Soul Kissed (3 page)

Cari’s belly twisted. Something had been nagging at the back of her mind, something she’d refused to think about.

Kaye continued, “I was wondering if you got a sense of the killer when he attacked your father.”

“The sickness came out of nowhere.”

“But surely you searched for the antumbra before it dissipated into Shadow?” Kaye was direct, all business now. “You’d be able to recognize the mage from whom the tainted Shadow originated if you were to meet him or her again.”

By the time her father had fallen, Cari had already been feeling the effects of the poisoned Shadow. She hadn’t thought to search for the antumbra, the unique trail of magic a mage leaves behind. The ability was a Dolan property of magic—to see into the shadow souls of mages, past and present. To name them, to know them. The guards had dragged her away. And even if they hadn’t, she’d been too overcome to think . . . to act. She’d been caught in one extended, silent scream.
Father!

She could’ve named his killer.

Kaye dropped her gaze to her hands, obviously waiting for Cari’s horrible realization to pass. “I’ve made some very painful mistakes myself.”

Cari burned; Kaye was right. She should’ve fought harder,
thought
harder. Her father would’ve still died, but she would have his murderer.

“But
your
mistake,” Kaye continued, “can be undone. You have only to investigate the scene, perhaps the next death, to discover the information you missed the first time. And in so doing, you could show magekind that Dolan House is still strong, still able, and is out for blood.”

That’s right.

She could try again.

She had to try again.

“And as you survived the plague, it stands to reason that you are immune. Very few have survived this.”

Cari put a hand to a welt on her neck, still so sore. She’d survived, was stronger than the plague. It suddenly occurred to her that the scars she would bear would show everyone that Dolan Shadow had been stronger.

“I propose a temporary alliance.”

Cari frowned at Brand. Fire wanting to ally with umbra?

“For the sole purpose of combining our talents and information to destroy the House responsible for the plague ripping through our people. We can’t afford to be weakened now; there are too many threats, from too many directions, to suffer this plague from one of our own kind.”

Kaye was talking like Cari’s father had, making sense. Yes, there was too much to worry about to let a mage destroy them from the inside.

Kaye cocked her head, surprise flexing her expression. “I’m glad you agree.”

“This mage needs to be stopped, his House broken.”

“We agree again.”

Cari couldn’t believe she was about to cooperate with Kaye Brand of all people. “I presume you have a plan as to how I would go about finding the next victim before the killer’s trail is lost.”

“Not a plan. More like a partner, another survivor,” Kaye answered. “He’s loyal to the Council, so that should appease those who won’t trust Dolan alone with this task. The pairing will keep everyone, or most everyone, cooperative.”

Kaye was deluding herself on that point, but Cari pressed on. “Who is it?”

“Mason Stray will be assisting you”—Kaye delicately cleared her throat—“once he agrees.”

Cari’s anger surged. That lowlife? For her
father?
“You’ve got to be kidding.”

 

 

Mason stood in the open doorway of his refuge cabin. He lifted his shotgun the moment he caught the sun glinting off the black of a Lexus LX SUV through the spare desert trees on the windy drive up his mountain.

He knew who it had to be. And he didn’t care.

Didn’t matter that the High Seat herself had traveled cross country and had hauled herself up his mountain. She wasn’t getting anywhere near him or his son. No mage was until this scourge had passed. The May Fair Massacre had claimed seventeen lives, and many more had fallen in the weeks since. He and Fletcher were lucky to have survived, but Mason wouldn’t count on luck again. He never counted on anything. Not where Fletcher was concerned.

A lizard skittered up the weather-bowed trunk of a mesquite tree. The high desert of New Mexico smelled dust dead, heat-stricken, a scorched bone of the world. It was why he’d chosen this place over his other refuge in the east.

The car slowed to a stop, dust hovering in a cloud around its wheels. The driver’s side door opened and Jack Bastian, Kaye Brand’s angel consort, got out. Tall, well built, the man had a backbone like an arrow—and his mind was just as sharp, just as deadly.

Mason cocked his rifle, hating the blare of the sun overhead. “Don’t come any closer!”

How many times did he have to hang up his phone on Brand to make her understand?

Jack Bastian looked over at him as he rounded the front of the car, a wry expression on his face, but his eyes hard. He didn’t stop to open the front passenger door, as Mason expected, but approached the house directly.

“I’ll allow no mages here, Jack,” Mason called out. He’d shoot; they knew he’d shoot. “Not even her.”

Jack stalked right up to the barrel of the gun. The angel had balls of steel. “You’ve made your point. It’s just me today.”

Mason glared back at the car, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not sense any Shadow within it. He swallowed to ease the fist of his heart, then lifted the shotgun so the barrel pointed to the sky.

Jack inclined his head in thanks as he bumped by Mason’s shoulder on his way into the cabin.

Mason slammed the door shut behind him, forcing himself not to look at the false wall behind which Fletcher hid. Mason was glad he’d long ago sound-proofed the hidden room, a precaution taken when his son was a baby.

“How’d you find me anyhow?” He’d chosen this remote spot on this scrub and scorpion-infested hill for a reason.

Jack looked at him over his shoulder. “I’m an angel.”

“Angels track souls, not Shadow.” It was how mages had hidden from the Order throughout the centuries. If angels could track mages, the war between them would have been long over, in favor of Order. “I ask again, how did you find me?”

Because if Jack Bastian could locate him, then others might as well. Which meant this place wasn’t safe. Mason adjusted his grip on the shotgun, his mind racing through alternatives.

“No one else knows.” Jack took a seat in the center of the old plaid couch that had come with the cabin. He winged his arms out to the side to rest on the back cushions, making himself very much at home. “Not even Kaye knows.”

Mason felt his sarcasm rising. “You don’t share everything? No pillow talk?”

The angel still hadn’t answered his question. How in Shadow’s pitch had he found him?

“Have a seat, Mason.” Now Jack sounded tired. “It’s about to get worse, so save your anger for where it counts.”

Mason cursed. “What has our High Seat done now?”

Kaye Brand lived on the wick of danger. One scratch, and she and everything in her path would go up in flames.

Jack closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze was even harder. “She’s done you a favor.”

“She does nothing for free.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jack agreed without humor, “but this time I think you’ll thank her just the same.”

“Surprise me then.”

Jack went very still, too still for Mason’s liking. This had to be bad if she’d sent her angel all this way to tell him, leaving herself vulnerable. “She’s arranged a place for Fletcher.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mason had heard his son’s name, but hearing it in this context made his brain flash cold. If Brand dared to meddle with Fletcher, she was effectively ending their uneasy friendship. She shouldn’t even speak Fletcher’s name. Not her business. Not her pawn.

“Fletcher needs wards, does he not?”

Since the May Fair all the Houses were hiding behind their wards. And those that dared to leave their safety did so at their peril. Jack had to be referring to Kaye’s newly built castle, Brand House, protected by the Brand ward stones lodged into its foundation.

“No, thank you.” Mason waved away the offer. “Kaye has more enemies than I can count. No matter what protection she employs, Brand House is still the single most treacherous place on this planet. My son and I will not be sheltered there. Might as well put targets on our foreheads.”

Jack opened his mouth, probably to argue, but Mason beat him to it.

“And I’m not going to the Segue Institute either. No matter how much I like Adam and his people, they are at war with Martin and have no wards at all. We’re better off here.”

“You finished?”

The ideal place, of course, would be Walker House, where Fletcher’s mother Liv was. Mason had tried to contact her many times over the years, but each silence was like Liv abandoning them again.

Mason looked the angel squarely in the eyes to be absolutely clear. “No one makes arrangements on our behalf.”

“She has negotiated the fosterage of your son to Riordan Webb.”

Mason blinked with irritation. He seemed to be having trouble keeping up.

Fosterage?

His mind churned through the idea. “You mean until this mage plague blows over?” The possibility lifted his spirits. He was suddenly heady and high. This could be the answer. Yes. Fletcher could be safe, much safer than here.

But Jack shook his head. “Webb is not volunteering to babysit. He requires the traditional fosterage agreement: A formal contract through Fletcher’s adolescence to strengthen the ties to Brand, and therefore the mage Council.”

Political in nature and common among aristocratic families in ages past, fosterage was alive and well within modern-day magekind. It meant Webb would raise Fletcher in return for favors from the High Seat of the Council, Kaye Brand. It meant power.

Stunned, Mason’s arguments hovered in the air around him, but he found the right one. “She can’t take my son away from me.”

The words came out like a threat, just as he intended.

“She’s not,” Jack said. “You’d have to agree to the contracts.”

“Then no.” Jack had been right. This was much worse than he’d thought. “She has wasted her time, and you are wasting mine. Get out of my house.”

“I thought you liked Webb.”

Not the point. Mason had hoped to do work for Webb, earn a place for them both, perhaps become one of Webb’s vassals. Safety for Fletcher, a home, in return for work. But fosterage was tantamount to giving up his son, giving him away to be raised by someone else. It was a formal arrangement, bound by contract, enforceable by mage law.

They could continue to hide out just fine.

Mason pointed to the door. Brand had no business, no right, to screw with him and his family. He felt sick, angry, and betrayed at the same time.

“Fosterage will protect Fletcher behind Webb’s wards.”

The angel was missing the point: Mason was not letting his son go. He would not abandon Fletcher, as his own father had abandoned him. Brand had overstepped.

When Jack didn’t move, Mason lifted the shotgun and aimed it at Jack’s head. Angels could heal superhumanly fast, but they could also die. Decapitation would do the job nicely.

“And he’ll have the company of Bran, as well as the luxuries of a strong mage House.”

Mason felt his concentration narrowing as he aimed down the barrel. He knew soldier Jack had seen a lot of action in his thousand years of toil on earth, so he should be able to recognize an impasse when he saw one.

The hard gaze didn’t waver. “You cannot protect Fletcher. Webb can.”

The mere thought of life without Fletcher hollowed Mason, a sharp pain whistling around his empty ribcage.

They’d managed eight years. Through all sorts of upheaval and danger. And a mage toddler is just about the most fearsome kind of mage ever. They might be strays, but they were getting by just fine.

But
you
are not a stray, Mason. You are human.

The angel’s voice in Mason’s head sent him staggering back.

Jack looked sad and tired.
And I was able to find your hideout on this hellish mountain because you have a soul. Any angel could find you.

Mason laughed and refocused his aim. Jack Bastian was full of surprises. “Wicked trick. You have three seconds to leave, and then I’ll fire.”

They’d survived because they were lucky.

“Stop that! Get out of my head!”

Jack leaned forward. “You are a parent, and to be a parent is to bear all sorts of excruciating pain and fear. If magekind discovers you have a soul, that you are human, Fletcher, who
is
a full mage via his mother, will never be accepted. He will be a pariah at best during this, the advent of the Dark Age.”

Mason’s aim faltered; the room went hazy. “I’m not
human
. I use Shadow every day.”

“All humans use Shadow—in dreams, nightmares, inspiration, art.”

“No, but I
use
Shadow.” All the things he’d done . . .

“You craft with Shadow. You animate with Shadow. It’s not so different from how other humans use Shadow. Your mage mother increased your ability. But your human father gave you a soul. And anyone with a soul is human. You can’t tell me that you didn’t suspect—you’re too canny about such things.”

“I’m a mage, a stray.”

“Your son is a mage, a stray. Nature is unpredictable that way. He wasn’t born like you; he favored magic. And he has a chance to be fostered within his kind, safe behind the wards of a strong House.”