Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (2 page)

Another cringer. He wondered if she'd ever noticed that ninety percent of her vocabulary had been canned. They made it five feet into the lobby before she nicked the carpet with a stiletto and toppled. She wasn't drunk. He did a lot of things, damn near
everything
, but drunk wasn't one of them. If she was naturally uncoordinated he didn't give a shit.

Sio turned to catch her and glanced at the fireplace a few feet to his left. The eyeful he got caused him to reassess the amount he'd had to drink. He nearly dropped his date trying to make sense of the nude delusion being devoured by the shifting onyx on the wall.

The half-submerged female in the fireplace kicked the training wheels right off his huffy. The severity of his physical reaction threw him for a loop. He had no clue how to respond to a situation like this. One look and every nerve ending in his body was linked by a near fatal current, humming as if he'd tongued a car battery. The fire light played over glistening bits of her velvet tan, showing them off to their best advantage, while in shocking contrast the darkness wrapped around her like liquid. It slithered over perfect, pert, gravity-defying breasts tipped with tight pink nipples that he wanted to do amoral things to.

God damned gorgeous, lady.

He blinked to clear his head because events like the one he was witnessing did not happen in real life. He counted out a handful of seconds with his eyes shut. When he looked back, the fireplace looked the same it always had; trendy, beautiful, architectural, and totally lacking. Problem was, he could feel the damn thing seething.

Sio stood slack-jawed, trying to wrap his brain around the mental hiccup he'd experienced. Meanwhile, his heart was vibrating with the kind of intensity that made him wonder if it was possible to separate the beats.

"I'm okay, sexy. Come on."

He wasn't. He was not okay. Not after that, and if he was being honest probably not before. The girl's grating voice and hard tug on his arm jarred him out of his stupor. He glanced at her without seeing her. He felt like he was lucid dreaming, with everything existing in a way that was hazy and surreal. Too bad the only thing he wanted to be real was a complete fabrication of his sex-addled skull.

Sio followed Gray Dress, letting her drag him along like a child until he regained a foothold on the grim reality of his life in the familiar, if not claustrophobic, setting of the first floor men's room.

The funny thing about death was how much it made you think, not about life, but of the last time it happened. Being dead came part and parcel with the memory of dying. Resurrection, on the other hand, just fucking hurt. It hurt so much that the unbearable agony was not first and foremost, but the only thing that existed until it didn't.

Tian hadn't been aware she was corporeal again until the sensation of rapid ascension preceded a sharp impact. Her body gave way under the onslaught like a bug hitting the windshield of a high speed vehicle. Every miserable molecule was thrust through a virtually impenetrable barrier in torment.

She would have screamed if her organs had been working properly. They weren't. Half of the little bastards were frozen, the other half were in shock. Tian's skin was cold enough that the condensation ran in ichor tinged rivulets from her body where she lay heaving, curled over on herself, ass in the air, forehead mashed into the ground. The pain was debilitating.

Translucent glass shifted under her with the rolling fluidity of water, battering her like a small boat lost at sea, sending her skidding helplessly through the inky puddles that had accumulated beneath her. The warm light pulsing below the crystalline surface stung her eyes as the easy shadows of the grave gave way, dripping from her lashes.

"A great many females are beautiful in their anguish," sighed an aristocratic tenor. "You...I hardly think it suits. Get up."

Tian struggled to acquiesce, contrary to the screaming protests of her palsied limbs.
She was still choking, expelling tar in a viscous outpour through both her nose and mouth.
The Gate's aftermath didn't burn any less on the way out.

"Do you presume to keep me waiting, mongrel, or are you simply that weak?"

Weak.

It was an execrable answer, but at least it was an honest one. She wasn't stupid enough or crazy enough to give it voice. Instead, like any well trained slave, Tian fought to get herself off the ground, taking more time than was safe or pretty. Eventually, by some act of the absent Goddess, she plugged her feet in under her and clambered to a position that resembled vertical.

The surface she was balancing so poorly on was the sole solid patch in a vast expanse of rolling steam and rippling water that extended to the tiled edges of a once opulent bathhouse. Far above rose a wild canopy of intricately laced stained glass panels. Tendrils of vines and fully grown plants drifted upward beneath the insubstantial plane at her feet, curling against the brittle liquid in patterns that were both lush and primal. A single emerald tree grew from the depths in front of her, laden with layers of weightless pale white cushions. The long extinct sapling slumped towards the liquid as if bone-weary under the gravity of an immense burden.

Tian wiped her mouth and nose with the back of a still shaking hand in an attempt to clear off the drooling darkness and bowed her head. "Oracle," she said, acknowledging the well-dressed male lounging in the tree's embrace. Her throat was raw from misuse.

"Half-breed," Oracle countered on a sucking inhalation. He was using a long thin filigree pole to consume the tendrils of mist in every conceivable color that rose from the pool she struggled to retain footing on.

The Oracle's azure gaze narrowed into reptilian slits as he appraised her in a way that made her uncomfortable to be naked. "I certainly hope that you prove to be more useful than you are aesthetically pleasing, Little Death. Your disfigurement is offensive. It puts me off my vapors."

"Apologies, Oracle."

Tian averted her face to obscure the lines of scar tissue that streaked diagonally over her right cheek. She watched through her peripheral vision as he exhaled a plume of bright orange smoke that had been a different color when it had entered his body.

"See, now don't you feel better?" He speared a gaseous pocket of lavender haze with the pipe balanced lazily between the middle and ring fingers of his right hand. His skin took on the same cast as the cloud he'd just discharged, causing him to look bloated against the white cushions.

"If it pleases you," she answered.

She didn't feel better. She didn't feel anything except the usual hollow agitation in her ribcage. Then again, if she hadn't been theoretically afraid of him she would have told him to go fuck himself, so maybe she did feel something after all. It was hard to tell.

Tian watched the trapped cloud of lavender vapor as it billowed a hairsbreadth before shooting down the metallic tube. The Sidhe Oracle ignored her, sucking hard on the other end of the pipe with the singularly focused zeal of an addict. He paled along with the inhalation, going boneless, as a light purple flush started in his throat and worked its way through a body perfectly formed for leisure. It took less time than she had expected to consume the garish orange color that had made him look like a kumquat. He still looked plush, though.

There were no harsh angles to the Oracle's physique, no leanness that indicated he had ever known hunger or struggle. He was well made in the way of all Sidhe, but soft, like a bully aware he'd never be troubled by karma. And under his pampered aesthetic lurked something off kilter, a taint that worried at the foundation deep below the pristine veneer like a plague. The undeniable sense of decay, or alienation, or insanity spread outward corrupting the temple around them in subtle ways. The realization made her twitchy.

"Such a pity about your face." He belched around a writhing mass of emerald green smoke. "Even for a mongrel you were never without charm."

He leaned forward and used the filigree pipe to trace the curve of her breast. Tian quit tracking him through the corner of her eyes and stared at the swirling patterns in the tree bark as she made a concerted effort not to flinch or fight back. She slipped beyond thought, beyond the near equatorial heat of the space, dissolving into a vacant balm of apathetic lassitude until she was devoid of response.

"A female is not meant to have hard edges, and you," he continued in a business like tone, "now have entirely too many. Tell me Little Death, do you find that you miss the ministrations of your first Lord, or does Eamon put that extraordinary resiliency to good use behind the confines of closed doors?"

Prick.

There was a beat of silence that indicated he might continue. When he didn't, she responded wondering, given the now greenish tinge to his flesh, if he would be amicable or unnaturally inclined to be contrary to whatever came out of her mouth.

"You would have me answer?"

The Oracle hit her hard, snapping her head to the side with enough force that at least one vertebrae was dislocated in the process. He'd left his seat and struck out with such speed Tian had barely seen the blow coming. She sure as hell felt it land though. She landed and skidded on the aether as the surface solidified in a series of angry pops and crackling noises. Tears welled reflexively at the corners of her eyes.

"I did not call you here because I had the desire to be questioned by a mongrel. Speak."

A flare of white hot fury arched through her, ashes even before it had formed. She struggled to hold on to the rare spark and came away with nothing. Obviously, it had been the wrong thing to say.

Tian shook her head to clear the fog and bit back a curse as her neck popped back into place. She stood, noting dully that her blood looked darker mixed in with the remaining ichor from the gate. The vines beneath her curled towards that brackish mixture in a disturbingly aggressive manner. She watched them as she answered, knowing the emptiness in her expression was only going to provoke another attack.

"Eamon wields all weapons with mind bent to purpose. They are honed the same."

Truth, followed by another obstructed sucking noise from the Oracle that made her want to grab the front end of the pipe and shove it through the back of his hairless skull. Instead she stood there, impotent, hands at her sides, bracing for another violent response.

None came, only a breathless wheezing laughter followed by a statement that made her blood run cold. "As that is the case," the Oracle said, "you should be able to appreciate that I too, have found a purpose for your accursed existence." His fevered eyes glittered with malicious amusement.

"Oracle."

"Your absent tone comes dangerously close to profaning my position, mongrel."

Tian dropped to one knee and bowed her head in an empty gesture of respect given to one who hadn't earned it in centuries. "I beg forgiveness." There wasn't any emotion behind that statement either, but he didn't notice.

"You may be coarse and unsightly, but at least you are not stupid. There is an object I require you to return to me. It is a simple task really, just find a cup, fetch it, bring it back. I would assume that such a thing is within the realm of even your capabilities."

The Oracle turned his back on her, striding over to his former perch in the tree and settling himself with no small amount of flare. "I also require your oath of silence in the face of The Unmoved," he added in calculated afterthought.

Just a cup, my ass.

Tian's head shot up in shock. The request was at best unusual, at worst she was afraid to consider the repercussions.

He cringed, disgust evident in his features. "You forget yourself, Breed."

Tian swallowed and forced her head back to the side. There were a lot of ways to die badly, repeatedly, and eternally, and dicking around with one's owner was the line item at the top of the list. Especially Eamon. There was a reason the Dark Queen's left hand was referred to as the Unmoved. He was a completely clinical, detached strategist with a silver tongue and little tolerance for deceit. He could taste it, and the ramifications for lying to him were legendary.

Moreover Eamon had been decent to her. He hadn't been gentle, but he and the Queen's Assassin had trained her to be something other than a victim. Eamon had used his position at court to lay claim to her death-proof ass, and thus far had made good use of the ill-fated indestructibility that didn't involve being bartered out to an endless supply of sadists and psychotics for small favors. A slave by any other name, but she owed him for that.

"Perhaps the Dark Queen's own ward Brenwyn would be of more assistance in finding the cup you seek, Oracle. It is said that her gift is quite extraordinary," Tian said.

"The Queen's own ward is an otherwise occupied asset one does not request lightly. You are a convenience and I would have your oath now."

"Oracle."

"I find these one sided conversations with your kind tedious. Your oath."

"No."

The silence that greeted her response was resounding. She was bracing for the series of inescapable blows when they came, so the impact was hardly a surprise. It wasn't as if he could do anything that hadn't been done before, and his ministrations lacked the finesse or purpose she was accustomed to. That said, being accosted with a metal pole wielded like a baseball bat never felt good, no matter what the diameter of it was. She choked, hacking two teeth up onto the aether, and watched them skip across the awkward surface like stones on a pond. The Oracle chuckled.

"Entertaining, mongrel, however, your Lord would not be disinclined to acquiesce to my claim on any of his dogs were I to make one, and believe me when I say that I do not want any of you. Tell me that even with your low level reasoning skills you comprehend the implied threat."

Was he fucking kidding?

"My oath," she said, "that I will not speak of this to The Unmoved, nor will I speak of it in his presence." She was so far removed she could barely hear herself form the words. Tian held her breath, wondering if the Oracle would accept an oath with so many blatant omissions.