Charlie Madigan.
Shadows Before the Sun.
Kelly Gay.
For Jonathan, who always finds the sun beyond the shadows even when I cannot.
Prologue.
THE SIREN CITY OF FIALLAN.
"Again."
His muscles tensed, going rock hard as the whip sliced through the air with a long, brutal sigh. The glowing barb flashed over the walls of the chamber and struck his left shoulder blade, sinking in deep and then ripping flesh as its power burned like acid through the wound.
A shocked gasp lodged in his throat. The pain strung his body taut, frozen, as though time itself had paused to acknowledge the vicious blow.
In a blink, time moved on and the barb withdrew, catching and slicing the flesh over his hip as his breath returned in a great, shaky rush. His head fell forward, hanging low between his shoulders and pulling down painfully on his arms. Shackles held his wrists high above his head-so high only the b.a.l.l.s of his bare feet touched the cold stone floor.
"A lash for every year you denied us." The voice was so beautiful and pure, so powerful and deep, like nothing he"d ever heard from a siren before.
The initial strike of the whip had clouded his vision with pain, but his sight cleared and he saw them; the three witches who held sway over the king and the entire city of Fiallan. The Circe.
All three were similar in height and looks except for the color of their eyes. Some said they were sisters, some said triplets, but there was no one left alive who knew for sure. Their regal bearing and siren looks were deceptive, though. They clung greedily to their power with ancient, iron fists, still denying the natural deaths that should have taken them eons ago.
"Two hundred fourteen in all," the one on the right spoke, green eyes lighting in earnestness.
He growled at them, adrenaline fueling his wrath and dulling his pain for a brief moment. The arcane barb on the end of the whip would impede his natural ability to heal, to knit his wounds back together. That many strokes might kill him. The old b.i.t.c.hes were ensuring he would suffer before he died.
"Oh, but sisters . . ." the one on the left said excitedly. "He has denied each of us."
Oh s.h.i.t.
He wrapped his hands around the chain above him, cursing his inability to attack, to summon his power, to call upon his voice. The helplessness burned through him as harsh and bitter as the barb that had opened his flesh.
"Ah, yes."
"True. Very true."
"Two hundred fourteen leashes for each of us, then."
Rage urged him to fight, to kill. And yet he could do nothing. He struggled and tried to speak, to curse them, to show his complete and utter hatred, but he could not. Nothing came. His words were hindered by the Circe"s magic, so he growled between ragged breaths, promising them with his eyes that they"d pay.
Oh, they"d pay. Even if he had to come back from the dead, he"d see them pay for every Malakim they"d destroyed, every life they stole. This was not finished.
"Stop when he loses consciousness," the Circe told the whip master. "And continue your count when he wakes. He must feel every lash."
The middle one stepped closer, her head only coming to the height of his heart. She lifted her chin. "Do not waste your time praying for death. You will not die, Malakim. Every time your body gives up and your soul prepares to leave, it will be forced to endure until the final lash is struck."
The second one stepped up to join her sister. "And once it has, perhaps then we will grant you leave to meet your family in the afterlife."
The third joined in. "Welcome home, Nierian, strongest of the Malakim sirens. Welcome home, traitor. With you the great house of Elekti-Kairos comes to an end."
They watched him, eyes wide and eager and . . . waiting.
Waiting until he understood, until he realized the implications of their words. Cold crept over his skin. The last of his family? That could not be true. When he"d left, his family was large, joined of the two great Malakim houses of Elekti and Kairos through marriage. It had been filled with sons and daughters, nieces and nephews . . .
The Circe smiled in eerie tandem as the truth hit him harder than any barb they could ever wield.
"And now you understand the depth of your betrayal."
"Someone had to pay, after all."
"All gone. Every last one, but you."
They left him then.
A scream of despair, bleak and cold, pushed on his chest, but he was unable to release it. Unable to do a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing. His pulse came rapid and erratic. Only a wounded, angry groan issued from his throat, finding its way past gritted teeth and out through lips wet from tears.
They were gone. All of them. Wiped out.
Because he had dishonored them.
Because he had escaped from the tower where he had gone willingly and proudly as a child, where his power had helped feed the four rings of protection that strengthened the inner wall around Fiallan.
Being a Malakim, a guardian, was a thousand-year-old tradition and the highest honor one could receive in Fiallan. But it was all a lie. A horrible, horrible lie.
The Malakim never asked to stay in the towers after their seven years of service was done. There was never any choice, never an escape or a survivor who could tell the truth about the Circe"s towers.
Until him.
He"d found a way to disconnect himself from the grid-as he called it. He alone knew the truth.
Once he escaped, his ring fell, alerting the Circe and the king. They fought in the tower and, somehow, he"d managed to throw the king into the grid, a move that eventually cost the king his life.
Then he"d fled. Branded a traitor and murderer, the first ever in a long line of guardians to dishonor his family.
He had no knowledge of how to care for himself, how to eat, what to eat; the basics were unknown to him, as the grid had taken care of him in the way that power does.
For two hundred years, he lived in the sidhe forests of Gorsedd, learning, growing in strength, and finally leaving to make his own way, always training, learning, and preparing to one day return and liberate the Malakim once and for all.
Only that day had come sooner than he"d planned . . .
He never imagined his family would pay for his desertion; that an entire lineage would end with him.
While he was learning and growing and, in the end, thriving, they were dying.
Christ. They were all dead.
The lash whispered through the air once again and this time when it hit, he accepted the excruciating pain as his due.
1.
"I"m serious, Charlie. I think I"m becoming telepathic."
"Telepathetic is more like it," I muttered.
Rex"s tone went flat. "Funny."
I slowed my vehicle to a stop at the light, and then took a sip of coffee, meeting Rex"s dark, sleep-deprived scowl over the rim of the cup. He was unshaven and needed a haircut. And, yeah, he might be the biggest goofball I"d ever met, but now that he knew who he was and where he came from, he"d become edgier and fiercer than before when he was simply a Revenant occupying the body of my ex-husband, Will.
"What?" He stared at me with one eyebrow c.o.c.ked.
"Nothing." I looked out my side window for a second and then back at him. "Your eyes are different."
"Noticed that, did you?"
"Hard not to," I admitted.
Will Garrity"s gorgeous gray-blue eyes that had always put me in mind of stormy skies were now changed-once I"d pulled his soul from his body, releasing him to find peace as he"d asked, it had allowed Rex"s jinn spirit to lay claim, to knit itself into Will"s physical form in a way that was beyond possession, in a way that was permanent and complete.
As a result, small jinn signatures began to manifest, changing things on the inside and the outside. The gray-blue color of Will"s eyes was still there, but now it was shaded in the violet indicative of the jinn race, turning them into a strange but beautiful lavender shade.
"I look like a f.u.c.king girl," Rex grumbled as I accelerated through the intersection.
Somebody shoot me.
From the time Rex had gotten into the pa.s.senger seat, I"d had to listen to him detail every ache and pain, his every claim and suspicion about what he thought was taking place inside of him. "You don"t look like a girl," I said. "Your eyes are . . . pretty." Which I knew would set him off, but I had a certain payback quota to fill when it came to Rex.
His finger punched the air. "Exactly! Pretty. Not masculine. Not dark and mysterious. f.u.c.king pretty."
"Oh please. Women love guys with beautiful eyes. Trust me. I think you"re good."
He thought about it for a moment, calculating. "How good, exactly?"
I laughed and saw he was grinning. Will had a smile so warm it could melt snow and in Rex"s possession . . . well, the female population of Atlanta was in for a treat if Rex decided to start prowling.
"You shouldn"t fish for compliments, you know," I said, parking along the curb and then cutting the engine. "It kind of breaks the whole thing you got going on with the scruff and the leather jacket."
Rex might look good on the outside, but inside he was a contradiction convention. Arrogant, yet unsure. Extremely intelligent, yet would veg out in front of Nick Jr. like a four year old. A warrior at heart who walked around the kitchen in a cherry print ap.r.o.n reciting Shakespeare sonnets.
He had a devil-may-care att.i.tude that came from thousands of years as a spirit, one who couldn"t be killed, one who had seen it all and done it all within host after host of willing bodies. Until he fell in with the Madigan clan. Until he met my daughter and felt the stirrings of the one thing he hadn"t done in life: be a father. Part of a family.
We got out and proceeded down the sidewalk, which ran alongside the tall fence surrounding the Grove. I ducked my shoulders against the light mist of rain and silently cursed the weather. The off-world darkness I"d summoned months ago still churned above Atlanta like a living shroud, but the rain was even worse. It carried some of the darkness to the ground, creating a thin off-world fog and causing my Charbydon genes to go haywire from all the raw arcane energy in the air.
Ahead, ITF cruisers blocked the 10th Street entrance to the Grove and two officers stood nearby talking. I"d been one of them once, proudly wearing the Integration Task Force uniform and dealing with the influx of beings from the dimensions of Elysia and Charbydon. Eventually, I"d moved on to detective, where I dealt with crime in the off-world communities in and around Atlanta, usually in Underground, the biggest off-world neighborhood in the city.
But those days, like everything else, seemed like a lifetime away, when I"d been human, when I had an ident.i.ty I was sure of. I supposed in a way, Rex and I were both having our own ident.i.ty crisis. We were just approaching it differently.
Rex b.u.mped me with his shoulder then lifted his chin a notch so I could get a good, clean look at him. "So besides the eyes, do I seem different to you? Like on a sensory level?"
Yeah, totally different approaches.
It wasn"t even nine o"clock and Rex was already getting under my skin. "For the hundredth time, no."
"Well, I feel different."
"No s.h.i.t, Rex," I finally said, exasperated. "You"ve been floating around for thousands of years as a Revenant, occupying one body after another. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Now you have a body all your own and it"s bound to feel different for a while. Look, you"ll get used to it." I took another sip from my paper cup. "You kind of have to, since you"re stuck with it."
He rolled his eyes. "Gee, thanks. Promise me you won"t accept any speaking engagements, or start counseling, or writing self-help books. Really. Stick to killing things because your motivational skills suck a.s.s."
I shrugged. "We each have our talents." And I was perfectly fine at giving pep talks when the situation called for them, and this one didn"t. I wasn"t about to feed Rex"s imagination. "But I"ve always thought about writing a book one day . . . maybe something like How to Deal with Overemotional, Highly Delusional Revenants or maybe I"ll just shorten it to Revenants for Dummies."
Rex gave a humorless laugh. "No, yours would be Don"t Let Life Get You Down, Let Charlie Do It Instead."
I shot him an eye roll, unclipped the badge from my belt, and flashed my credentials at one of the two uniformed officers standing before the open gate. Somewhere beyond that gate in the home of the Kinfolk, the city"s largest population of nymphs, was a dead body.
As we stepped around the officers and into the Grove, unease slid down my back. Gone were the concrete paths, the benches, the water fountains, and the public restrooms that existed here years ago when this was Piedmont Park. In their place was an ancient forest, thick and dark-spurred into old growth by the nymphs" magic. The forest of the Grove was dark even on the sunniest day, but now, beneath a cover of living darkness, it took on a sinister feel. And when the nymphs said stay on the path, don"t stray from the path, one tended to listen.
Torches lined the path that cut through the forest from the gate all the way to the sh.o.r.es of Clara Meer Lake and the nymphs" colossal wooden temple. The only things that kept me from feeling like I"d just stepped back in time by a few thousand years were the skysc.r.a.pers and city lights surrounding the park.
"This is . . . rural," Rex said as we kept to the path.
"The nymphs" private playground." The only beings born with the power to shift into an animal form-without the use of spells and crafting-the park gave the nymphs ample room to run and play and hunt. "They built their own Stonehenge on the hill there," I said, gesturing to Oak Hill.
Rex stared at it for a few steps. "Looks creepy as h.e.l.l."
"It"s even creepier when it"s being used."
The stones sat silent for now, ghostly monoliths that could pulse with power so strong and deep it had once made me momentarily deaf and extremely nauseous.
"You know I"m changing, Charlie, or I wouldn"t be here to help with the investigation," Rex said at length.