Oblivion Heart (Darkling Mage 4)

It was entirely possible, but I didn’t want to think of what else it suggested.

“Thea,” Asher added.

That was the exact thing I was avoiding. When I first joined the Lorica and discovered the world of the arcane, it was through forced circumstance. I’d been murdered, a victim of ritual sacrifice. Long story short, Thea, my former mentor and first friend in the arcane underground, was behind my death. Her actions triggered my latent magical abilities. More importantly, she’d been known to use various forms of mind control in the past.

“No,” I muttered. “No way. She’s dead. We all saw that happen, remember? She can’t be back. It’s impossible.”

“It isn’t a pleasant eventuality.” Carver raised a hand. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. We’ll reconvene tomorrow and examine this from a fresh angle. I’m sure you’ll all want to be rested.” He nodded at me. “Especially you, Graves, and especially after your harrowing encounter with another Scion. You must tell me more about this man soon.”

I patted at my chest, feeling for Royce’s business card. “Oh, I’ll tell you all right. Guy’s a piece of work.”

Carver nodded again. “Tomorrow then.” Everyone, with the exception of Sterling, rose from their respective perches in our makeshift living room.

“Think I’ll stay here,” he mumbled, twisting into the piece of furniture that had been informally designated Sterling’s Sofa, the blood-red one that he stretched out on and claimed the very day it appeared in the Boneyard.

Asher chuckled, then sauntered off to his room. Gil, who’d assem

bled most of the modular Swedish furniture Carver had ordered singlehandedly – and loved it – shrugged and walked off. I poked around in the break room fridge for a beer, snapped the top off, then headed for my own bedroom, taking sips as I made my way to the corridor where our quarters were located.

We’d each been assigned a room, each of them roughly equivalent in size and amenities. The Boneyard had some interesting properties, among them its ability to provide exactly what its occupants needed in terms of space. When I first entered the hideout, the corridor only held Sterling and Gil’s rooms. A third one appeared when I joined, then a fourth, when Asher did. I took my beer into bedroom number three and shut the door behind me.

Setting the bottle on the nightstand, I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my shirt. Then I plopped down onto my bed, throwing myself fully into a pillow. A rare opportunity to relax, I thought, at least before we went out to find a fix for the warehouse problem.

But that would still be better than dealing with the Eldest. Things were strangely quiet on the cosmic horror front. Not that it meant we could relax any. Quite different from the entities of earth, the spirits, demons, and mythological creatures that populate the various ethereal layers of our reality, the Eldest were primal, ancient forces that represented the most destructive aspects of the universe.

They were older than the human race, older than the gods themselves, and though they’d been asleep for so very long, recent events had awakened them, drawing their attention back to humanity. We’d had multiple encounters with the agents of the Eldest in the past, and the worst was knowing that we hadn’t seen the last of them. When it comes to mad elder gods from beyond the stars, no news is bad news. It felt like an invisible bubble could burst at any moment.

Still, maybe the world wasn’t totally screwed just yet, and I was just overthinking things. I sighed, angling my head over at the shelves that held my meager possessions. Some books, a laptop, a few gaming consoles, and there, on the top shelf, was my sword, Vanitas, the very paragon of how you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

At first glance, V was a tarnished old sword, made of bronze, but so old that his blade was turned a powdery bluish-green with verdigris. In truth he was made of star-metal, a mysterious, resilient material associated with the mad beings known as the Eldest. The only things of evident value on him were the garnets set into his hilt, which pulsed brightly whenever he spoke. But it’d been a while since he’d done any talking.

Vanitas was a sentient sword, or at least he was, once, before Thea destroyed him. He could talk, and even fight and fly on his own. It was awesome. But he’d been quiet for a while now, dormant. I knew that Vanitas needed time and attunement with his human companion to replenish his energies, but it’d been long enough since I’d brought him home whole and repaired. Still nothing.

But yeah, when Vanitas was destroyed, I’m talking proper destroyed, like there was no chance of him being put back together, not when he was just a heap of twisted metal and broken garnets. As for how I did get him reforged – let’s not get into that. Let’s focus on how I was reaching for my beer, enjoying its coolness, its dewy glass slick under my hand –

And how, as I took a sip of it, eyes open, I fancied through the gorgeous, amber liquid and the bottom of the bottle that the world, or at least my bedroom, looked beautiful in gold. I swallowed, the bubbles tickling my throat, then set the bottle down against my chest, savoring the chill – only to realize that the world was still golden.

I would have said my room, but I knew that I wasn’t in my room anymore. I was standing, beer in hand, barefoot and shirtless, in a great hall. It was almost completely gold in color, from the floors to the high ceilings, even the frames of the portraits of uncanny, inhuman humans lining the walls. And at the end of it, standing in a pool of molten gold, was the very creature who had put Vanitas back together again.

“Dustin Graves,” said the demon prince of greed, smiling through a mouth of sharp teeth. “Mammon has come to ask for a favor.”

Chapter 4

I squeezed my eyes shut, in some fervent hope that this was only a complex hallucination. Or maybe I’d fallen asleep, and it was just a dream. But the cool glass bottle in my hand and the chill of the marble flooring underfoot were very real. I opened my eyes, sighed, and gave the demon a weak smile.

“Hi. I guess.”

“It has been a while, thing of shadows. Long enough for Mammon to consider how you may best fulfill your half of the bargain.”

“Yeah. About that.” I scratched my nose, doing my best not to show my irritation. “I’ve had the sword with me for a while now. I mean it stays in the same room that I sleep in, and still no sign of sentience. I’m starting to think you might have bilked me out of a fair deal.”

Mammon held a hand to its chest, each of its delicate fingers tipped with a golden nail, then gasped. “Surely you aren’t accusing the demon prince of greed of – well, greed.”

I frowned. “Be serious.”

Mammon sighed. “You may recall, once, when the sword spent a significant amount of time away from your person, then went dormant.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know about that?”