BloodAngel Read online

  "Routine," Jess said, and laughed. Then she said: "Soulcasting."

  He nodded.

  "You went into the Dreamlines?"

  Kai glanced at her sidelong, his mouth twisting a little. Shadows slanted across the room, across them both. His expression was impossible to read. "Not deep enough," he said. "But I was able to see… This is what I know, now." He unfolded the map and spread it across the table. "The Dreamlines have ruptured somewhere here," Kai said, sweeping his hand across a portion of Nevada desert. "We call it a slippage. The Dreamlines and this world intersect, and the point of intersection becomes what we call a sorenikan. A borderland between the two worlds." He paused, then said, "The Labyrinth was founded on such a place."

  "And you think Asha will go there."

  "She might be there already."

  Jess eyed the map, gauging the distances. "Not that far," she said.

  "No. Not far."

  "How long do these… sorenikans… last?"

  Kai shrugged. "Sometimes for minutes, sometimes for thousands of years. But they're never more powerful than in the first days after conception. After that, it's a long slow decline." He smiled wryly. "Like life."

  "So the Labyrinth would have died eventually, even if—"

  "Everything dies, Jess. But it should be allowed to die on its own. It doesn't need to get shot, beheaded, and burned."

  "What does Asha intend to do there, in this… this slippage?"

  "There's a term," Kai said, "'bloodangel.' It's the term used for any otherworldly entity that's sacrificed in order to bring power to others." He paused, drank down wine. "It's in a demon's nature to devour," he said. "I thought Asha would consume Innat, absorb whatever power she could of him, and then seek the release of her old followers, her Pact. But no. She plans to turn the boy into a bloodangel. With her to call and lead them, demons will find the rupture and descend down into our world; she will offer up her human followers for them to possess, and she will give them Innat's blood to drink. His blood will bind human body to demon soul. Create a new race of beings who will follow her. As many of them as she can make. It's an act that would normally be impossible for her—for anyone, no matter how powerful—except for two things: Innat is weakened and vulnerable—"

  "And the slippage," Jess said.

  "This slippage in particular." He paused, then said, "If Asha gets hold of the boy, a mark will appear in the sky. You will know it when you see it. The mark of the bloodangel. It will mean that the rites have begun. So follow that sign, and you will find him."

  "We will find him," Jess said.

  Kai smiled a little and touched a napkin to his mouth.

  "We," Jess said, more loudly now, "will find him."

  Kai took the glass from her hand. "No more of this," he said.

  * * * *

  Something woke her. Jess opened her eyes and lay quietly, listening for it again. She could smell the cigarette someone was smoking outside and one block down. She could feel the weight of air on her body.

  The cry came again.

  Jess got out of bed, feet whispering across the rug. Starlight and citylight slanted in through the terrace doors, and she had the dizzying sensation that her waking life and dream-life were merging; that the suite was about to transform into the hallway of doors, the ghost-self of Del laughing and mocking her. Kai's bedroom door was closed. She stood there, hearing nothing except the sound of her own heart as one minute turned into the next.

  It came again: the low, tortured groan.

  She opened the door.

  In truth, he kept himself such a mystery she wasn't sure he slept at all. Always he was awake when she retired to her own quarters; he was awake when she rose the next morning, no matter how early. But she saw his shadowed form supine on the bed. She heard the cry break loose of him. His body jerked, arched up, and as she came forward she saw his twisted face. He cried out again, his voice splintered—

  Only dreams, after all. They can't hurt you.

  She had once believed that.

  She was beginning to know otherwise.

  "Kai," she whispered, and touched his shoulder.

  His eyes snapped open and he stared with such violence she took a step back.

  "It's only me," she said.

  He sat up, the sheet falling away from him. She saw his naked chest and shoulders, the muscles in his arms. He was beautiful. How was there ever a time she had not found him beautiful?

  "Bad dreams," she said.

  "Bad," he agreed.

  She got into the bed with him. She didn't have the nerve to check his reaction, only surrendered herself to the impulse. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. She could feel the energy lifting off his skin, a strange mix of hot and cold; she could hear, deep in his body, the relentless bass of his heart. He relaxed ever so slightly, and his hand came up to grip one of hers.

  He said, "Bakal Ashika. She's sending me dreams. She's getting stronger. And she and I…" He paused, and then said, "My father," and his voice faltered.

  She could see he was on the verge of a confession, something deeper and harder than anything else he had said to her. "My father," he said again.

  She brushed her lips against his shoulder. "Tell me."

  "We are linked, Bakal and I. My father was her father."

  He was silent. He was looking away from her. She took a moment to absorb this, to cast it into language.

  "Your sister," she said blankly.

  He gripped her hand, squeezed it. "Although I never knew. Never knew. She and her mother—" Jess waited. He took a breath, and said, "You want to know, you need to know, I will tell you. My father was a tyrant and eventually a madman. He became obsessed with his young sister, my aunt. He seduced her, or raped her, I don't know. She became pregnant. He exiled her from the Labyrinth. When he sent out an emissary to learn what had happened to her and the child, reports came back that they were both dead. But the child… She was brought back into the Labyrinth and sold as a slave. I saw her, you know, I saw her many times over the years, in the markets, and sometimes at court, I knew the ones who owned her, but—I never knew, never thought—"

  He was silent.

  "She's coming closer, Jess. I feel her energy. She has followers now, disciples. They are starting to find each other. We're running out of time."

  She closed her eyes. She didn't want to feel fear anymore. She kissed his throat. A sigh escaped him and he turned towards her, eyes glinting in the dark.

  He moved his face into her throat and they paused, then; she listened to the rise and fall of their breath, taking on the same rhythm. "Jess," he said, "Jess," as if not knowing what more to say, or if he could say anything; she heard the reluctance in his voice, knowledge of this threshold, but she also heard his longing, and it was this longing that she listened to, the rest that she ignored. She looped her legs around his waist and felt him give, then, his arms sweeping round her back, pulling her into him. Heat broke around them, and she felt her own desire to be devoured, as long as it was by him, she would let herself be incinerated, as long as it was by him.

  He pulled away from her, gasping. "Shit," he said. It was the first time she'd ever heard him use profanity. "I can't do this. I can't—"

  "Why not?"

  "It's forbidden. You—" Kai rubbed his mouth, pulled slightly away from her, but his hands stayed on her body, rising to her shoulders, compulsively gripping, kneading, as if testing the raw material of her.

  "I'm what?"

  She saw his rueful smile before he looked away. In that moment she caught a quick glimpse of the younger, reckless man: there had been, she intuited, many, many lovers.

  He murmured, "You're not just any woman, Jess. I have to stay detached."

  "Why?" Jess whispered. "Why? The world could end tomorrow…" It was such a corny line, she had to laugh; and yet there was truth in it.

  He touched her face, running his thumb along her cheekbone. "Ah," he said, "ah, Jess—"


  "You're not detached," Jess said.

  His smile faded. She saw the darkening in his eyes, then, and she moved even closer, running her hands across the smooth broad planes of his chest, the softer skin of his belly, daring him now: "You're not detached. Not since you stepped into my loft—"

  "No," he said abruptly.

  He tilted his head, studying her, as if realizing for the first time.

  "Not since Cape Town," he admitted.

  Something warm and deep turned over inside her, radiated all through her: something better than any drug, the thing that drugs themselves tried to imitate. "So let it all come down," Jess said, "and we can deal with it after."

  He was silent for a moment; he was so still he seemed to stop breathing.

  Looking at her.

  And then his mouth was on her throat, and he was laying her down amid the pillows. She felt, then, a new touch of fear, something to do with the vast unknown quantity of him, the boundaries between them now thinning, now breaking. This was a new country now. Not my equal. And yet: something inside her, more formidable than she had expected, rising up to meet him, taking him on, leading him inside her.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  She waits for you, Kai.

  Those voices, those whispers, had slipped up from Ashika's spellbooks and into his brain, where they clung like leeches and he couldn't shake them, couldn't reach inside and pull them off. He was plagued by his sister. But then, he always had been.

  She is your blood, Kai, and blood calls to blood. Blood connects us… And through you she will find Shemayan's heir.

  He knew this was true.

  He heard himself telling Mina: I could go to her. I could atone…

  And he remembered what Jess had asked him: How much damage is enough?

  He had refused to answer her, and she had not pressed the question. But now, in his mind, he said, You have to give up everything. You can't be reborn into your power without dying first. And who can say if you'll be allowed to make it back?

  He lay beside Jessamy and watched her sleep. He touched her face and whispered a word and sent her deeper into slumber, fracturing his earlier promise not to use magic on her. But he wanted these long, deep hours of quiet, of gazing on her, before the clouds that had been gathering for so long now finally started to break. He loved the taste and sight-sound and pale silky feel of her, the heedless way she had watched him in the dark—Let it all come down, let it all come down—

  Jess sighed, eyes moving rapidly beneath the closed lids. "It is a false moon," she murmured. Dreaming, he knew, talking to herself. Or maybe someone else.

  "Blood moon," Kai agreed. He himself had only witnessed one, the night before the great destruction of the Labyrinth: like a red hole ripped through the sky.

  "It's just another doorway," Jess murmured. "Remember that."

  He waited for more, but she rolled away from him and seemed to sleep on.

  He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, checked the time. A little past three a.m. He took some hotel stationery from the rolltop desk and wrote it down for her: False moon. Another doorway. Remember. He unfolded the maps of the Mojave—the maps he had meditated and mindshifted over, had marked up with yellow highlighter—and left them atop the desk, the note paper-clipped to a corner.

  Then he left her.

  Time to find what was waiting for him.

  * * * *

  Mist rolled in off the bay, the streets stark and deserted. It was a little past four a.m. He walked with no direction. Bakal would find him. He was holding himself out to be found. He felt supremely detached: as if the world and all its history were spinning away from him, and all he could do was watch it recede.

  The world still held beauty for him. The world still broke his heart.

  The car glided down the street towards him, headlights carving up the dark. Kai stopped and waited, slipping his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. The car pulled up alongside him, the back window sliding down.

  "Lucas," Kai said.

  The man's eyebrows went up in surprise. "So you must be the brother."

  "Lovely night for a ride."

  "Then by all means." The man pushed open the door, slid back in the seat to make room for him. "Hop in."

  Kai took a last glance around him, the Victorian houses with their dark bay windows climbing both sides of the hill. He stepped towards the car—then sensed calm, sun-warmed water, surface rippled by siren's wind, siren's call.

  Jess.

  He turned and saw her. She was not much more than a shadow, keeping well beyond the light from the street lamps, the hood of her black coat pulled over her head. She had deflected his sleepspell. She had faked him out.

  Go! He fired the thought at her. Don't be stupid.

  She wasn't well practiced in this kind of communication; so it surprised him how smoothly her voice came to him, how shapely the words felt in his mind.

  I'll let you go if you tell me why.

  The hiss of a breath behind him. Then Lucas was getting out of the car, demanding, "What was that? Who is that? Who—"

  His gaze went to Jess.

  He fell silent.

  Standing there, watching as Jess and Lucas watched each other, Kai felt a current pass between them. Jess came forward one step, two steps, her face registering disbelief, even shock. Lucas was riveted in place. His mouth moved but no words came out. Finally he hummed beneath his breath, then sang, "You're my little handful/I'm your handful of dust—"

  Kai felt Jess mindcasting toward him—then felt that mindcast fragment, her concentration dissolving. She called out instead: "No. Don't go with him."

  Leave. Casting the thought-word towards her with the force of a slingshot. Now.

  "—Isn't it ridiculous/What love's done to us?" Then he called out, in a low, silken voice, "You want to come with?"

  Jess turned and faded into the shadows. She was there; she was not there. Kai was impressed, and allowed himself a small smile of pride for his pupil. As Lucas continued to gaze in her direction, Kai said, "Are you going to chase girls or do as your mistress commands?"

  The other man's smile was tight and hard. "Get in."

  Rich scent of leather, cologne. The back of the driver's head through the dark glass partition. As the car rolled through the silent streets and out of the city, Lucas leaned back in the seat and said, "So who is she?"

  Kai glanced at him.

  "The girl," Lucas said loudly. "Who is she?"

  "A toy."

  "A toy?" Lucas grinned. "Would you be willing to share your toy?"

  He shrugged.

  "She's waiting for you," Lucas said, and he knew they were no longer talking about Jess. "She's eager to see you."

  Kai said nothing.

  "I've seen you before, you know. In dreams within dreams."

  "That so, Lucas?"

  The musician leaned back in the seat. His eyes held the kind of luminosity a man's eyes should not possess. He had been marked, Kai saw. Marked deep.

  Kai said, "I was hoping you might surprise me."

  "And it appears I haven't?"

  "You could have been great on your own," Kai told him. "Any third-rate psychic could have told you that. You didn't need her. You only thought you did. That's one of the reasons she wanted you."

  Lucas turned his face away.

  "And you know all this," Lucas said.

  "Yes."

  "Because I'm so special."

  "You make the music of angels," Kai said. "We've always been aware of you."

  "Have you listened to our music?"

  "She used to sing, you know, in the Labyrinth. They forced her. I never liked her voice then, either."

  "Maybe she'll sing for you tonight. And you might change your mind."

  Kai laughed.

  Lucas leaned forward in his seat, clasping his hands between his knees. Kai could sense Bakal Ashika inside him, moving through him, fueling and deepening his already considerable gifts. What an interest
ing man he could have been.

  There was the chance, however slight, that he hadn't been as fully consumed by Bakal as one would think; that some of the ferocity in his gaze was still his own. Kai touched the man's arm. The man was closed off, held perfectly within himself: he was absolutely unreadable. Kai was impressed.

  Lucas was smiling at him.

  His face held a shard of knowledge, a shared intimacy, that gave Kai pause. Kai sensed that in touching this man he had also touched on a mystery. Something here that went beyond what he knew, or sensed, or expected.

  Lucas said, "She's extraordinary, isn't she?"

  Asha, of course. He must be referring to Asha.

  And yet, as their eyes met within the soft leather dark of the Lincoln, Kai was suddenly uncertain.

  Lucas said, "I would like the chance to know her. To see what she becomes."

  Jessamy, Kai thought. Is there something here you never told me, or didn't know to tell me? Something I can't see on my own?

  Lucas moved back into the seat, his face slipping into shadow. Kai turned in to his own thoughts, controlling his fear the way Shem had taught him lifetimes ago, focusing and preparing his mind for what lay ahead. It was so close now he could taste it. The blood of it.

  * * * *

  The car rolled over to the shoulder and stopped. The two men stepped from the air-conditioned interior into the blunt hot world of desert. The sun burned.

  Figures stood in the near distance. Kai felt himself falter. The thought crossed his mind very much against his will: I can't go through with this. Don't make me.

  "Come, now," Lucas said. His voice was not without gentleness. "We've come so far."

  He followed Lucas across the hard-packed sand. He fixed the image of Jess in his mind, her eyes, her body, her voice.

  Asha was waiting beside a large outcropping of rock. There were others with her, barely more than teenagers.

  "So you chose," Asha said, "and you chose me."

  Her voice was devoid of the triumph and glee he had expected. Her eyes were flat like a shark's, her body still.

  Kai said, "Yes."

  "I wanted to kill you, once," Asha said. "And for a long time."

  He tipped his head in acknowledgement, then said, lightly, "And now?"