01 Chapter Joss
Joss
Damn this rain.
The downpour totally washed out the scent trails I needed to track. But not only that. The lightning didn’t play nice either. Toyed with my other senses, disturbing energy flow as it animated the sky with its forked power surges. Each strike forced a game of peek-a-boo, erasing my ability to track the aura signatures until the skies settled into a rumbling darkness.
Not gonna lie, Lethe had a pretty light show going on. From up here, perched on the roof of one of the many high-risers overlooking the city of Nyx, the brilliant purples shrouded in white-hot vibrations crackled even brighter across the midnight sky. Their luster emitted a phantom heat that wiggled its warmth through my chilled cloak and leathers.
Never seen anything like it — as well as a lot of other things — and we’d only been in the Outerdark for about three weeks now. Of course, the beauty of this realm had been hidden from those of us who lived in Heliades under centuries of lies.
Some of those lies were still hard to swallow.
Like the fact that my mother and some other Belles mind-fucked the Light Fae into believing that everything in Dakikai reeked of darkness. That Dark Fae were beneath us and irredeemable, meshing Kiánáidei into a lump with the chaos of the Dark Ones.
Makes me sick how I blindly followed the council’s dogma without researching it out for myself. My trust so loyal to our Elders, that I nearly rejected my soulmate because she didn’t fit the mold we had all been indoctrinated with.
The Laws were final. The end all of any dispute.
Until Ash.
Her whirlwind stormed into my life, challenging my ideals. Disrupted the rhetoric. Cleared away the clouds blocking my eyes and fogging my mind so I could see reality for what it was. A terrible lie that kept the clueless Nerádei from knowing the truth.
A truth we wouldn’t have discovered if things hadn’t unfolded as they did. A necessary, cruel destiny triggered by Mistress Styx and Corbyn’s relentless compulsion to possess Ash, unleashing one shitstorm after another, which ultimately uncovered the lies.
Nothing Ash nor I signed up for. But a fate we wouldn’t reverse if given the chance, either. Nothing happened by accident or from frivolous choices. This road, hollowed out with our blood and pain, delivered us out of a past we could not return to. Those lies, now beneath us where they belonged.
That cage, no longer strong enough to imprison our lives.
Yet, I felt deep in my bones that we weren’t entirely free, either. We liberated ourselves from one cage, but only to discover another, bigger deception looming on the horizon.
How many more lies were there?
I needed to return to Heliades and speak with my father. Wanted to see his face when I told him I knew the truth.
But that was a meeting that needed to wait.
Too much shit going on here in Nyx. After returning from Farlazan and reviving Slyte, the Lost Boy’s energy went full throttle on digging up intel, chasing the latest lead, to find my children and to recover Ash’s Shadow. Neither one more important than the other.
But when another day passed, it chipped away pieces of hope as another cruel truth beat at my chest, pounding its reality into my heart.
I’ve lost my babies.
I’m losing her.
Another barrage of lightning brightened the sky, strobing in the inky clouds. Not at all outshining them, but mingling in its murky mist. A beautiful dance of dark and light threatening to turn the skies into glass.
A perfect ambiance of Ash. A Fae anomaly of being both a Nerádei and Kiánáidei. A Pan and a Belle. An oddity my mother declared as a freak. In the eyes of the Fae, it is what she was because they didn’t know any better. Something I needed to rectify.
But I didn’t care what others might think of her. Of us. Not their damn business.
She’s my beautiful Freak.
The sky thundered, vibrating the ground with its shockwaves, and interfering with my senses once more. My teeth ground out my impatience as the storm rampaged, as if it didn’t plan to let up anytime soon. Because just as I felt the hint of something, another round of lightning strobed, dulling my perception once again.
Once the electrical currents thinned and dissipated with the scattering rain, I sensed something. I knew this window would close with the next wave of static, so I forced my mind through the thick voltaic fumes, hunting for the aura that reeked of a deranged Reaper void of its moral code. The same feral chaos that thrummed the low, dull frequency of a Shadow Eater.
Because that is what her aura radiated right now.
That same iniquitous energy I sensed as I lifted my head and shifted to the left. Inside the soaked black hood, I squinted through the pelting rain over the miles of city lights, as if I needed my eyes to see her. I didn’t. Not since we mated. Instead, our bond fluttered more like a vibration, its waves rippling over my aura as I honed in on her position through the bond.
I had to move fast before the next electrical barrage purged her trail.
With wings spanning wide, I pushed off the roof.
A shimmer flashed on my right a few buildings away with Slyte’s energy sizzling the edges of his aura like fire as he shifted into a blazing bronze version of a Crow. Inside his dark hood, coppery eyes burned from its depths, and golden hair no longer wet, swayed in the heated vapors.
‘I think I got something,’ I said through our mind-link as I pointed. He nodded without question. There wasn’t any time to second-guess this shit. ‘Follow me–’
We both jerked into a hover mere seconds after we flew a few yards when my thoughts buzzed with Dylan’s presence.
‘Blake’s got something!’ he muttered, also alerting the Lost Boys scattered across the city.
‘Are you sure? Not another diversion?’ Peter interjected with the same scrutiny that squeezed my lungs.
We had already confronted a handful of Shadow Eaters tonight. How they managed to get past Mistress Nyx’s perimeter kourtína shields hyped a whole other problem to be figured out, but it wasn’t our major issue right now.
Needed to focus on the shit in front of our faces first. Like Ash. And how their auras threw us off her scent as much as this damn storm. A grand-scale goose chase that forced the Lost Boys to split up, hustling after every skiofágoi frequency, hoping it would be Ash at the end of the trail.
This also happened a few weeks ago, the first time I found her gone and the silver sclav busted to pieces on the bedroom floor–same as I discovered the replacement bracelet tonight but this one was nothing but metallic blobs like it had melted off her wrist. Had to be magic.
The first time was a coincidence. The second time made it a pattern.
I didn’t know what the hell was going on, or who exactly within Nyx’s fortress could rid Ash of her protective wards that help her manage her Reaper while we searched for her Shadow, but I was absolutely sure it had everything to do with those bitches, Styx and Megara–Mab and Portia–whatever the hell they wanted to call themselves.
‘You sayin’ my math ain’t mathing, Daddy Pan?’ Blake hmm’d through the link. ‘Trust the science.’
‘Trust the — what?’ Peter huffed. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes. I have eyes on her now,’ Dylan replied. ‘And we’ve got incoming. Three skiofágoi. But they seem less interested in us, and more about tracking her.’
‘Shit!’ Peter hissed. ‘Send us a location! Jem, what’s your status?’
’We’re on the south side. Kurlee just found what appears to be a portal surrounded by skiofágoi. I’m thinking it’s their access point. We’ve alerted Nyx. As soon as her boys arrive, we’ll be headed your way.’
‘No worries.’ Dylan said, ‘My team can handle the Shadow Eaters while I send Fala to trail Ash.’
’What’s this ‘we’ stuff?’ Blake scoffed. ’Always signing me up for your Fae Squid Games.’
‘Dammit, Blake–throw out a signal for your location, already!’ I barked, impatience burning hot as I scoured the sky in the direction I had initially planned to take. Drawn to it by my own metaphysical science, as he put it.
Blake mumbled, ‘All these cranky Crows are driving me into a mental crisis.’
Once Blake’s vibrant green radiance throbbed like its own lightning strike forking upward into the inky sky, I smiled with the validation swelling in my chest. Hope revived and pumped its vigor throughout my soul.
I am right! It’s where I felt her to be!
I haven’t lost her.
Our bond hadn’t eroded to where she would be too far gone for me to detect her.
Only a matter of time when it would if we didn’t find her Shadow.
Another barrage of lightning blinded my senses, its atmosphere suffocating my nose and cutting off my link to Ash. Although I roared at the impeccable timing, I could still see Blake’s light crackling within the black clouds.
Before the signal washed away within the storm’s energy influx, I bolted in a rush of wind and feathers. With each clash and rumble, Slyte and I weaved in a manic aerial dance to outmaneuver the aggressive strikes. Changing flight patterns didn’t help, as if the storm could predict our movements and lashed out at our attempts to evade the missiling bolts.
A roar burst from my lungs as lightning lashed against my thigh, cutting deep enough to slice skin. Luckily, my thigh hardly had time to bleed before the extreme heat cauterized the wound. The near-miss hadn’t even been enough to electrocute my ass and send me spiraling into the city streets below. But I wasn’t out of the woods. That strike still shook my system–like grabbing onto a live-wire–causing my muscles to contract and cramp into the worst charley horse I had ever felt.
Motherfucker! Hurt like hell.
I’d been hit by lightning before, but not since I was a kid and learning how to navigate through storms with the other knights during Íroas training. That had been a few centuries ago, but I didn’t remember it feeling like this. Like hot wire wrapped around my thigh, and squeezed its barbs in my flesh.
Style shifted around from where he hovered. His hood had long fallen off his head, as did mine. Worried copper eyes pinned once he found me drifting as I struggled for breath. I could see the intention in his expression. He would fly back the distance he had gained because he wanted to heal whatever damage I suffered from.
“NO!” I barked against the preceding thunderclap, holding him off. No time for that. Not when seconds mattered with so much stacked against our success.
I can’t lose Ash.
Not again!
Not to Mistress Styx. Not to her tainted Reaper.
Gritting my teeth, I roared even louder, ignoring the knotted ache as I darted for the dwindling green in the angry clouds.
Zeroing in on the mayhem that came with beating down Dark Ones, finding Dylan and Blake hadn’t been too hard. But I didn’t see Ash or Fala. Still couldn’t feel her either, since that damn lightning from hell seemed to follow Slyte and me to the open-ended alleyway. Its flashing, violet lighting up the dark corridor with each jagged blitz.
Desperate to needle into the passageway, what looked like some macabre, static hand, speared and diverged into the narrow space. It only made it as far as a canned lighting fixture, blasting it off its mount. Absolutely obliterated, its pieces rained down, hitting a redcap that had been charging for Dylan. The chunks of metal pulsed with static current, shocking the Dark One enough that it lost its footing. Its grotesque, pallid body continued to slide with the momentum, still aimed to collide with Dylan from behind while he fought off a Shadow Eater.
Dylan wasn’t battling as a human, nor in his átimoíra chaos unicorn form. Instead, he faced the corrupted reaper in his Dark Belle Kiánáidei’s second state–the Wylder. With Tynk’s help over the past month, he learned how to take on what the Light Belles call their mikrí state, which would simply be perceived as a butterfly if a human saw it due to a Belle’s illusion enchantments. Better known as a pixie with butterfly-esque wings to humans who were endowed with the sight and could see them in that form.
For a Dark Fae, they called them Wylders, which appeared very distinguishable aesthetically from their Light counterpart. Although they could still be just as colorful, their hues vibrated with a vivid, darker shade. Rather than the delicate chitin wings of a butterfly, the Wylders had more of a sinewy membrane, tough, like the skin on a batwing.
Contrasting far from the pixie he had dressed up as for equinox, Dylan’s Chaos Belle aesthetic consisted of his leathers, boots, and sharp, angular batwings, which glistened in the shift of the light with an undertone of a dark vibrant blue. That version of Dylan from half a year ago, full of life in those green wings glittering in gold smiles, did not exist anymore.
Chaos fused in his soul the moment his protective ward broke, throwing him into this new era of his existence. A life I knew he despised, because he wore that hate in the deep grooves of his features, in the rough tone of his voice, and speared with the reds of his eyes. A chaos he learned to bridle tight against his chest, because he understood the consequences of letting go. Saw it first hand with his sister.
Ash can’t help it.
I’ll be your strength, baby. As long as you need me to help you contend with your inner demons, I’ll do it.
Like Slyte did for Dylan. The anchor that kept him from losing himself.
Since he had learned to shift into a Wylder, he preferred to keep this form. He said he wanted to feel comfortable in his new skin, learn to live with it, fight with it, like he did his dark Unicorn.
Embraced who he had become in order to leave behind the man he used to be.
Otherwise, he’d go crazy with the melancholy.
Slyte dove for the red cap just as its gangly, pasty fingers reached for Dylan. Groans clashed in greedy discord with its elongated tongue snaking outward for a taste and the eager click, click, click of its garish talons mere inches from Dylan’s calves. Slyte landed on top of its back, slamming it hard against the pavement, his boots digging into its spine, which visibly protruded under a skin that stretched far too thin and revealed far too much of what wriggled and writhed inside it.
The Dark One screeched as Slyte slashed and burrowed his claws into its body. Unforgiving, as he ripped chunks of tissue and innards out of its cavity.
Blake’s grunt pulled my attention to his location further down the alley. His scars always seemed to glow brighter the more emotional he became. Perhaps the more pissed? Present time included, as he squared off with a skiofágoi. The Dark One must’ve clued in quickly that getting close to Blake would be a bad idea. His touch meant death to any Pan, whether it be Dark or Light–and apparently even Chaos. His repulsive vibes, meant to scare off any Crow.
Heh–Blake became a real Scare Crow in the flesh — just like his equinox costume, too.
Not a speck of that usual sass flirted in his expression, his features now blanketed with furious determination as he launched that brilliant green energy from his hands. The first time I fought with him, I noticed that, too.
The two sides of Blake Edwards. The one he showed everyone—the cheeky pain in the ass that beamed sunshine and rainbows — and then this version that glared and snarled at the Dark One like he was about to rip its neck off and piss down its throat.
“Blake — where’s Fala? She still tracking Ash?”
Without taking his leering, neon-green eyes off the skiofágoi, he pointed upward. I didn’t need to ask for any more details. Blinking through the pouring rain, I followed his finger to the second floor and the vacant window lacking a kourtína. No way anyone would have their energy shield switched off during a storm like this.
I hadn’t prepared myself enough for what I might find inside the window frame.
Last time, things rolled out differently. We found Ash just a few miles away from Nyx’s palace outside a Crow’s dwelling. Perched in a tree, her red eyes leered through the cloistered branches at a couple who lounged outside in their yard, enjoying a drink while they lazed under the stars.
When I had arrived, her ravenous expression melted into relief, whimpering as she reached out for me.
Now, she didn’t even acknowledge me in the room. I flew through the window into the pitch-black room and landed without a sound, but she should have at least sensed me because we were so close.
Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I found Ash in the sitting area, and discovered exactly what distracted her.
I swallowed, blinked, trying to force myself to believe something else. Because this couldn’t possibly be true. This wasn’t my girl flanked by Pan corpses while she straddled a third between the furniture.
“Ash, baby?” I whispered, creeping closer. My voice barely audible over the mewling groan and sucking slurps. But those noises weren’t coming from her. Ash, dressed only in her bedclothes consisting of a short, silk slip, and bare feet, panted and gasped as she drew the emerald energy from the victim, as if lost within the throes of an orgasm. My teeth grit, not at all okay that something else made her shudder and moan like that.
Ready to wreck anything and everything.
But the disturbing grunts and sloshing, wet ripping noises upstaged the grudging spite that barely had a chance to get a full hold on me. Any emotion other than revulsion bound its terror in my throat, so much that I couldn’t breathe.
At the feet of the body that Ash caged, a redcap had torn its legs clear of any clothing and supped on the flesh. Feet already gone, it worked one calf like sucking the meat off a chicken bone. Its acid saliva drizzled with her blood, having tenderized it made it easy as it slogged its way upward.
I shifted again to Ash, either unaware or uncaring about the monster that feasted behind her. And the creature, not at all interested in Ash–only in what she could provide for it.
A Shadow Eater and its cleaner.
