Chapter 30
CLEMENTINE
Like in Griffith’s house when we first arrived, there’s an impromptu Mythic Council meeting taking place in the police station as we try to figure out how a hunter made it all the way to Local Brew without being detected and what exactly should be done with him now that he’s here.
Having Luke behind bars should bring me a sense of ease, especially since they took the handful of weapons he had hidden on his person.
But I still see flashes of his hunter friend lunging toward me with that blade whistling through the air.
The wound in my side aches all the more fiercely from the memory.
“Where’s your buddy?” I keep a few feet back from the cell, not wanting to be in grabbing distance. I underestimated this man once; I’m not going to do it again.
“Who?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“The guy who stabbed me.” I gesture toward the wound that still refuses to heal. “He your backup? Lurking in the woods on the edge of town?”
Luke frowns. “He’s dead.”
I stutter on my next inhale as hope, relief, and distrust war within my chest.
“How? The rain I shot at him wasn’t lethal. Unless you killed him?”
Luke sits on the bench in his cell, elbows braced on his knees, eyes on me. For the life of me, I can’t see the charming man who first caught my eye. How did I think of this guy as anything other than a threat?
“I would have,” he says. “But it was the blade that did it. He didn’t have enough power to balance out the cost.”
I frown, trying to work out what he means. A cost for using the blade?
“It’s a god object, isn’t it?” Carl is the one to ask, and I wonder what he might have found in all the spare time he’s spent at Mor Shelly’s library.
The council members, who were having a whispered conversation in the far corner, all approach now until there’s a semicircle in front of the cell.
Luke tilts his head, eyes flicking around the gathering, finally landing on my brother.
“Hunters call them divine artifacts,” he answers the question.
“Boris—the one who attacked Clementine—was cocky. He didn’t think the toll was real, or he thought he could handle it if it was.
Minutes after he cut you”—his gaze resettles on me—“he was dead. Used up. If you hadn’t left so fast, you would’ve seen. ”
“Oh, so I was supposed to hang around?” My voice is harsh with dark humor.
“Grab a beer with some murderers?” There’s a comforting weight on my shoulders, and I can tell without looking that Griffith has placed his hands there.
Not pulling me back. Simply lending me his strength.
“How did you even find me? How did you know what I was?”
That, more than anything, has scared me. I thought I’d lost myself in the crowd of humanity. What was the use of never taking on my mythic form if I was so easily found out?
Luke doesn’t respond right away, seeming to think his answer over. I want to grab the bars and shake them. I want to transform my hands into my mermaid talons and rip them across his stomach so he’ll know an ounce of the pain he’s caused in me.
Finally, he moves, slipping a ring off his finger and placing it on the ground between us. He was stripped of all his weapons, but not his jewelry.
“This is a divine artifact. Passed down through my family.” He stares at the ring, speaking low and steady, as if telling a story.
“The wearer can identify a mythic. Your kind glow. Boris only assumed, rashly, that someone I was alone with would be prey. I hadn’t known he was going to be there,” Luke says, shifting on the bench as if he’s finally feeling a touch of discomfort. “And I don’t kill mythics.”
I scoff. “No, you just catch our kind, right? You would’ve caged and sold me to a sorcerer, where my magic could slowly be drained out of my soul for years? Yeah, you’re a saint.”
And I pray to the gods he’s not lying about the ring and it being a god object because if a mythic identifier is something hunters can mass-produce, then we’re all in for a shitstorm.
Luke’s face remains blank, hiding whatever feelings he might have on the subject. If he has any at all.
“My family are hunters,” he admits. “I trained with them. But I never became one.”
“What a convincing story,” I hiss. “Truly, I’m moved.”
He braces his elbows on his thighs again and holds my glare with an unblinking stare of his own. “I know how to heal you.”
That stops my snark. Carl and Griffith tense, both of them on high alert for the answer.
“So you say.” I cross my arms. “Go on. How?”
Luke leans back against the concrete wall, mirroring my posture but dropping his eyes back to his ring. “I want to speak to someone first.”
Griffith moves past me, stalking forward, gripping the bars, and rattling them. “You’re negotiating with her life?” he snarls. “Open the door, Carl. I’ll get the answer out of him.”
“Fangworn!” Juan barks at my wolf, power in his voice even though I’ve learned he’s the beta, not the alpha of Griffith’s pack. “Back off. You’re not helping.”
“I’m not going to deny Clementine the cure.” Luke gives every indication of being calm, even with a furious werewolf snarling at him. “I befriended her so I could find this town. There’s someone here I know. I need to speak with them.”
“And by speak, you mean kill?” Carl clarifies, my brother leveling his own furious glare at the man holding my fate in his untrustworthy hands.
Now Luke scowls. “I would never hurt them. I would die to keep them safe.”
The room goes quiet at that proclamation. I don’t know what to think of his claims. Is this a clever ruse? Or is Luke some kind of hunter who doesn’t actually hunt?
I’m more inclined to believe the former, if only to err on the side of safety. The stabbing pain in my side seconds my caution.
“Quite the level of devotion.” Moira steps forward, and her mate, Levi, shadows her approach, as if worried Luke will be able to attack her, even with iron between them. “Not what one would expect from a hunter.”
Luke shrugs. “I’ll stay in the cage while speaking to them if that’s what you prefer.”
Carl shifts to face the room, taking in everyone, but most of his focus remains on Luke. “You heal my sister, and we will tell this mythic you are here, contained, and want to speak to them. But it is their decision whether or not to talk to you. Deal?”
No expression shows on Luke’s face. He remains stoic, hiding whatever thoughts play in his mind. “You also tell them I will swear any blood vow they ask of me, then yes. We have a deal.”
“Sounds like you plan to make a deal without The Council’s approval,” Selena says, but I can’t quite tell if the witch has a problem with my brother’s proactiveness.
“This will need to be discussed,” Juan adds, and I wonder if my current witch bandage will last the length of their debate.
Still, I don’t exactly like the idea that this mysterious townsperson will be pressured into speaking to a hunter, so I keep any potential argument to myself.
But before anyone else can voice a protest, Griffith pulls out a knife.
I half expect him to try plunging it into Luke’s eye, but instead, the wolf opens a gash on his palm.
“I swear I will pass your message on to the mythic you’re searching for if you tell us how to heal Clem. Now.”
My reaction time is too slow to keep the binding promise from happening. Luke lunges to his feet, reaches his hand through the bars, and allows Griffith to cut his palm. They clasp hands. A snap of power leaves a static-like sensation in the air.
“Damn it, Griff!” Carl retrieves the knife. “You stole my move.”
The wolf shrugs and offers a tight smile in the face of my and The Council’s fury. Will he be punished for this? How does The Council even punish people?
“I assume you have the dagger you confiscated from me.” Luke speaks to my brother. Carl nods. “That was the weapon used to injure Clementine. The cure is in the handle. You just need to find a mythic strong enough to wield a god object.”
The police station goes quiet at this revelation. I reel, knowing that we have a cure, but might not be able to use it without someone draining their life force like the hunter who originally cut me did.
Is there anyone I would take the risk with? Potentially trade my life for theirs?
Levi sighs. “I know someone who can.”
He doesn’t say a name, but my mind goes to the handsome, lonely monster with an undeniable air of power. The one who called Levi when he fished me out of the lake. While I imagine that Sev is magically capable, I have my doubts about his willingness to help despite saving me in the past.
“He can’t be trusted,” Georgiana snaps. The representative for the winged mythics vibrates with unmasked fury at the idea of approaching Sev for help, and I wonder if the two have some kind of history. “He shouldn’t even be allowed to live in this town.”
“If he truly wanted to harm anyone in Folk Haven, he would have already.” Levi doesn’t back down from his assertion. “I agree that he’s not exactly stable. But he’s relatively passive. One more god object isn’t going to send him on a rampage.”
Another stunned silence, and then Georgiana whispers, “One more?”
Levi doesn’t try to backtrack his statement.
“As far as I can tell, he has a handful of others. He’s also one of the few mythics strong enough to utilize god objects without killing himself.
So, if you want to heal Clementine, then he’s the one we need, and I can almost guarantee he’ll demand the knife as payment.
And honestly, I’d rather have it guarded by him than passed around the town. ”
“He shouldn’t have as much power as he does,” Georgiana mutters.
“What he does and doesn’t have doesn’t matter right now,” Griffith cuts through The Council bickering with a firm voice that has me thinking he could be a leader if he wanted to be. “What matters is, will he help us? Will he help Clem?”
I think back on the monster who pulled me from the lake when I was dying and kept me company after wrapping me in a silk robe.
Even after all that, I still don’t know what he’ll say. But there’s only one way forward as far as I can tell.
“Let’s go ask him.”