Soul Kissed (2 page)

“Mayor Bingham has this idea that we’re all basically the same. And in many ways we are. Family, for example, is very important to us. And loyalty is one of our most prized character traits. Power, too, is highly sought after among my kind.”

Mason glanced over long enough to see the mayor’s smile faltering. Yeah, buddy. Little late now.

The crowd was utterly silent.

“But it’s best you know that we’re fundamentally different, so much so that there can never really be peace between us.” Cawl continued, “Point of fact, you humans have souls. We don’t. We have dark magic within us. There was a time when you humans used to hunt us down and burn us alive. It’s time for Shadow now.”

That mother who’d seen what Bran Webb could do was looking at Fletcher, her features growing tighter. Mason knew what she was thinking, or would think soon enough—that no soul meant soulless, which meant evil.

Mason held his son, his reason for living, even tighter. What Cawl had left out was that each mage had an umbra deep within, a source of magic, not so very unlike a soul. Fletcher was all good, in every way. A person would be
lucky
to know him.

Cawl kept talking, “. . . what the Dark Age will bring. . .” but Mason thought he’d already made his point. No peace.

Mason looked for escape. The car was too far, the crowd too tight to make much progress. Up ahead, Webb was doing little better with Bran. Any minute now, some mage was going to use Shadow to get free of this place or to make a point. And then there would be chaos.

He squeezed Fletcher. “Everything I say.”

Fletcher nodded.

“Keep your head down.”

With that, Mason adjusted his hold—the kid had grown; why did he keep doing that?—and plowed toward the nearest break in the crowd. He elbowed into backs and barged through groups. The rank smell of sweat hit his nose, that and greasy food too long in the sun. Blood, no, ketchup smeared up his arm.

The crowd made a sound of astonishment, one voice that rolled through the gathering, which had become a single organism.

Mason swore, though he usually tried not to around Fletcher, and craned his head to see what kind of magic had finally been used to break away from this place.

A black snake of Shadow darted and twisted above the heads of the crowd.

Mason didn’t recognize this kind of Shadow. What was it? Who controlled it?

He squinted to see better, adjusting Fletcher again, who was trying to see as well.

The sky snake of Shadow branched out, while rushing toward Cawl, who’d trailed off speaking and was gazing into the air. Guess he didn’t know what kind of Shadow it was either.

The Shadow spread into a dirty blanket of haze and enveloped Cawl.

Mason was too far away to see what the effect was, but the scream of the lady in the pink pantsuit made things clear enough. When Ranulf Cawl collapsed on the stage, Mason was pretty sure the mage was dead.

More black snakes twisted through the air.

And more screams rose from within the crowd. Like birds startled by gunshot, people scattered. Mason was buffeted by the rush, but dived into a jewelry stall to avoid immediate trampling. Others got trampled though. Strollers were abandoned, children clutched in parents’ arms. Humans and mages weren’t so different after all. Not where it really mattered.

“It’s going to be okay.” Mason put Fletcher down. The booth, with a thick plastic-and-steel girder, would protect them for the moment. “Stay
right
there.”

Mason’s attention was caught by a mage some twenty feet away, visible only intermittently through the flock of fleeing humans. Mason could see that he’d raised his arms to hold back the darkness, when he should’ve known that Shadow could permeate anything.

The murk descended upon him and the mage convulsed, his skin pock-marking with burns, as if from the inside. His eyes rolled back to the whites, then grayed to viscous ash, and the mage collapsed.

Mason came to a simple conclusion: the May Fair wasn’t about peace; the fair was a trap set for mages.

How many times throughout history had a hearty welcome been the early guise of a massacre?

He’d been so stupid. A stray ought to know better.

Mason looked to the sky, now polluted with thin Shadow. The death-dealing stuff was inking closer. The booth wasn’t safe anymore.

Mason hauled Fletcher outside. “We run. As fast and as far as we can. We run, or we die.”

Could an eight-year-old understand?

Mason would have carried him again if it would have been safer, but the humans had grown more dispersed, and frankly, Fletcher could run faster than he could. Kid had speed and power in those legs. Mason’s eyes burned as he cursed again. He just hadn’t anticipated Fletcher would have to run for his life so soon.

They got as far as the parking lot access road when black doom torpedoed overhead, poisoned Shadow picking out the mages from the panicked crowd.

They weren’t going to make it to the car.

Mason made a grab for his son, who was still in flight. Fletcher jackknifed in the air—the muscle in Mason’s shoulder shredded—but he brought his son to his chest and went down on his knees on the street.

He’d have prayed, but if there was a God, he’d long ago forsaken the Shadow born.

Mason curled his body around Fletcher. Screams of fear and pain ripped the air so close, Mason groaned. He strove to make a boy-sized hollow out of his chest and belly, kneeling on the pavement and hugging his son, hands splayed over Fletcher’s face and head, his own head bowed to close the man-made cocoon. Within his grasp, Fletcher trembled, his heartbeat fast like a rabbit’s. Mason’s own heart had stalled. His throat had strangled shut with horror. All necessary body function was diverted into willing his son to live, at any cost, including his own life.

Black, smoky arms of terror reached among the throng, brushing by Mason like whispers of vicious gossip. He felt the Shadow singing in his blood as it drew near; ironic that his aptitude with magic would help him know when his death was near. The dull thump and burn of a body falling nearby brought bile searing onto his tongue. Another mage down, moaning, then gargling into death.

“To the Webb wards!” Riordan’s voice, far away, rallying the stricken mages.

Yes, House wards would protect the mages who’d come to the May Fair. House wards were impenetrable magicks of safe harbor. And Webb’s wards were the nearest, just ten miles from the fair site.

But since Mason had no House, no wards, that option wasn’t open to him. To his
son
. Not yet. Though he would have begged if there’d been any chance or service he could have traded.

Stray mages were outsiders, no matter how friendly the handshake. How many times did Mason have to learn that lesson?

Humans whimpered and ran, their passage bumping Mason’s shoulder, riffling his hair, as if they were the ones at risk. Stupid. This was a trap for Shadowed blood.

Inside Mason was frantic:
Not my son. Please, not Fletcher. Pass over. Pass him by.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Today was supposed to have been about peace, an opportunity to make friends.

Someone somewhere was laughing.

Mason ground his teeth against the burning in his eyes. He clutched Fletcher and vowed again, as he had a million times before, he’d do better for his son. Keep him safe. No matter what in blackest Shadow he had to do.

Cari Dolan sat on a hard straight back chair in the servants’ access hallway to the study, where her stepmother and stepsisters wouldn’t think to look. Her gaze was fixed on the white wall before her. Her eyes were hot and gritty, but she wasn’t going to cry. If she breathed shallowly, the smell of smoke from her father’s funeral pyre grew faint, almost absent. The rest of her was in a cold grip, arms folded for heat, her body painfully tense, which made moving an unthinkable effort.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a maid peek down the hallway, then dart back out of sight.

This chair was for Allison, the housekeeper, who was supposed to wait outside the study until called upon by a member of the grieving family. Like when Cari was four and her mom had died; her father had summoned Allison to take her from the room with the instructions to tuck her in bed and read a nice story and to stay by her side until her father could come himself.

Now the Dolan heir was hiding there instead of standing tall next to her stepmother and silently vowing reprisal. Part of her mage brain knew this was a time for heat and curses and dark plots, but . . .

Cari rocked forward, foundering in a wave of loss. She hadn’t been ready to lose him. To become him. She wanted her father back to protect her from the storm of everything that was to come. His loss made her feel so unready. So scared.

For several weeks now, starting with the Stanton May Fair Massacre, unexplained attacks on magekind had taken place. Shadow, the strength of magekind, had been poisoned, and the death it brought was a catching kind, a plague.

A quiet had settled over the Houses, a hush of abject terror. Some caught the plague from direct contact, falling where they stood in a fester of hot wounds. Others carried it unknowing with them back to their Houses. A touch here. A kiss. And the poison worked more slowly, but nevertheless, claimed its victims. It had riddled families and left heartache in its wake.

And yet some Houses the death passed over, when a member of that family had clearly been touched, but had never fallen ill. Suspicions were aroused—Why
my
House and not yours?—and blood oaths taken. More lives were claimed, this time by violence.

Until each House was closed to outsiders, and the spread of the plague was halted.

Cari looked down at a welt now healing on the inside of her elbow—so ugly. The mage plague had taken her father, and it had almost taken her. She remembered too well the burn inside her. Remembered screams ripping up her throat—but she had somehow lived through it. If this smothering quiet was living, that is.

Even whispers of staff and family were banked by half breaths, so they sounded more like the sighs and hisses of the fae who watched from the other side of the veil.

The common conclusion: Some ruthless House was orchestrating a takeover, Shadow against Shadow. They meant to cripple magekind, their own people, with fear and death, and usher in the Dark Age themselves as Lords of a fallen land.

She should be striving to find out who was doing this, who had killed her father, and almost her. But somehow she was trapped in yesterday, so tired, so heartsick, and she was just now discovering that the past turned frigid as time pushed relentlessly forward.

And yet, there were so many things to take care of now that her father was in ashes. So much work. She’d always thought of him simply as her father, but to everyone else he was Caspar Dolan, and that meant something. She had no idea where to start beyond trying to remember to breathe and blink.

Her father answered voicelessly inside her:
Secure the succession.

Right. But the acknowledgment came bitterly.

The House guards had done that by dragging her away when her father had fallen to one knee, midstride, in the courtyard of their family’s business compound, his skin mottling with gray eruptions. Murdered. By then every mage House knew it was a contagious kind of attack, so she couldn’t even hold her father’s hand. The strain of bucking to get free of the guards still racked her body. All sound had been drawn out of the memory, but she could still see her father collapsing in front of her.

How ironic that she’d caught the mage plague anyway. And both guards had died as well.

She closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands to her lids.

But yes, technically she’d survived the attack, so the Dolan succession was secure. Now she had an unfathomable amount of work before her but no heart to begin.
Father?

She nodded to his memory, which had a bit of his warmth.
Yes.

House meant family, and she had a lot of it. Her stepmother Scarlet, and her stepsisters Stacia and Zel. And her uncle on her birth mother’s side, and cousins, their spouses, children, indentured mages, assorted dependents, who’d taken shelter within the wards. Dolan House was full to bursting, and she had to provide for them all.

Cari felt lightheaded with the load of work ahead.

She’d have to look into the Dolan finances immediately. Get a grip on the money.

Pitch,
Cari swore to herself, thinking of Zella’s betrothal and the political dancing that it required.

And then there was DolanCo, the family business, which she must now run. The special project that her father had thought would sustain the House through the advent of the Dark Age could not be ignored. The fact hadn’t changed—it had actually grown more imperative—that they would need a highly valuable source of revenue or trade when the human markets collapsed, and DolanCo’s more mundane products wouldn’t provide for the House. Now that was up to her, too.

She broke in a half laugh-half cry at the absurdity of it all, took a shuddering breath, got a nose full of her father’s smoke, and wheezed into a sob, tears spilling over swollen banks.

No, no, no. She wiped at her face. Tears accomplished nothing. She was the Head of the House now.

Maybe she ought to start with a list. Yes, that’s what she’d do.

Her father would have paper and a pen in his desk.

She was wiping her nose when she pushed into the study. She expected to find Stacia or Zel, who’d shadowed her every step since yesterday afternoon, watching and worrying and trying to feed her.

But seated in front of the desk was a strange woman. Her deep red hair was impeccably coiffed. She’d dressed in sleek black slacks and a vibrant blue silk blouse. Her ankles were crossed, legs angled to the side. The room positively simmered with her presence. She had to be greatmage Kaye Brand, High Seat of the Council, the one who’d started this civil war in the first place.

Cari’s heartbeat tripped.

How had Brand gotten through the Dolan wards? Was she infected? Had she brought more death here?

Brand slanted her gaze Cari’s way. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?”

Cari’s attention narrowed, yesterday and today colliding in a silent cataclysm, and with an inner burst of heat, she finally felt her sluggish blood rush.

Kaye Brand was going to die. If not for her, none of this would have happened. Cari’s father would still be alive.

“Please, sit.” Kaye gestured to the chair at Cari’s hip. She didn’t seem the least bit worried for her safety, even here within the House of an enemy. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“How did you get inside?” Cari demanded. Then, to the closed study door she barked, “Zella!”

“I have a vassal, Marcell Lakatos,” she said, “who has an aptitude for crossing boundaries. He assisted me.”

Very handy person to have on hand. And too dangerous to live. Lakatos should be killed.

But Brand seemed healthy enough, in spite of her transport. How dare she come here at a time like this? Anger felt good. Felt strong.

The door opened and Cari’s eldest stepsister leaned partway inside, her white-blond hair sliding over her shoulder. She held a plate with a sandwich. The hopeful look in her eyes turned to alarm when she spotted Brand.

“I need a weapon,” Cari said. When Zel didn’t move, she added, “Now, please.”

Mages killed their enemies.

Kaye Brand examined her manicure. “I’ve done nothing to harm you or your House.”

Zel had left the door open and was summoning the guards, what few they had left. Rapid footsteps sounded down the hallway.

Cari sputtered. Nothing to harm her? If not for
Brand
. . . “You divided magekind, set House against House.” She’d
started
the conflict that had just taken the life of her father.

Which would be enough to kill Kaye here and now, and yet there was more. Kaye had also betrayed magekind to the Order of angels. The Order, who’d again and again throughout history struck Shadow down, trying to wipe the soulless mages from the world. The Order would not allow magic to rise. But Kaye had taken an angel for a lover—his prick a key in the lock of their Council, opening their ranks to intrusion.

The bloodshed had started soon after, Houses turning on each other, each climbing over another to topple Brand from the High Seat. And now this latest assassin, slowly working his way through magekind with his plague . . . Everyone would know the killer when he claimed the High Seat for himself.

Guards burst into the room, guns drawn and aimed at Brand. A commotion sounded in the great hall as other family gathered for this new crisis. Her uncle’s voice rose. One of the kids started crying again. Staff murmuring. Her stepmother demanded to know what was going on.

Cari stepped back out of the guards’ line of fire, satisfied. Kaye might’ve gotten inside Dolan House, but she was not leaving it alive. Her father had wanted the High Seat of the Council for Dolan; well, this was Cari’s chance.

Kaye glanced impassively over her shoulder at the guards, then back to Cari. “I could have killed you when you were crying in the hallway.”

Cari saw Zel’s gaze flick to the service entrance. No more hiding there. No more hiding anywhere.

Cari shrugged at Kaye. “Too bad for you.”

“And”—Kaye opened her hands—“I am unarmed.”

“You’re never unarmed.” Brand was a fire mage.

“I came to help,” Kaye said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you spread your legs.” Dolan had never been allied with Brand, but still Cari’s father had respected the House, at least until it was clear how Kaye had risen so quickly in power and who her protectors were. Vicious angels.

Dolan House did not support the Council, would not, with Brand in the seat. Lines had been drawn.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaye said. “Point is, you’ve been targeted.”

“We know who our enemies are.”

Protect the House.
Her father’s voice again.

Cari looked to Zel, who was peeking back in the office. “Get out, get everyone away from here, but stay inside the Dolan wards.”

Zel shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“It wasn’t a request,” Cari shot back. She had a duty to her family. “Get everyone out.” Brand might not be contagious, but she was deadly.

With a long, desperate look, Zel fled the study. The guards stood their ground. Dolan only employed the loyal. The voices in the great hall rose for a moment, then broke into disparate pieces of quiet as her family fled to the sub-houses or shelters on the property.

Now it was just Dolan against Brand, and by the pitch of Shadow, Dolan would prevail. Cari would not disappoint the memory of her father. She would be enough for this. She’d make his memory proud.

Kaye shook her head. “No one knows which House is responsible for the recent deaths. There is no faction among us that has been left untouched.”

“Then whoever is doing this is simply covering their tracks.” Didn’t take a seat on the Council to be able to figure that out. “Kill someone from their own side to avoid reprisal.”

Kaye looked thoughtful. “Excellent point. And what if your father was murdered, your House challenged, not because of his own power and clout, but as a decoy in a larger plot?”

Took a second for the word “decoy” to attach to “father” in her mind.

No.

Couldn’t be. Her father was too great a man to die as a mere decoy.

Brand smiled. “And the killer left an inexperienced young woman in possession of Dolan House.”

“I’m only a year younger than you.” She could handle herself. She could be her father’s daughter. A gale of emotion was battering her like a cruel wind, but she turned her face into it. She wouldn’t fail him.

“I was not inexperienced when it came time for me to act.”

“I don’t want your kind of experience.”

The insult seemed to sail right past Kaye. “Nevertheless, it is still time for you to act.”

“I’ll do what I have to.” Cari was done crying at least. She could thank Brand for that much.

“I know,” Kaye said, “which is why I’ve come to help you.”

Cari shook her head no. Brand help Dolan? What a crock. Brand would take advantage of the turmoil in Dolan House to get Cari to do what she wanted.

Cari would fight her instead. Dolan Shadow was old and powerful. Brand fire against Dolan’s umbra.

“How about some incontrovertible facts?” Kaye winked. “Jack Bastian, my . . . significant other . . . works very hard to see that I am safe.”

Cari snorted. Significant other. Maybe it was her angel lover that was picking off mages one by one.

“But eventually whoever killed your father will attempt to kill me. Perhaps he or she already has tried, and Bastian’s angel light has kept the killer at bay.”

Cari smiled. “Or maybe the killer thinks you’ll be the instrument of your own destruction.”

“I admit, I am my own worst enemy.” Kaye smiled back. “But I don’t want to die. And I want this killer found before he can get to me. There is one House, and only one House, I know of that can identify the person responsible.”