A chorus of curses flooded the comms from the team stationed downstairs. Angel’s shoulder brushed against mine, a solid, silent presence. It was grounding, but did nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. I took a deliberate step back, putting space between myself and the runes.
“I’m going to clear the rest of the apartment,” I announced, needing to move.
Angel gave a faint nod, falling into step beside me as I began a slow circuit of the rooms. The memory of Cassidy’s apartment—the sinister setup I’d dreamt was hidden in his closet—made my hand hesitate over the first closed door. But hesitation was a luxury we couldn’t afford. I reached for the knob anyway.
Angel slipped around me, gloved hand snagging the knob before I could. He tugged me a step back and to the side, his body angled as if expecting an explosion.
The door swung open to reveal a coat closet. I breathed a sigh of relief.
We moved through the rest of the apartment in a tense dance. A small office off the kitchen yielded nothing but unpaidbills and toddler toys. Angel hovered as we searched the baby’s room, then the bedroom. The entire place felt ordinary. A typical small family trying to exist in the chaos of the current world. Messy playpens, overstuffed closets, and even books beside the bed. It all felt inconsequential.
Angel tugged open their dresser drawers as I entered the open door of the bathroom. The space was small and dark, builder grade with no updates, and still my heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of caution. Something lingered on the edges of my senses. The shadows, maybe?
I eyed them warily, wondering if it was the changeling again.
My gaze swept over the sink, open toilet lid, and landed on the closed shower curtain. I reached for the curtain, fingers closing around the edge of the fabric, and yanked it back.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, I saw it all. The empty tub, the lonely baby bath seat, the half-empty shampoo bottles on the ledge. And there, drawn in the gooey, blue residue of spilled soap beside the drain, was a single, pulsing sigil.
Then the world dissolved.
The bathroom vanished. The light, the sound, the sense of Angel just feet away—it was all ripped away, replaced by a suffocating darkness. There was only the void of light and the echo of my racing heart.
A breath of air, cold and reeking of open soil and decay, stirred the hair by my ear.
“Jude,” a rough voice growled. The darkness congealed in front of me, and for a split second, Cassidy’s face materialized, illuminated in the dark—his skin sagging and eyes hollow as if he were long dead yet still moving. “I told you, you were mine.”
43
My heart hammeredin my chest, the wordtraplingering on my lips as I struggled not to allow the panic to overwhelm me.
“Cassidy,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “You look like hell warmed over.”
He let out a wet, gurgling laugh that was nothing like the sound I remembered. “I missed your smart mouth. Especially having it wrapped around my cock.”
I threw up a little in my mouth. “The only thing rising on you is the stench.”
The wet laugh died in his throat, and in a movement faster than anything Cassidy should have been capable of, his hand shot out and clamped around my neck with a grip of iron. He lifted me onto my toes as if I weighed nothing and dragged me close enough to smell his fetid breath on my face as he snarled. I clawed at his wrist, vision spotting as the darkness collected around him into an overlay of familiar, yet horrifying, shadows.
“Such a mouthy little vessel,” a voice rasped in a ruined blend of Cassidy’s death rattle and something much darker. “A tool shouldn’t speak unless spoken to.”
“I’m not the tool in this equation,” I choked out.
Cassidy tilted his head at an unnatural angle. Was he already dead? I swallowed hard as the shadows around him solidified into a silhouette of woven darkness. I knew even if I changed my vision to view the weave of him, he’d be nothing but shadow, using Cassidy’s decaying body as a macabre puppet.
“Erlik, I presume?” I wheezed, trying not to panic over facing down a god, or whatever sort of nasty demon-thing this was.
His grip tightened, and for half a heartbeat I thought he’d crush my trachea, then he shoved me away, dropping me to the floor like a broken doll. I panted, rubbed my throat, and sucked in air. “What’s the game here? Take over the mortal world? It’s not a great place, I promise. Billionaire assholes suck the life out of everything.”
The nightmare laughed, and Cassidy spattered blood and ichor across the floor with the sound. “You think your tiny world matters at all? The realms beyond are limitless, full of tasty delights. The more I peel back the Veil like the thin skin it is, the more I feast upon the raw, screaming life beneath.”
Gross,andwow.This thing wanted to eat all the realms? “And when you’ve picked the bone clean? What’s left? Just you, alone in the dark, with nothing left to consume but your own bottomless hunger?”
“There is no end. Beyond the Veil lie countless realms, infinite dimensions screaming with life I have not yet tasted. I will consume your world, and it will make me strong enough to tear open the next. And the next. Your realm is not my finale. It is merely my next meal.”
“You’re a supernatural tapeworm and our whole realm is just the cosmic black butthole you’ve decided to feast on? Gross. Let me off this ride.”
“You mistake your part in this equation, little mortal,” the darkness grated against my nerves as he wrapped his shadowsaround me in a chokehold that vanquished any remains of light. “You are not a passenger. You are the engine.”
