Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2) Read online

  At last she sat back on her stool and loosed a long belch. The giggle that escaped after startled her. For the first time in weeks, her head felt clear and as though it was her own again.

  Now it was time to interrogate a phoenix.

  In a fireproof room deep in the aedis below the castle, Dante sat beside the phoenix on a bed, scribbling in a little notebook.

  “My lady Isela,” he said, a smile in his voice.

  She fixed her eyes on the figure in the bed. He looked thinner and softer around the edges somehow, as though he were a photo out of focus.

  Gold?

  He’s coming apart—the body can’t contain him like this.

  Can you talk to him?

  Gold’s presence prickled against the inside of her skull. The sensation was just shy of painful. Distract the necromancer.

  Isela cleared her throat. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “There are few creatures of both life and death. The blood—grace blood—tends to split and leave us to one or the other. Most of them died out after the godswall was cast. And this phoenix is—was—one of the last of its kind.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m not as old as the others, and there are so few of us sometimes everything feels new.”

  “So you must be what, three, four thousand?” Isela said, trying to make a joke of it.

  He gave her a brief stare. “I was born in Baton Rouge, shortly after emancipation.” He paused. “Of the slaves.”

  “But you…?”

  Now he laughed. “Azrael found my talents worth his considerable effort to train. For that I am forever indebted to him. I’ll never be as powerful as the others. My aging simply slowed when theirs halted.”

  His voice lacked bitterness or regret. His lips moved silently as he studied the phoenix for a moment. He made an observation in his notebook in small, precise print. His gaze flickered back to her, and Isela remembered her job. “And the others?”

  Dante closed his notebook on his pen and crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair as he contemplated her. Isela fought the urge to squirm, afraid to reach out to Gold for fear of betraying her.

  “Tariq was Azrael’s first,” he said. “He was mostly gone by the time Gus came along—out of the nest, so to speak. Gus found me. She’s always been a little overprotective.”

  Isela bit her tongue against a less charitable description.

  Dante said after a long pause, “You have to forgive Gus.”

  “She’s definitely strong willed.” Isela kept her voice even.

  Dante laughed. “She’s not the only one.”

  Isela ignored the pointed expression he aimed over wire-rimmed glasses. “Did she have a rough time, becoming a necromancer?”

  “Didn’t we all.” He sighed. “But Gus’s problems started well after she came into her powers. She spent a long time running from Paolo’s attempts to seduce her into becoming his consort or destroy her.”

  Isela couldn’t wrap her brain around that enough to form a question.

  Dante opened his journal again and added something to his notes. “She’s a threat to Paolo as long as she stays in his territory,” he said without looking up. “But it’s her home too. She won’t give it up even if it kills her. Whole situation makes her a bit… temperamental.”

  He’s in there somewhere. The bird, Gold said, frustrated and drawing back. Isela, what do you know about sanctuary?

  Chapter Seven

  Someone—Tyler, most likely—had tried to make the undead spies comfortable in Azrael’s aedis, providing water and food. But these two fit the shambling-zombie image better than most. Ray had bound any of their higher functioning, a precaution Azrael understood given the circumstances, but it left them utterly devoid of any traits that would have qualified them as living.

  They stood, shuffling from foot to foot, with vacant gazes and sagging, slack expressions. They would not eat, or drink or sleep, unless commanded. Left to their own devices, they would simply waste away. Dehydration would take them before starvation, though in the end neither would be pretty.

  He tried to see them as they had been, tall and strikingly handsome. One square jawed and sandy haired. The other with ethnically ambiguous olive skin and impossible-to-distinguish eyes. A leading man for any starlet. A casting director’s dream.

  They were also work of master craft—the command to spy had been impressed while they were still human but had been masked so well Raymond would not discover it when he took them on and turned them as his own servants. The undead were bound to obey the necromancer who created them, though Raymond had relinquished his claim. Now they were Azrael’s problem. And his responsibility.

  “Drink,” Azrael murmured, testing his control. “Eat.”

  The two shuffled obediently to the table. One groaned when the bread touched his tongue, a low, desperate sound of mingled relief and torment. The other spilled half the water down his shirt guzzling from his cup and dissolved into fits of wet hacking.

  Azrael cursed himself for assuming Ray would have subdued their appetites as well.

  It was undead like these that the necromancers had displayed during the takeover to cow the human population into submission. Each member made undead to stand behind them, silent witness and visible promise to anyone who dared to resist or defy them. Azrael had been careful to choose from the worst criminals Gregor could find, but watching the others that day, he doubted many had bothered that much. Some of the Allegiance had been particularly illustrative in their descriptions, warning that their victims would feel the urges of their body even as they were unable to meet them. Living torment.

  Apt, he thought, considering the two now weeping silently as they choked in their hurry to acquire simple bread and water. When had they last eaten? It would end today, he vowed. He would get whatever information he could and then release them.

  Would he have done any less if he’d discovered another necromancer’s spies in his territory? Raymond said the one had been found in his map room. The other had attempted to break a ward guarding his potions locker. Raymond’s collection of elixirs knew no equal. Azrael could only imagine the protections Raymond had erected to safeguard it. Yet the zombie had dared. What had he been looking for?

  He turned his attention inward, searching for the knot of spellwork that tasked and bound them. He identified the wards first. Used to create the boundary of their awareness and exclusion of other commands, the wards had been reworked recently to allow Azrael to take control. With delicately wrought interlacing, they connected to geas: the command of the necromancer they served. Together they formed the spell that bound the soul to the body and their creator.

  Next, he pried deeper for their true purpose.

  He began cautiously, scanning for carefully disguised geas and finding them knotted in the base of the skull, the reptilian portion of the brain. After a moment, his natural ability took over with deft confidence built over centuries and a natural inclination to untangle and defeat opposition. It was his talent, after all, the one Róisín had taught him to hone by making him her scout. When they would come upon a failed necromancer or a supernatural creature, it fell to him to discover and define any threat.

  “The danger will teach you surer than any book or lesson.” She overrode his objection. “And if you survive, the knowledge will be embedded in your bones. Such is the value of experience.”

  He’d had a few near misses, and she’d had to save him once when he underestimated a soul-stealing ward and nearly spent an eternity trapped in a bottle like a djinn.

  “You’ve expended your grace, goat boy,” she’d chided after. “You’ll see to yourself from here on out. Don’t make such a stupid mistake again.”

  Satisfied, he withdrew carefully, leaving the base-level geas intact for now.

  Neither reacted as he strode to them. Unlike an untouched mortal, they wouldn’t be able to flinch away, though the nearest’s eyes widened in alarm. Azrael sketched the geas for obedience and tru
th on his forehead. He anticipated that once he got too close to the truth, their built-in wards would act in one of two ways: defense or self-destruction.

  “What is your purpose?” he asked it, his voice activating the geas he’d instilled.

  Its voice was rusty from dehydration and lack of use. “To be famous.”

  That would have been true enough when they joined Raymond’s service.

  “Who is your true master?”

  It hesitated, and he could see the defensive wards struggling against his geas. He watched it flare, then unravel, and whispered words of a binding to keep it from triggering the secondary wards that would cause the undead to self-destruct.

  “Bran,” Azrael said softly, worming the geas deeper into the man’s consciousness. “You have a story to tell me, don’t you?”

  The square chin dipped once, and the undead’s Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively. It took a breath, and its eyes widened in panic. Its mouth clamped shut. A muted, shrieking moan sounded between its locked jaws as blood trickled from the corner of its mouth. It gurgled behind closed lips, gagging.

  Azrael spat out a command to block the latent ward from continuing to take effect. “Open, you fool!”

  Its jaw fell open. With a soft pop it unhinged, swinging loose from the joint like a snake. Blood coated its chin, and a wet lump of meat fell out, landing on Azrael’s toe. It coughed, and Azrael sidestepped the spray of crimson before shaking off his boot. He nudged the lump with his toe.

  Tongue. It’d bitten off its own tongue.

  Azrael swore in three languages. How had he missed that ward? The undead stared at him in mute horror and pain, unable to lift a hand to its bloody mouth. It gagged, trying to respond now that the ward had been defeated, but the words were unintelligible. Azrael silenced him with a quick gesture.

  He had been so focused on the condition of the undead, not wanting to inflict any more harm on them than necessary. His concern—this compassion—was a distraction. And he was weak for not wanting to go into the man’s memories out of a desire not to feel the undead’s emotions as he tried to follow the trail back to the beginning. In the end, both only made things worse.

  Now he would have to invade the man’s mind anyway, and whatever sensations—pain, terror, despair—he felt would be stronger with this newest injury. From across the room, the other undead began to moan and rock unsteadily, its eyes on the bloody pool forming at Azrael’s feet.

  “Sleep now.” Azrael waved a hand, and the second undead sank into a huddle on the floor, chin to chest.

  He commanded the first onto one of two gurneys and gave him the command to sleep, laced with a geas for remembrance. Then he closed his eyes and slipped into the man’s thoughts.

  For a moment it was all he could do to breathe and be calm, assailed by the storm of emotion that had taken over the undead’s mind. He focused on his own breath, drawing his wards around him piece by piece until the gale battered the edges of his walls but did not touch him.

  Show me what you would say, he commanded.

  The image spun around him, a blur of impressions at first until the night he tried to break into Raymond’s elixir vault. They became clearer, more cohesive. Arriving in Los Angeles. Stepping off the plane and staring into the sun and crystalline blue sky with awe and a bit of terror. Azrael encountered resistance as he urged the undead further back. There was a gap and then a familiar face. Paolo.

  Stop, Azrael commanded. He felt the human mind around him recoil in terror, but he could not afford mercy. Not now. He pressed, forcing it into the blackness it had created to block the memory. Paolo’s smiling face and easy promises to care for the man’s family and eventually to free him to enjoy the rest of his unnaturally long life if he was successful.

  Become my vessel and be rewarded beyond value.

  The scene wavered, trembling, as the mind crumpled around him, taking the memories with it. He pushed harder, reliving the memory of what Paolo had done next and the agony that had followed. That only sped up the process of degradation. Azrael pulled back the moment before the mind collapsed into a permanent gray blankness. He stared at the figure on the table, unhinged jaw frozen open in a rictus of pain. He touched its forehead with his thumb.

  “Release.”

  The corpse loosed its soul in one long exhale. Azrael stared at the empty shell on the table for a long moment. Then he snapped his fingers and the body went up in a burst of white-hot flame, contained by the force of Azrael’s fury. The last ash drifted to the stainless steel, and fragments of rib cage crumbled into dust. He rolled the second gurney forward and sighed.

  The second undead had served Paolo much longer, a human servant who craved nothing but to become one of Paolo’s undead. Its willingness made the process by which Paolo inserted his secret geas tolerable, if not less painful. But even better, it had been present during a call from Vanka, a forgotten set of eyes and ears that Azrael accessed now with surgical proficiency.

  It’s gone. Vanka’s rage was only dampened by the distance of memory. While I was securing the dancer, it overpowered my guards. They’re tracking it now, but…

  Paolo tsked lightly, his brow furrowing. It has served its purpose—we know it can be done. We no longer need it.

  Your spies…

  Leave in the morning, Paolo finished smoothly. If Ray has the elixir—

  We don’t have time to wait, Vanka said.

  Calm yourself. Paolo rose from his chair. Azrael was aware of the intensity of his host’s response to Paolo’s movements, the well of desire rising at the sight of his broad shoulders and the sun from the window on his curling tawny hair. He was suddenly aware of his host’s own position, sprawled in the sheets of a messy bed. This one had been Paolo’s lover then. Not that it meant much to Paolo. Human life was almost valueless among some of the Allegiance. Had Azrael been one of them once? Of course he had. He considered how willing he had been to use Isela for his purposes—including seduction—and then release her, or kill her, if need be.

  She was one; his territory protected many humans just as vulnerable, or more so than she was. That was his rationale. And now? Now he would let the entire city burn to prevent harm from coming to her. Which was better?

  Paolo spoke again, and Azrael forced himself to pay attention to the words as the first tremors began to shake the edges of his vision. This mind was beginning to break down. Time raced toward the edge.

  …headed to Stary in the morning, Vanka said, and centuries’ worth of place names and locations flashed in his mind until he identified the small town on the sea. It’s there, and I’ll find it.

  Paolo shrugged carelessly. If the destination is achieved, what does it matter by whose road it is reached?

  It matters if you are caught, Vanka snapped. If Raymond suspects…

  They will destroy themselves before revealing anything. I’ve seen to it, and whatever intel they’ve gained about the workings of Raymond’s house will be worth the loss. Paolo cut her off. And you? It’s disputed territory. Azrael—

  Will be too busy enforcing the vow he made over his human pet to notice, Vanka said. I’ve taken care of it.

  Paolo sucked his teeth and returned to the bed. Azrael had to fight the urge to recoil as the necromancer reached out to him, caressing the cheek of his host body. It leaned into Paolo’s touch, eager.

  Not human anymore, Paolo said, as if an afterthought. And not the only one soon.

  Azrael snapped back just as the mind around him crumpled to a blank point. He came back into his own body, staggering backward with the effort. Even sapped of energy as the work had left him, he felt invigorated. He had a name. Stary. And a purpose. His eyes flicked back to the corpse on the table. The blank, vacant stare was at odds with the serene smile beneath.

  “I release you,” Azrael said as pity welled up in him.

  What had the human thought, taking a necromancer for a lover? Had he feared at all, even at the end? Azrael thought of Isela and the way she c
urled against him in sleep, a smile on her face. Contentment, safety. For the first time he was grateful she was the vessel of a god. What other chance did she stand in a world such as this, with humans as fodder for the intrigues of necromancers? The god would protect her, out of nothing more than a selfish concern for its own survival, but nonetheless. Everything else he would provide.

  He left the smoldering remains of the second corpse and sent a mental summons to Gregor. Call Lysippe. Find out what she knows about Stary.

  Master?

  And pack an overnight bag, Azrael said before cycling through his other mental connections. Tyler. Have the plane fueled and on the tarmac.

  My lord, Tyler replied.

  Azrael headed to his study to wait.

  “I want to offer the phoenix sanctuary,” Isela began, rounding the corner.

  The room was meant to be a study, but the books that lined the wall and the enormous tables made her think of a library. One wall was all grimoires, part of an enormous collection amassed over centuries. The others were filled with manuals and reference books that Isela had never seen or heard of before. She’d dedicated a few hours a day to that side, trying to expand her understanding of this new world. She most often ended with a headache. Academics had never been her strength. Unlike Tobias, who came by his family-bookworm status via their father, studying had been a painful ordeal for her. She could memorize choreography after watching it once, but she’d struggled to get even passing grades in her classes.

  Gold helped, allowing her to focus, and helping with translations, but there was only so long she could sit with dusty old books, struggling with archaic sentences, before her body itched to get up and move.

  Unlike Azrael, who stood as still and certain as an oak at one of the tables, hands braced on either side of an open book. It was one of a stack he had built up around him. There was no indication of how long he’d been in that position, but his head rose with leonine grace at her entry.