The Singer (42 page)

“You’re not sure?”

“Too many!” She was already becoming overwhelmed by the clamor and resisted using the spells that would close the door, still hoping to be able to track Brage.

They started up the stairs but had to stop on the second landing when three Grigori burst out of a doorway, knives bared. Malachi pushed Ava behind him and attacked. Ava pulled out the knife he’d given her and looked for a target, but the crowded landing made positioning herself difficult.

The three Grigori had come from above and they had the advantage. Malachi was just as fast as he’d always been, but she noticed he didn’t heal as quickly. The cuts they gave him were open and bleeding. Blood splattered from the throat of one soldier as Malachi sliced his throat, then used him as a shield to attack the others.

The scent of urine, sweat, and blood surrounded her. From the corner of her eye, she saw a hand shoot out as a Grigori ran from below and reached for her. Ava grabbed his arm on instinct and pulled, jabbing the knife into the cord of muscle on his bare skin. When the knife pierced his flesh, a shot of pure adrenaline lanced through her system. Her heart sped. Her vision cleared. The thrum of voices dropped to the back of her mind, and Ava could hear him again.

“Yes…”

A low laugh cut off by Malachi shouting her name.

“Ava!”

A strangled curse and shout. She was shoved back into the banister as Malachi pulled the Grigori closer and plunged a silver knife into his spine. The dust rose, clouding her vision. Then Malachi was there and pulling her with him.

“Come.”

“He’s upstairs,” she choked out, blinking the dust from her eyes. “I can hear him again.”

“This is a madhouse.”

“We’re killing more of them than they are of us.”

He didn’t ask how she knew.

They climbed the stairs. One flight. Two. Three.

“He’s above us,” she said. His voice was no longer whispering, but a thin thread of his presence lingered.

“There has to be a roof,” Malachi said, sweeping his eyes from one hallway to the other.

The majority of fighting was going on below them. Ava could hear Renata shouting for Max. Then she screamed and a man roared in anger.

Ava ran toward the stairs, searching for her friends.

“Ignore them!” Malachi shouted. “We need to find Brage.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her down one hallway, but there was no exit. They went back the way they came. At the end of the other hallway, there was an exterior stairwell and a pocket of frigid air. The door had recently been open. Malachi ran through it and Ava followed. He held knives in both his hands, loose and ready at his sides. Ava watched him with pride. Possession.
 

Her mate.

Broken. Lost. And still every bit the warrior that he had been. With his
talesm
glowing in the dark and a shot of her own magic running through him, Malachi did not hesitate.

Snow dusted the rooftop. It swirled in fat flakes as salty wind blew off the fjord and twisted around them. It was a rooftop garden, bedded down for winter. Heavy furniture lay covered with thick canvas, tied off against the weather. A few evergreen trees sat in pots, their branches a festive white.
 

Oblivious to the cold, Brage lounged in one of the chairs, its canvas cover thrown off. He was impeccable in a pure white shirt and black slacks, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow as he balanced a dark metal blade on the back of his hand.

“It’s about time you arrived.”

Chapter Twenty-five

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? So perfectly balanced,” the Grigori said as they approached. “But of course, it was forged in heaven. Or hell. I’m honestly not sure what I believe at this point.”

Malachi said nothing, trying to place the blade. He knew he should know what it was. There was something…

“Don’t recognize it? I’ll admit, it was dark in that shit hole of a cistern,” Brage said, flipping the blade from the back of his hand to rest in his palm. “Maybe you couldn’t see it clearly.”
 

The knife pulsed with power. Its metal was dull, almost black. There was no decoration on it. No leather wrapped the hilt. Nothing to detract from the purpose of such a grim weapon.
 

Death.

“Your silence intrigues me,” Brage said.
 

Malachi realized that the Grigori wasn’t speaking to him. He was speaking to Ava. And Ava couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“You killed him with that,” she said softly, the air fogging as it left her lips.

“Yes, I did. Apparently it didn’t take.” Brage glanced at Malachi, then back to Ava. “My father wants you.”

“He can’t have her,” Malachi said.

“Was I talking to you, scribe?” Brage continued to stare at Ava, flipping the knife in his fingers. Handle. Tip. Handle. Tip. He didn’t fumble once. “Will you come with me? Or will I have to take you?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you creepy asshole.”
 

Malachi approved of the disdain dripping in her voice. He stepped between Ava and Brage, his knives ready, his heart eager. Her power coursed through him. He could feel her song whisper in his mind.

Brage’s eyes flickered to Malachi. Then they closed briefly as a whisper left his lips. “Boring.”

He pounced.

The Grigori took Malachi by surprise, knocking him off balance and trying to slip behind him, the blade already raised to strike. Ava stuck her foot out and tripped Brage, distracting the Grigori and causing the blade to nick the side of his forearm as he stumbled back. There was a hissing sound as the smell of sulfur filled the air, then the wind swept it away.

Malachi sheathed one of his knives and circled his opponent as Ava braced her back against the brick wall of the stairwell. Brage swept a foot out and punched Malachi’s knee, causing him to slip on the icy bricks. He fell, the snow and slush soaking his back and side.

“Do you even know what she is, scribe?” Brage taunted Malachi as he climbed to his feet. “I’ll admit, I didn’t at first. I’m still not sure of the details. I do know that your kind won’t know what to do with her.”

Malachi rose with him, keeping himself between Ava and Brage. The Grigori’s lip was cut and the wound on his arm seeped a steady flow of blood. It was black and thick. When the snow hit
 
it, it sizzled.

Brage continued to stare at Ava, cocking his head as if he were puzzling over a specimen in a laboratory. Malachi lunged in, hoping to catch him distracted, but Brage grabbed his wrist and pulled, switching the black knife to his left hand and trying to slice up at Malachi’s elbow. He could feel the pulse of magic as his
talesm
repulsed the Grigori’s strike. Stepping closer, Malachi hugged Brage to his chest and plunged the silver blade into his side. Blood gushed over his hand, but Brage pushed back, pressing a hand to his waist to stem the bleeding but never lowering his knife.

His lip curled. “I was told you lost your
talesm
.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

Brage lunged again, but his movements held an edge of desperation. Malachi knew he couldn’t let the black knife touch him. The cut on Brage’s arm was growing. The flesh around it was gray and the veins stood out black against his pale skin.

“You’re dying,” Malachi said. “Tell us why Volund wants her.”

Brage only laughed and dropped to the icy brick, sweeping a leg out again, catching Malachi’s ankle with his foot. He brought them both down and scrambled over to him, trying to climb atop Malachi.

Shit.
 

The Grigori had the upper hand, and Malachi couldn’t find purchase on the icy bricks. He was close to panic before a clang sounded through the air. Malachi blinked and Brage fell to the side. Ava was standing over him, clutching a copper urn smeared with blood.
 

“I couldn’t just stand there!”

“Good!”

Climbing to his feet, he almost slipped again, but Ava held him. Brage was shaking his head and blinking at Ava. A frown creased his eyebrows. Still, he persisted.
 

“Come with me,” he pleaded. “You can change everything. You have no idea—”

He stopped when she threw the urn at him.

“Are you nuts?” she shouted. “Why don’t you just die?”

Malachi ran and slipped across the roof as the snow swirled. There was a scream on the wind. Nothing human or even animal. Brage looked up, past Malachi. Over his head and into the black night. His mouth fell open in horror and Malachi halted.

A great gold eagle landed on the roof, and the snow exploded around it. It stepped forward and grew into Jaron. He glowed with light, and Brage raised a hand, pointing at him.

“You promised! You said you would not interfere!”

Jaron lifted the Grigori up by the neck. “I lied.”
 

Malachi turned to run to Ava, but found his feet were frozen to the ground.

“No,” he gasped. “Ava!”
 

His body was frozen. He could not reach her. Malachi twisted his neck around, but could barely catch a glimpse of her over his shoulder.

She stepped closer, her eyes locked with Jaron’s. Her face held no fear, only a grim fascination.

Malachi shouted again. “Ava, no!”

She didn’t turn toward his voice. And she didn’t stop.

It was quiet. So quiet.

Peaceful.

One minute she was frightened, watching Malachi and Brage slip across the frozen roof as they tried to kill each other. It held none of the terrible grace she remembered from Istanbul. It was dirty and bloody and cold. Then Brage had looked at her. Malachi was only steps away from killing him, and Brage looked at her with a terrible hunger.
 

Longing.

For a second, his voice smoothed out. The whisper did not rasp. It curled and twisted, seducing her. Softening her. Then—

Quiet.

Quiet like in her dreams. As if the world had been wrapped in cotton wool and the only sound she heard was his voice.

She saw him, holding the Grigori out to her like an offering. And when he spoke, the whisper came to her ear.

“Do you want him?”

There was nothing and no one on the roof except the three of them. The wind was silent. She was warm. Comfortable. She stepped closer.

“Why?”

“He is yours if you want him,” Jaron said, his voice for her ears alone. He held out the black knife as he raised Brage in the air. In his hand, the blade was not a dull black, but a swirling crystalline jewel, glowing with heavenly power.

“Why would I want him?”

The angel frowned. “Don’t you want to kill him?”

Of course she did. She’d imagined it countless times. But somehow, the thought of plunging a knife into the limp Grigori that Jaron held out felt wrong.

“I… I don’t know. Was he going to kill me?”

“No. In his own way, he very much wants to protect you.”

“Then wouldn’t it be wrong?”

Jaron cocked his head. “Does it matter?”

Did it? Ava blinked and tried to remember. In front of her, the glowing knife beckoned. She knew it would be warm in her hand. It would fit perfectly. She could feel it sink into the Grigori’s spine, and a soft voice whispered in her mind.
 

Yes…

Come with me…

Take what is yours…

She stepped closer. Brage hung limp in Jaron’s grip, like an offering presented to her.

An offering.

To her.

“He would kill your mate,” Jaron said. “He would take you to his father, but he would kill your mate to do it.”

He
had
killed her mate. In that moment, Ava remembered. The Grigori had killed Malachi. Ripped him from her. Torn Ava’s soul in half. The fury rose up and the black whisper grew louder.

Yes.

Kill it.

This is yours.

Ava looked into Jaron’s eyes, which held a softness she’d never seen before.

“Tell me what you wish, my daughter,” he spoke to her mind. “Tell me, and I will grant it.”

She didn’t know what to do with such a gift. It was too terrible to offer.
 

Ava was tired. She only wanted Malachi.

Jaron said, “I cannot grant to you what you have already taken.”

“If he would kill my mate,” Ava said, “then let my mate kill him.”

The angel smiled and closed his hand around the black knife. “I offer you a gift and reap an unexpected reward. How very interesting.”
 

In a blink, he was gone, and Malachi was there, holding Brage by the neck, plunging his silver blade into the Grigori’s spine as the monster screamed.

Then the screaming stopped as Brage’s body dissolved. The wind snatched his dust, whisking it away from Ava and Malachi, sweeping the snow off the roof in a violent flurry until there was nothing under their feet but black ice and cold brick.