Promises to Keep (5 page)

“Believe it or not,” she snapped, “playing dress-up and hanging paintings I despise
to make
you
feel better is not my priority.” If her heart could beat, it would have been pounding
with the exhilaration of standing up to him. If only she had done so when he had first
swept into her home that afternoon, demanding that she and her art put in an appearance.
Though if she hadn’t been at the party, she wouldn’t have met that intriguing stranger.
“Who was Exequías’s toy tonight?” she asked, cutting off Kaleo’s saccharine retort.
“I haven’t seen him before.”

“If I heard right, he’s a witch, and a hunter,” Kaleo replied, shaking his head at
her abrupt change of subject. “They’re better left alone.”

Her own laugh was so sudden, so sharp, that it made her jump. “Oh?” she challenged.
“And what was the name of that witch
you
wooed, back before Midnight fell? You know the one. You took her from her family.
Left behind her human husband and two darling infants … mm, Rachel and something.
I can’t remember the boy’s name. How many times did Rachel try to kill you?”

Her words finally hit their mark.

“Fine,” he whispered, his temper coming out not in volume or violence but in his words.
“Go throw yourself at the witch. If nothing else, I’m sure he can help you kill yourself.”

Kaleo disappeared, leaving her to absorb the echo of his words.

I’m sure he can help you kill yourself
.

She turned that last sharp retort over in her head, examining it. Before the witch
had come to her, she
had
wanted to kill herself.

What had he done to her?

She thought back to her suicide attempt, and shuddered. At the time, it had seemed
like the only option. Now the heavy yoke of grief wasn’t
gone
, but she could start to see past it, as if the witch’s magic had lanced the worst
of the poison from her spirit.

“T
HAT WAS
B
RINA
?” Jay asked as Xeke led him away. The vampire’s arm across his shoulders was meant
to look possessive, so Brina would let him go. Jay was grateful that it helped him
stay upright despite the pounding in his head.

“She tends to conveniently forget that laws such as freeblood status exist,” Xeke
said quietly as Jay walked with him back to the room where they had first spoken.

Freeblood laws had been an invention of the original Midnight, back in the sixteen
hundreds. Humans could be abducted into the empire by anyone’s whim, but witches and
shapeshifters were given the right to remain free as long as they abided by Midnight’s
laws.

“Daryl was her brother?” Jay asked, confirming.

“I’m surprised she’s noticed he’s dead,” Xeke answered dryly.

Jay winced. “She has.”

“Should I assume this all means you are no longer in the mood to follow through on
that delightful offer you made earlier?” Xeke asked.

Jay considered it. He was shaken, having reached too deeply into Brina’s madness,
and now felt raw and vulnerable.

“Rain check?” He closed his eyes a moment, trying to focus, and felt his body sway.

“Are you all right?” Xeke shifted his arm from Jay’s shoulders to around his waist,
taking some of his weight. “You look faint.”

“I’ll be fine. I should head out.” He needed to be anywhere else, far away from so
many ancient minds pressing against his.

“Are you driving?” Xeke asked.

“Yeah,” Jay answered. He didn’t want to drive. Should he take Xeke up on the offer
to stay at his place, though? “The couch would be fine,” he said.

Xeke chuckled, and said, “Why, yes, I do happen to have a couch where you can crash.”

“Sorry,” Jay said. “I’m unfocused. It’s hard to tell what you’ve said out loud.”

“Most telepaths can’t read vampires,” Xeke said.

“I’m not a telepath,” Jay answered. “I’m an empath. Similar talents, different mechanism.”

“You can explain the difference to me later,” Xeke said.
“For now, you look about ready to fall over.” He reached into Jay’s jacket pocket
to retrieve his car keys. “I’ll drive.”

“Thanks,” Jay whispered.

He took a few steps, and then felt himself being lifted.

Jay shut his eyes.

“You are one mellow witch,” Xeke observed.

“You’re relaxing to be around,” Jay replied.

“You’re not helping my ego.”

“Your ego doesn’t need help.”

By the time the car had warmed up, Jay was asleep.

He dreamed of the barren wasteland he had found in Brina’s mind. As he walked across
the scalding sand, his skin started to char, peeling and flaking into black ash like
a Hollywood vampire in the sun.

He woke alone on a comfy sectional sofa. A note on the coffee table said:

Was the excuse genuine, or had Jay’s host left because he wasn’t sure how his hunter
guest would act once out of Kendra’s territory?

Intrigued by this chance to learn a little more about a man he had long admired, Jay
began to look around. Instead of a
bed, the largest room boasted a bank of three computers, one of which had been left
on, with a video camera plugged into it, and was now flashing the message
Import Successful
.

Hoping for a sneak peek at Xeke’s next work, Jay pressed Play. The video was raw footage
of an interview.

“It’s a controversial subject,” the woman in front of the camera was saying. She looked
vaguely familiar to Jay, but he couldn’t place her. “Even today, many serpiente consider
Anhamirak and Ahnmik
gods
. People do not like having their gods studied scientifically.”

Now
Jay recognized her—she was one of the parabiological researchers working with SingleEarth
to investigate the history of serpiente shapeshifters. SingleEarth’s scientists had
established that vampires, most witches, and all shapeshifters had a link to a particular
elemental power called Leona, an immortal being of immense power. Scientists were
still trying to figure out what made all her magical descendents so different from
each other.

“Would you share your theories with me?” Xeke prompted from off-screen.

“Well.” The researcher fidgeted a moment, and then seemed to recall that she was on
camera. “Serpiente myth describes a time when they possessed incredible magic, which
was wielded by the priests and priestesses of a group called the Dasi. Oral tradition
tells of a creature named Leben who tried to take over the Dasi by impersonating their
god. The Dasi’s leader seduced Leben, and to win her favor Leben gave them all their
second shapes.” She paused, and with a shrug explained,
“Unfortunately, this ‘gift’ triggered a series of natural disasters that nearly wiped
out the civilization. Hundreds, maybe
thousands
, of the new shapeshifters died in the upheaval, a horrific number when you consider
that we’re talking about a pre-dynastic Egyptian village, not a modern city.”

“You say ‘natural disasters.’ Were they natural, or magical?”

“Well.” That word seemed to be her method of pausing to gather her thoughts. “We know
now that Leben is one of Leona’s creations. He is directly responsible for the genesis
of every shapeshifter living today. My theory is that the serpiente gods Anhamirak
and Ahnmik were actually elementals, just like Leona. Like all their kind, they gain
power through their mortal bonds. When Leben claimed their worshippers for Leona,
Anhamirak and Ahnmik fought back. Either Leona deliberately started killing the new
serpiente to weaken their elementals or the serpiente’s deaths were a natural consequence
of elementals fighting. An earth elemental gets angry, and you get an earthquake—that
kind of thing.”

“Why would Leona challenge another elemental in the first place?” Xeke asked.

“These days, Leona is unrivaled in power, with thousands of bonds. Back then? As far
as we know, she had three vampires, and a small band of witches with nowhere near
the power that the serpiente attribute to their ancestors. Leona may have worked through
Leben to eliminate the competition.”

Ancient immortal soap operas
, Jay thought, imagining a reality television show in which a bunch of elementals
were trapped on
an island together. Chuckling, he stopped the video and went looking for the rest
of his belongings.

He found his jacket, tie, and vest hung carefully on a coat-rack by the front door,
with his shoes beneath them. Xeke had apparently decided he shouldn’t sleep in his
full monkey suit and noose.

Noose
. The image of Brina dangling with a broken neck, unable to move until one of her
slaves cut her down, rose into his mind once more. Jay had seen plenty of violence
in his past, but he had never experienced such a black gulf of emotional pain as had
driven Brina to try to destroy herself. Delving so deeply into her mind had forced
him to feel it the way she did. To feel
himself
swinging there.

He shivered as he stepped out the front door.

He was in a small apartment complex, set well back from the road and backed up against
the forest. Tasteful white lights on the trees out front reminded Jay that this was
Christmas Day, or would be once the sun rose.

His car was nearby, and a quick check of the GPS made it clear he was across town
from Kendra’s gala. Few vampires were powerful enough to bring other living creatures
with them when they did their teleportation trick, and even for those who could, it
was a rough trip for both parties. The lack of bedroom made it clear that this wasn’t
Xeke’s only or primary home; he had probably dropped Jay here because it was the shortest
drive.

Jay was a little stiff from sleeping restlessly on a couch, but a short walk would
fix that. He liked trees.

But there was something … odd … about this forest.

He hesitated at the edge of the woods. It wasn’t the fact that he was in dress shoes
and tuxedo pants, anticipating trudging through the snow. It was …

Something
.

Yet something else pulled him forward, and Jay Marinitch wasn’t one to resist the
call of unnamed, unidentified forces suggesting he wander into a dark and unfamiliar
forest.

The woods were beautiful, illuminated by the moonlight trickling through naked branches
to bounce off the snow beneath. What surprised Jay was the lack of animal tracks.
The snow had fallen two days before. Why weren’t there signs of foxes, rabbits, and
deer?

When he finally
did
sense life, he pursued it.

What he found, curled in the snow, was a woman with skin and hair the color of the
night sky, and white streaks like moonlight in her hair. She wasn’t sleeping, but
neither was she awake. She was just lying in the snow, in a long gown covered in frost.

Her breathing was barely more perceptible than her hypothermic thoughts. When Jay
knelt and set his fingers to her throat, he felt that her pulse was steady. He touched
her arm, and a whisper of magic replied. A shapeshifter of some sort? That would be
good. Shapeshifters were very sturdy.

He put a hand over her heart and slowly trickled warmth into her body, wondering who
she was and what might have brought her to be here like this.

Most breeds of shapeshifter had certain defining features.
The Mistari-tigers were of African-Asian descent. Serpiente tended toward dark hair
with fair skin. The lions were black in human form, but this woman wasn’t just black
in the way that humans were; she was actually
black
, like coal. Lynx would have been able to guess her breed by her smell, but Jay couldn’t.

She stirred slightly, moaning.

Jay tried to reach for her mind, but it fluttered away, as elusive as a faerie.

As he continued to pour warm power into her, he sensed her body remembering injuries
both recent and from long ago. There was a sense of resignation in her flesh, and
a memory less substantial than scars that remembered cut and burned flesh, broken
bones, blood flowing.

And an even deeper agony.

Suddenly, that agony lashed out at Jay.

He staggered backward and thudded into the snowdrift behind him. His connection to
the shapeshifter had been completely severed.

Wind whipped through the forest, making the trees shiver and groan in sympathy. The
air rippled like heat rising from pavement. A force whispered to him,
She must come home
.

The force that spoke was … maybe not malevolent, but maybe so. He knew only that it
was powerful, and it had stopped him from helping the woman.

She can’t go home if she dies here
, he thought.

He lifted her gently in his arms. If he couldn’t keep her warm with his magic, he
had to find another way. He wished he hadn’t locked Xeke’s door behind him. He arranged
her
in the backseat of his car, wrapped in an emergency blanket. He wanted to call SingleEarth’s
healers for advice, but his cell phone was still dead. The best he could do was turn
on his GPS and ask it to take him to the closest SingleEarth Haven, which was #2.

Perfect; his cousin Caryn Smoke worked at the clinic attached to #2. Caryn was twenty,
just a year older than Jay, and hadn’t yet finished her formal medical training, but
she was already one of the best magical healers he knew. He had recently received
an engagement announcement from her, though he couldn’t remember who she was marrying,
or when. Hopefully it hadn’t been a Christmas wedding. He wasn’t sure what would become
of the shapeshifter if Caryn wasn’t there to help.

H
E REACHED
S
INGLE
E
ARTH
shortly after dawn, while the winter sky still had that gray-and-purple tone, as
if it weren’t sure if it wanted to stay dark, get bright, or catch on fire.