Bewitched & Betrayed

Roughly man height and shape, the Reaper had the translucence of a jellyfish, with filmy tendrils flowing gently around it like the ragged edges of a long, tattered robe. I knew from experience that those tendrils turned into constricting coils when they touched you. Yes, those tendrils could be soft and soothing, but a Reaper was also death in its purest form, eternal cold, and I do mean eternal. Its touch made you want that cold more than you’d ever wanted anything, to step into it with open arms, eager to embrace the darkness. Reapers used that lure to draw the souls of the wandering dead into themselves.



Like the souls in the Saghred.



I dimly heard Mychael and Vidor Kalta shouting orders.



The Reaper in front of me wasn’t getting any closer; it just hovered there. This many Reapers weren’t here to collect just one wayward specter. A few weeks ago when I’d escaped the Reaper in the tunnels under the island, I knew that it would be back, and when it came it would bring reinforcements.



Dad stood at the top of the stairs, not even twenty feet away.



“Run!” I screamed at him.



Dad knew the danger. From the expression on his face, he wasn’t running from anything.



Dammit.



Anyone who had died and been brought back to life was fair game for a Reaper. If you had only been dead a few minutes, you were still theirs. The young Guardian whose body my dad’s soul inhabited had died. As far as the Reapers were concerned, coming back to life was my dad’s problem, not theirs.



He ran toward me, darting around the Reaper. A tendril snapped out, lashing Dad across the back. His breath hissed out in pain, but he kept coming until he was at my side.



I couldn’t believe him. “Are you insane?”



He flashed a crooked smile. “I’ve heard that question a lot.”



To everyone watching, he was a twenty-year-old Guardian either brave or stupid enough to tangle with a Reaper. To me, he was a dad trying to protect his newly found daughter.



“I’ve dealt with them before.” His words came quickly and in near silence.



I caught a flash of another face under the young Guardian’s skin, that of Eamaliel Anguis, my dad. I knew it was an illusion—at least I thought it was. Dad’s elegantly pointed ears marked him as an elf, a beautiful pure-blooded high elf. His hair was silver, and his eyes were the gray of gathering storm clouds. Eyes identical to my own.



Eyes that could see the Reapers just as clearly as I could.



Sudden movement caught my attention. Vidor Kalta. I didn’t think he could see the Reapers, but he knew exactly where they were, surrounding us. Then he saw my dad and his black eyes widened in realization and disbelief.



Oh no. He knew.



The body that housed my dad’s soul had been murdered, dead for only a few minutes, but dead was dead and Kalta knew it.



The Reapers were coming out of the walls. I felt two of them rise from the floor behind us. Dad went back to back with me, his entire body suddenly aglow with the same incandescent white power that had covered Mychael’s hands.



He was going to fight.



“Tell me what to do,” I asked as my eyes tried to look everywhere at once. The Reapers were too damned fast.



“Tamp down that rock!” he growled. “They can’t eat what they can’t find.”



“I’m standing right here,” I snapped. “It’s not like I can—”



“Just do it. Leave the rest to me.”



“How are—”



Dad took my hand and his thoughts instantly passed to me.



My mouth fell open. “You’re kidding?”



“It’s worked before. Take care of the rock and leave the beasties to me.”



No doubt my dad had plenty of experience keeping Reapers away from the Saghred, nine hundred years’ worth. But as far as these Reapers were concerned, I was the Saghred.



And his idea of fighting them was to sing them a children’s song.



It was a nursery rhyme sung by children at bedtime to chase away things that hid in closets and under beds. Those were imaginary monsters; these were real.



These were hungry.



My dad, Eamaliel Anguis, was a master spellsinger. Arlyn Ravide, the young Guardian whose body his soul occupied, was not.



His first note confirmed that with sickening certainty.



Arlyn Ravide couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. The Reapers were getting closer but Arlyn’s off- key tenor kept right on singing. It wasn’t just awful to hear; it was going to get us killed.



Then magic spun from that note-cracking voice. He was doing more than singing the words; he was believing them, and that belief gave them life and substance, but most of all it gave them power, pitch be damned. I could feel it and so could the Reapers. This actually might work. Arlyn repeated the verse again, and then again, and each time the words took on a new certainty, a defiance. The Reapers didn’t back off, but they didn’t come any closer. At this point, I considered that a victory.



Until the souls inside the Saghred began to struggle.



“Stop them!”



Dad’s urgent plea came inside my head. I wanted to answer him, I wanted to stop the souls that were surging up inside of me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t breathe. The Saghred was in a guarded and warded chamber five floors below, yet I felt it as if I were holding it in my hands, feeling the souls writhe inside. Their terror was mine and so was their desperation.



One soul broke away, then another, and yet another, trembling with eagerness. They weren’t inside the Saghred.



They were inside of me.



Inside of me and struggling to get out, to go to the Reapers, to embrace and be embraced by Death. They wanted it with an intensity that stole my breath and froze my body. They were coming out; the Reapers were drawing them out.



Through me.



I gasped with shallow breaths, the shouts and screams of the men around me dying away until my own panting breath was all I heard. I looked down in horror as a twisting, curling ribbon of light as thick as my arm emerged from my chest, the cold vapor of a wraith, a captive soul that was captive no longer. In a flash of light it was gone, snatched by the nearest Reaper. Another wraith followed the first, then a third, and a fourth.



I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t scream, and I desperately needed to do both. I was blacking out. Pain dug with white- hot claws into the center of my chest. It felt like my insides were being ripped out, and I was helpless to stop it.



I raggedly dragged air into my lungs and screamed, an agonized wail of unbearable pain.



The wraiths inside of me stopped.



And the Reapers rushed us.



Vidor Kalta shouted something and ran forward, a spell spreading a black nimbus over his long- fingered hands like a shield. He used it like a battering ram between two Reapers. The things jerked away from him as if burned and he closed the distance to us. The nachtmagus turned his back to me, putting himself squarely between us and any Reaper who tried to get past him.



Vidor Kalta was defending us.



Three Reapers darted back and forth mere inches from the nachtmagus’s extended hands, looking for a weakness, determined to find a way to get past him. Kalta’s already pale face blanched further under the invisible onslaught, beads of sweat forming at his temples and running down his face, his breath harsh and ragged. He couldn’t hold on for much longer.



What felt like a whip made of ice lashed itself around my wrist, jerking my hand from Dad’s grasp. He disappeared into a knot of Reapers.



“No!” I screamed.



A roar tore its way out of my throat as I shielded myself and charged into the Reapers. Tendrils that a moment before had looked thin and filmy lashed at me like the stings of hundreds of jellyfish. My legs went numb with cold; coils whipped my throat, face, arms. One wrapped like a weighted chain around my waist and dragged me down. Coils of soul-numbing, burning cold grabbed at me, stabbing, slashing, looking for a weakness.



Finding a way in.



I screamed in terror and pain. I struggled to think, to fight back. I was covered in Reapers, panicking, their coils weaving their way around me like a shroud. I’d denied Death before; I would win again. My scream turned into a snarl, channeling my rage into a white- hot fury. I had to fight them; I had to get up. They would take me, and then they would take Dad.



A flash of impossibly bright light pierced the cold. An avenging angel, blazing with rage and savage strength, beautiful and deadly.



Mychael.



The coils and tendrils loosened, retracted. I could feel my legs and arms burning as if lashed with fiery whips.



A pair of arms wrapped around me, warm and strong. I blinked slowly, trying to focus. My vision cleared and I looked up into eyes younger than my own, but haunted with nine centuries of life.



I dimly felt my lips twitch in a smile. “Found you,” I croaked. My throat was raw from screaming.



Dad’s hands were cool on either side of my face. “Raine!” His shout came to me as if from the top of a deep well.



I dimly heard Mychael shouting commands, then he was by my side. He spoke quickly to someone I couldn’t see; his voice was forced calm, but his words had an urgency that scared me.



I looked down at myself.



My hands and arms were covered with red lashes. My shirt was in tatters; the raw welts slashed my chest, back, and legs. I tried to move and pain blazed from every burn as I fell into darkness.



Chapter 4



I drifted.



And dreamed.



Impossibly soft, sun- kissed sand, heated and firm against my back. Gentle waves and ripples flowed over me, caressing my bare skin with tropical warmth as I lay in the shallows, my long hair flowing loose around me. Soothing, calming.



Healing.



The waves receded and the dream slowly shifted. Large, warm hands roamed over my body, caressing, lightly brushing, barely touching. Strong, skilled fingers soothed painful aches, aches that were determined to drag me awake.



I wanted to stay right where I was, warm, cradled, held.



Held?



My mind’s brief flutter of concern was outvoted by eyelids too heavy to open, too content to move. I sighed and shifted, rolling over on my side, snuggling back against the source of that warmth.



Warmth whose breath tickled my ear, followed by a low, masculine snore.

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