Bound by Light (45 page)

When he went for the gold chain and ring, his legs were heavy, unfamiliar, not quite within his command.

As he knelt and picked up the jewelry, he started feeling again, and what he felt was pain. Everywhere. Inside and out. He still didn’t want to believe Merilee had taken it off.

But she was gone. Disappeared through the mirrors, into the ancient channels, who knew how—or
where
.

The talisman, though.

The talisman was here.

Jake squeezed the gold chain so tightly the links crushed and bent in his palm.

This is how you think it has to be.

He could still smell her here, still feel her—but the room was empty except for himself, and the Mothers, who were now running in behind him and around him. Mother Keara, the last one through, shoved Delilah toward Bela. "Take her to the basement. Do not let her out of your sight."

As Bela left with the old woman, Jake put on his talisman, the gold as heavy and cold as his heart.

Merilee . . .

He bent toward the broken mirror and grabbed pieces of its frame. A thousand bits of glass sifted through his fingers. Almost sand again. No putting it back together—but there were several more mirrors.

One of them might work, right? One of them might get him to Merilee, wherever she had gone.

"Dear goddesses of Olympus." Mother Anemone held out a black feather in one hand, away from her body like it might be dangerous or poisonous all on its own. "She’s gone to the Keres."

Mother Yana and Mother Keara moved to her side, long-faced, looking older than their many, many combined years. "Ve have all lost the daughters of our heart."

"Lost?" Jake’s senses revved back to full alert as he studied the women. "She’s in danger, right? I get that—but why do you think she’s lost?"

"The treaty." Tears crystallized in the corners of Mother Anemone’s eyes. "By law, when she went to them, she became a suicide. Lost to us. Even if she intended to bargain for her triad’s life, the price they’ll demand—Merilee. It will be my Merilee."

She lowered her head, but Jake grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her until she looked at him. "Fuck the treaty! Merilee’s not a suicide. She’s
not
lost. And what price? What will those monsters do to her?"

"Ve cannot know that, demon," Mother Yana answered as she, too, stooped to collect a feather. "They are death spirits. If they offered to help her, it vas for their own reasons. They live for blood and battle and madness."

Jake let go of Mother Anemone. His claws tore out of the ends of his fingers. His fangs jabbed through his gums and grew, punching into his bottom lip. No way he could hold them back. He wanted to snarl like a mad dog, bite something, claw it to bits.

"Whatever the Keres do, it won’t involve Merilee’s survival." Mother Keara sounded flat and bleak. "Likely, she will indeed try to trade her life for the lives of her triad. In her position, given the same opportunity, we would all make the same sacrifice."

"They’ll glory in possessing the blood of an air Sibyl." Tears rolled down Mother Anemone’s face. "Our conflict is older than time and deeply bitter. Because of the treaty protecting both our races, they couldn’t act against us—but Merilee has gone to them of her own request, her own will. They played this situation perfectly."

Jake wheeled on the fire Sibyl Mother. "Open the channels again. To wherever these Keres are—where Merilee is. These other mirrors work, don’t they? Use one of them."

Flames licked across Mother Keara’s shoulders, and her sharp face grew shrewd. "Káto Ólimbos is closed to us. I could attempt it, force the issue, but the journey would likely kill you."

Jake clenched his fists. "Do it."

"Agapitos."
Mother Anemone’s gentle hand came to rest on Jake’s wrist. "Even if you survive the transport, you are not a Sibyl, and not human. It would strip you to your basic nature. To your Astaroth essence." She broke off, choked by her crying.

"It is the same dilemma you have been facing," Mother Yana finished for her. "Ve vould not be able to help you regain your human form. If you do this, you vill be a demon evermore."

Jake turned to Mother Keara, his wings already emerging, his skin turning paler by the moment. "I don’t care what happens to me as long as Merilee lives through this."

The Mothers didn’t move or speak. They stood around the charred communication platform staring at him, each looking sad—Mother Anemone the saddest of all.

"I can’t fly to Greece fast enough to do this myself," Jake yelled, the demon resonance in his voice echoing around Cynda’s communications room. "Send me to Merilee, goddamnit. Send me now!"

(33)

Merilee stood on the moonlit mountaintop straight out of her nightmares, teeth chattering in the cold wind and mist. Her heart pounded against her ribs, too fast yet too weak, almost fluttery from the sudden change of altitude. Her head swam from getting jerked through the projective mirror, and her leathers felt like no more shield from the frigid air than thin black paper. She clutched her bow and wished she could draw an arrow, but that might offend the creatures watching her with empty black eyes.

I can’t believe I called for them in the mirror.

I’ve got to be out of my fucking mind.

She swallowed and shuddered as the chill got deeper, stabbing into her joints and bones and leaving her lashes crusted with frost. When the Mothers had locked her into Cynda’s room to force her to rest, Merilee had known how it would go. Seen it in her heart and mind. The Sibyls would regroup, plan, and search—and find nothing. They’d be too late. Riana and Cynda and their babies would die just as surely as the sun rose and set each day, and that simply wasn’t acceptable to Merilee.

So she had taken off Jake’s talisman, gently, carefully, sobbing as she did it, and placed it on the floor where it wouldn’t get damaged, and where he’d be sure to find it. Then she had climbed onto the platform. She had pressed her hands against the most powerful of the projective mirrors, and she had called out to the death spirits.

They had been helping her. They had some interest in this situation—so she had grasped at the longest of long shots.

She had offered herself to the Keres if they would meet her price.

And they came.

I can’t believe they brought me here.

Gods and goddesses, I don’t even have a roof to jump off—can’t jump—can’t run away.

A few yards from where she stood, the Keres ringed her, ten of them in stained red robes. They were taller than she remembered or imagined, but just as gaunt. Almost skeletal—though definitely, definitely female in shape and form and energy. Black feathers drifted from their ragged wings as they flexed their shoulder muscles and clawed fingers. Matted black hair hung in their pale faces, and their hooked fangs gleamed in the unearthly, almost black moonlight of Káto Ólimbos. The dark place. The forbidden place.

The last place I’ll ever see.

If it hadn’t been for her superior Sibyl vision, she probably wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all in the strange darkness that seemed to deepen every few seconds.

Merilee choked back a sob, caught between regret and fear, but still resolved to do whatever she had to do to save her triad sisters and their babies. It had to be this way, so it would be this way. She didn’t call her wind, or even try to stir the air to protect herself. From her previous dreams, she knew her elemental energy wouldn’t work anyway.

Her chest ached at the thought that she would never see her sisters of the heart again, or Jake. Oh, sweet Aphrodite, Jake. Merilee touched her neck, feeling the empty hollow where his talisman had been.

How she’d love to kiss him just one more time.

Please understand
. She closed her eyes and sent the thought toward him with all her energy.
Please know I love you.

But she was her triad’s broom, their last line of salvation, and she would
not
let them down again.

Merilee lifted her chin. "I’m ready," she said, her words issuing through the quiet cold in a rush of white steam.

She braced herself, waiting for the onslaught of shrieking, for the monsters to leap forward and shred her with those claws and fangs—but they just stood there until Merilee’s blood pressure shot so high her brain malfunctioned and her mouth started working without her consent. "I told you my terms. My life for the safe return of my triad sisters to the townhouse and to those who love them. You agreed—and you came. So kill me and go save Riana and Cynda."

The Keres spoke. Some of them. Maybe all of them. The answer raked across Merilee’s consciousness, making her whole body bend and tremble.

"We cannot rescue the Sibyls. They are not our province."

"What?"
Merilee hugged herself and forced herself upright. Her eyes widened despite the brutal cold. "Then why am I here? Why did you answer me and jerk me through the mirror?"

This time it was several of the monsters that talked, she was sure of it. "You are special amongst your kind. Sensitive enough to hear us and understand our warnings. We can speak with you. Your energy has drawn us before."

Merilee did manage to snatch an arrow from her quiver even though her hands shook. In her mind, all she could see was that moonlit night at Motherhouse Greece, when the Keres had taken flight and one of them had come toward her.

It did happen. Exactly like that. One of them flew at me.

She got the arrow nocked, surprised the winged monsters didn’t charge at her. She didn’t know which to aim at, so she picked the one closest to her, dead forward. "I don’t want to
talk,
and you know it. I want to save my triad sisters. That’s the only reason I called you. The only reason I offered myself to you!"

The Keres all spoke at once then, the noise of their harsh voices blending into the mind-stabbing sounds Merilee had taken for shrieks every time she had heard them. She shook her head, then cried out with them and had to drop her bow and arrow. To save her hearing, she clapped her leather-clad fingers over her ears. "Wait! Stop. Stop it!"

Were they listening? She didn’t want to move her hands to find out. Shit, what had she been thinking, drawing weapons on death spirits as old as time itself?

"I can’t survive all of you making noise at the same time, so take turns, okay?" She risked lowering her hands, but didn’t bother with the weapons again. "Maybe pick someone to speak for you."

The Keres shifted slightly, then turned their scary faces to stare at one another.

The silence soothed Merilee’s aching ears, but she had an uneasy sense that the Keres were speaking mind-to-mind. Taking nominations. Maybe even voting.

She knelt slowly, making as few movements as possible, retrieved her arrow and slid it into her quiver, and picked up her bow. She couldn’t use the weapons, no, but she could have them with her, on her. If she died here, she at least wanted to die armed, the way a Sibyl should.

A moment later, the death spirit at whom Merilee had aimed her arrow broke the circle by stepping for ward. The creature walked a few feet, then stopped an arm’s length from Merilee.

Against all of her instincts for self-preservation, Merilee held her bow but didn’t raise it.

Was this the death spirit that had flown at her all those years ago, sending her screaming and flailing off that rooftop?

Somehow, she thought it was.

Merilee tried not to gag at the stench of rotting meat rising off the spirit’s robes, her skin, her hair. Even in the icy air, it seemed like enough to kill a person outright if she breathed too deeply.

They’re like walking corpses. Zombies with wings. And they can’t help me. What the hell am I doing here?

Maybe she ought to raise the bow and shoot as many of the things as she could.

Tears pressed into her eyes, turning icy almost immediately, stinging and burning as she tried to blink them back.

That would be vengeance, wouldn’t it?

But vengeance against what? Fate? Awful luck—or maybe stupid choices?

Her chest ached from holding back screams and curses, and a bleak hopelessness covered her like the mountain’s cold, creeping fog.

Cynda. Riana. I’m so sorry. I thought this was the answer, but I’ve gotten myself killed for nothing. I’ve failed you both.

And Jake.

Jake . . .

The creature in front of Merilee tilted its disgusting head as if listening to her thoughts, then spoke slowly, almost too carefully, pronouncing each word as if she might be teaching an infant something of dire consequence.

"I am Nosi, daughter of Nyx, sister of Fate and Doom, and many others, released to freedom by Pandora, to whom we owe never-ending allegiance."

Merilee’s mouth came open.