Chapter Sixty #2
‘I don’t know,’ Kyan said, brooding over the Scottish night. ‘I shouldn’t have come. Clearly, it’s a problem. Rightly so, with the Wake.’
He reached up to tug momentarily at his dark curls, as if still unfamiliar with them.
The scent from his open collar was warmed by the heat of his body and she took a deep breath, his presence alleviating the sense of a ticking clock that had only grown louder with Verin’s death.
She glimpsed Bells’ small black bag, which Kyan had slipped over his shoulder inside his jacket, for if – when – they left this place with the torc.
Nicole looked out at the low moon. ‘He – he’s not what he seems, I think, my father.’
Kyan’s eyes met hers.
‘Do you know if he’s a Death Seer?’ she asked quietly.
Perhaps Kyan had picked up on a nuance she’d missed after so long hunting creatures. After the Druid’s revelations – Kyan’s sister, she reminded herself – Nicole was even more certain her father was hiding something.
Kyan waited a beat, then shook his head.
‘I had my doubts. But it’s his secret to tell.
I’m sure he’ll admit it when he’s ready.
There are many reasons someone might hide an aspect of themselves.
But in my experience, it’s either because they’re ashamed, or they don’t want others to know how dangerous they are. ’
She nodded, taking a forced sip.
Kyan’s fingers hovered at her back. She focused on the ghost heat of them, and wanted to lock herself with him in the decadent hotel room and just pause the world, the onslaught of revelations. Not do or think anything.
‘Do you want to talk to him about it?’ Kyan asked.
The fantasy disappeared, as if painted over.
‘I keep meaning to, but’ – she shook her head – ‘so much is at risk. So much has changed so quickly. Part of me needs to know. But …’
‘It could change your relationship. And that’s one of the only things in your life that’s a fact. That you were supposed to be able to trust.’
‘Yes.’ She glanced up.
He had felt that, too: with the Wake breaking his trust, betraying his protective impulses and turning them into some divine grab for power. Not to mention discovering so much of his past wasn’t as lost to time as he’d suspected.
She took a breath, recalibrating. Right now, they just needed the torc, no matter the cost, and there were two ways to do it.
Influence the thief, or tell him the truth.
‘I don’t think we can risk telling him,’ she said.
Kyan watched her for a long moment, then looked out over the skyline.
‘No. But he left that card for a reason. He wanted to be known as the one that stole it. If we can guarantee that people will know that, perhaps that’s all he’d want.
The acclaim. Look at this place. He likes people to know what he can do. But …’
He didn’t risk saying the other option aloud. That if the thief didn’t let them buy or have it, they’d have to Influence him. There was too much at stake.
‘All right, we’ll give them five more minutes.’
After finishing her drink, they stalked back inside.
Nicole knocked on the office door swiftly, before pushing it open.
The sight froze her in place.
‘D-Dad?’
Her father stood over the thief, his eyes wholly black, a smothering, dark power saturating the room.
‘Nicole,’ he breathed.
The thief slumped to the desk, unconscious.
The colour of her father’s eyes reformed, swirling back to that familiar grey-blue as they shot to Kyan.
‘Ronan,’ Kyan greeted warily, quickly closing the door behind them, his body tense, as if making sure her father wasn’t a threat.
Because a Seer’s eyes didn’t do that.
‘I’ve got the key,’ her father said. ‘The safe is in here.’
Worry curled in her stomach. Just how had her father got that information? ‘Is he …’
There was no kill scent, only a strange mix of acrid fear and a champagne-like surprise prickling her tongue.
‘He’s fine, but we’ll need to move fast,’ her father said. ‘I’m pretty sure he’ll have set some warning with his security about how long people can be in here.’
Nicole snapped back into action as her father reached around the desk to a button below, and pressed it. The painting behind slid over the face of the bookshelves either side and revealed a corridor lined with more artwork and a monstrous silver safe at the end.
Nicole strode over and went to step inside when her body shifted.
A gasp tore from her. Kyan gripped her arm, scanning the hallway. There was a creature in there somewhere that must be guarding the vault. But nothing was visible. The feeling swelled and banked, her body growing hot and cold, her Empyreal prowling in confusion.
It wasn’t just the scent of one deadly creature, but many.
‘I don’t understand,’ Nicole said, backing out of the secret corridor.
She heard no breaths, no heartbeats. There wasn’t anything in there, but somehow the whole room was saturated in jarring, triggering scents.
Her power twisted and shuddered, the sensation so unnerving she backed up a few more steps.
‘The paintings,’ Kyan realised, his body rigid behind hers, fighting the same urges. ‘They must be painted with the essences of dangerous creatures. There’s a different imprint on each of them, no doubt to stop an Empyreal walking down this corridor.’
Her father searched the panelling after an irritated glance at the unconscious thief. ‘There must be a key slot somewhere to hide them.’ He ran his hand down the wide seam of the hinged painting. ‘There’s nothing. I’ll go in. Stay here.’
Nicole nearly found herself protesting as he hurried down the corridor and she tried to suppress the unnatural churn of her body still trying to identify the invisible threat.
Her father didn’t waste any time: evidently, he’d got the codes for the safe, too.
They were elaborate, each one bleeping green before requiring the next.
Nerves pulsed with her heart the more he had to enter.
Any wrong digit might call a host of security on them, stop them from being able to leave—
Then the safe swung open slowly.
‘That’s it,’ Kyan said beside her. ‘That’s the one.’
Nicole’s lips parted in awe.
The golden necklace was so much bigger than she expected. It sat on a pedestal, spotlit when the door opened. She could barely look at the rest of the glinting treasures. Something about the torc stole every ounce of her attention.
‘My god,’ she breathed.
She wanted to stare and stare and stare at it.
If you didn’t study the period, life during the Iron Age sounded near barbaric, almost nothing separating it in the mind from the Stone and Bronze.
They were ages that might conjure mental images of huts and little else.
But this – this revealed the true craftsmanship of the time.
Looking at it convinced her of a lost line of Irish royalty, of Druids and gods and a sky glinting with the bright, ancient magic of stars.
Her father stepped in and took the torc.
Nicole held her breath, not sure what she was worried about him doing until he strode back towards them and passed it to Kyan. She felt him relax as something complicated and almost guilty relaxed in her too. Kyan hid the torc in the bag beneath his suit jacket and then they were out of the office.
No one stopped them.
No alerts had been tripped.
When they came into the night, rain glittering on the asphalt, Nicole realised that the only reason they now had a two-thousand-year-old artefact – the second goddess-blessed item they needed – was because her father had revealed a true sliver of the dark powers he’d hidden from them her whole life.
Without it, they wouldn’t have stood a chance at retrieving the torc.
But she couldn’t help but feel like the consequences could damn them all.