Chapter Twenty-Three
Nicole
NICOLE BURST INTO BELLS’ SHADOWED BEDROOM TO FIND her father already there, checking her sister’s vitals. The curtains to the left were drawn, but a fire flickered gently.
Huge, mythological tapestries watched from the walls, their glade scenes in a palette of olive, blues, and warm woods, granting the space a peaceful, sewn softness. Evidently, it hadn’t helped tonight.
Nicole gripped the edge of the four-poster bed, its leafy carvings biting into her palm. ‘What happened?’ she panted, Kyan at her shoulder.
‘She’s asleep,’ their father answered. He leaned over Bells and opened one of her eyes to show the whites were crossed with bloody veins. ‘She’s having a vision.’
Dylan ran in, Callum behind him.
Nicole perched on the bed’s silk-embroidered sheets and took her sister’s cool fingers. ‘Bells,’ she said softly.
The moment she made contact, Bells’ eyes flashed open and the blood quickly returned to normal.
‘Bells, what happened?’ Nicole asked.
‘I’m fine,’ she said weakly, but the purple beneath her eyes said otherwise. ‘A vision. I – I think I saw the Wild Hunt.’
Kyan tensed, but it was Callum that asked, ‘What makes you say that?’
Bells explained the dying creature and the killer writing a bloody message. The swarming mist-like form of the Hunt, and the mysterious hunter within.
‘Then I saw another death that scared me.’ She looked suddenly embarrassed at realising it was her scream that had brought them all running. ‘But the Hunt looked just like the paintings you showed me,’ she said to Nicole.
Kyan filled them in about the inaccuracy of the Wake’s archives and how the Wake must be summoning the Hunt to trigger a Dark Age.
‘So, it’s like a dark cloud that people move in and out of?’ Dylan asked from the foot of the bed.
‘It seems to be a portable prison,’ Callum answered.
‘Its hunters might live within it, bound to the Hunt so they can collect the souls of dangerous supernaturals and make sure they don’t linger on this plain.
Once, all souls went to the Otherworld to be reborn.
Now, the dangerous ones need somewhere that can keep them contained. ’
‘These hunters, they’re dead Empyreals?’ Nicole asked. Kyan had once told her that he believed when an Empyreal died they could be recruited by the Goddess of Death into the Hunt.
‘Possibly,’ Callum said. ‘But no one’s been able to confirm. It’s frustratingly secretive and invisible to humans and almost all creatures, except Death Seers, evidently.’
‘We – we don’t know if that’s what I am yet,’ Bells said. ‘There’s still time for my powers to settle.’
‘Of course,’ Callum said, more gently than Nicole would have expected. ‘Legend says it’s had leaders from a range of mythos who are bound to rule it for a time, then pass on.’
‘Pass on where?’ their father asked.
‘Once, I would have said the Otherworld,’ Callum replied. ‘Now …’ He shrugged.
Nicole recalled the name from a distant mythological story and supernatural religions. ‘And, the Otherworld is the place the Irish gods came from?’
Callum’s intrigued gaze slid to her. ‘Why, yes. Ten points, Miss Palmer. There’s an Otherworld referred to in Welsh folklore as well, but which one you think souls go to depends on your supernatural religion, I suppose.’
‘Can you remember what the killer wrote in the blood?’ Callum asked Bells.
She grabbed one of the expensive monogrammed notepads from the bedside table and drew it for them to translate, confirming it was the same ogam message as the one from Kyan’s last kill.
‘So this killer is also trying to draw the Hunt,’ Kyan mused. ‘But why go out of their way to write this if the Hunt is drawn to dead creatures naturally?’
‘That is a good question,’ Callum mused, going to the window to think. ‘It’s unnecessary. Which makes me think the killer did this to either make certain the Hunt would come – since most of us can’t see it and confirm – or, to put suspicion on someone, or something, that would know ogam and blood.’
‘Like a Druid,’ Kyan mused. ‘Did you see who killed the creature?’ he asked Bells. ‘A face? Any details?’
She shook her head. ‘No. From the glimpse I got they were wearing black clothes and a mask.’
Kyan looked to Callum. ‘The Wake have all manner of tactical gear. Could be an Empyreal.’
Dylan looked between them. ‘Why the hell are masks and tactical gear needed when Empyreals are supposed to be doing the right thing and hunting dangerous creatures?’
Callum gave him a flat smile. ‘Sometimes human tech causes issues. Getting caught on camera is a very real issue for a lot of Empyreals’ hunts.
Masks are often necessary to ensure that if you’re on an urban one you can hide your face from human CCTV, or people snapping countless pictures for social media so they don’t find out about our world.
Most of the time we have some good Nazen tech to scramble cameras, not to mention all Empyreals’ faces are in databases to wipe or blur them, but it doesn’t always work.
‘Right now, though, I’m more interested in this Hunt.’
‘Was there anything else, love?’ their father asked Bells.
‘Well, I did see the hunter that stepped out of it.’
‘What?’ Nicole asked. ‘What did they look like?’
‘I didn’t see their face.’ Bells yawned. ‘It looked like they collected the soul for the Hunt and left.’
A prickle of protective instincts had Nicole straightening. ‘Was that everything?’
Bells nodded.
‘Then, I think it’s time to try sleeping again. Do you want me to stay?’
Her sister nodded again, and Nicole glanced up to Kyan.
He lingered. It wasn’t unfamiliar to be at this in-between stage. To be bound, but not together. To have so much to say, but too much to do. To want him, but not have the privacy or time to enjoy it. But that didn’t make her any more certain of what to say.
‘Goodnight,’ he said instead, starting to the door. ‘I’ll be down the hall.’
Nicole got up and lit a few candles as their father went to brew Bells a tea and Callum and Dylan left.
‘I don’t want to sleep yet,’ Bells said.
After quickly showering and changing into pyjamas, Nicole collected the burner phone they used to speak with Remi and the pair of them responded to her last comments, laughing and easing the darkness and tension from the room.
But as Bells drifted back off to sleep, Nicole couldn’t help but think of the Hunt coiling over cities beneath the stars. She wondered where it would go next.
And just how many deadly creatures’ souls now slumbered within it.