Winter (Mist Riders Book 2) Page 5

  Two weeks from starting my new life abroad, and here I was, being thrown back into the middle of hell with no direction home. This was my destiny, to be dragged back again and again to a role I did not select but was born to play. I used to think destiny was a good thing, but it is merely something that is unavoidable.

  I might as well accept it and dive in headfirst.

  “I can’t share details,” I said, “but I promise you I’ll do everything possible to get Emmet back unharmed.”

  Mr. Groshek bowed his head. He seemed deeply touched, absorbing my words as if they were a needed elixir. “I’ll take you at your word. Be careful, Sophie. My son is no average shifter. Only a thing of great power could have taken him.”

  I had some ideas.

  “The pack has agreed not to inform his mother yet,” he went on. “I thought it would only serve to devastate her. The woman would fly out here from Rhode Island and put her own life at risk to save him.”

  Emmet’s mother was a shapeshifter. Shifters lack control when a family member is in peril. She wouldn’t leave a stone unturned and in so doing, she’d jeopardize not only her life, but also Emmet’s.

  “You made the right call,” I said. “Let’s not complicate this further.”

  Mr. Groshek grimaced, overcome by the agony of letting go. “My son trusts you. I must choose to do the same.”

  A sinking feeling hit my stomach as I shut the door. The world started spinning, as if my equilibrium was off. Everything was happening too fast.

  Mist Rider or not, I was still vulnerable, still outplayed. I was fighting against forces with thousands of years more experience than me.

  This had Chaos’ footprint all over it. He had a habit of sending messages via monsters and he liked to get my attention by hurting people close to me.

  It was all my fault. I had basically handed him Emmet’s head on a platter when I mentioned Emmet’s name to Chaos outside the hospital.

  A possible silver lining was that Chaos knew better than to hurt Emmet. If his intention was to get my attention, he had succeeded.

  I intended to break every treacherous bone in his body and chew his guts out when I got my hands on him. I’d had it with his sick games. The problem was I had no idea how to smoke Chaos out from whatever deathly backwater he currently called home. Maybe there was still some connection to Chaos in Lucia’s subconscious mind, a way to contact him through her.

  No. That was my rage speaking for me. I would not put Lucia and Lily at risk, even for this. Winter had loved pointing out that my emotional response to conflict was my biggest flaw.

  The only thing I could think to do was get the police involved like Emmet had urged. I’d tell them I had a stalker. I’d tell them he had gone apeshit in my apartment, and that I was worried he might target my friends next as they had provided me shelter and safe harbor. Hopefully, they’d keep a watchful eye on them while I tried to hand the Lord of soul suckers his balls.

  The bastard had his hostage. He had as much leverage as he would ever need over me. Lily and Lucia were probably in no immediate danger, but I wouldn’t overlook any dreadful possibility.

  More instructions in the form of riddles would likely follow, but one way or the other I’d get to the bottom of this, with or without cryptic clues.

  Faion. Shit. I wanted to leave him out, too, but shit. I needed him. Despite Celia’s plead and despite my own reservations, what choice did I have? As far as detecting etheric fields and tracing residual magic I was beyond useless and Faion was all the rage.

  I glanced at my phone on the coffee table. I should have ditched that thing as soon as Emmet mentioned the fake text. I hurled a small spark of electricity at the screen. The spark sizzled as it invaded the inside mechanisms and made my smart phone dumb. A small implosion shook the coffee table as the phone started to smoke like a miniature industrial chimney.

  On my way to the police station, I dumped what was left of my cursed phone into a trash bin marked for Pet Waste Only.

  CHAPTER 7

  ____________________________________

  A day later, and after the police had combed the apartment, Faion and I walked through my door. I’d called him from the police station the day before and briefed him on our way from the airport.

  He crossed his arms on his chest and scanned the apartment. “Damn, you weren’t joking when you called this a dumpster fire. Place looks like five crackheads forgot where they’d hid their stash.”

  I bent my face at him, trying and failing not to smile. “Why would you think I was joking?”

  “Females blow shit out of proportion.”

  Females? Give me patience. He was lucky I needed him, or I would have put him on blast. “Dude, really? What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “This a day-after-a-frat-party, feng shui apocalypse. I’m not even mad. They fucked up yo’ crib with that hurricane flavor, like FEMA needs to be cc’d on this.”

  I tapped my feet on the floor. “Are you done?”

  “Like a bull in a vagina shop.”

  Oh, for crying out loud.

  “You’re hardly the expert on that,” I said. “How about we nudge this conversation back to reality? Do you think the soul swallowers did this?”

  That shut him up, finally. He stared at me with wide open eyes, then started for the door. “Oh, hell no. I don’t even know what that is, but I damn sure want to keep it that way. Uh-uh. Nope. My ass is leaving the building. I’m black Elvis. Show’s over.”

  My hand twitched. The door immediately slammed so he couldn’t leave.

  Faion stopped cold. He closed his eyes, breathing intensely. “If I stay for a minute, just to listen, then you need to promise not to use your scary-ass Carrie magic. I don’t want any pig’s blood poured on me.”

  I waited until he turned around and then hit him with pleading eyes. “I’m sorry about the door. Sometimes that kind of happens involuntarily.”

  “Mm-hmm, that’s what Carrie would say,” he said. “And I do not want to be the black dude who dies at the start of a horror movie. Or the middle. Or the end. I want out of the whole Stephen King multiverse. Feel me?”

  “It’s just been a lot, Faion,” I said with a heavy exhale. “You’re the best guy. You know that I think that. In fact, I think you’re simply divine.”

  “That’s better,” he said.

  I flashed him my biggest smile. “Maybe you might, maybe, possibly consider using that big, powerful divining power of yours? You know, for a loyal friend in need.”

  “Don’t overcook it. I’m not hetero,” he reminded me. “I don’t respond to some of that coquettish manipulation, but I do respect it.”

  “So, you’ll help? Just a teensy-weensy?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You need to shield any reverberations. I know that’s a Lunar witch thing, sealing magic scenes.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll do my best,” I told him, “but every minute that passes could prove crucial for Emmet’s chances of survival. I pulled him into this. I have to get him out.”

  “Is the scene undisturbed?”

  “Think so, for the most part,” I said. “I left things as they were.”

  He readied himself. “Gran warned me not to use my powers above ground. Not again. I agreed. This is not cool, lying to my Gran.”

  Ah, that explained it. Celia had gotten to him already. As much as I hated that both of us were breaking promises to her, I couldn’t come up with any other way to search for Emmet.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “I won’t forget this, Faion.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  Sealing another’s magic wouldn’t be easy. I’d finally learned to do an adequate job with my own magic, in enclosed spaces, but executing that same trick for a friend was far more challenging. Winter or Chaos could do these things as easily as breathing. They were ancients. I was twenty-two.

  I flung my hand on top of Faion’s head. Underneath my fingertips, his pulse quickened as his blood rushed to the c
rown of his skull where the magic in my own blood was summoning it. Our auras connected as they flared above us, Faion’s a lemon yellow and mine olive green.

  A pale pink light flickered around us, then expanded in traversing lines snaking about the room, surrounding the door and windows. No magic reverberations would escape the walls of the apartment.

  “Done,” I said, breathless. “The room is sealed.”

  Faion paced about the space, artfully avoiding discarded objects on the floor. “First, I’ll need to hold something of yours,” he said. “Something quite personal, so I can eliminate your own etheric essence. That tough witch vibe must be all over the place.”

  I headed for the closet and found the San Diego Chargers shirt I had slept in the night before my trip to Astoria. It was at the top of my hamper. The entire closet had been untouched. Strange.

  Faion moved to the center of the room and held the shirt to his heart. “I’ll need to touch things they’ve touched, connect to any fleeting residue.”

  “Uh, the police dusted for fingerprints,” I confessed. “Could that—”

  “…be a problem?” he said, sternly. “Yeah. That wasn’t smart.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “For sure not,” he said. “Wait, did you say there was a blood note?”

  Of course, why didn’t I think of that?

  I tiptoed through broken glass and stepped over English muffins to grab my purse. I rummaged through the contents and pulled out the note.

  Faion held his breath. “This is foul,” he said, unfolding the piece of paper. “They used actual blood to write this.”

  “That’s why it’s a blood note.”

  “The soul munchers don’t play,” he said. “I’m not sure I can intuit creatures I didn’t know exist and don’t know how they look.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  He shook his head, then squatted and closed his eyes. He clutched the note in his right fist and began to chant under his breath. I held my own breath as his lips quivered and his aura became a sharp, vibrant gold that circled him quickly before being sucked into the fibers of the paper note, leaving tiny golden tendrils floating in the air.

  Faion’s eyes darted about under his closed eyelids.

  “The scents are familiar,” he said.

  My heart surged in my chest. “What are they?”

  “At least one Immortal slinked through these walls.”

  “Chaos,” I said. “What a complete bastard.”

  “There’s more. These are hard scents to distinguish.”

  Right. The minions, the soul suckers, the asshats that abducted Emmet.

  “Scaly beings, cross species, armored, warlike. They stand on two legs, I think, they’re reptile-like but humanoid. Four foul beasts.”

  It can’t be. Those rumors were true.

  “Troglodytes. You mean troglodytes?”

  Faion’s eyes snapped open. “Yeah, I guess, whatever. They are foul, the very foulest souls. Rotting. Their blood is rancid. Old blood. Almost like the dead... and I got a whiff of wolfie in here, too. Your shifter.”

  “Emmet,” I said. “Yeah, he was in here.”

  “I’m thoroughly creeped out by what I just felt,” Faion added.

  “Me, too. Troglodytes never step out into the basic world, not since the beginning of time. They have stayed hidden from the human realm. They have a strong disgust for weak, disease-ridden creatures, humans especially.”

  Tam had mentioned that the troglodytes were teaming up with necromancers. What an odd coupling. Necromancers were equally lethal, but they always stuck with their own agenda. They did not want souls to swallow, they wanted souls to command.

  What possible common goal could these factions hold?

  I rubbed my temples. This was far above my paygrade. How was I supposed to fight not only against Chaos and the troglodytes, but also necromancers who could blow life back into the dead and then command the resurrected like a zombie army? Only the Divines in the Eternal Halls had been keeping the necromancers in check.

  Had Chaos conned both the eaters of living souls and those who ruled dead souls to join his rebellion? If so, we were all screwed.

  Faion tapped the piece of paper in his hand. “This isn’t a Sophie and Faion adventure. We go to college, we share memes and text each other emojis,” he said, reading my mind. “We can’t deal with this alone. We need help.”

  “I agree one hundred, but who are you thinking about? The Deep Down? Are they really going to risk open war with the Immortals just to come to the aid of a single shapeshifter?”

  Shapeshifters were not even allowed in the underground realms. They had no affiliations, no loyalties at all with the beings of the Deep Down. Anything they might learn or steal, it was feared would likely be used to advance their primitive, violent, clan-driven natures.

  Faion’s face turned cold. “Don’t play dumb, honor roll girl. I can see you’re lying even to yourself. You know who we going to call. That Methuselah motherfucker. That rickety old hunk-slash-stalker who probably slept with Cleopatra and her mother. Your icy hot grinch. Mr. Mean.”

  I shook my head. “There must be another way.”

  “Dude owes you. Not only did you save their collective asses, you saved his own personal immortal ass. It’s time to collect.”

  That bridge has been burned to ash.

  Faion sighed. “Do you want to save your boy toy or not?”

  For the first time Faion was not nice, but he did have a point. “I don’t even know if we can find Winter or contact him. We didn’t end on good terms.”

  “I don’t need to hear all that,” Faion said. “Whatever happened I already know it was his fault, whether you believe it or not. It was.”

  Everything in me screamed not to do this but… priorities. I’d deal with my emotional misgivings and betrayed principles on my own time.

  “Okay, Faion, give me your phone.”

  “What happened to your phone?”

  “Gone. It had been compromised.”

  He reluctantly handed me his phone. “Don’t compromise this one.”

  “I won’t,” I said and started typing.

  Faion raised an eyebrow. “You just going to text an Immortal? They got smart phones now? Okay. What’s next? Necromancers going to be swiping right on my Tinder photo? Troglodytes going to challenge me to an epic game of Words with Friends?”

  I kept typing, ignoring him.

  “Urgent! Contact me at this number”

  “You memorized his number?” Faion said with a raised eyebrow.

  “You have a Tinder account?” I snapped back.

  Faion’s phone rang, startling me.

  A Drake song, big bass, fuzzy synths.

  “You see?” Faion said with a grin. “He thirsty, two second callback.”

  I glared at him and answered the phone.

  “It’s I,” Winter said. “What do you need?”

  He sounded chill and casual in a pre-Tudor sort of way, as if our relationship hadn’t disintegrated into little more than hostile barbs and threats, both veiled and unveiled, before we parted ways.

  “My place has been sacked,” I said. “Like totally tossed and trashed. Faion sensed an Immortal and maybe four troglodytes.”

  Silence. I tapped my fingernails on the screen.

  “When did this occur?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Your home was invaded two days ago and you’re telling me now?”

  He sounded pissed. Good.

  “Yes. Isn’t that what I just said?”

  I’d have preferred never telling you, genius.

  More silence, followed by a heavy exhale. “Fucking child.”

  I lowered the phone to my waist to avoid unleashing a stream of pointed profanity. When I regained control, I returned the phone to my ear.

  “There’s more,” I said. “Emmet... you know, the wolf.”

  “I know who he is,” Winter said.

  “They
lured him to me, took him, then left a message in his blood.”

  Too much, too soon? This news might even please him. Instead of helping me, he might track down those responsible to give them high fives.

  “You are a sharp pain in my ass,” he said. “Be there in one hour.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ____________________________________

  Winter knocked on the half open door. My lungs stopped cold. I hadn’t realized how seeing him would affect my breathing and make my skin feel instantly clammy. He stood there in the flesh—tall and blond with perfect posture, high cheekbones and those deep-blue eyes. He was both lean and muscular, and his bearing had the alert, contained violence of predator cats.

  He entered rooms as if he owned them, even while wearing the garb of a suburban dad—a brown polo shirt and khakis. He locked his simmering eyes on mine with purpose.

  His confidence and the irrational fear he always made me feel pissed me off.

  Winter surveyed the damage, flaring his nostrils as if he could sniff out the truth.

  No one wants their nemesis to be attractive. His dimples and his full lips always ruined my train of thought.

  Thankfully, Faion cleared his throat.

  Winter looked at him for the first time. “Mr. Trice.”

  That just about did it. I lost the little patience I had left. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, his name is Faion.”

  We were past all that crap. I wanted to make that very clear.

  Winter furrowed his brow. “What trouble have you found this time?”

  I had to admit, he was uniquely gifted at triggering me.

  “This time? When did I ever find trouble? You found me, remember? You got me involved in a war I didn’t know existed. You exposed me to the most deviant, monomaniacal dickwad in the universe as part of your own personal, bullshit rivalry. And then there’s the time you tricked me into initiating the slaughter of thousands of shifters.”

  “Morphs,” he corrected me. “Bloodthirsty metamorphic shifters.”

  “I know. I was there, remember? Because of you.”

  “Actually, no, not those times. My inference referred to other times. For instance, the time you were about to physically couple with a shapeshifter who easily fed you lies and now here you are again, feeding on more lies, or at least freshly-baked delusions despite all warnings.”