we’ve been through in the last few days and you’re scared of a scryvoyag—” She stepped into the dark surface and disappeared along with his hand.

Remington wasn’t sure what to think, but he held his breath and plunged in.

It wasn’t unlike swimming in a pool of chilled aspic. Not something he’d ever chosen to do. He wasn’t a big fan of aspic in the first place. But it was soft and semi-solid, yet it gave way easily around their movements.

He felt the warmth of sunshine on his hand before he emerged fully on the other side. Remington blinked against the brightness of the light. He was back in his office in Tombstone. His desk—actually everything in his office—had a light layer of dust on it. Clearly he was going to have to talk to his cleaning lady, whom he paid a weekly sum to come whether he was there or not. He glanced back at the plain full-length mirror on the wall inside his personal office.

It looked no different than when he’d seen it two weeks ago. He touched the surface and found it solid, his fingers leaving prints on the glass. “That’s the damnedest thing. It’s like Alice in Wonderland going through the looking glass.”

China was leaning up against his desk, her arms crossing over her breasts, causing them to swell in a rather enticing manner. She jerked her head to the side. “Told ya you broke a window.”

Glittering shards of glass littered the floor. Remington swore under his breath. His landlord was going to have words for him. But that could wait. Right now he needed to get to the telegraph office and quickly.

He grabbed China around the wrist. “Come on.”

“We just got here! Can’t we get something to wear first? Where are we going?”

He glanced down at himself, a slight blush coloring his skin. “You’re right. Clothes first, then to the telegraph office. If the codex was right, then there’s no way the Gates of Nyx are in Bodie like my brothers think. I need to wire them to meet me at Marley’s so we can put the Book together and then figure out where the Gates might be.”

China stared at him. “I know a way we can find out.”

“How?”

“I’ll ask dear old daddy.”

He whirled around, a vein pulsing hard in his temple. “No!” From the glint in his eye she could tell he didn’t trust she’d return. He went over to a wardrobe closet he had in his office, opened the doors, and began flinging out garments and an oilcloth. He chucked a shirt and a pair of pants and suspenders at her and gently wrapped the piece of the Book they’d brought with them in the oilcloth.

“If anyone would know where the showdown is going to be, don’t you think it’d be Rathe?” she said as she slipped on the shirt and began buttoning it.

“Of course, but you can’t risk it.” He shoved on a pair of pants himself, then stalked over and grabbed her about the shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh.

China threw off his hold, angry. “Why? Because I’m not a Hunter born and bred like you and your brothers?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because I’m not strong enough.” He closed his eyes and bent his head.

“You aren’t strong enough? You mean to defeat Rathe?”

“No. I know I can’t do that on my own. That’ll take me and my brothers.” He shook his head and turned from her. He paused, and the silence stretched out between them. “I’m not strong enough to . . . lose you.”

China stepped around and cradled his rough cheek in her hand, her thumb caressing the deep divot in his chin she loved to kiss. No one had ever given her what he had: his trust and true concern for her welfare, even above his own. He’d made her feel important, valued, not for what she was, or who she was, but simply because she existed. She hesitated to label such a thing love. She’d had so little experience of it to go by in her own life, it was hard to know for sure, and risky to make the assumption.

“Let me do this for you. It’s one of the only things I can do to help.”

“I don’t like it, but I also don’t see how we have much choice. There’s barely a week until the new moon rises.” He kissed her fiercely. “You are the bravest woman I know. If there were such a thing as female Hunters, you’d be one.”

She gave him a weak smile. “If I were a female Hunter, then I wouldn’t be Darkin, and I wouldn’t have the direct connection to Rathe that might make this shortcut possible.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “I’ll always find my way back to you. Trust me.”

 

 

China finished dressing as best she could. Nothing fit; it was all far too large and made for a man, but that was fine with her. It didn’t need to fit for where she was going. She reached beneath the baggy shirt that smelled of Remington’s Bay Rum and placed the tip of her middle finger on the center of her brand and let the sluggish, sticky sensation wriggle and creep through her veins. She hadn’t wanted Remington, or anyone else for that matter, to touch the scar for a good reason. It was one surefire way to locate Rathe, anytime, anywhere. A direct line to her father, not something to be tampered with lightly or even by accident. Not something she wanted.

Normal Darkin could only transport to places they’d been before, but because she was marked by Rathe, she could return not just to a place she’d been before, but to a person with whom she shared a connection. Her body began to fall apart, but not in the same way it did when she shifted. Instead of the welcome rush of heat and the sparkling sensation that filled her, this was cold, sticky, and vile like congealed blood. Dark particles consumed her from the feet up, turning her into nothing but smoke and ash as she transported to Rathe’s’s hall of horrors.

She’d been there twice before. Once as a terrified six-year-old to watch her mother die and to receive her brand then be held against her will for six months before he cast her out into the world, and once when he’d ensured she had her virginity taken by force by one of his incubi. China couldn’t breathe; the suffocating sensation made her lungs and nose burn, then just as suddenly dissipated.

Without opening her eyes she could smell the stench of burnt flesh and decay in this place. Beneath her hands was something hard and cold, the familiar black marble floor on which she’d broken her first bone. The light from the lava on which the floor floated glowed red through her eyelids. Still she hesitated to open her eyes, knowing that Rathe sitting upon his monstrosity of gleaming glass-like obsidian, would be waiting to greet her.

“I see the prodigal child has come home.” The sound of his voice, unctuous and superior all at once, grated on her nerves and made her palms instantly damp. Her heart pounded out a mad tattoo, like it was as desperate as she was to leave this place.

China lifted her head and glared at the archdemon from Hell who’d sired her, locking her gaze on him as she slowly stood, bare feet braced wide apart. The deathly pallor of his face picked up the reddish glow from the lava that lit the edges of the enormous rock cavern that was his throne room. It was really a torture chamber as far as China was concerned. She could hear the clink of the rusty chains and massive hooks overhead that disappeared into the infinite darkness above them.

He was dressed like a dapper Englishman, all spanking clean and pressed, from the crease in his pinstriped trousers to his matching vest and coat, and crisp, high-collared, snowy shirt. In many ways he wasn’t dressed all that differently from Remington on the first time she’d seen him. The big difference was while it looked good on Remington, it made Rathe appear overdone and gaudy—like a whore trying too hard to look like she’d risen above her profession and become respectable. The bloodred silk tie was overkill. So was the golden watch chain strewn with the shrunken, gilded heads of his enemies.

China refused to let her body shudder. She’d deliberately waited a moment to answer him back. “It’s not as though you’ve put out the welcome mat,” she answered tartly.

The reddish slash in his face that passed for a mouth flattened into a grim line. “I see your manners have not improved.” The fingernails on his hands changed, elongating and sharpening into black talons, like those on a bald eagle.

China had tried to shift into a bald eagle once. The feel of talons, that big and that long, extending from her fingertips had made her think too much of being like Rathe, and she’d never done it again.

“Didn’t feel there was anybody here I needed to impress.”

Rathe steepled his fingers, the talons clacking against one another. “Then, if not for a social call, why are you here, daughter? Surely you didn’t hope to receive a matching brand for the one you already have.”

China flinched before she could stop herself. “I came about the Chosen.”

“Ah, the Chosen. One of my more favorite topics of conversation as of late. And how are they, my dear?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve only been tagging along with the middle Jackson brother since the younger one left me buried in adobe brick and rotting in jail.”

Rathe leaned forward. “And did Remington Addicus Jackson recover the final piece of the Book of Legend?”

China gave one curt nod. “Thanks only to me,” she replied.

“You didn’t expect me to make it easy, did you? I wanted them to feel a sense of accomplishment before I snatch it all away and open the Gates of Nyx wide to the rest of my brethren, and bring about a new world order.”

Her heart clutched in her chest. The age-old wound broke open deep within. She’d wished he cared even a fraction of that much for her. But the days of seeking his approval were over. “Why do you care if they have a sense of accomplishment?”

His ice-blue eyes turned yellow and hungry like living flame. Only the vertical slit remained the same, and even that widened with anticipation. “The more accomplished they feel, the more agony they will endure when I take it all away and they realize all their sacrifice, all their lives, and those of their ancestors have been in vain. Worthless. A waste.”

He was one sick, cold, evil demon. But then, that wasn’t anything new. She just hated being reminded of how ruthless and sadistic Rathe could be and how heavily she’d relied on him, feeling helpless and hopeless when he’d branded and discarded her.

China swallowed down the bitter bile tainting the back of her tongue and searing her throat. She hoped like hell this touching family reunion was worth it. As long as she could find out the location to the Gates of Nyx, she could return with her head held high.

Rathe rose from his throne and stepped down from the dais, moving slowly toward her like a pit viper. “Do you know how all this began—Darkin and Hunters, the prophecy of the Chosen?”

He was close enough now that the reek of dead things coming off of him made her eyes burn. “You were all bored to tears and decided to screw up the world for entertainment?”

He slapped her full force, making her neck snap as her head swung with the blow. China had been hit before, but not like that. Never anything that made her face go numb from the pain and started to swell her eye shut instantly.

“Insolent child. I never should have let your mother keep you.”

Least she never laid a hand on me
, China thought bitterly. She would have spit out the words, but she still couldn’t feel her jaw, and the blood collecting in her mouth was choking her.

Joy. She hadn’t let anyone in for so long, she’d forgotten powerful Darkin could read one another’s thoughts. And there was none more powerful than Rathe.

His yellow gaze bored into her, the vertical slits in his eyes widening like a cat’s the instant it scented prey.
I’ve a plan for you. You are going to help me annihilate the Chosen.

His mouth, if it truly could be called a mouth, stretched slightly, a dark, lipless maw in his pale, waxy, dead-looking skin. The sharp points of his teeth just barely visible. “You can either serve me or be destroyed; that is true. But if you serve me, the end will be far less painful for you.”

The vertical slits in his eyes narrowed. “You are not afraid to die, are you?”

China refocused her gaze, letting it rest on the spot just behind Rathe. She didn’t want to see his face. Didn’t want to be reminded that this Darkin had branded her skin when she was a defenseless, frightened child. The searing smell of human flesh and the blinding black pain had been equally branded on her memory.

“But you do value the lives of the Chosen. Do you not?”

It took everything within her not to flinch, not to change the pace of her breath. She looked Rathe straight in his dead yellow eyes, gathered all her power to shield her thoughts from him, and lied.

“What happens to them is none of my business. I only look out for one person since you killed my mother—me.” It was really more of a past truth than an outright lie. Up until she and Remington had been pulled together by their journey to the center of the earth and back, she’d not known a man could be so kind, so tender and loving, while at the same time strong and decisive.

His gentle, kind side didn’t make Remington weak; rather it made him even stronger. Something Rathe would never understand. Remington might have a weakness for always wanting to be right, but his strength was that he did the right thing, regardless of what it cost him. There were so many ways he was like Rathe and yet totally different. Her heart squeezed at the realization.

“All I wanted to know was where I should be for the best view when the showdown happens.”

Rathe’s golden gaze bored into her; the corner of the red slash that marred his skin as a mouth lifted in approval. “Well, that’s a change. Could it be that my spawn is finally willing to take up the mantel of her station as one of the noble among the Darkin?”

China stiffened. She could do this. She
had
to do this.