Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

“Very sweet,” she said, grinning at Asher, then at the little ball of light in the palm of her hand. “You should have known that there was nothing to fear, gentlemen. This was simply the poor old man’s essence. Though I understand that it is quite unusual, and perhaps extremely disconcerting, seeing a human soul flee its mortal husk for the very first time.”

“About that,” I said. “This is pretty awkward. We were actually hoping to collect Mister Reynolds’s last breath. For the enchantment.”

Izanami pressed her fingers around Billy Reynolds’s essence, clenching her hand into a loose fist. His light went out. The goddess closed her eyes and shuddered. I shuddered, too, but for an entirely different reason.

I cleared my throat.

“Sorry,” Izanami said, her eyes fluttering open. “You were saying?”

“We were here for the sealing enchantment’s reagents. I brought Asher to help, but it looks like we’ve missed out on collecting the breath of the dying.”

“Which must be willingly given,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my hackles rising. “What?”

“Oh. The breath of the dying must be willingly given. A sacrifice, essentially. Did I not mention that part? I was sure I mentioned it.”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. Asher’s hand tugged on my jacket, a silent, but welcome warning not to piss off the death goddess standing just feet away from us.

“So that rules out murder, which I was certain you wouldn’t have the stomach for,” Izanami said, lifting one of her fingers. She raised more as she continued talking, counting off. “No accidents either, I suppose, and if you really want to go with getting consent from someone who’s dying a natural death – well, you’ll need to be more convincing than you were with old Billy up there.”

“Then we skip the part where we have to explain everything.” I raked at a handful of my own hair. “The arcane underground, the Eldest, all of it. What are the chances we’ll find someone in the magical community who’s both close to death and eager to surrender their last breath?”

“Slim to none, given the urgency of the situation,” Izanami said. “None but the Eldest themselves will know when the next attack will come.”

And something about the extremely negative reactions we got from even asking about dying breath at the Black Market suggested that this wouldn’t be the way to go, either. What were we going to do, strut around asking where everybody kept their oldest, most vulnerable wizards? We were fucked.

Izanami tapped at her wrist. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but the gesture spoke volumes.

“Best get moving, boys. Time stops for no man. Well, except for chronomancers. Bloody chronomancers.”

“Chronomancers?” I asked.

“Time mages,” Asher said. “Carver told me about them. Nasty pieces of work. They can slow you down, speed themselves up, or even freeze time in place. Scary stuff.”

“Not nearly as scary as what’ll happen if the Eldest hit Valero again,” I said. “Let’s regroup for now, talk this over with Carver. Maybe there’s another way.”

I nodded at Izanami as Asher and I sank into the shadows, thinking it was best to go with a quiet, low-key farewell. But entities are entities after all, and she flashed me another grin as she tapped the back of her wrist.

“Tick-tock, Dustin Graves,” she said.

I clenched my fist.

Chapter 19

That same night, when we’d all gone back to the Boneyard, I figured it couldn’t hurt to look into the Dark Room again. Maybe I was hoping I’d trip over another ball of golden string, and find another lead through this gods-moot or that.

But a guy can only get so lucky.

I was spoiled, I figured, as I stepped through the Dark Room, with how much the entities were offering, and had already offered. Sure, it wasn’t in their nature to directly influence our reality – which I always thought was kind of hypocritical, honestly, because clearly Amaterasu could hide the sun whenever she wanted. And I’d never met them, but I was pretty certain that either Zeus or Thor would happily fry someone with a lightning bolt as a passing fancy.

Yet something in my heart told me that there were still answers to be found within – inside myself, or inside the Dark Room. I kept my mother’s amulet clenched between my teeth as I negotiated the tunnels. Juvenile, maybe, but it made me feel safe, having the strange, ambient warmth of the garnet so close by. And like Carver said, it was best to get the object accustomed to the ethereal signatures of my body.

“Then it will more readily accept an enchantment when the time comes,” he’d said. “Which should ideally be sooner rather than later.”

Which was why we planned the thing we planned that night, something I’d think back on and regret, but it had to be done. I didn’t know where else we would acquire the screams of anguish we needed otherwise.

But I digress. Something quiet and unknown was drawing me, pulling on my chest and guiding me through the Dark Room. I wondered if Nyx hadn’t given me one final gift, planting a lodestar in my heart, giving me a clue about what I was meant to discover in the Dark Room.