Siren's Fury (32 page)

“And what happens if, say, you accidentally take this entire ship down?” Myles says. “Not that I’d mind, dear, except for the fact
that, you know, I’m on it.” He sniffs. “We need to stay with our agreement, and once we’re over land—”

I begin walking. “You helped me with Lady Isobel; you can help with Eogan. And once Isobel wakes up or her Mortisfaire discover us, I doubt we’ll get another chance. Eogan doesn’t have time for us to make any more blasted plans.”

“Nym, just wai—”

I ignore Rasha and stride to the dining room door. Without looking back I jerk my head at the wraiths still laid out cold. “If you’re smart, you’ll kill them and Lady Isobel before they wake.”

I’m just pushing open the door to the airship’s deck when Myles curls the atmosphere around us, turning himself into a wraith and me into Lady Isobel. I smile like I’ve seen her do and something about it feels oddly natural. Relieving.

I’m going to finish this.

The guards on deck hardly glance our way as we slip to the right and around the corner to the door leading up to Eogan’s quarters. “Move,” I say to the two undead beasts standing there.

I don’t even wait for them to obey before pressing my way through. Their hissing grows louder, but they make no attempt to stop us. “M’ladyyyy,” they say, and it almost sounds worshipful. Something about it makes me shiver as I yank open the door.

With Myles behind me, I march up the two, five, fifteen red-carpeted stairs to a room almost completely made of windows except for a wall and door on my right. Three wraiths stare at us, and the two young boys seated at a bench of what appear to be knobs and wheels for steering this blasted ship turn to look at me.

One of them is Kel.

“Lady Isobel,” he says.

I don’t answer. I’m too busy staring back.
He’s alive. And here.
As a ship captain? Is that how he stowed away on the airship at Faelen’s Keep?

I peer at his face, his hands, his shoulders. He’s hunched over and near broken looking, but his expression is hard and hateful as he glares at me. For a second I cringe until I realize his loathing is not actually directed at me, but for Lady Isobel, and it’s all I can do not to step forward and hug him.
They’ve forced him to fly this.

One of the wraiths glides forward. “How may we helllllp you, Eminencccce?” he hisses.

I blink and turn from Kel. “My father. Where is he?”

The wraith angles his cloaked face until it’s tilted all the way to the side and studies me—like a pythanese snake. It occurs to me that his hood-shadowed face is covered in wide, flat, mottled-green scales that make the hair on my neck prickle. A second later he raises a crooked finger and points to the only door on my right.

Before I can move for it though, the handle turns and it opens and Eogan is standing there. His face widens a split second before narrowing in anger. He glances at Myles and back at me before emitting a low growl and springing for both of our throats.

The airship swerves and the wraiths’ hissing soars as Draewulf’s hands clamp onto us. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snarls.

“Your wraiths killed our men,” I snarl back. I place my hand over the one that’s gripping my throat, and rather than push his off, I press it tighter to my neck. It’s burning my skin—cutting into the ice in my bones like a torch. I sense the
beat-beat-beat
of his pulse through his fingers.

They’re bleeding into the fury of my own heartpulse.

The wraiths behind us are hissing their confusion at seeing
their master attack his own daughter. They don’t move though. Just stay standing in my peripheral as do Kel and the other captain who’ve half risen from their positions at the steering bench.

The beating in Draewulf’s fingers grows stronger and his hand grips tighter.

“Now would be a good time,” Myles half mutters, half gasps beside me.

The mirage around us shudders but stays in place. Suddenly one of Myles’s hands has clasped onto my owner-circled wrist. He begins squeezing as my lungs begin failing.

I swerve my attention to Draewulf’s eyes. Eogan’s eyes. Rimmed with barely a hint of green. Or is there? My gaze is blurring, and the hunger for power that has been scratching up my veins since Lady Isobel erupts to the surface.

I slide my fingers from his hand on my neck all the way up his arm, onto his shoulder, then to his chest. To warn the trainer inside to brace for what I’m about to do. What I now know how to do. What Myles and I can do.

Except . . .

I glance at Myles.
What is
he
doing?

The look on his face has gone dark, and there’s a struggle clearly etched across it. A temptation. A hunger like that which is opening up the vortex in my chest.

My gut twists and my hand falters.

He wants to kill both Draewulf and Eogan.

Draewulf looks startled for a second. He snarls but I swear there’s an amused undertone to it. As if this is, on some bizarre level, a delightful turn of events to entertain him. He turns toward Myles and sinks his fingers all the way around the man’s neck.

Myles’s grip on my wrist weakens.

The vortex inside me wobbles.

His neck looks like a twig. It is a twig. He must know it, too, because the expression in Myles’s eyes goes from hunger to pure terror. He chokes as the mirage covering the two of us dissipates, and then Myles screams like I’ve never heard him, even when I hurt him back at the cave. This time . . . this time he is in agony.

It’s the scream that can only come from Draewulf using Eogan’s block to cut out Myles’s ability just like he did my Elemental power.

I shove both hands against Draewulf’s shirt and press into his skin beneath. I feel his muscles wince and weaken, but if he notices he doesn’t care because he waits, seemingly unperturbed, until Myles’s scream stops and his neck goes limp.

Draewulf tosses him to the wraith. “Take him below,” he roars. “Keep him and the princess locked up until I slit both their throats. And check on my daughter!”

Next thing I know he’s dragging me into his quarters. The last glance I get of the room is of the boys—their eyes are big as orange-fruit. Kel’s mouth wide open.

The door slams behind us and Draewulf drags me toward the room’s far window, still holding my throat, muttering something about the powers having to be in order. About needing me to understand that it will only be a little longer.

The first thought that enters my head is that he’s insane.

“The powers from the kings?” I whisper.

He stops and nods as if that’s what he’s been explaining and don’t I see that this is the only way. He’s talking like a mad person in a tone that’s trying to convince me. Of what, I have no idea. I’m hardly listening now. Something is wrong in my veins. As if the
spider I swallowed is reacting to Draewulf, or Eogan, I can’t tell which. It’s clawing its way out of my chest to attack him while the vortex in my chest responds to the insanity in him.

The spider begins shaking beneath my skin, as if thrumming her web, drawing on all the fury and anger and scared-as-hulls confusion. “What do you want me for? What am I a vessel for—are you going to destroy me too?” I yank his arm and pull myself next to his face. “Because if you are, then just bleeding do it.”

His hand is still on my neck and I’m glad because it means he’s not noticing my palms on his chest. Working to pull his very soul from his host as the spider crawls through me to claim her victory. I can see it now, Draewulf’s eyes flickering before mine, even if there’s no green anymore.

I squeeze both hands against his shirt and command the hunger in me to take over. To take it all. To rip Draewulf from the very seams of Eogan’s sinew and skin.

Draewulf lets out another roar but doesn’t pull away. As if he enjoys the pain. Except the next instance he’s weakening. His shoulders slump away from me even as his essence begins to struggle for freedom from the host containing him.

His power attaches to my hands and slips up my wrists. I watch it creep up, a blackening in my skin, seeping up to look like cracked glass as it seeks to break loose. I can feel the energy inside him. Burning. Alive. Full of the lives he’s taken. Along with their fear.

That fear is all I need. The chasm in me surfaces, shooting ice through my arm and my once-gimpy fingers that are now perfect, the tips of them drawing every last breath from Draewulf’s lungs.

I smile and reach farther, harsher, pressing in stronger, turning my head to watch his eyes for flecks of green, his smile, his face for
separation from this demonic spirit. Suddenly I sense it. The tearing inside. The ripping of power and energy and breath.

Black wisps like I saw at the Keep erupt around Eogan’s body. They swirl and hiss, and for a moment I can see the animal’s wolf face inside Eogan’s.

He lunges for my hand, crunching it with his. I cry out but don’t release him even as the thought erupts that I can’t take him down. He will win this.

I pull harder anyway.

“Eogan,” my soul calls to his. I wait for him to appear because I swear I perceive him slipping from the surface. There’s no answer.

Suddenly the energy I’m drawing is too fluid, too dark and dank, and too strong to be contained by a block anymore. As if Eogan’s block has broken. I press in harder and the coiling within him is unlike any I’ve felt. This is power and freedom and strength that is on a level my ability could not hold in a thousand lifetimes. Somehow I know this.

“Eogan, please!” I say aloud, but my voice sounds dull. Empty.

Draewulf’s energy begins receding from mine. I can feel it just as clearly as I can feel Draewulf’s chest shaking in laughter beneath my fingers and the fight draining out of me at the soul-level realization. There is no Eogan any longer. They are one being.

Draewulf glimmers those ghoulish eyes at me, which are not Eogan’s but black to match the beautiful black skin that once belonged to him. He pulls back and there’s not even a tug against my hands this time.

No.

No no no no no.
Abruptly I’m screaming at him that “I will not allow this because I did not come this far and train this hard to let
this be how he ends.” I scratch for his face, trying to rip it from Eogan’s, trying to tear his heart out even as my lungs compress.

Suddenly the airship dips down and slopes toward the water, suggesting I’ve drained the air from more than just this room.

Good. Then we’ll all die.

Draewulf yelps and grabs my wrist. He bends it back until my screams turn to pain, and all the while he’s murmuring those blasted foreign words. Then the ship rights itself and he looks down at me and smirks.

I spit at him. “It’s not going to end like this,” I hiss. Doesn’t he know death is too long, too thick a curtain to try to cross alone? I swear at Eogan because doesn’t he remember that I told him to hold on? Because everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve fought for, has just ended—disappeared into the sea of black that is Draewulf’s eyes.

My body shakes as the realization settles in:

Draewulf has won.

He tucks a strand of Eogan’s jagged hair behind his ear and smirks. “It’s just you and me now, pet.”

CHAPTER 36

D
RAEWULF STANDS THERE WATCHING ME, WEARING Eogan’s body like a shroud.

It’s all I can do to fumble forward and grab the wall to my left and hold on, hold still, and pretend that the grief washing over me is any less painful than that a week ago in Faelen’s castle when I believed Eogan was dead.

I scoot as far from him as possible, to the large window in front of us that overlooks the ocean, and press my cold spine against the glass. Keeping my face toward the beast. “Why?” I whisper, and it comes out all jagged.

“Why did I kill him? I think you know the answer to that. Or are you asking why I’ve not killed you too? I think it’d better behoove you to wonder why I
shouldn’t
,” he muses. “Except perhaps the simple fact is, keeping you alive is far easier than offing you at the moment.” He slinks backward to a chair, which aside from a small table is the only piece of furniture in the black-carpeted, wood-paneled room.

My gaze follows him as he drops into the cushioned seat and rests his chin on his fingers. I refuse my tone to shake with the
anguish near-cowing me. “You seem to have found it easy to kill my kind in the past,” I say bitterly. “So I’ll ask again—why? What am I a vessel for?”

“I can assure you, your kind were hard to kill as well, especially early on in the war when they were more numerous. Although a pact with your kingdom definitely eased the burden of eliminating them myself over the last hundred years. Placing them in your ‘safety’ camps was brilliant, really.”

He sniffs and looks back at me. “You’ve never met one other than yourself, have you?” When I don’t reply he adds, “Curious. I always suspected they’d saved a few in reserve. Funny though how things work out. If I’d known sooner what your kind were useful for . . .”

“They didn’t even know I existed.”

“How lucky for me. In that case, I shall tell you the male Storm Sirens used the elements very effectively, but not as effectively as you. You can call them forth on a plane unparalleled.” He levels a leer at me. “Or, should I say, you used to be able to call them forth.”

I settle a glare right back at him, but his gaze takes on a distant expression and drifts to the window behind me. I shiver even as the emptiness in my blood flares in my chest. The irony doesn’t escape me that this is more about Elementals, about myself and my race, than I have ever heard, ever been allowed to talk about in my life. And here he is, the animal I hate, explaining myself to me.

From the corner of my vision I see him twitch his hand and suddenly my eyelids drift heavy.

Keep your eyes open,
something whispers from the depths of me.

But I can’t. My lids are suddenly too heavy and my head too sleepy.

I feel my body slump to the carpet.