Chapter 16

CHAPTERSIXTEEN

She heard a heartrending wailing, and that was worrisome, but being able to breathe, the realization she was with her coven, was a strong improvement of her circumstances. Their trinity formed a bulwark against the darkness.

She was sitting on the beach of a tiny island in the middle of that silver plain. Ripples marked it now, lapping against a white sand shore, marked with swirls of black like doodles on canvas. It reminded her of her kitchen table. The air was cool, but contained the acrid tinge of a recent fire.

Despite the blood still wetting her palms, the cuts, Ramona didn’t yet trust their surroundings enough to let go of those two essential threads. Even though Ruby’s hand was flexing as if it wanted to be free.

No, it was jerking rhythmically, because Ruby was rocking herself. She was the one wailing. Screaming.

“No, no, no.”

Raina squeezed Ramona’s wrist with her other hand, a gentle but firm request to let her go. Plus a reassurance that she believed they were somewhere reasonably stable, a reality where they wouldn’t be torn away from one another. When Ramona reluctantly loosened her grip, Raina moved to Ruby’s other side. She sent Ramona a significant glance, a call for help to retrieve Ruby from her despair.

Having a task and a focus helped. One thing at a time.

“It’s okay,” Raina soothed, holding Ruby. “It’s all right.”

“He’s gone,” Ruby sobbed. “He was in my arms, and he’s gone. He was afraid and I couldn’t do anything.”

“Stop it. Stop.” Switching tactics, Raina pulled back and swung, fetching Ruby a startlingly strong clout in the face. It activated Ruby’s defensive skills, as Ramona expected Raina intended. Ruby managed to half-block it and struck back, narrowly missing Raina’s full lips and silky cheek when Raina ducked.

“What? Why would you—”

“We don’t know what’s happening,” Raina told her, meeting her wet eyes. “He could be in some kind of stasis. They all could. The whole world disappeared, but obviously it’s still somewhere. I was talking to Gina and Li, and then a darkness came over everything. I grabbed for them, and they were swept away. But we’re here, in this place. Something still exists.”

She turned a questioning gaze to Ramona. “Yes,” Ramona said. “I was at the house. A boy was helping me in the garden. He disappeared, too, but didn’t seem to see the darkness. Maybe those not tapped into magical abilities can’t. And Silas…”

She steadied her voice, fingers curling over her throbbing palms. She realized the pain had been inflicted only upon her mind. Her skin was unmarked. Except for Silas’s ink on her wrists. She closed her hands over them, a steadying cuff of pressure. “The mark came to life and fire swallowed him.”

“He’s dead?” Raina asked sharply.

“No. No, he can’t be. I mean…I don’t know, but I don’t think so.” She made herself believe it, even as she evaluated the possible truths. “It’s more like it took him, the way the darkness took everything else.”

Ruby had put her head down, forehead pressed to Raina’s arm as Raina kept the other one around her back. Ruby was taking long gulps of the smoke-tinged air, fighting to contain the flood of emotions hitting Ramona like a wave. She could also feel Raina’s anguish and worry for her sex demons, even if she had a better handle on it. As for Silas…

“Damn it, they’re alive,” Ramona told her sisters as she gripped Ruby’s shoulder. “That’s the only way this is going to work.”

Ruby nodded, her throat working. She was getting it together, Ramona could tell. Normally Ruby was their pragmatist, strapped down, the last to show strong emotion. Probably because she carried so much of it.

“How did you know to grab hold of our lifelines and pull us in?” Raina asked. Then she shook her head. “Sorry. I should know by now not to ask why or how you do things.”

“Remember what she told you when we first met?” Ruby said wanly. “‘If I could tell you, it wouldn’t be fucking Chaos.’”

“Right after she said we had to become a trinity coven. Remember what she said when we asked her why?”

Ruby nodded. “She gave us an ‘isn’t it obvious?’ look, and then she said…”

“‘Because our names all start with R.’”

They said the last part together, as good as a chant to help them align and shake off the debilitating effect of their worries. “And when she said we possessed the power of three, I said the first one who started to hum the Charmed theme song would be given crotch rot.” Raina tucked a lock of Ruby’s straight hair back into the band of her usual thick ponytail, then looked toward Ramona. “You okay, baby?”

Though Raina was the oldest of them, she rarely used a maternal endearment unless she knew it was needed. Then the comfort of that one simple word was immeasurable.

“Yes. I think so.” Ramona got to her feet on her own steam, ran her knuckles down Ruby’s upper arm as she did the same. “Okay, then?”

Ruby gave her a red-rimmed look, but squared her shoulders. “He and Derek are fine and alive. Nothing else will let me be any good to them or anyone else. Let’s figure this out and kick the shit out of it.”

“That’s our designated badass,” Raina said approvingly, then pointed. “How about we start with that?”

When she’d first taken in her surroundings, Ramona was certain the island had been nothing but a hill of black and white sand. But now there was a cottage of stone and moss, overgrown with wilted flowers. No color to them, but she had a sense there had been color. Just as she was sure the air here had been light and fresh, and the water hadn’t been this still glass. The charred smell had grown stronger. It brought back to mind Silas, covered in fire. Could he be in there? Hurt, needing her?

She stumbled toward the cottage, helped and steadied by the other two. It took longer than expected, and the cottage grew in stature as they approached. By the time they reached it, the one-story structure was twenty feet tall, with an arched doorway nearly twice their height.

“I’m getting nightmare visions of Jack and the Beanstalk,” Raina noted.

“I don’t think I brought us here,” Ramona said. “I was given your lifelines, as if I was the best vehicle to do the driving, but something directed us to this place.”

Ruby’s brow creased. “Raina and I would know if it was Mikhael or Derek’s doing.”

“While Mikhael likes to surprise me with romantic trips, I’m pretty sure this isn’t one of them,” Raina agreed. “So we don’t know if this was a bad guy or good guy move.”

“Or both,” Ramona said, remembering the presence of two factions in the bindings upon her.

“Regardless, going inside seems our only immediate option,” Raina said. Even with the island’s expanded size, they could still see the full perimeter. “And the pull I’m feeling to go in is strong. Like something needs us in there. Something…kindred.”

Ramona felt it, too. “Like family.”

“Family can be far more dangerous than any enemy,” Ruby said dryly. “But I agree. Common sense would suggest one of us staying out here as a lookout, but I also think we need to stay in sight of one another.”

“In horror films, splitting up is always a bad idea.” Ramona offered one hand to Raina, the other to Ruby, and they grasped them.

The large double doors groaned and shifted.

In a blink, they’d readied whatever best first-attack spellcraft they had. Ruby had the most well-ordered arsenal to call upon, though Raina’s witch skills combined with her succubus power made her no pushover in a fight. Ramona’s magic had never failed to come through when needed.

But as the doors slowly creaked open, no attack presented itself. Ramona inhaled familiar scents. Fiber, dyes, wood. Weaving smells.

She exchanged glances with the other two, then stepped forward. It felt like she should take the lead, so she crossed the threshold into the cottage.

The first thing Ramona noted was that Silas wasn’t there, a disappointment balanced by wonder and confusion at what lay before them. Along with a soul-deep terror that something had gone very, very wrong. Something that impacted all of them, connected to why their world had literally disappeared.

“‘In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.’” Ruby murmured it, reading her thought.

They saw a Loom, so vast it required a capital letter. It would have dwarfed her Navajo loom, making it look smaller than even her smallest loom, which she could hold in her lap as she wove with it. This Loom filled a space much larger than what the cottage had seemed to possess from the outside, even after it had expanded in size at their approach. It confirmed Ramona’s witch sense that this was an in-between place, tucked into a pocket between worlds.

Parts of the Loom had been burned, a sacrilege that offended Ramona in an indefinable, gut-level way. However, the fire had gone out before it could do more than cosmetic harm, as if it was resistant to the flame. Whoever had done it had resorted to brute force, wrenching the frame with an inhuman strength to break the lap joints holding it together. Even then, one corner had defiantly held while the cracked timbers hung loose in an open, twisted rectangle.

The warp and weft yarns had been cut, sliced up, and tossed to the side before the Loom was set on fire. Someone hadn’t wanted them destroyed, but they were a tangled mess.

The threads were multi-colored. Snarled like that, their tones seemed mottled and subdued, but on the Loom, Ramona thought they would have displayed every shade and vibrancy imaginable.

All the colors of the world. Which suggested to her where they might be. And made the situation even worse.

“Look.” Ruby pointed. In another corner was a fountain, tumbling into a mirrored pool emitting flickers of light, like a television left on. The three women approached it, still studying their surroundings as they went. The foreboding hanging over this place was too strong to relax defenses.

As they reached the water, a cry broke from Ramona’s throat. Silas.

The scrying pool showed him standing on a busy city street. Traffic had stopped, though. As Raina leaned in, spoke the words to zoom in for a closer view, Ramona saw people sitting motionless in their cars. Staring, empty eyes, hands fallen away from the wheels.

The image moved back to Silas. His cloak rippled around him against an ashen sky. The fabric snapped with a heated wind so evident she felt like she was drawing soot into her lungs. The cowl shadowed his smooth skull, those shadows collecting in the valleys of cheek and jawbone.

The glowing eyes piercing the darkness were red fire, not the emerald glow she knew. His scythe was planted before him, bony fingers wrapped around the haft.

As her gaze slid away from him, the pool cooperated, widening her view. Pedestrians lay where they’d fallen, staring with the same dead eyes. Her hand went to her mouth. The souls that had inhabited their bodies were marching toward him, joining those who had left their mortal husks at the wheel of their automobiles.

Silas watched them come, motionless.

“He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t take souls before they’re ready.” She flashed back to what had happened to Morris in her kitchen. Had that decision activated the mark, been the catalyst that activated the mark’s purpose? Or foreshadowed it?

“I believe you,” Ruby said grimly. “But whatever has control of him through that mark would.”

While she watched, Silas turned away and began to lead the army down the street, toward a destination she was certain the Silas she knew wouldn’t be leading them.

She noted his movements were stilted, awkward. Silas had a consummate measured grace, that inner calm he carried projected in his movements.

“He’s fighting it.” She was sure of it. “Inside, if he has any awareness of his actions at all, he’s resisting.”

“But where is he being forced to take them?” Ruby leaned over the pool, fingers clutched on the edge. The scrying magic surprised them by answering her question, the image dissolving then reforming.

They saw another Reaper, leading a much larger group of souls, as if the numbers had swelled as she proceeded toward their destination.

Though Ramona hadn’t seen her in her Reaper form, she recognized the silver blue flame on the scythe, the symbols woven into the billowing fabric of her cloak, indicating her rank. Shock gripped her.

“Oh, Goddess. It’s Honora.”

She’d been unmarked the last time Silas had seen her. They had theorized that the strongest of them were being taken closest to the time the architect of all this was ready to execute the full plan. He had succeeded.

If Honora had been taken, all of them had.

Ramona leaned over the pool tensely, shoulder to shoulder with the other two. She didn’t recognize where Honora was. A greyness blanketed the background and immediate surroundings. She suspected the location wasn’t important. Whoever controlled this would use the closest portal to get the souls where they wanted them taken.

Honora brought them to a halt with a lifted hand. Her bones were a solid, ebony black, the red glow of her eyes casting a blood shadow on the face of her skull. She drew a line before her with the scythe. The witches watched closely when she sketched a symbol with a stiff hand, as if someone was holding her wrist, forcing her to draw it. The Wake leader would be fighting the control, just as Ramona knew Silas was.

But they hadn’t had time to tell Honora the mark would try to integrate with her behavior, wash the will away in the belief a Reaper was acting as intended.

The line thickened, burst forth with light, tearing open a doorway. Or not a doorway.

The water in the scrying pool sizzled, startling them into a quick flinch. Though they didn’t draw away, they overlapped hands, Ramona’s fingers over Ruby’s, Raina’s over hers. They put the bond in place to shield them from any recoil that might come through their connection to the scrying magic. Forewarned was forearmed, as Ruby might say.

“Merciful Goddess.” Raina’s golden-green eyes were stark.

The Pit. Silas had briefly mentioned it, and Ramona expected it would be considered the antithesis of The Gate. Living in the subconscious of them all, artists had called it forth in countless depictions. Often it was confused with Hell, the network of redemption chambers in the Underworld, administered by Lucifer.

Knowing The Pit was merely the gateway to the demon realm of the Underworld didn’t make it less terrifying. Fear, pain and acts of evil held dominion beyond it. Even through a reflection, Ramona could feel the hunger that lived in those flame-licked depths, waiting, wanting what the Reaper was bringing them.

Souls.

“Honora.” She wanted to scream at her, wake her up, stop her. She was beckoning her souls toward that edge, lemmings who couldn’t resist the Reaper’s pull. Worse—they trusted it.

Once we connect to their lifeline, they cannot leave us.

Honora was using that tether. The first line of souls came forward, docile, obedient. Ramona pressed her fist to her mouth as they simply stepped into space and were gone. Ruby and Raina watched with matching helpless anguish.

Ramona spun away. As the souls dropped into The Pit where they would be devoured, shredded and cease to exist, she watched that tangled galaxy of threads. She saw the shimmer, the spark, the waver of light before certain ones simply vanished.

Silas had been willing to throw himself in that place for Cal, rather than face the agony of losing even one soul to a Soul Collector. They had to stop this.

Ramona turned back to the pool, knowing she needed to see what Honora did next. Her gaze was flat stone as the souls passed her, dropped in. They were crowding one another now, the pace picking up. It was like watching cereal pour into a bowl, an obscene thought. Then Ramona cried out. Because the Reaper turned and stepped out into the same space.

“Honora.”

Unlike the souls, who simply disappeared into the gaping maw, flame shot up and enclosed Honora, a sickly white-blue-green that was no normal fire.

Ramona saw the robe burned away in a blink, the skeleton figure arching up in agony, a scream breaking from Honora’s lips. Then she was gone, a spiral of ash and snapping embers.

Gone. Destroyed. Irrevocably.

“Enough of this shit.” Raina pulled her and Ruby away from the pool, jerked them around so they were looking at the broken Loom. “We weren’t brought here to watch. We were brought here to fix this. If we fix this, we help. So that’s what we focus on.”

Ramona knew she was right, but she had to say his name. “Silas.”

Somewhere in those advancing armies of souls was her Reaper. If Reapers had threads here, as she was sure every living thing did, she wanted to find it, wrap it around her and hold it as fiercely as she’d held Raina and Ruby’s, even if it cut down to her very bones.

But if he survived, and his souls and fellow Reapers didn’t, she knew he’d prefer the oblivion of those flames.

“Derek, Jem,” Ruby said, echoing her.

“Mikhael, Gina, Li, Ana, Saul…” As Raina chanted off the names of her demons, they linked hands again, formed a circle and held tight. They spoke the names of those loved ones three times, Ramona adding in Buford, dear Buford, and the other two adding in names as well. With each repetition, a determined calm settled on them. They’d been through darkness before.

“The fight’s only over if you give up,” Raina said. Dropping hands, they faced the Loom again.

“This is where the Fates weave the path of souls,” Ruby said, her eyes hard and mouth taut. “So where are they?”

“Something took them,” Ramona said. “And Raina’s right. We’ve been brought here to fix this.”

She pointed to the wall, to a plaque embroidered and framed like a grandmother’s needle point. The words glowed as Raina read them aloud. “When darkness reigned, a Loom was formed by the Goddess. The spun life of every soul, connecting with all others, created the pattern of Life itself. The Goddess gave the task of operating the Loom to a trinity of Hecate’s daughters. So it is that only a Hecate’s trinity can operate the Loom.”

“It makes sense,” Ramona told the other two. “The Fates have to have a backup plan if something goes wrong.”

“And we’re the backup plan,” Raina said. “Apparently all other Hecate trinities had schedule conflicts with the apocalypse. But other than us being witches, why would the Fates think we could do this?”

“You’re Passion, Ruby’s Order. I’m Chaos. The life spark.” Ramona answered her. “Everything related to creation, to the way we live our lives, is a mix of those things.”

Keep it simple. Ramona gazed at the broken Loom. That was the starting point. Stepping forward, she laid her hand on the corner that was still attached, because she had a suspicion. One that turned into hope as she felt what was in the wood.

It was a living, breathing magical artifact. Despite the cracks in the massive beams from the tearing loose of those joints, it could repair itself. With their help and guidance, plus a solid shot of healing energy, it could bring itself back together.

Repair it, then the warp threads—which contained the individual souls—would need to be strung back on. Her gaze went to the tangle, and she couldn’t stop her heart from sinking.

She would have to splice countless warp threads to re-join them. Then would come the wefts, the most challenging part. Because the threads would need to be seamless and smooth in the pattern for this to work, she had to hope the ones that needed to be reconnected could be felted. When she felted wool, it was almost a magical process, the way a bit of water could bring a broken strand back together, so it was smooth in the tapestry once more.

They were surrounded by water, so they had a good supply of that. Hell, she’d even used her saliva for the occasional quick repair on her own weavings.

However, when she knelt, touched the threads, she realized it wasn’t going to be water they needed. She pressed her chin to her chest, listening to what the fibers were telling her. Every type of thread felt different. Silk and wool blends, cotton…the texture of these reminded her of all of those fibers, but they were also infused with pure creation energy, soul energy. She saw a face in her mind when she touched this thread, a soul. Part of the warp threads. When she touched another, she saw an event, a relationship formed. A pattern, formed by the weft threads. She would be able to tell warp from weft based on the images she was given.

As she drew her hand away, she noted there was a tiny smear of blood on her fingertip where she’d touched a broken piece of the weft. Testing, she reached for the other ragged end of it, pinching the two together. The tiny fibers moved under the pressure of her touch and the blood, coming together to form an unbroken thread again.

She stared at it, the significance of the information flitting through her heart. Then her gaze lifted to encompass the vast pile of tangled, cut and torn threads. It seemed impossible to do it in the limited time they had, and that was even estimating the amount of thread she could see. A humming vibration, a presence, told her that her human eyes were only processing how many she could conceive of before her. There were an infinite number of threads that had been on that Loom, that were part of that mess. Waiting.

But she, Raina and Ruby wouldn’t have been brought here if it couldn’t be done.

“Well, thank Goddess you showed us how to use that loom of yours, so we know the basics,” Ruby said, breaking her out of the thought.

Ramona recalled that rainy afternoon, where she’d shown them how to weave on her simpler looms, in the ways Crescent had taught her. Ramona had been nine and reluctant, afraid, at the height of her fear of what was within her. But once the pixie had taught her the skill, and how to make the thread itself, she’d told her to have at it.

Ramona’s thread, the patterns she created, always ended up something different than expected, but when Crescent made her really look at what she created, Ramona had realized it was…perfect. The best mix of Order and Chaos.

The warp was the order, the straight line. The constant. The weft, the pattern, provided the element of Chaos, while all the pieces to the weaving process…that was the skill and faith, adding to the elements that contributed to the end results.

While she’d have to take point on that process, Ruby and Raina knowing the basics was important, so they’d understand what she was doing, and tailor their support and energy toward her for it accordingly.

Her gaze went back down to her finger, the smear of drying blood. She understood what it meant. But it didn’t matter. All that was relevant was it needed to be done.

This wasn’t just about one woman’s son, lover, family. Countless numbers of souls faced destruction, and there was no telling how that would change the face of the world they knew. It also might not be the end goal; just the beginning of an eternal nightmare on earth.

“Ruby,” she said, rising. “The Loom knows what it needs to repair itself. Tap into it and let it guide you. I will start working on repairing the threads, so as soon as the Loom is back together I can start warping it.”

“Okay.” Ruby gestured toward the doorway to the cottage. “I’ll cast a shield first, an alarm system in case we come under attack. Something came for the Fates here. If we start fixing things, we may attract its attention again.”

“Leave it to the gun shop owner to think about our defenses,” Raina noted, then added, “and one of us can reach out to Mikhael and Derek. Since they’re on the trail of the mind that set this in motion, what we know might help them. If we can reach them.”

“Your non-human blood gives you the farthest range. Plus, I don’t think…” Ruby straightened her back, firmed her voice. “You need my shit together, and if I heard Derek in my head right now, asking about Jem, I’d lose it. I’m not doing that to you two again.”

Raina squeezed her shoulder. “You didn’t this time. Sometimes a woman has to have a good cry before she can do her best work.”

Ramona gripped Ruby’s hand as well, though her mind was still on that tangle. And what they’d seen in the scrying mirror. “Raina, once you make your call, if you can reinforce what Ruby’s doing, that will move us even quicker to the warping.” She took a breath, met their gazes. “Once I start working on that and repairing and starting the weft pattern, I won’t be able to do anything but that. I can use whatever energy you can lend me, to help me go as fast as I can, and not falter, but if something attacks us… I’ll be able to hold my own with the weaving while you deal with it, but I’m not going to be able to stop and help.”

“We’ll handle it,” Ruby told her.

As Raina dropped to her heels, one hand on the floor of the cottage, the other on her temple to aid the focus she needed to reach out to her mate, she nodded. As well as tossed out one more encouraging thought. “Remember, we’re not fighting this battle alone. There are hounds who envy Mikhael’s tracking ability. With that and a teaspoon of luck, he and Derek may have already cornered this bastard.”

* * *

When darkness swept the world, Mikhael and Derek were in the vast depths of the Underworld, using its pathways to get to their goal, since navigating the Earth’s surface would take longer. Now it had become impossible to do otherwise.

So deeply bonded to the energies of the earth, they felt the magnitude of the disruption. Then it became worse. The bond that connected them to their witches, and Derek to his son, simply…vanished.

The primal need to abandon what they were doing, go in search of those threads, was as strong as what had gripped the Earth in darkness. But with over two thousand years of life and experience between them, they knew obeying that compulsion wasn’t the right course.

It didn’t change the pain of it.

They also knew what to do with that, and how to channel it. Their focus on their goal reached a lethal intensity, their usual banter silenced. Shadows shrank from the swiftly moving men. A glance at their garb—one in cowboy hat, jeans and boots, carrying a staff, the other dressed in black Armani, his dark talon-edged wings spread to add to his speed—might not have inspired that reaction alone. But one glance at the ice blue eyes of the Light Guardian and the death gaze of the Dark Guardian, and any Underworld mischief-makers decided to stay in their cracks and crevices and await easier prey.

The power gathered around the two Guardians wouldn’t blast obstacles out of their way—they’d be turned to vapor.

Mikhael could tell Derek’s heart was roaring for Ruby and Jem. He himself was trying not to think of his irascible, passionate witch, but it was impossible. Especially when he detected her life thread, reaching out to touch him. Seeking him. Faint. So fucking faint.

He grasped Derek’s arm, bringing them to a halt. “Raina,” he said. Derek’s gaze speared him as the Dark Guardian tuned into it.

“Ruby and Ramona are with her. The Fates…they are on the Isle of the Fates.”

Derek’s brow creased. “No one can access that place. It’s one of the most secure places in all the universe.”

Mikhael lifted a shoulder. “Nevertheless, they are there. Reapers are pulling souls from bodies before their time. They are leading them to The Pit and then they are being destroyed by flame themselves. Something has damaged the Loom, but our witches are putting it back together.”

“If the souls can be returned to their bodies, the reversal might create a recoil on the spellwork. It could weaken whatever is controlling the Reapers and trying to pull them to The Pit.”

“Yes.” Mikhael paused, then his expression tightened. “I was able to communicate that much, but she is gone. Giving us the bare essentials was difficult. Things above are bad.”

Derek swore, then tightened his hand on his staff. He didn’t ask about Jem. If Raina knew his status, or Derek could do anything for him, she would have communicated it. “Let’s get to the source.”

“We’re almost there.”

Knowing the witches were alive would have to be enough, for both of them. A few minutes later, after covering miles in barely a blink, with a complex mix of portaling and sheer determined speed, they surfaced.

This part of the world seemed unaffected by the darkness, but perhaps that was because it was already hellish enough as it was. The frigidly cold mountain region was remote from human civilization. Derek studied what lay before them. “It looks like something out of Grimm’s fairy tales.”

“There’s a reason they wrote those stories.”

The cottage had gingerbread embellishments, flower boxes out front with brown husks of plants that never could have survived here, even to grow and die. It was a pitiless, cold fortress of spellwork, intended to repel with extreme prejudice anyone who tried to breach its walls.

“Allow me,” Mikhael said, setting his jaw.

“I have your back.”

Mikhael spoke the words as Derek readied himself. The cottage quivered, shimmered, twisting, resisting the Dismantling and Neutralizing magic. The Reveal spellcraft Mikhael injected into it contained an artistry and ruthless determination Derek appreciated. They had different styles, but they’d learned the building blocks shoulder to shoulder.

With their lifespan, those thirteen years in the elite Guardian school should have been a dot in a thousand-page volume, but the intensity of that training, how it had broken them down and rebuilt them, never faded.

The most important lesson they’d learned was no matter how big and bad they became, there would always be something bigger and badder. So Derek kept all his senses on full alert, watching every attack point that might disrupt Mikhael’s efforts.

He didn’t have long to wait.

He lunged forward as spiraling shoots of poisoned flame erupted from the ground. He swept out a dousing flood of water with one hand, raised his staff and sketched an arc in the air that repelled the jagged metal pelting them like blood-hungry hail. He knew when he was being tested, distracted, so he wasted no time calling the craft to hand he needed to electrify the air, transforming the metal into a fluttering fall of flower petals.

Though Mikhael was intent on breaching the entry, Derek heard his appreciative chuckle. I think you’ve been learning from the Chaos witch.

A Guardian who stops learning is a dead Guardian.

Worse. A boring one, who might as well be dead. And you’re already a tedious Boy Scout.

A rumbling earthquake split the ground. While Mikhael went smoothly airborne, hovering as he worked the unlock enchantments, Derek brought the crack back together, sealed and reinforced it.

Energy work was about seeking the deeper levels, understanding the nature of what the sorcerer needed to do his work. Those who sought to manipulate it to their own ends often made mistakes. This one didn’t cut corners. But then, Ramona had speculated he’d spent decades preparing this. He wasn’t impatient.

A wall of fire shot up around the cottage and Mikhael used his wings to take him up higher. He had his eyes closed, lips barely moving as he sought to understand the shape of the barrier keeping them from entry. Derek shifted in front of him as the wall of fire crackled and danced. A roar, and a dragon the size of a Boeing burst through it.

Shit.Derek threw up a shield, modulating it so Mikhael could keep working through it. No point, since the dragon shredded it. Fine, he’d take the cowboy approach.

He tossed out the lines of energy, wrapped them around the creature’s thick neck and legs, giving the lines barbs that speared the flesh and wings. As the thing howled, Derek went left, yanking it into a spin toward him, away from Mikhael.

The dragon wasn’t an actual dragon enslaved to a master. It was a Frankenstein construct, put together from pieces of living tissue and a complex level of spellwork. Which made it three times as dangerous as a real dragon, and those were no picnic, if they were of a mind to be an enemy.

His boots had been sourced from one of those.

This thing was a weapon capable of bludgeoning, poisoning, ripping and decimating whatever it contacted. It had teeth, armored scales and breathed fire that cooked Derek’s renewed attempt at shields.

So Derek once again dropped them and leaped to meet the dragon, leading with his staff. He shot lightning into its composite heart, followed by a tsunami of water. The electrocution illuminated its insides as it screamed and writhed. Grabbing a handful of scales for leverage, he slid over its back and behind it, avoiding the slash of the giant tail. When the beast crashed down a hundred feet away from the left side of the cottage, he crouched on its motionless back.

No time for a coffee break. The next barrage included basketball-sized mortar shells that exploded in the air when he blocked them from ground impact. He lost sight of Mikhael in the resulting detonations, flashes of fire and choking smoke. Shrapnel sliced over his face and shoulders, because he was having to divert more energy to protecting Mikhael, but it would heal. His witch would put her hands on it and scold him for not being more careful.

There were perks to this kind of shit.

Slowly, things quieted. The smoke cleared. Either they’d exhausted the outer defenses, or Mikhael’s success had deactivated the trigger for them.

Both apparently. Derek grimly appreciated Mikhael’s faith in him, for the Dark Guardian had let none of it distract him from finding the right entry point for the cottage. Only now did his dark eyes open, wings folding back as he touched back to ground. He’d had to exert himself enough he’d shed the Armani and wore more serviceable clothing. Black jeans and a T-shirt. When it came to color, Mikhael embraced the Underworld clichés.

“Didn’t want to get your expensive shoes dirty?” Derek asked him.

“I take care of what matters to me.”

“Must be why I’m all beat to hell.”

Mikhael’s lips twitched, but their gazes turned toward their goal. The cottage veneer was gone. They were looking at a shack dipped in poorly spread and hardened tar. Bare ground led to the single door, the wood scarred as if a tiger had tried to scrape its way inside. Next to the door, on a too-short hook, a set of chimes beat against the wood on a listless but bitterly cold wind. A ragged cloth fluttered at one tiny open window.

Despair and a lack of mercy formed the siding and foundation for this place. Whatever lived here had nothing left to give the world. It only wanted to take from it, so keenly that Derek suspected the desire to inflict suffering was what kept the walls standing. It certainly wasn’t the architecture.

Mikhael glanced toward the dragon, a bundle of melted metal and sparking spell remnants. “While I did the work, you had all the fun.” He gave Derek an assessing look, taking in the blood on his face. “You’re getting slower.”

“You’re uglier.”

“Not what your wife says.”

“On the day we die,” Derek said in a measured tone, “you’ll still find a way to poke that wound. I shouldn’t have blocked that poison fire spell from reaching you. Maybe there would have been boils to mess up that pretty face.”

“Missed opportunity.”

“Fine. I’ll tell your mate you obsess over my wife, then.”

“Don’t. She worries about it. With no cause for it in the slightest, but it is a vulnerable spot in her heart.”

The unexpected straight comment had Derek meeting the Dark Guardian’s gaze. He offered a short nod, nothing more needing to be said. In their uneasy alliance that occasionally flirted with actual friendship, they drew lines. Those that protected the women they loved wouldn’t be crossed by either. Not consciously or willingly.

“Heads up.”

“I feel it.”

Their quarry wasn’t done. The shack had its own protections, and crossing the threshold would set them off. More subtle defenses this time. Mind-magic, to render the shack invisible and scramble the mind. The enemy would think the shack was to the left—forty yards into the open air over the rocky edge of the cliff. Before they realized it, they’d be splattered on unforgiving ground below.

Or, since a quick glance showed that the bottom wasn’t visible, it might be a vertical portal, taking the disoriented attacker somewhere else entirely. Where, with their mind scrambled for an indeterminate time period, they would be uncertain where they were or how to get back.

“It’s ingenious craft, but he’s not fueling it anymore,” Derek murmured, coming back to Mikhael’s side. “Either because he can’t spare the energy to keep fueling it, or…”

Because his objective had been accomplished. They were both connected to the currents of life in the world above. Even without Raina’s message, they knew things were worsening.

Derek met Mikhael’s gaze again. They’d both had enough. Not only were they out of time, they might already be too late.

“Obliterate.” Mikhael could apply the spell with the precision of a neurosurgeon, or the blunt effectiveness of the Jolly Green Giant’s fists. This time it was the former, as capturing their quarry alive might be vitally useful.

The flash that passed over the threshold was crimson red. When it blasted away the mind-magic, Derek had added a backup buffer to absorb the recoil. He handled housekeeping, wrapping up the dangerous residue of the craft and shooting it out over the cliff edge, letting it shred and turn to ash. The cold wind blew it away.

Once again, what they saw around them changed. They were no longer above ground, nor even in the mountains. They stood in the cheerless hallway of a Cold War relic bunker, based somewhere in Europe. Bare concrete walls flickered with anemic lights in rusted metal cages.

Mikhael exchanged another look with Derek, and the two advanced, their senses covering every angle and dimension. Though removing the sorcerer’s defenses told them their powers eclipsed his, Derek referenced the corollary to that #1 rule. Stronger didn’t mean smarter.

This male had proven himself an exceptional spell crafter. The Underworld demons using him hadn’t had to do much more than seize the handle of the weapon the sorcerer had wanted to create, load and aim.

They’d reached a steel door, marked with symbols. Derek traced the unlocking over them with his staff. A quiet flash, and the door creaked inward in an uncertain way.

The room’s interior matched the study of any modern-day sorcerer. Old books, scrolls, crystals, a functioning lab for mixing potions, plus a high-end computer with several screens, including one mounted on the wall. Disuse clung to it, though. As they’d suspected, its purpose had been served.

Mikhael drew Derek’s attention to a door at the other end of the space. A wooden one, more fitting with the original cottage they’d seen. It had a wreath on it. Its flowers were spelled to stay fresh. Everything else they’d faced had reeked of death and rage. The green aura misting around this brought the scent of fresh earth and growing things.

Once they stood before it, Derek touched a flower. Mikhael rested a hand on his shoulder to increase the clarity of the image transmitted between their minds. A fortyish woman in a garden, wearing a straw hat and pulling weeds, a smudge of dirt on her soft cheek. She had brown hair, friendly eyes. She was tired but content with her day, the sun soaking through her clothes, the results of her labors blooming around her.

The door moved, opening several inches. A voice came from within. “It’s not polite to watch someone’s home movies without permission.”

Derek pushed the door back. The space within was narrow. A bunk bed was bolted to the far wall. The man lying on the thin mattress was on his side, facing the wall, his arms wrapped around himself and legs drawn up, head tucked down. His shaggy hair hung to his shoulders. When his head turned in their direction, he showed an untended beard of about two weeks’ growth. His eyes were cold. Fixed. If he hadn’t spoken, Derek would have called them the eyes of a dead man.

In this case, a man who’d died while his body yet lived.

“It’s not polite to end the world without the permission of the populace,” Derek answered coolly.

Raina referred to Guardians as cosmic cops. The bite to it had softened since she’d mated with one, but she still liked to tease them with her distaste for authority. They didn’t argue with the description. Like all cops, he and Mikhael knew motives mostly fell under three categories. Love, power or money. Based on that wreath, Derek was going with love. Which sucked, because a wrong act motivated by love was the hardest to derail.

Both he and Mikhael had creative tools to extract information, universally effective. But a sorcerer of this power could make getting that data far more difficult. Derek suspected he might even have some form of self-destruct to take it beyond their reach. This male cared little about surviving to see his efforts succeed. As his next words confirmed.

“You’re the only thing left on my list. Be killed by those who think that they’re doing the right thing. You can’t stop it, though. There are too many links in the chain. The weight will pull everything over the edge.”

That indifferent gaze slid over them. “Guardians. Soldiers of the Underworld and Heaven. When I was a Reaper, I brushed paths with you now and again. Odd that you two work together. Do you have names?”

“Derek. Mikhael.” Derek gestured. “And you are?”

“Bryan. First names work. Just like on a playground, because that’s what we all are. Children on a playground. That’s where the biggest dreams happen and most brutal games are played.” Bryan’s gaze held Derek’s. “I’m not ending the world. I’m destroying the Fates’ control of us.”

“Did you kill the Fates?”

“Impossible. They are like…air.” He barked a pitiless chuckle. “You can’t starve air of air. Can’t kill an element, can you? But what you can’t destroy, you can trap. And the way to trap something powerful is to make them think they’re not trapped at all. They’re somewhere they can no longer fuck up people’s lives. Oblivious for now, and fine. When they figure out they’ve been removed from the ability to do harm, it will be far too late to try and reclaim their tyranny over our souls. The Reapers have been blocked from collecting them at the appointed times.”

Mikhael frowned. “But they are collecting them. Well before the appointed times. You should have taken a closer look at that fine print. The demon world figures out every loophole. Look.”

At his glance, Derek opened a scrying screen, using his tracking of the energies on the earth above to lock onto the most concentrated point of the disruption, correctly assuming it would illustrate the point.

Bryan turned over, pushed himself up heavily. The smell that wafted to them was of a body that hadn’t seen soap for quite a while. With bloodshot eyes, he stared at the sight of a cowled Reaper marching forward, portaling souls out of the mortal world and into the grey-cast tunnel provided for them. To the edge of The Pit.

Raina had told them what was happening, but it didn’t dilute the horror of seeing it. As the souls tumbled over, Derek steeled himself not to move, not to distract Bryan from the watching, even as his reaction mirrored the rage he felt from Mikhael.

Bryan stared a long moment, then his face hardened. “So dark forces are mucking with my plan. Fits with their usual MO, doesn’t it? The demon world can have their pound of flesh. There will be people who escape them. Life will go on.”

Derek let the image dissipate. Bryan locked gazes with Mikhael, not an easy feat for anyone, but the accomplishment spoke to the will of what burned in his tormented soul, the husk of what he once was.

“I feel your contempt.” His attention drifted to the wreath. “But Reapers are given a soulmate once. Just once. Our lives are lonely and long. You are Guardians. You understand, for it’s the same for you. It’s how we’re designed, how we’re made. Have you found yours? I can see you have. Everything you are is about her, and it becomes more and more that way every day. She is your heart. Now what would you do if the Fates you serve took your heart away?”

His expression transformed to cold fury. “Made her suffer before she died. You can hear her crying your name, crying out for your help, every night when you sleep. A help that came too late. She’d have had every right to die believing you’d failed her, but she didn’t. Her last thought of you was love, because that was what she was. She took all the love you had inside you with her.”

“Your loss was grievous,” Derek said. “And Reapers serve the Fates in a way that often isn’t easy. But is this a way to honor that love?”

Bryan shook his head. “You don’t understand. They took those memories away. I served the Fates for hundreds of fucking years, all the while not knowing they took that from me. On the threshold of dissolving into peace, it was revealed to me. A big fuck you for your service. You lose everything that matters to you, feel that pain, day after day, and try not to go mad from it. Try not to answer it with revenge, fury, destruction. Destroy the cause.”

He shifted to Mikhael. “Do not lie. If you lost what mattered most to you, you’d burn down the world that did that to her, to you, to the love you shared. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. But he would stop me.” Mikhael tipped his head to Derek. “As I would stop him if it happened to him. Because there must always be balance. Else there would be no room to find that love to begin with.”

How many times had he and Mikhael debated the point, why Mikhael chose the Dark, and Derek served the Light? Though Derek might not understand Mikhael’s choice, what he found in that darkness, in this kind of moment, confirmed they served the same purpose.

“The Fates don’t make those decisions,” Derek said quietly. “They are like the artist, the writer, the actor, looking for inspiration, suspending thought or intention to let the magic come to them, to guide them.”

“You are going to instruct a Reaper on what the Fates decide?” Bryan scoffed. “Try to make me believe it’s something outside of them. Like a God or Goddess?”

“Yes. But it is us, too,” Derek responded. “All of us. Every soul, all the energy that gives us life and movement, it chooses the threads we follow, for reasons buried beyond our reach, but there, the knowledge is there, under the sorrow and fear and pain.” Derek felt Mikhael’s gaze on him, wondered if those endless debates between them were in his mind as well. “Love knows all things aren’t possible. There is no escape from the horrible and unimaginable. But love has an endurance that exceeds the horrible, the unimaginable, if your faith in it is strong enough.”

“You think you’re that powerful?” Bryan scoffed. His eyes burned, on the verge of tears he was no longer capable of shedding. “You are about to find out. You think I didn’t know the Fates would call others to their Isle? Who better than daughters of Hecate bonded to Guardians? Plus a Chaos witch, bonded to one of the strongest Reapers? That piece was unexpected, a last moment gift.” His face twisted with vicious irony. “Some might call that…Fated.”

The triumph in his eyes, that he’d succeeded in giving them some of the poison that infected him, was fleeting. He laid his head down on the pillow, wrapped his arms around it. His fevered gaze lingered on Mikhael. “That Dark Guardian look could kill me if I wasn’t already so far gone. Or give me pain, if it wouldn’t be just one more drop in this blood-filled sack of it.” He looked at Derek. “Your words are just what you hope, and it all means nothing. Chaos or order, it means nothing.”

He closed his eyes, the energy he’d found for the conversation ebbing. But he had enough for his next words. Derek expected he’d always have enough for them.

“She used to make breakfast for me. She would wear one of my shirts, her hair tangled on her shoulders, her feet bare. She would smile at me, distracted because she had things to do, but she would still make breakfast for me. I didn’t realize what a miracle that was. Someone who loved me, in my kitchen, making breakfast for me.”

He didn’t smile, he was well beyond that capacity, but they saw the far distant echo of it. “She was a terrible cook. She could only do toast and scrambled eggs, but she made those for me, an act of love. Of service to that love. She was so pleased when she figured out scrambled eggs come out better if you take them off the heat when they’re still a little uncooked. Let the heat of the pan finish it up, keep them from drying out.”

Derek approached the bunk, trusting Mikhael to keep a lookout for any treachery, though they both sensed the man had no objective at this point other than death. “Bryan, do you want to know why I believe you should tell me where you put the Fates?”

Bryan’s eyes opened, considered. He’d spent decades studying, researching. An unanswered question was likely the only thing that could tug at his logy mind.

“You know that the demon world will take your purpose for their own,” Derek told him. “But it runs deeper than that. When you use Dark Soul magic, you walk a line along the abyss. What clings to its edge are forces that will wrap around you, sink into you, capture your purpose and use it for their own ends, often without you realizing it, because your own pain blinds you.”

It resurrected the memory of how he’d nearly lost Ruby to it. He felt Mikhael’s awareness of where his mind went, a mix of emotions touching him from the Dark Guardian. Yes, it would always be both bond and sore point between them, the pain and regret, the sacrifice and debt. But it also included things that ensured they would also be brothers.

Brothers that more often than not wanted to beat the shit out of one another, but brothers all the same.

“Your intent was to free souls from what you felt was the imprisonment of their lifeline.” Derek held the sorcerer’s gaze. “But those lifelines are not imprisonment, as we told you. They are a series of experiences, a mix of Fate and choice.” Which, as a Reaper, before his grief pushed him to an unfortunately brilliant calculated madness, he’d known. Derek was counting on that bank of memories being in there, as closely tied to that woman as his pain was.

Though his expression didn’t show any of that awareness, at least Bryan was listening. “By taking them off those roads, away from the guidance of Fates,” Derek continued, “you have missed that below the Loom is the abyss. Waiting to take those souls, devour and use their energy for a purpose that has no regard for their light, their desires or choices. Yes, some may survive, get away from that end, but was that really your initial intent?”

Derek leaned forward, dominating Bryan’s vision. “It has been decades since her death. Souls are reborn into other lives when and if they are ready to do so. Her soul could be one of those being led to that Pit.”

Bryan stared at him, the gears in his mind visibly grinding, trying to un-muck what had been salted and sanded in there. His hand tightened on the pillow. “No. She wouldn’t…she stayed in Heaven. You’re lying to me, trying to trick me. I’m not…no. Try to break through my shields, Guardian, and I will ensure everything behind them disintegrates before you can touch what lies there.”

He spat the words, drew out of Derek’s reach. Flipping over to face the wall, he huddled against it. He started rocking, muttering equations. Likely shoring up the defenses on those shields.

We are out of time, Derek.Though they could speak in one another’s minds if needed, Mikhael used the subtle shorthand gestures they’d developed during Guardian training. No speech had been allowed during those thirteen years except by instructors. We are losing too many souls.

Plus three women’s lives were on the line. Their women.

Mikhael was willing to take the lead on what needed to happen next. But Derek was the Light Guardian. He’d do it.

“Bryan.” He spoke to the man’s tense back. “I am going to give you something. The way you felt before she died.”

Bryan turned his chin to his shoulder. Puzzlement crossed his face, suspicion. “You think throwing me an illusion as a gift will help—”

“It’s not a gift.” Derek closed his hand on Bryan’s shoulder. When his fingers wrapped over the bony upper arm, he shot the full force of the “gift” into Bryan.

Bracing himself, he opened the path. In order to take Bryan down it, he had to join him. He wished he could have tried to break through Bryan’s shields, made it a fair fight. There would be nothing fair about what he was about to do.

When they reached that strongest memory, Bryan and his soulmate in her kitchen, he stood silently at Bryan’s side. Through Bryan’s eyes, Derek saw her beauty. Her hair more lustrous, eyes brighter. The lines of her face, the plump body he’d known intimately. The soul that knew him and his heart. Nothing in the universe felt like that connection except divinity itself, because they were one and the same.

She had a woman’s distracted look, as she balanced the daily to-dos. Like Ruby, when she was holding Jem on her hip while talking to her gun store manager on the phone, plus scribbling out a grocery list. All while Jem played with her ponytail and Derek lifted his morning coffee from the counter, pressed a kiss to her throat. She’d dip her head toward his, brush her hair against his face, and offer him an absent smile.

Derek would have smiled at the memory himself if what he was watching didn’t cut him to the bone as a result of what those kinds of memories meant.

Bryan and his soulmate had had chickens. She was talking about feeding them. Bryan fell to his knees, held her tight. Everything he’d missed came back to him, a storm created out of all the elements. Overwhelming.

Tears were born again, squeezing out of his eyes as she bent over him, put her arms around him, confused but giving comfort. Derek didn’t tune into their words. Not just to give Bryan privacy, but because he was closely monitoring the course of energy inside the former Reaper, staying aware of when he would step back mentally, when reality would penetrate and detonate like a dirty bomb.

Though his conscience had been bludgeoned into numbness, Bryan had possessed one. In her arms, he began to remember what their love had truly meant, all the layers. Its connection to his choices and how he’d intended his life to be lived, the purposes he’d intended to serve. The truth began to grow within him.

Be ready, Derek sent the gesture to Mikhael. He blocked out everything else, the inevitable route this would take. He could have probed Bryan’s mind during the distraction, seen if he could break through those shields Bryan had said would avail him nothing, before this went too far, but he wouldn’t risk it. What was at stake was too important.

Ironically, a reason Bryan would understand.

It was not the first time Derek had had to do something like this, but his bonding with Ruby and the birth of his son had made him far more aware of what Bryan himself had pointed out. Little separated him from this male except Derek’s heart, his woman, still lived. He would do anything to protect her. Ruby knew that.

When she’d broken free of the Dark Soul magic, she’d needed his help to do it. But she’d realized how far Derek would go to keep her from being lost to it. She’d held onto who she was, enough to know the right thing to do. Even though she’d thought climbing out of that despair would destroy her, she had, because she’d had him to clasp her hand, stand with her and heal.

Bryan was getting the illusion of that rescue. But though he’d scoffed at it as such, he couldn’t resist the power of Derek’s training. When he recognized it was an illusion, it would be because the truth of his soul and conscience had been opened by it. And then things would get ugly.

He rose, stepped back from his wife. She was gazing at him, that half smile on her face. As she began to shimmer, Bryan looked through her, saw the route he’d followed. Nights working on the right formula, chasing down texts he’d needed. Coming up with the spells, mapping every clue until he found out where the Fates were, and how to take them from the Loom. Open the protections on the Isle so the demons could attack it, hold up their end of the bargain.

In his rage, he would have killed the Fates if he could have, but he’d known that was beyond his strength. Instead, with cold calculation, he’d embraced his madness, recognizing an escape from the force of the pain in pushing himself to the limits of his genius, with no moral boundaries.

He’d wanted the Fates to suffer, but he’d been controlled enough to keep his wits, shift them into a contained environment where they thought they were still working the Loom. They were stuck in a loop of awareness where they never progressed beyond a single fixed point in time, an extreme form of short-term memory loss.

The spellcraft was fucking amazing. In other circumstances, his soul would have been marked as a candidate for Guardian training. The Underworld would have offered it to him as an alternative path when he was ready to shed his Reaper mantle. This loss had derailed him. A soul learned and grew, and he hadn’t grown enough. He hadn’t been able to cope with the loss.

Whether mortal, Reaper or Guardian, the will could be broken. Everyone had something they couldn’t bear to lose.

Got it? Derek asked silently, knowing Mikhael was seeing the same formulas he was seeing, the location of the reality shift for the Fates.

Got it. Coming?

I’ll finish this.

Do you wish me to stay until it is done? Mikhael wasn’t sentimental, so the offer was a surprise.

No. Every moment counts. I’ll rendezvous with you.

Mikhael disappeared. A chill tapped Derek’s spine, either from his exit, or foreboding about what lay ahead.

Bryan stared at the unfurling path he’d taken. Experiencing the full, vibrant memory of the love that had started it years ago, under the gaze of the woman who’d adored him, he saw with clear eyes where he’d ended up. And the point in his timeline when his actions had resulted in the deaths of others. Those he’d pulled from their own lovers and families.

Then what Derek had showed him revealed itself again. The souls falling into The Pit, those already lost to the abyss, those marching toward that edge. The possibility that Bryan’s soulmate could be one of them.

Derek hoped not, but there was no guarantee.

Bryan tried to avert his eyes, began to mutter again, but he was inside his mind, no shutting it out. A denial choked from him. Now back in the desolate room where Mikhael and Derek had found him, he dropped to his knees. “No.”

It didn’t take long. Derek felt the knowledge bludgeon Bryan’s heart, blow after agonizing blow. An immortal could be killed, if one knew how to do it. In this case, the immortal had taken himself to that threshold, by allowing Dark Soul magic to drain his lifeforce.

Derek watched life die out of Bryan’s eyes, but not the horror, the knowledge that he couldn’t change what he’d done. Redemption would be a long road for him. But like death itself, it was one they all walked.

Let them who are without sin cast the first stone.