The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (27 page)

“Get them out of here!” Raven orders, shouting over her shoulder as another hellhound leaps. She dives to the right, landing on her backside as she casts a wave of blue over the beast, wrapping it in magic, dissolving it back through the veil. “Get the humans out
now
!”

Kyla grabs my arm and gives me her most serious look. “Come on, Ana.”

I look at Trebor, brow furrowed. “No, I can’t—” Someone grabs my other arm from behind.

Trebor’s brow furrows too, and he pushes me away. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on!” An Irin shouts, hauling me away. He grabs hold of my wrist and pulls me through the mayhem, magic flying all around us. Kyla clings to my other hand.

Faye is up ahead, clearing the way for our escape. She looks at me for an instant as we pass, and I can see the apology in her eyes.

I’m not going to cry,
I tell myself, thinking of Trebor, thinking he needs to be able to concentrate, to fight.

“This way,” our Irin orders, gruffly.

And we follow, running.

None of the hellhounds break off to follow us—that’s my first clue that whatever is happening is part of a trap. But what can we do? We have to keep moving, or find a place to hide. I don’t even know if it’s possible to hide anymore. Everywhere we turn leaves us vulnerable, exposed. This damn city is so empty, so quiet, the skinwalker could find us anywhere.

We run and run until, finally, we turn and find ourselves at a traffic circle outside of City Hall—our way blocked by an old woman and two swarthy, angry, familiar men. The Zee.

Our Irin stops, thrusts his arms forward in a grand gesture and spins a wide net, surely big enough to strike all three of them—but the old woman laughs and holds up her hand, almost as if to wave away the magic. The net strikes, bounces back, wraps around the Irin…

And he vanishes.

“What did you do to him?” I gasp.

“It’s called a reflector spell,” the old woman laughs. “We just used his magic to send him back home. No harm done, dears. Not this time, anyway.” She cackles for a moment, then frowns. “No harm done by
me
, anyway.”

I swallow, breathless. Kyla grabs my hand, and we step back, away.

“Not so fast, little Ouros, little
dark one
,” the old woman says. “We have a score to settle. A trade to finish, if you will.”

Kyla goes rigid. My mouth goes dry. I feel the phantom sensations in my hand, my wrist, the sudden give, the sick
slip
of blade into flesh—living flesh—human flesh, no matter how far Fallen. I feel my palms grow slick, my pulse jump into my throat—

“Ah, the guilty one confesses,” the old woman says, turning her blind eyes in my direction. She sniffs the air and says disdainfully: “Little Ouros. How could you?”

“He was going to kill us,” I justify, but it feels weak. I don’t know if it will ever be enough. But it has to be—what else could I have done? I step back, pushing Kyla behind me, hoping with enough distance, maybe, enough of a head start, we can run again, and keep running—

“But to kill one of your own kind?” The old woman raises her eyebrows.

I freeze, and for a split second everything is so sharply focused that it doesn’t feel real. When the sharpness passes, her words are the only sound ringing in my ears. “What?” I whisper.

“Ana, don’t listen,” Kyla tells me. “They’re liars and thieves. You did what you had to do. Don’t listen.”

“You didn’t know, did you?” the old woman crows, cackling. “Oh, sweet comedy of errors. The murderess did not even know who she was murdering.”

“No. Enough. That’s enough!” I shout.

“It’s not
nearly
enough.” The old woman scowls, toothless lips pursing. “You killed my grandson, you daughter of gypsies—filth of the mid-world— petulant, useless, half-thing!”

“What?” I gasp, too horrified by what her words imply to fully grasp the threat at hand.

The two men flanking her step forward, swords made entirely of light and magic appearing in their hands.

“Ana!” Kyla yanks my arm. “Over there! We can catch a ride!” She pulls as hard as she can and doesn’t let go, running through the center of the traffic circle, across the street, towards the steps of City Hall. “Andy!” she calls.

My eyes widen. There he is, just getting out of his car. He seems overly surprised to see us, theatrically confused by our state—my clothes and hair are still wet, and Kyla is covered in red dust from Sheol.

“Andy, we need a ride!” Kyla tells him as we approach.

“Okay, sure.” His brow flexes. “What’s the hurry?”

“We pissed some people off,” Kyla says, pressing my hands to the door handle and running around to the passenger side.

“One second,” Andy says, looking preoccupied.

My body tenses, remembering the last time I saw him, remembering the old woman’s words, remembering Trebor’s face when he pushed me away. Too much, too much, all at once, making my mind muddy, confused, slow.

Andy pulls something from his pocket and reaches for my door—but he grabs my un-broken wrist instead. He holds it up, looks me in the eye with that overly charming student-council-president-grin, and his eyes flash so bright, so white, I don’t see him move. I don’t realize what he’s done until a line of red breaks the surface of my arm from the bottom of my palm to the middle of my forearm. It rises, thickens, coheres, until it becomes too heavy to linger and it bleeds, bright red trickling down and pooling in the crook of my elbow. The burn of sliced flesh doesn’t set in until long after it’s too late.

His knife shines in the blaze of his eyes.

Three hellhounds come bounding around the corner of the steps to City Hall, paws leaving dark red prints on the pavement as they run to their master.

“Ana?” Kyla says meekly. “Andy?” She hurries back around to our side of the car, and when she sees what he’s done, she screams.

Her scream tears through my head, through the fog that has settled over me, and the burning intensifies, the urgency of the situation clarifies. But something else is wrong, if that’s possible.

Kyla stops, only long enough to catch her breath, and screams again, clutching her head. The scream becomes a keening, becomes a wail. She writhes, curling in on herself, doubling over as the wind picks up around us, blowing hard in a sudden gale, summoning dark clouds overhead.

Andy lets go of my wrist, staring at Kyla, backing away with wide white eyes. “It can’t be…” he mutters.

I can hear the old woman cackling on the other side of the street, laughing and laughing, calling out “The dark one! The
dark one!
She has arrived!”

“Kyla?” I wonder, squeezing my wound under my other arm to staunch the flow of blood. My voice is so weak she can’t hear me. “Kyla!”

She flings her head back,
roaring
. Her eyes look black, and her skin is changing from warm honey brown to a deep, unnatural blue—

“Oh God, Kyla—”

“
Run
,” she growls at me, and a pulse of magic flies out from her in a perfect circle, washing over us like an aftershock, making the hellhounds yowl and Andy fall to his knees. Even the old woman goes silent.

“Kyla, what’s happening to you?” I panic.

Kyla’s hands fall from her head and she looks forward, not at me. “
Run now
.” Her voice is low and fierce, and it makes my stomach twist.

“Ky—” But I don’t have a choice. I fall back, as if shoved, and my legs move regardless of my will. I run, because I must, because I have no choice. I stumble here and there, picking up speed even as the world spins around me, even though I don’t know where I’m going, who’s following, what the point is. I know only one thing:

Everything has finally fallen apart.

— 59 —

My pace doesn’t slow until I hit Church Street, where I stagger to a stop at the steps of the cathedral and collapsing.

I’m gushing blood.

The arm trying to squeeze the wound shut is slick with it, skin slipping against skin the harder I press down. I have to wrap the wound, put pressure on it, find a way to retain what blood I have left. It’s escaping, running away from me, stolen…

My head swims and my heart hurts. I need to focus.

Bandages.

I have no bandages. I have my clothes. I will have to shred some of my tee-shirt.

I take the bottom of my shirt in my teeth and pull with my good arm—better arm, I suppose, since it’s only broken and not leading to my imminent exsanguination—and hold my wound tight against my stomach as I pull. The effort makes my vision go black, and a moment later I’m flat on my back, blinking up at the looming silhouette of the cathedral spires.

“I’m going to die,” I say out loud, shoving my gushing wound between my good arm and my ribs, rolling over onto it, squeezing it closed as best I can. I look up at the cathedral, at the protective plastic covers over the stained-glass windows, scuffed and yellowed with time. The stones used to build the cathedral are a dark, reddish brown, rough-hewn and imposing. It looks like it could be made of rocks quarried in Sheol.

Sheol, where I once killed a man.

A man I may have been related to.

“No,” I shake my head, refusing to give in to the madness lurking within those thoughts. Kyla needs me. Trebor needs me. I have to survive. I have to save them.

And then I will happily give up and die.

The city is quiet. I can hear cars on the expressway, rushing past the city, but I’m too close to the waterfront now for much traffic. Restaurants are closed, bars, businesses, and nightclubs are elsewhere. Around me, there is the Cathedral, and the expressway overpass, and the arena in the distance. Here and now, it’s just me and the dark, and the impossible weight of three worlds bearing down on me.

Swallowing, I haul myself to my feet and try not to fall back down. I squeeze my wrist under my arm and look around, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

“Hey!” I shout, voice breaking, shaking as I drag in another breath. “Hey, Irin! Sura! You win, okay?” The sound of my voice lingers in the cathedral doorway, floating up to the spires. “I’m dying, and you took Trebor, and God only knows what happened to Kyla. It’s over. The Arcana win, the human loses!” My whole body trembles with exhaustion, but I walk forward, down the stairs. Like a fucking champ.

“What else do you want from me?” I try to shout, but my lungs can barely muster the force to speak. “Because there’s nothing else you can take! There’s nothing! I’m done. It’s over with.” My eyelids are heavy, and I can shout no more.

When my heart begins to race, pounding in my chest, it’s too much for my broken body to handle. The blood moves too fast, rushing, everything rushing past me, spinning around me. I swoon, and am weightless when I fall—

But I am held.

“Not yet,” Trebor murmurs around a frown, cradling me, lowering me to the ground. He leans down to kiss my forehead, pulls my wounded arm to his chest, and covers the slash with his hand like a warm, living bandage. “
Ahuvati sheli. Shaya. Shayavati. Shaya…
”

The world goes white—

—and when it fades back in, the first thing I see is Trebor. He’s holding my hand to his forehead, and weeping.

“Trebor,” I say, voice so small it doesn’t even sound like it belongs to me. But I feel fine. My head is clearing. My wrist doesn’t even hurt—neither of them do. “Trebor, it’s okay. I’m alive.”

He shakes his head, and when he can finally stand to look at me, I understand that’s not why he’s crying. It washes over me like a nightmare.

Trebor healed me.

He
healed
me—something only the havati bashrat are capable of. And if the two of us are like them, then we are soul-bonded. We are…meant to be. We are
predestined
.

And we can never be together.

I touch his face, wipe tears from his cheeks and hold his head in my hands, wanting to comfort him. I want to tell him it will be okay. I want to tell him things will work out, he’ll see.

But I don’t believe that.

What I believe—what I know—in this moment, is that Trebor is the one I love, and the one who loves me, and
I can’t have him
. There is nothing about that that’s okay, and it breaks my heart to be unable to do anything but agree with the agony in his.

He touches my face, brow creased. I’m crying too.

There’s nothing else to be done.

“Best get a move on, kids,” Lykos drawls from the sidewalk, his voice more sorrowful than I’ve ever heard. “The Irin’ll catch up real soon.”

Trebor nods, and helps me to my feet, steeling himself.

“How did you get away?” I ask.

“Andy.” He frowns.

“The skinwalker,” I correct him.

“He didn’t want you to die, so he sicked his hellhounds on Raven and her troops again before they could haul me away. One of them had their wings slashed pretty badly.”

I can tell by the set of his mouth when he says it that the injury means more than I know. “What happens when your wings are slashed?”

He swallows, not wanting to discuss it. “If they can’t heal properly, we become human. We lose our connection to magic.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t let his cool fool you, sweet pea,” Lykos chimes in. “Losing your wings is the worst living punishment imaginable for an Irin. Most would
prefer
execution to that fate.”

I look at Trebor for confirmation, but he doesn’t look at me. “Come on.” He puts a blood-streaked hand on my blood-stained back. “Let’s get out of here before the skinwalker shows up.”

“Too late!” Andy shouts from the bottom of the church steps. He stands tall, arms out at his sides, glaring up at us, grinning—looking utterly mad. “Thanks for your help, buddy. Ana, glad you made it through.”

Trebor pushes me behind him, whipping a net at Andy like a blanket of lightning. It wraps around him, sizzles and smokes.

Andy giggles, and coughs. “Human body, soldier. Can’t send me back home unless we’re playing an away game.”

Trebor sneers. “How long have you been using him? Days? Months? Years?”

The skinwalker laughs in Andy’s body. “Using him? I’ve given him so much! I gave him charm, and wit, and amazing hair!” He runs his hands through the gelled-up tangle. “I’m not
using
him. We’re a team. A partnership. He had needs, and he reached out to me for help. I said ‘Sure. But can you do me some favors too?’” He grins so broadly I think his lips might split. “Next thing you know, the bill comes due, and here we are.” He coughs again, and spits out blood. “It won’t do for long though. I’ve only been in here a few days, and he’s falling apart. Average human flesh just isn’t made to hold the
glory
that is me. But a human with real magic? Now, that would be different.”

I push past Trebor to stand beside him. “Where’s Kyla? What did you do to her?”

“Why, I handed her over to the old woman, of course. The Zee wanted their signature
fair trade
.” He smiles. “Kyla means so much to you, just as Ishmael meant to Madam Cevaux, so it seemed to make the most sense.”

I struggle not to gasp, not to cry out or scream, but my heart does all those things, hammering the fear of her loss deep into my bones. “No,” I breathe, though a certain kind of rage has begun to crackle in my fingertips. “If they hurt her—if she’s—if you—”

“Oh, she is still alive,” Andy assures me. “She’s what I call
insurance
. They’re going to hold onto her for me until I get what
I
came for. You.” He leers at me and puts his hands on his hips. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been a woman. I think I’ll enjoy it.”

Trebor’s hands ball into fists, and he makes a noise I’ve never heard before—almost a growl, almost a hiss. His head drops, shoulders seem to double in size, and he moves as if to leap down the stairs.

I stop him with a hand on his arm, and shake my head. “Where are they?” I ask quietly, swallowing my horror.

Andy grins. “Right this way.”