Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

"Dallas Wilde, you better not have killed that poor little thing."

Barnaby stood over my death altar with his hands on his hips, dangerously close to brandishing a wagging finger.

"I asked you to bring the head, not your judgment," I reminded him. "Hey, Funus."

The skull in Barnaby's possession swiveled his glowing yellow eyes over to me.

"Good morning, acolyte."

"There are plenty of things you could murder that I wouldn't care about. What about a cockroach or a spider? Mice are intelligent creatures."

"I don't think cockroaches have souls, Barns." I wiggled my fingers in the air as a demonstration. "I needed something with little hands."

That finally got his finger wagging with gusto.

"A mouse is a perfect practice specimen for your training," Funus agreed until he heard Barnaby take in a pre-rant inhale. "But of course if you killed it, that's not nice. Horrible even. Shame on you."

"Oh, for the love of the Saint." I picked the thing up by its tail and held it upright like a mouse-sicle. "I bought it frozen from the pet store. It's snake food." I set the mammal flavored icy treat back onto my altar. "I'm not a monster."

Barnaby tossed me a dismissive sniff of satisfaction.

Adjusting Funus on his pillow, he said, "I'll come back and get you when you're done. I rented that new documentary we wanted to see."

"Oh, wonderful!" Funus's eyes brightened. "Thank you, dear."

I rolled my eyes as Barnaby's cheeks flushed.

"Oh my God, get out. Your affection offends me. I'm doing death magic shit and I need to get into the vibe."

Barnaby didn't acknowledge me now that he had no ammo to wield accusations of mouse murder, and walked past to leave Funus and me to my dark bidding.

"Shut the door behind you!" I called, grunting in agitation when I heard his footsteps leave the room without the accompanying door closing. I lifted off of the floor and stomped over, shutting the door with a bit more force than I should have. "How the hell do you stand that fussy little shit twenty-four seven?"

"You bring that out in him, not me." Funus scanned over my death altar carefully, humming through his teeth. It had taken me a few times to remember the placement of the candles, even longer to dedicate memory space for the runes that I'd written across the hardwood in chalk.

The glass jar containing Zane's ashes was placed beside me. He wasn't part of the ritual in the technical sense, but if I had to suffer through novice level bullshit to get his ass back to life, then his ashes had to endure it with me.

As a previously savant necromancer reduced to a fumbling novice, the biggest struggle was putting up with all the extra flair that went into pulling a soul back from the void. When I still had my powers, still held the Goddess's scythe in my chest, I could feel death magic like cold, slippery tendrils snaking up my arm as it crawled from the void. The power of death was at my fingertips, reluctantly obeying my command like an unruly octopus I'd wrestled into submission.

I had gotten pretty okay at it. It almost felt like second nature by the time we had gotten into the crypt and found Funus.

Now it took me hours to feel even the smallest blip of death magic as it passed by, even with the reanimated skull of one of the Death Goddess's chosen training me.

It was frustrating, insulting and fucking heartbreaking each damn night.

But I had to keep going.

I had to keep trying to find him, one little piece at a time.

"This will do," Funus told me, satisfied with my altar. "Do you remember the mantra I taught you to recite in your head?"

"Yeah." I flicked my lighter to life, the cheap plastic cool against my palm as I took my time lighting each candle. "I remember."

"Close your eyes and recite the mantra of the Goddess, hold the visions of the void close to your heart," he instructed me with the same docile tone he did each time. Funus had the patience of a skull that had been sitting dormant in a crypt for hundreds of years, unfazed by the snail's pace my training had been going thus far. He honestly didn't have anything better to be doing, other than watching history documentaries with Barnaby, which sounded like torture if you asked me.

I complied, exhaling out all the air in my lungs to try and settle my mind. Sitting still and reciting mantras wasn't easy for me, and fighting the war against my desperation to do literally anything else and my heart's ache to see Zane again was never ending. It was up to me to get this right—to take the time to learn necromancy from square one—even if it was incredibly, painfully, gruelingly boring.

The Goddess mantra was as dry and repetitive as the psalms I'd had to learn for the Saint's church as a kid. All human created religions were fucking terrible. Jinn got to have full feasts when they gathered for their services, onis got to go on a hunt. A hunt! Like with bows and shit. It was so cool.

And sex demons?

Well.

Orgies, of course. Which sounded way more fun than sitting on a pillow in my room chanting about how merciful and amazing death was. Yay, death is great, it's part of the cycle of life, all things balanced between, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, my God I would have killed for something to eat or to be brandishing a bow instead of talking to myself. I'd even take hearing about the orgy instead of going. Someone tell me a sexy story instead of whatever the hell this was.

Fuck.

I wasn't paying attention. How long had I been thinking about food and sexy stuff instead of doing the mantra thing?

I rubbed at my eyes and shook out my hands, reluctantly starting over.

Okay.

Death.

It's great.

The void is all around us, part of the cycle of life that brings balance to the universe. The void is unbiased and eternal, an endless expanse that holds all that was and will be.

But was it truly endless? That's impossible, right? Even the known universe in space had a beginning and an end. Wasn't the sun supposed to burn out and leave us in darkness, thus ending the living universe as we knew it? And at that point, if there's no intelligent life left to perceive the universe wouldn't that mean?—

Focus, hunter.

I breathed in deep, holding his words in my mind. Focus. I needed to focus.

This wasn't just practice for the sake of it. I had a reason for trying to house this power again.

A grumpy, book obsessed, gothy reason.

I had to get my shit together.

I held the mantra in my mind. I remembered standing in the void with him.

The shadow with red eyes, the thumping of his beating heart encased in a skeletal hand. The ripple of the void danced away from me as I stood beside him, marveling at how close it had been with his blood on my tongue.

I remembered the Goddess's presence beside me.

I remembered how pleasant the cold was.

With my mind calm and visions of the void in my heart, I reached a hand out to let it hover over the body I meant to control.

"The void is close but won't listen to mortals easily," Funus reminded me. "You have to be persistent. Patient."

Those two attributes weren't high on the list of skills I'd mastered, but I wasn't about to let that stop me.

The chill of the thawing mouse breathed against my palm, and I used the sensation to draw in more memories of the death magic I used to control. I focused on the old feeling of ants dancing across my fingertips, the frigid grip of tendrils on my arms.

I wanted the void to hear me, to part and let me reach in.

This would be the time Zane would have placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, anchored me against the tide of darkness. The phantom touch made a chill dance up my spine, a tight breath escape my lips.

He could always find me.

Find me now.

Find me now, Zane. Please. I'm here. I'm right here.

Please.

Please.

I felt it.

A small thing, a fleeting kiss of cold spark against my fingertips. The void was there, teasing me, letting me know it could hear me knocking.

"Hold it," Funus whispered. "Lock that feeling into your mind and hold it still."

I twisted my hand and curled my fingers in, grabbing the threads of magic that tangled themselves like spider silk. It felt like a whisper compared to the powerful arms I had felt before, but it was there. Fragile and fleeting.

I held on as tight as I could to something as wispy and intangible as a broken spider web, sweat prickling my hairline from the effort. I set my jaw and pulled tighter, the webbing slipping and resetting into thicker threads with each tug. I kept pulling, demanding more, wanting to feel the ants, the tendrils, something close to what I knew I needed.

"Don't force it," Funus was saying. "The connection is fragile, acolyte. You need to do this in steps. You need to develop a baseline."

The threads between my fingers hummed, not quite cold enough to be a true void connection, but much stronger than the frail webbing it had been before. I knew the void was close, because I had seen it before.

I had seen it with Zane on the island when I was dying, and again when I had healed my leg and needed to be reassembled.

I knew it was close. He was close.

I had to find him.

I took a breath and pulled hard, focusing on the darkness of the void I had met previously when my life as a necromancer was tied to a vampire. I was a powerful, death magic wielding badass once. I could be again.

I was going to be again.

Or I'd die trying.

I felt the cold chill race up the threads and tighten around my fingers, felt the hum of magic as the void opened a tiny window under the mouse.

"Slow and steady," Funus was telling me. "Hold the control. Don't fight it."

The cold bit into my skin, the feeling of death painful against my living flesh. I wasn't a necromancer yet, just an asshole who was dabbling in things beyond his mortal soul. The instinct to jerk my hand back and slam the doorway into the void shut screamed, but I locked it away next to the never-ending sadness I felt knowing I had let Zane die in my arms.

My vampire had died because of me.

It was my fault. I deserved to feel the cold. Deserved to feel whatever horrors that would grind me into pieces as I ripped his soul back from the void.

Starting with this stupid little frozen mouse.

I would bring this thing back to life to prove that I had mastery over both planes of existence, and nothing was going to stop me—not even the Goddess herself.

It took one loose thread to undo all of my hard work.

Before I had even placed my hand into the void, I felt one thread snap and coil away.

Then another.

And another.

"Fuck," I hissed, curling my hand into a fist as I tried to rein them in. The window started to shut, the presence of the void disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. My muscles strained as I held on, temples pounding and sweat trailed down my neck as I desperately tried to hold on to the magic.

"The connection is hard to maintain. Don't fight it. Narrow your focus," Funus was saying, but I couldn't listen to him. The control over the magic was slipping too fast, the threads melting away before truly forming.

The final bit of magic fell away, the chilly touch of death replaced by warm blood flowing back into my fingers.

The void closed. The threads just a fading memory. The frozen mouse on my altar thawed without ever budging an inch.

"It takes time, Dallas," Funus told me as I shoved to my feet, pacing the anger out of my body so I didn't kick him like a soccer ball.

It wasn't his fault I'd failed. I knew that. Hell, I wasn't even mad at him. I just really wanted to punt something across the room and he was the perfect size.

"I can't get the threads to stay solid! As soon as I feel the traces, they slip away," I raged, throwing a pillow instead of kicking the skull. "It never felt like this before. It was always so overwhelming and powerful, like arm wrestling a fucking kraken. Now it's like I'm slapping at passive aggressive cobwebs."

"You had the Goddess's scythe before," Funus reminded me. "That type of power normally comes from a lifetime or two of study, hard work and dedication to the magical craft, acolyte."

I rubbed at the pounding in my temples, scrubbing my eyes as they threatened to get glassy.

"I can't wait a lifetime to see him again, Funus."

The gentle skull sighed, heartbroken even without the torso to house a heart inside.

"I know. I wish I had a short cut I could teach you. I really do. You'll get there, Dallas. I know you can. We need to work on getting you grounded, finding you an anchor to help the magic from slipping."

"An anchor?" I dropped my hands away, blinking resolve back into my vision. "What do you mean?"

"Having an anchor keeps your mind from wandering, thus solidifying your grasp on the void's threads." His bright yellow eyes followed me as I paced. "Normally, that's a Thrall. They can help ground you to the void. But since you don't have one, we'll need to find you another source to keep you focused."

"Like what? Music? Weighted blanket? Guided meditation? I'll try anything, Funus. Name it."

"We can try all of those things," he said gently. "Whatever helps to maintain your concentration. You need to be patient. This is going to take time, but I'll do my best to keep it under a lifetime. I promise."

"Under a lifetime" wasn't the estimation I wanted, but it was better than "never."

It would have to do until I could find a solid short cut. Or I got my goddamn scythe back.

Hang on a little longer, Zane. I'm coming for you.

My despair and pity party was interrupted by the unmistakable beat of the police pounding on the front door. No one else knocks like they want your door to cave in like the cops, I'm certain it's part of the training process.

"Ballsy coming up to Sias's place with that energy." I blew out my candles and shoved the thawing mouse back into its plastic container. "You gonna get the door, Funus, or should I?"

"I would but it seems like my legs are asleep," Funus played along, which is why he was my favorite. "Unless you want to toss me at the doorknob and hope I can grab it with my teeth."

"Nah, Barns will get mad if we try that again." I picked Zane's jar up and placed it back onto the bed next to Twig's pillow. We had found a comfortable arrangement that allowed her to sleep next to his ashes without trying to knock them onto the floor. There was a brief scare when she couldn't reel in her feline instincts to shove objects off high places, which involved me diving across the room to catch Zane in a free fall.

From that point on, the jar slept between us on the bed. And Kevin judged us for it, because he's literally the best.

With Zane safe and sound, Funus was scooped up into my arms before I let Twig back into the room.

The moment I opened my bedroom door, she sprinted inside with a whiny, disappointed scream.

"I told you the mouse isn't for you !" I shuffled around her as she tried to trip me, hoping to see me crash to the ground so she could pluck the mouse-sicle off my body. Her stick tail shook like a rattlesnake as she followed me all the way down the hall, occasionally dancing on her hind legs to try and paw at the plastic coffin.

"This is my practice mouse, you fiend!" I lifted the container higher. "I need it for death stuff!"

This mattered not to the tiny beast. She demanded tribute, and I was the insufferable brute that was not giving in to her demands.

The pounding at the door had picked up in rhythm, which signified whoever was playing the Cop Knock Solo was getting pissy.

"Barns!" I called, shuffling down the hallway to avoid stepping on a Twig. "Come get your head."

"Who in the world is at the door?" Barnaby materialized down the hallway, taking the cheerful skull as it was passed to him. "Who did you upset now?"

"Like, recently? Or within the past few months?"

"Should we be concerned?" Funus asked from Barnaby's arms. "They sound…persistent."

"If they were the bad guys, they wouldn't be knocking," I tossed over my shoulder as I made my way for the door. Sias's mansion wasn't gigantic, but it was large enough that it took me a leisurely stroll to make it to the foyer. You know a place is fancy when it has a room for the front door that was bigger than my whole damn apartment.

Twig was delighted when I picked her up so she could chew at the plastic mouse container, and I tucked her into the crook of my arm while I swung one of the double doors open.

"Hey, my favorite DHAP officers!" I greeted Preston and Seyyid. "You're looking haggard and underpaid today."

"You fucking deaf, Wilde?" Preston greeted me with his normal level of assholishness, which meant he was doing much better than the last time I saw him. "I've been knocking for ten minutes."

"I can go back in and let you round up to a solid twenty if you want."

"Can we come in?" Seyyid placed a hand on Preston's shoulder, calming the fire before it could lash out and burn me. "We need to talk to you about something."

Seyyid, who was the lesser of the two evils, still had bruising around his left eye from when he had been clobbered during a vampire attack. Normally, I'd chalk it up to inexperience with handling the undead jerks, but this time I had to admit his defeat wasn't exactly his fault. The vampire that had surprised him had been one of Florence's monsters: an undead vampire grunt that had still retained its bio-magic abilities after death.

Which should be impossible.

Seyyid had taken a nasty hit to the head and almost gotten to visit the void permanently, but he'd survived if only to keep Preston from going into freefall.

I shoved the door open and stepped aside, letting them shuffle in. The weather had started to turn from frozen and miserable to soggy and miserable with the changing season. Spring was threatening to warm us up and bring on the allergies, and I was trying to avoid it as much as possible.

I was already going through enough without adding itchy eyes and a dripping nose to the mix.

"As happy as I am to see you," I told them with the same dryness my sinuses currently had. "I am a very busy man."

Twig watched the two men with her ears back, little fangs puncturing through the lid of the container.

"Nice place," Preston mumbled with the bitter jealousy of an underpaid and overworked government employee. Demon and Human Alliance and Protection officers made more than regular beat cops, but that didn't mean they made nearly enough to handle the specific hells of navigating magic regulations. "How'd you score this level of sugar daddy?"

"Because I have a huge, well-endowed personality." I shifted Twig in my arm so her little rear paw knives stopped digging into my skin.

"There's something going on in the city," Seyyid jumped in. "We're not exactly sure what, but we're hoping maybe you could shed some light on it."

"More weird vampires?" I guessed as Seyyid fished his phone out of his pocket.

"Not exactly." Seyyid tapped on the screen before pivoting it in my direction, producing a fuzzy picture of a black cloud surrounded by DHAP officers. "This was taken in Midtown three days ago. Does it look familiar in any way?"

The grainy picture wasn't doing much in providing anything tangible, but the urgency in Seyyid's voice told me it was worth another look. Upon further scrutiny, the cloud in the hastily snapped picture wasn't as incorporeal as I thought. It wasn't so much a cloud as an ink smear, and my brain rattled around as I tried to make sense of it.

"The only thing I could think of is a Thrall. They can turn into mist, but…this is too dense." I offered the phone back to Seyyid. "Was there connected vampire activity? Drained bodies, grunts, anything like that?"

"I don't think this is a Thrall," Seyyid corrected, wisps of silver trailing up like smoke from his jinn eyes. "It was more like a hole. A rip."

"Officers located this after a citizen called it in. They said the air tore open and this was left behind," Preston stepped into the conversation. "Wilde, something came out of the fucking thing."

My stomach turned sour. "A tear?"

"A creature came out of it," Preston reasserted. "It took three officers to put it down."

"I don't know what this is," I confessed, the sour state of my stomach warming into resolve. "So, skip the guessing games and tell me everything you know."

"All we know right now is that the tear happened around three in the morning, and there was no vampire activity reported in the area," Seyyid took over again. "The tear was contained using concentrated life magic in an amplification device, but it took a heavy blast to get it to knit. As for the creature, we don't know."

"You don't know?" I echoed, mystified. "You don't know like you don't know how to describe it or you literally don't know?"

"It's classified," Preston growled. "We don't have clearance."

"Bullshit," I shot back before I caught Seyyid's wince. I hadn't noticed or truly cared that the two DHAP officers before me weren't in uniform until that moment. Preston sporting the scruffy beard of a man whose future was uncertain, and Seyyid looking exhausted around his magic, silver eyes.

I offered them Twig to pet as an apology.

"You're freelancing this case?" I asked.

"You could say that," Seyyid lamented. "We had to call in favors for this much info. The rest is locked up tight."

"They're calling it an ‘unclassified magical anomaly,'" Preston growled, rubbing Twig between her ears. "We've been benched pending investigation after I went to them about the vampires still holding on to their bio-magic. They still don't believe us."

"Even after Seyyid was attacked?" I snorted. "What the fuck else do they need? One to walk over and give them a formal greeting?"

"One officer not following protocol and getting hurt on the job is not evidence," Seyyid explained. "We're on leave for a while, and are being watched carefully."

"Do you know if the creature that came out of the rift is still alive?" I asked and Preston shook his head.

"It's dead. We got that confirmed." He smoothed Twig's hair down and exhaled. "We think there are more, but we can't get confirmation. If there is a pattern or something setting these things off, we don't have that intel."

"But we do know that DHAP have ramped up patrols in lower east Midtown bordering the Swallows," Seyyid provided. "That seems like a good place to start."

"Saints, this is bad." I rubbed my face with my free hand. "Alright. I'll get out there today and start scouting the area. If you two are being monitored, maybe give me space. We don't need your buddies trailing me."

Preston had started piercing me with his cop stare, brows pinching the skin into a crease.

"What do you think this is?"

I glanced down at Twig, who was back to busy rabbit kicking the mouse container. "Without seeing this thing or what came out of it, I can't say. It sounds like dark magic, but I don't know of any necromancer that summons creatures beyond vampires."

Preston was going through his own shit, and I knew that. The man had almost lost his boyfriend in a brutal, bloody fashion, and in return he was thanked for his service by getting kicked to the curb. Under slept and haggard were a fucking understatement for the state this guy was in.

And I knew he didn't like me. Hell, I didn't like him. He was a prickly asshole on the best days, and I knew if it wasn't for Seyyid, he would have tried to punch me more than once.

He didn't know.

But that didn't keep me from going numb with rage the moment he spoke.

"Why don't you ask your vampire boyfriend about it?"

I put Twig down.

"What did you say to me?" I heard myself ask, but I wasn't driving anymore.

Seyyid had placed a hand on Preston's arm to get him to back down, but his bulldog wasn't listening to commands.

"You don't exactly have my unbridled trust, Wilde," Preston spoke around a scowl that aged him twenty years. "Last time I saw you, Seyyid was in a coma and you were palling around with that fucking Thrall?—"

I punched him hard enough to break his nose, but Preston's face was a brick. Clearly it wasn't the first time he'd had his face punched with the attitude he had, so his nose was much more pliable to greeting a row of knuckles. Both of our training kicked in at the same time, two hurricanes of military infused aggression throwing each other around on a marble foyer.

Only I was cool with throwing knees into dicks and going for the eyes. Saint's Army trains to kill, not contain.

I was also really fucking mad.

Before I could cripple Preston or make him unable to sire mini-assholes, I felt my temper cool into a concrete, ironclad choice not to continue to pulverize him. It washed over me like a wave of clarity, like I had known all along that's what I wanted to do.

I let my fist drop to my side, the fingers curled in his collar relax. Preston blinked in a haze, his eyes the placating silver of manipulation magic, as he released his vise grip around my wrist.

"There we go," Seyyid was telling us, his jinn magic a blanket of reason around us. "Neither of you want to keep fighting. You're both ready to calm down."

"Ugh." I pushed off Preston and rubbed at the ebbing grip Seyyid had over my skull. "Yeah, alright. I'm done. Get your jinn magic out of my head."

Preston made a similar grunt of acceptance as Seyyid pulled him to his feet, his eyes easing back to their normal color.

"Are we done being apes?" Seyyid quizzed us both, dusting his boyfriend's shoulders off.

"Didn't realize that was going to hit a fucking nerve," Preston grumbled, wiping some blood off his lip. "Fuck's sake, Wilde. If your Thrall might know what this shit is?—"

"Zane," I snapped, my temper threatening to give his face an encore. "His name…" I trailed off when the grief kicked in, freezing the anger into an icy dagger pressing into my belly.

"Do you think that the tech you went hunting for has anything to do with what's happening in the city?" Seyyid pressed. "Do you think it's connected?"

"Maybe." I rubbed at a spot on my jaw, annoyed that Preston had landed a solid hit during our scuffle. "Florence has some strong necromancy magic. I aim to get it and destroy it. Maybe it'll solve both of our problems."

Preston's cop gaze had lost some of its teeth after the fight, but the old dog wasn't down yet.

"Give us a reason to trust you. You're keeping something from us, and we've given you everything. How do we know this necromancy shit isn't something you're tied up in?"

"I am tied up in it," I shot back. "I'm fully fucking tangled, Cheslock."

"You have a Th— Zane," Preston corrected. "And you're going after some strong necromancy shit that might be causing monsters to spawn in the city. Look me in the eyes and tell me you're not going after this crap like our ancestors did, Wilde. We're human, we fall for this shit."

I ground my teeth so tight I thought my molars would disintegrate.

"I'm going to destroy that thing, not use it in some weird undead power fantasy. I'm a vampire hunter and necromancer assassin, it says it right on my fucking business card. I don't care if you help me, Cheslock, but don't stand here in my sugar daddy's foyer accusing me of being something I'm not. I'm not a goddamn monster."

Preston's jaw bunched as he ground out his frustration, the heat starting to fade from his eyes. A soul deep sigh escaped from his flared nostrils, and I saw his hackles drop.

"That's fair," he lamented. "I don't like you either, Wilde, but I can at least admit that you're not a monster. You," he paused to choke on his words a second. "You did help Seyyid. You kill vampires. I trust that you're not actually trying to do something evil, at least not with this."

"I'm not evil," I agreed. "I'm ambiguously aligned, but I'm not evil. You can trust me on that."

The solid, confident stride of Sias could be heard echoing down the hardwood hallway before he made his appearance in the foyer. He was dressed immaculately as always, a bespoke suit with the jacket left behind, a vest tailored to show his broad shoulders and narrow, belted waist covered by tailored slacks and designer shoes.

What really brought the whole look together, was the plastic apron covering his ensemble, smattered in what one would consider an alarming amount of blood.

"Ah, there you are, love," Sias purred. "I was finally able to get our guest to speak. Join me in the sunroom and we can discuss." His eyes flicked to Preston and Seyyid, the blue hue darkening only a fraction. "See your guests out."

He turned and left without another word, the snap of a latex glove traveling with him as he peeled the bloody mess off his hands.

There was an awkward moment when the only noise was the fading sound of Sias stripping off his gloves and me clearing my throat, but I managed to scoot around the gobsmacked DHAP officers to open the front door.

"Drive safe, officers. Send me the address of where that tear was, and I'll check it out."

"You really think we're going to ignore that?" Preston turned his head to me.

"Sias is really into finger painting." I flashed a smile. "It's a fully immersive experience. Highly sexual. Nothing you wanna hear about."

"You gotta be kidding me, Wilde."

"You get your info your way, we get it ours." I placated Twig with some pets as she mewed at me, bored with the mouse coffin she couldn't break.

"Seyyid," Preston whined as his partner took him by the arm and gently guided him out.

Seyyid made a point to lock eyes with me, the silver wisps of his magic like fog. "I'll send you the address. Don't make me regret this." He tugged his partner along with him. "One battle at a time, Preston. First the tears, then we'll look into…whatever that was."

"Finger painting," I reminded them, hurrying them out before shutting the door behind them.

I waited until their arguing traveled further from the door before I let out my breath and rescued the mouse coffin, now sporting cat teething decorations. It was deposited in the freezer before I found Sias in the sunroom.

"I'm not sure if it was awesome and hot that you just dismissed two DHAP officers while wearing an apron of gore, or if I need to resign myself to shooting them at some point, which would be a bit of a bummer," I told the incubus who was reclining on a couch like he was posing for his tenth oil painting. The apron was gone and I had no clue what he did with it.

"They're not a threat." Sias motioned for me to sit. "Have you eaten?"

"No, but I have a feeling you're about to tell me something that's going to kill my appetite anyway." I landed on the couch with much less grace or poise as the slick sex demon.

"You need to eat," Sias scolded. "You can't keep skipping meals, darling. This is important."

"Is Reynolds still alive? That was a lot of blood on you."

It made my stomach churn just saying Reynolds's name out loud. The bastard had been my well paid, criminal doctor for years before he sold me out to Florence and took Zane from me.

Reynolds was the sniveling dog turd that had shot my Thrall with the healing nano tech, dissolving him from the inside out like the vampire had been made of cotton candy.

Sias's eyes swirled an aggressive shade of yellow before cooling into an ocean blue.

"He is. For now."

"Good." It took me a breath or two to unclench my jaw. "That asshole doesn't get to die yet. Not when Zane is still gone. Were you able to get anything useful out of him?"

"Through the groveling and mewling, he did mention that there had been discussion of testing the tech controlling the vampire grunts in some secret place in the city." Sias checked the status of his nails, no doubt checking for bits of Reynolds that had possibly bled through the plastic. "He didn't know where, unfortunately."

"Does he know anything about the tech? How it works?" I pressed.

"Not the specifics. He was able to explain that they are tethering them together with implants at the base of the skull, syncing them under one master control. The magic is necrotic in nature, but altered in some way using jinn influence frequencies. Perhaps Dex can build something to counter it."

"Yep. My appetite is shot." I rubbed at my poor, stressed stomach. Instead of it being an endless cavern for me to toss junk food into while gallivanting around the city, it was currently perpetually full of cottony anxiety. "A master control over grunts using manipulated death magic is just so great. Love that for us."

"Speaking of death magic." Sias tilted his head, gold catching the sunlight at the tips of his curled horns. "How did your lesson go this morning?"

"Shitty." I rubbed at my eyes, exhausted from my attempt at necromancy. "Not much progress to report. I'm really bad at this whole dead stuff business."

"You'll get there, darling. I know it's impossible for you, but try and be patient. The wait is always so rewarding."

"Yeah, when it's something fun like ordering a cake or edging. Then the pay-off to all the waiting is delicious. Trying to grab onto the void's magic to bend it to my will isn't at all like fighting an orgasm or eating icing."

Sias hummed. "What did the cops want?"

"We have a fun new problem. Apparently there's some mysterious rifts tearing open across the city."

"What do you mean ‘rifts'?" Sias lifted a golden eyebrow.

"I don't know yet. They said a tear opened up in Midtown and something came out of it. They specifically used the word ‘creature,' which I'm not thrilled by." I bounced my knee to keep from springing up. "I have a bad feeling that they are void tears."

Sias motioned for me to continue, a furrow settling onto his handsome face.

"When Zane and I were at the cemetery, the scythe kind of…fired out of my chest and hit a tree." My chest bloomed in warmth from the memory before wilting into dust. "The blade tore into the void like a rip. So, it is possible for strong enough death magic to cause tears. I don't know that this is Florence or if it's a very ambitious necromancer causing a separate issue."

"Lovely," he said wryly.

"My thoughts exactly." I lost the battle of containing my anxiety and got to my feet. "I'm going to go prowl around Midtown to look for more of these rips. I can't sit around here meditating to the Death Goddess any more today."

"I'll bring the car around." Sias stood, his suit refusing to hold a single crease.

"You're giving me a ride?" I asked stupidly, to which the beautiful incubus in front of me regarded with amusement.

"I'm coming with you. If there's something tearing holes into the city, I'd like to know why. I have a lot of real estate here, you know."

"Sias, this is death magic. You can't get close to it," I reminded him. "It'll consume you, or make you something undead and gross."

"Good thing life magic can be infused in weapons." He checked his watch. "If we leave now, we can miss traffic."

"You really want to prowl around the city with me to hunt forces of death that might be ripping holes between realities?" I clicked my tongue. "Might dirty your suit."

A silky landslide rumbled through his chest as he chuckled, and I felt a trail of heat climb through my fragile being. It made me shiver to feel something other than cold grief, and that bliss quickly splintered into sharp barbs of guilt.

"I'm not one to be sloppy, darling," he purred.

"My mistake," I managed, my cheeks erupting into flames as his long, elegant fingers curled around my chin.

"And Dallas?" He gave my chin a squeeze. "You're not missing breakfast. Get something on the way to the car. I'll know if you don't."

Sias left me standing there in his sunroom, a little dumbstruck.

And kind of hungry.