Blackhearted Betrayal (23 page)

For the first hour of Jeserit’s divination ritual, though, we neither saw nor heard any sign of pursuit. The Seer’s voice rose and fell in varying volumes until it grew hoarse, meaning
quiet
became the default setting. I paced my third of the pentagram’s perimeter, gaze sweeping the area around us. Every once in a while I climbed a sand dune so I could see farther into the distance. I caught an occasional glimpse of Scott and Elliana stalking the night in Hound form several hundred feet away. I never really saw Charlie or Mac—Charlie presumably because he had some earth-magic form of camouflage and as a part-Fury, part-Sidhe, I figured Mac would be even better able to blend in with his surroundings than I was.

Another monotonous half hour ticked by. Nike grew as on edge as I, moving from one arm to my waist to the other arm, and back again. Despite our vigilance—or perhaps
because
of it—the expected attack never materialized. Instead, Jeserit’s voice rose one final time in a triumphant shout, and magic flared inside the pentagram in a burst of shimmering silver light before pouring
into
her scrying stone and fading away.

Jeserit flopped onto her back and convulsed several times. The three of us panicked and ran forward, each smudging a portion of the chalk outline to render the magical circle harmless since Jeserit’s collapse meant
she hadn’t been able to properly banish it. Sahana managed to reach Jeserit first by virtue of being the closest when she fell. Not a bad thing, since the same gifts that allowed Sahana to bring Death could also allow her to sometimes chase it away.

She felt for a pulse and let out a relieved sigh when she found one. “Just backlash, it looks like.”

I heaved a sign of my own and zeroed in on the scrying stone, still dangling from the Seer’s fingers. It glowed with a distinct blue energy it hadn’t possessed before, a light that reminded me very much of the physical manifestation of Fury magic.
Most likely from your life essences,
Nike hypothesized.
If she succeeded in divining the best path for you to take to fulfill your Mandate, the stone should now show the way.
Made sense to me, even if it was a little unsettling to see an inanimate object giving off the same glow that a Fury working magic would.

Sahana began shaking Jeserit gently in an effort to revive her. I grabbed the discarded canteen and shook it. Empty.
Of course!
I shifted to full Nemesis form, beating my wings and jumping upward. “Be right back. Mac has more water.” Which was more than I could say for myself. Since I didn’t
have
to eat or drink, I hadn’t even thought to pack something so mundane, not even for the nonimmortals around me. Then again, the optimist in me had envisioned our foray here being a more straightforward dine-and-dash type of affair than the slog it had actually become.

I allowed myself to enjoy the wind dancing along my skin as I flew in the direction I’d last seen Mac head in. Just when I started to worry that some ill had befallen him, magic tingled below, and he popped into view. My eyes widened because whoa! That had been the closest
thing to true invisibility I’d ever seen. Other than a slight blurriness as he materialized, Mac had been virtually undetectable against the blue sand dune he’d been standing upon.

He hurried forward when I landed. “Everything okay?”

I nodded, gesturing to the spot where he had just been. “You never told me you could actually go freaking invisible!”

He shrugged. “You never asked. Besides, I just assumed all Furies could.”

My brows furrowed. “No, not like that. We do a mean magical camo that makes just about everyone overlook us, but not even close to what you just did. It must come as much from your Sidhe genes as your Fury.”

“Maybe. I never bothered talking too much to the Sidhe Stacia’s cronies captured. Half had been so brainwashed they wouldn’t say
boo
without her permission, and the other half spat every time I came anywhere near their cells. They considered me one-half abomination, one-half traitor for cooperating with her.”

Hard for me to consider someone else who had been raised believing Stacia an authority figure to be trusted only to find out the exact opposite was true any kind of traitor. Especially not when he’d had the courage to break through her mental programming and rescue our mother from the nightmare in which she’d been trapped for two long decades.

“Jeserit finished her divination but passed out. Sahi’s trying to wake her up, but she’s gonna be thirsty when she does.”

He nodded. “Backlash is a bitch. I’ll get it to her while you gather the others.”

At my nod, he began the shift to Fury form—or his modified version. Rainbow-scaled serpent tats burst across his skin, but they’d not yet come to life that I’d ever seen. I was hoping they would once he swore to the Sisterhood. His red hair shaded to charcoal, and his eyes became glowing green orbs the same as mine, and massive, dark-colored wings unfurled at his back. His clothing stayed the same black cargo pants and tee, however.

I waved, and we launched into the air in different directions. Finding Scott and Elliana proved easy enough, and I sent them hurtling toward our temporary camp in Hound form. Charlie, however, was as difficult to track down as Mac had been. He’d also gone farther afield than anyone else, thanks to his ground-eating strides. In the end,
he
found
me
, appearing unexpectedly from behind and snatching a loose feather off one of my wings. Instinct had me spinning and lashing out with wicked sharp talons, but he’d been smart enough to leap back the instant he plucked the feather.

He guffawed at the outrage on my face and wisely took several more steps back. “Sorry, darlin’, but I couldn’t resist. It’s flipping boring out here. Jeserit discover where we need to go yet?”

I gave a grudging nod and took off walking in the direction Mac had taken.
Would serve him right if I left his Giant ass to walk alone!
Nike agreed with my sentiment, but we both knew neither of us would make good on that threat. Charlie fell in step beside me soon enough—ridiculously long legs of his—and cleared his throat a couple of times. We made it another minute or two before he started clearing his throat again, over and over like he really
had
swallowed a frog. It was so very
un-Charlie-like that I stopped and turned to stare. “You swallow some sand or something?”

He started guiltily and drew to a stop across from me. Another annoying throat clear before he finally spoke up. “I’ve got something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

His voice sounded so suspicious, it had me folding arms across chest and Nike tightening her grip around my waist. “Am I going to want to kick your ass when you do? Because it’s only fair for me to point out that we’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s no one here to pull me off you.”

Charlie winced because he knew I was only half joking. I’d gone at him once before when he’d made a very bad joke at my—or rather, Vanessa’s—expense years before. He hadn’t meant his comment the way I took it, but Rage had kicked in before I could stop it, and luckily someone else had been there to keep me from killing him. I liked to think I wouldn’t have taken it that far, but I’d been younger and even more susceptible to Rage then …

“I hope you won’t, but there’s never any telling with Furies, now is there? Look, it’s not something we’ve been intentionally hiding from you.”
We?
I liked the sound of that even less. “But we didn’t want to share details with
anyone
until we were sure of each other’s feelings.”

I blinked, and burgeoning Rage at the thought of another betrayal coming on vanished. My brain switched tracks and tried to think of
who
Charlie could be talking about. I’d suspected he might have a lover when I’d shown up at his apartment unannounced but hadn’t tried to guess who it could be. That list was longer than you
might imagine, because Charlie was known to play for both teams. He was an equal opportunist when it came to love and had a long trail of ex-girlfriends and boyfriends to prove it. Oh, there weren’t a lot of them
because
he was bisexual—Ekaterina was the next thing to celibate, and she was also—but because he was Charlie. He loved as hard as he worked and played, with lots of enthusiasm and energy and without fear of putting himself out there.

So who among my friends had he most likely hooked up with on the sly? As far as I knew, he and Sahana had only just met when I introduced them. Same thing with Durra—and if she
had
been the one, I really
would
have kicked his ass. Hmm …maybe one of Scott’s relatives? We’d all worked closely together bringing Stacia’s ass down. Kiara was a safe no-go since she only dated women; none of Scott’s brothers were into guys although a couple of his male cousins
were
…None Charlie had worked with, though, as far as I knew. Then I remembered how Charlie had valiantly assisted a battered-looking Amaya out of Stacia’s mad-scientist compound the night we had assaulted it, and I grinned. They wouldn’t be the first couple to bond after a rescue scenario, for sure.

“You sly dog, you. Congratulations!”

His turn to blink. “Wait—you don’t mind if she and I …”

She? Ha! I guessed right.
“Now why would I mind? I think that’s just great. Scott might be another story, but I’ll work on him for you.”

He frowned and tilted his head. “Why on earth would
Scott
mind that I’m seeing your partner?”

My ears started buzzing, and I had to try to several
times before I managed to take a full breath of air. “My p-p-partner? You’re seeing …you’re seeing
Trinity
?” The last part emerged as a louder-than-intended roar.

Charlie gulped and edged a few feet away. “Yeah, who’d
you
think …Oh. His oldest sister? The one we saved. Amaya?” At my fierce nod, he gave another wince. “No, she’s just not my type. Way too much of a tomboy.”

Which was just
rich
, considering that he had no problems being attracted to actual
boys
. “Son of a …I knew you were open to love, Charlie, but I never knew you went for
mundanes
.”

He stopped edging backward and scowled at the tone in my voice. “What the hell, Riss? You
work
with mundanes; your lover is the
son
of a mundane. I never figured you for a bigot.”

I glared and gestured rudely. “I’m
not
a bigot, no more than any other arcane. Less than most, since I
started out
mortal. But you’re a merc—just like Scott’s dad—and you both are used to our world.”

“And your partner isn’t? She works with you on arcane cases, for gods’ sake. She held her own with me in that compound, Riss, and that’s a fact. I didn’t have to slow down for her even once.” He shook his head. “Trinity told me you used to coddle her like a child, but she claimed you were over that. Said you respect her skills and—”

“I
do
respect her skills. Very much! It’s just …” My voice trailed off, and I tried to figure just what
it
was. Why
should
I mind if Charlie and Trinity, two consenting adults, became involved? I hadn’t minded one bit when she used her feminine wiles on Pennington Banoub’s brother, Tariq. She’d even gone on a few dates with him, and that hadn’t bothered me one bit. She dated a lot,
though she hadn’t gotten serious with any one person since I’d been working with her …and
that
was it exactly.

Whoa …I’m jealous. Jealous she’s committed enough to someone, and he’s pretty much asking for my blessing. And a little hurt that
she
wasn’t the one to tell me.

I opened my mouth to tell him the same thing when something odd occurred. Panic flashed in his eyes, and his body twitched several times. He raised both hands and shook them vigorously, as if trying to shake off something sticky, which was when Nike and I had the same thought and kicked into gear. I flapped my wings and surged forward, knocking the giant to the ground so I could straddle his still-twitching body. Nike slithered from my waist to his neck, where she remained calmly, tongue flicking in and out but venom remaining safely inside.

Charlie’s convulsions stopped, and his eyes opened, eyes that had become rimmed with glowing silver. I gasped at the visible confirmation of what I’d already guessed: Someone had transmuted into Charlie’s body, and that
someone
had to be a deity. The obvious guess would have been Anubis, but that just didn’t feel right. If Anubis were going to do something as crazy as switching souls with another being himself, it sure as hell wouldn’t be with a lowly arcane. It would be with another, more powerful immortal.

Silver light flickered, and I swore I saw
Charlie
looking out of his own eyes, begging for help. The silver glow solidified, indicating the immortal had reasserted control. Rage had talons bursting from my fingers, and I pressed them to the Giant’s chest, directly above his pounding heart.

“Who the hell are
you
, and
what
are you doing inside this Giant? Try anything stupid, and I won’t hesitate to
rip his heart out.” A bluff, but the immortal wouldn’t know that. I had a reputation—and so did Nemeses.

Charlie’s lips moved, but the voice that emerged echoed with some indefinable quality that screamed
other
as loudly as the silver-rimmed eyes. “Peace, Nemesis, I mean neither you nor the Giant harm. This is the only way I could speak with you here, and that only because some of my followers are in this realm for me to draw strength from.”