Soul Fire (Darkling Mage 8)

Then who was the faceless man standing next to me?

I scrambled away, just far enough to put space between us. I hissed in pain as, on instinct, the palm of my hand ripped open, Nightmare spurting from the Dark Room and into our reality. My blood trailed down my fingers as I readied my blade to confront the intruder.

“Who the hell are you?” I growled. I could feel several pairs of eyes turning to stare at the sound of my voice. “What do you want?”

The smooth, unblemished surface that served as the man’s face rippled and crinkled as it attempted to grow human features. I recognized the sneer before the rest of the face even assembled itself.

“Dustin Graves,” said Donovan Slint. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Chapter 28

“I killed you,” I growled. “But I can kill you again.”

Not this shit again, and no way was I letting him escape this time. What little I’d learned about swords must have worked its way into my mind and my muscles. Donovan hardly had time to dodge as I rushed him, then thrust Nightmare clear through his belly.

I heard gasps, then the sound of Donovan choking. The room had fallen silent, except for Donovan’s gurgling breaths as he slumped across my body. I felt no remorse when I twisted the blade, nor when he sobbed in pain. I couldn’t tell if the blossom of triumph in my chest came more from my heart, or from the Dark Room’s influence.

But the gurgles turned into snorts, then peals of laughter. Voices called my name from around the room, shouting warnings, but Donovan had grabbed my wrist with one hand. He planted the other in my chest, shoving me away and pulling Nightmare out of his stomach with a horrible, unearthly strength. I watched as Nightmare left his body, the black of its blade streaked with fresh blood. I glanced up into Donovan’s face, the thump in my chest a panicked tattoo of confusion and horror.

“What are you?”

“The better question, Mr. Graves, is: who am I?”

Donovan’s face and voice had changed. His features were gone, replaced with those of a far too familiar entity.

I gasped. “Loki?”

The trickster god smiled sweetly at me as his hand closed around the length of Nightmare’s blade. He clenched, and the sword shattered into pieces.

I screamed. It was as if he had snapped one of my bones, the pain shooting all the way down my arm, and somehow, deep into my soul. Motes and streamers of ragged shadow flew from my wound, from the stump where Nightmare once sprouted, rising in a horrible whirlwind around me.

No, I screamed at the Dark Room. Don’t come here. My friends, don’t hurt them.

But the quality of this darkness was different, and the look in Loki’s face told me that this was deliberate, something he didn’t consider a danger to himself. The shadows rose around us, consuming everything outside, all the light, life, and sound in the world beyond the little space that Loki and I occupied. The last thing I heard was Herald calling my name.

I grabbed my wrist, staring hard to look for traces of Nightmare, but the shadows had receded into my body, leaving just a bloody slit in my hand. Gritting my teeth I staggered to my feet, looking around me, eyes wide as I took in the featureless darkness.

“Where are we? This isn’t the Dark Room. Where did you take us?”

“Elsewhere,” Loki said. “Someplace else. Or perhaps we are still in your master’s beloved Boneyard, and our disappearance itself is a deception. To your friends and master, we have vanished. But for all intents and purposes, we haven’t gone anywhere. We are invisible.”

I wrested my hand out of his grasp. “For fuck’s sake. You’re worse than Hecate with all your damn riddles and lies.”

Loki parted his hands, smiling serenely. “That is my role, is it not? My place in the world. I am a trickster god, Mr. Graves. And as I told you not too long ago, some things change, but some stay the same. I enjoy trickery, changing my shape, illusions. The books themselves say so.” He gestured around himself. “This place, too, is an illusion.”

“I don’t know what you’re playing at here, but – ”

He raised a finger to my lips, and I flinched away. Loki chuckled. “I only brought you here to talk. To explain myself, as it were.”

“There’s nothing to explain. It was you who stabbed me in the chest, brought back the curse of the Dark Room. Everything would have been fine if you’d just left me well enough alone.”

Loki cocked an amused eyebrow. “Oh, would it? And besides, you burned a hole in my chest and stabbed me in the stomach. Well, you did those things to Donovan Slint, I mean. One of my favorite identities to date, the ambitious young upstart who only wanted to excel and rise in his status as a Hound at the Lorica. I must say, Mr. Graves, you did serve as quite an inspiration for the character.”

I tightened my hands in anger, then I hissed at the pain, my wound still fresh. I backed away from him cautiously. “Then Donovan never existed. You made him up, made up an entire identity for – for what? To bring back the Dark Room? What about the Scion? Jonah?”

Loki’s eyes flicked upward and he rubbed his chin, as if trying to remember. “Oh, yes. Jonah, my superior. He was very real. Quite the pompous fellow. He was very convinced of his own brilliance, never giving Donovan – I mean me, of course – any of the credit for our fine work as a Hound. Yes. I killed him. Mages are only human, after all.”

“You what?” I threw my arms out, incredulous. “What the hell was the point of all of this? What’s with all the manipulation, all this lies? I’m not just some plaything for you entities, for the Eldest.”