Braving Fate (The Mythean Arcana 1)

He cocked an eyebrow. “The dead zone? You shouldn’t be there. Why did you go?”

Mytheans rarely went to the dead zone unless they had an inclination to break the laws of both the mortal and the supernatural realms. She went there to hunt rogues or to steal the soul power of those she didn’t have to feel guilty taking it from, generally demons and other unsavory elements of their society. But Warren didn’t have to know that.

Warren watched Esha, unable to look away. What was it about this American soulceress that got to him? She was all contrasts. Light and dark, soft and hard. An enigma as always, with her damn cat constantly at her heels.

Her abilities intrigued him. She intrigued him, with her couldn’t-give-a-shite attitude, and the heaviness that occasionally crept into her amber eyes. He’d made a point to look for it on the rare occasions he saw her. What put the shadows in those haunting eyes?

She was hell on his celibacy and peace of mind. Most things in life he could pack into neat boxes in his head so he could get a moment of peace. But Esha defied boxes. He did his damnedest to avoid her because of it. He’d been pretty succes

sful, until now.

It was one thing to change his route when he saw her from afar or to avoid places he knew she’d be. But standing right across from her, so close that he could breathe her soap-clean scent, made keeping his eyes off her an impossible task.

She dragged a hand through her midnight hair, mussing the utilitarian ponytail she forced it into. “I went to the underground because I was hunting rogues. That’s what the university hired me to do, remember? But I felt something off. So we went to check it out.”

Alone? With a house cat for company?

The irritable animal hissed at him as if it sensed his thoughts. Esha had never been afraid of anything in the decade he’d known her. She wouldn’t have hesitated before heading into the underground. The woman had a shell as hard as granite and balked at nothing.

“We looked around for a while, went through most of the tunnels on the north side, until we reached a huge chamber, the one located under the statue of Sir Walter Scott in the park. There was an enormous group of shadows. Fucking huge evil shadows. But there was no one, alive or dead, in the area. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Was that fear in her voice? Not possible. Not from what he knew of Esha. “What do you mean, evil shadows?”

“Come on. Don’t give me that. You know what I can do.”

He did. She could see the evil in people’s souls as shadows.

What did she see in the blank space where his soul should be? He knew she could see the shadows of the evil that he’d committed. It made him wary as hell and was another of the reasons he avoided her. Although she didn’t care what anyone thought of her, he did. He’d worked hard to regain his honor. To do right in the world. He hadn’t yet succeeded and probably never would, but he didn’t know how to deal with the fact that she saw the truth of him. It made him itchy.

“If there were no people—or ghosts—in the area, where did the shadows come from?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what is so freaky about this. It was huge and looked like you could walk into it and never walk out again.” She actually seemed shaken—there was fear in her wide, amber eyes.

“Until we know what this threat is, I doona want you going back there,” he said.

Esha sighed as she began to pace near the door. “Why not? You can’t see the shadows and neither can your guards.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

She laughed. “Seriously? Too dangerous for me?” She stretched out her arms.

He scowled. But she had a point. For Mytheans, creatures of myth and legend, Esha was the thing that went bump in the night. She sucked the power out of other Mytheans and used it against them. She would be fine. He shouldn’t worry about her. And given that her kind had stolen his soul, he definitely shouldn’t be worrying about her. But he did. He just didn’t want to examine the whys of it.

“Just stay away. I’ll do something about it, I promise,” he said. “But in the meantime, doona go back there.”

The cat glared at him again. It had been slinking around the room, alternately turning from smoke to corporeal form, sniffing anything that came into its path.

“Do something? What do you mean something? We have to address this immediately. I’m not joking when I say it’s really bad. The worst shadows I’ve ever seen.” Her eyes were bright, her face hard, her posture stiff. Her chest rose and fell with her heavy breaths and he struggled to keep his eyes on hers.

“I’ll look into it. As soon as we have some information, I’ll tell you. But doona, under any circumstances, go back there alone. I will handle it.”

He turned his back on her in dismissal, skirting the side of the desk and walking to the window. It was a dick move, but he had to get her out of here. He heard her huff, stalk across the floor, and slam the door behind her.

Warren leaned over the desk, gripping the edge until it cut into his palms, and tried to drag calming breaths into his lungs. Damn it. He focused on his breathing, trying to forget the sight of her, the scent of her. How she made him feel.

One of her kind had stolen his soul and made him a monster, had made him kill those he loved. He shouldn’t want her. He shouldn’t like her. He shouldn’t feel this way about her. He shouldn’t feel at all, not if he wanted to keep the demons of his past from howling until his mind cracked.

He leaned back on his heels and slowly counted backward from one hundred. One by one, he carefully packed the demons back into their coffins and locked the lids. They’d break free eventually, but for now he had a measure of rigidly self-enforced control that in its own way led to peace. As long as he wasn’t around Esha, he could maintain this.