“I saw him. Jesus, Mom, how is he alive? I thought the fire—”

  “Your father has always been an ambitious man. I was…I was beginning to have my doubts for months, and that night…well, I confronted him. He was messing with magics that should never be toyed with. It was wrong. It went against everything our coven believed in. And…and I was terrified. He’d changed. Or maybe he was just revealing himself, but in either case, he didn’t take kindly to me pointing out the error of his ways.”

  My mother stepped forward, her gaussimer form shimmering and blurred at the edges. She was wavering, made of light and stardust and the space between molecules. Hovering her hand over my cheek, I could feel the faint buzz of her spirit as she held my eyes, both of us crying.

  “He…he was going to hurt you. We fought. The house was empty, the coven too far away to call, and you were a child. When the lantern tipped over, it caught the ritual cloths on fire in seconds. I tried to get you out. I got you so close to the door, but he yanked me back into the building. The last thing I remember was hearing him chant something I couldn’t understand. Not until the end, at least.”

  We hung there in the expanding nothing, hands grasping and clawing around an unseen circle of protection that surrounded us by just a few feet on all sides. The sobs were endless, fear and betrayal souring my stomach.

  “What happened? What did he do?”

  My mother’s voice broke as she said, “The wood over the front door came down. I was just able to push you out of the way, but you still hit your head. When you were unconscious…I turned around to see him standing in front of a massive black gate, iron bars turning to smoke as they poured into his body. Your father said…”

  Her eyes fell to the floor, the sweep of her light brown curls hanging in her face. I put my fingers beneath her chin, still unable to touch her.

  “Mom, please. I need to know.”

  “I’ve always tried to protect you, Briar!” She shook from how hard she cried. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more.”

  “I know, Mom. Please. Tell me.”

  As the tears rained from her and dripped away into nothing, the beating of fists on the barrier grew louder and louder. Cracks formed in the dome of light, and we ducked as it flickered in, losing us several inches.

  “Mom! I need to stop him. This is the only chance!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, the sobs making her voice thick. “Take this woman and child. Take them to the darkness and enter me. Be bound by my blood, and forever more, let Death no longer look upon me!”

  He’d tried to kill her, kill me—my own father.

  I screamed into the ether until my lungs threatened to explode, and then I kept screaming. A rift of white light burst out from the center of my chest, swelling power blazing within it and roaring out of me in a furious detonation.

  The world was gone. Everything was gone. But out of nothing, I could hear the whisper of my mother’s words.

  “Do not let him do this.”

  Fissures spider-webbed across the expansive plane of emptiness. The false walls of my prison dropped away in shorn pieces of nightmare, and clarity rushed into my mind, my father’s chains of illusion crumbling.

  “Call upon your siblings' past and fallen. Use the power of your blood—willingly bound to the beings of your heart.”

  Seering white grew brighter and brighter. My mother’s face hung translucent and ethereal until it was too luminous to keep my eyes open, and then I woke up.

  Sitting up, I jerked as my body came back online. In a second, arms squeezed around me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.

  “Briar! Oh, thank fuck.”

  Sez held me to his chest, that candy-sweet smell of his blooming in my nose like the best welcome back home.

  “I can’t…” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Breathe.”

  He let go in a flash, yanking himself backward as he combed over me with his eyes, looking for any sign that I wasn’t okay. I offered a weak smile.

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  Cupping my face, Sez locked his eyes on mine. “That was too fucking close. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “I’m not planning on it. Where’s—”

  A deafening boom of crushing rock and grating metal screamed from across the cave. Shaedir was pinned back by the warlock—my father. They were blocking swings from his scythe over and over, falling to their back and dragging themself across the floor. My father roared, gripping Shaed’s flail and lobbing the heavy end toward their shoulder.

  Shaedir was knocked back, the flail coming away dripping black blood.

  I reached out. “Shaedir!”

  Their face lit up as their eyes found mine. “Briar?”

  Just as I was getting up, a gust of wind shoved us all back down to the ground.

  “No! You fucking ungrateful whelp! You will not keep me from my prize!”

  The inhuman voice bellowed into the stony cavern, and I looked up in horror to see the mangled form that had once been my father. The reaper they’d absorb was practically shoving its way through his body, my dad’s arms and legs and face distorted to a terrifying visage of bones tearing through black muscle.

  Pinpoint, crazed eyes sat in the center of deep black wells, and my father howled like a banshee as he hoisted his scythe and cut it through the air toward us. Sez grabbed me, rolling us out of the way. We narrowly missed the blade, but his shoulder smashed into a thin, pointed stalagmite, which stabbed through his arm at the ball joint.

  “Fuck!” I reached for it, snapping off the sharp tip and hoping he could pull himself off it before his eyes went wide. “Look out!”

  Facing my father, I was just able to jump out of the way, and as I rolled to a stop against a wall, I forced myself to stand. Dad was quick to follow after me, and as he kicked the back of the blade, it soared up and out, an uppercut with a particularly sharp edge.

  “Stop!”

  Holding out my hand, I called on everything flickering through my veins, drawing from an untapped well as I remembered my mother’s words. The scythe froze in place, and I tossed both it and my father away with the swipe of my hand.

  He went flying, the scythe clattering to the ground, and then his frenzied stare sought me out. “You little fucking bitch!”

  “You know what?” I glared at him, disgust clenching my jaw. “I don’t have time for you. You abused your gifts, you took away my mother, and you nearly killed me. No more.”

  Rushing to his feet, the broken, corrupted form of what had been my father leaped for me, materializing this scythe in his hand. But as he arched it down, it stopped mid-air, held in time and space by the gifts coursing through my blood.

  That’s it.

  “My blood. My family’s blood. My mother’s. My siblings’. My mates’.” I raised my arms, feeling the glow of the full moon even within the dank recesses of this miserable cave. “The blood of witches fallen and remembered! The blood of our dead, our beloved, and our grieved!”

  “No!” If any human remained of my father, it fell away, his horrid cry tearing out and sending ichor-filled spittle to the ground. “It is mine! You will not stop the changing tide! It will be undone! It will be broken!”

  Wind swirled around me, lifting my hair as the heat of my blood thrummed. I could sense the golden glow of my eyes, the magenta bolts of lightning streaking through my veins.

  “What is open will not be broken. What belongs below shall evermore be bound there.”

  Sez ran to Shaedir on the floor, helping them up as they met my eyes. I could feel the threads of fate binding us, the permanence of what we had that stretched beyond time and space.

  That growing white glow within me pulsed with my heartbeat. It permeated my skin, expanding over the floor. Each place it touched, the ichor and desecration of my father’s workings turned to nothing but ash. I let it funnel through me, feeling the spirits of my ancestors standing proudly at my side.

  “Ahh!” My father cried in terror, scrambling backward across the stone and leaving his scythe to be obliterated by the radiance flooding out of me. “No!”

  Shaedir lunged off Sez, planting their scythe against my father's back and halting his retreat. “Oh, no. You’ll be staying right here. The day of your reaping has come. Face it.”

  He fought against my reaper, but Sez appeared in front of him, wrapping Shaedir’s flail around him from the reaper’s hip like a lasso.

  “Mother,” I whispered, looking up at the roof of the cave, which had dissolved into a translucent barrier, “thank you.”

  “You are all fools! Immortality lies in your grasp! You can’t—”

  Locking my blazing gaze on him again, I unleashed the full wrath of the power charging through me with the force of the sun. It rocketed forward, bathing the monstrosity in pure being. The cancerous form twisting my father’s body into something unholy and cursed crumbled into ash that disappeared in the flaring light.

  After a moment, a black smudge in the air was all that remained of my father—his soul.

  “I’ll take this.” Shaedir lowered their head toward me, the reaper self complete again.

  As they held out their hand, drawing the necrotic powers of the Underworld to claim the charred soul, I collapsed. Sez was at my side in seconds, and I wobbled like a damn cooked noodle as I tried to watch Shaedir send my father’s spirit to the afterlife.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was shaky and threaded with raspy breaths. “I feel like I was hit by a bus.”

  Sez grinned, swiping my sweaty hair away from my face. “Well, you look great, gorgeous.”

  As he kissed me, I melted into the sensation, gripping onto the fabric of his stupid, white crop top. “I’m just glad to not be dead.”

  “That is an incredible perk.” He smirked, touching his forehead to mine. “I think we deserve—”

  “Ugh!”

  We looked at Shaedir, and my jaw dropped. The black essence of spirit that remained of my father was coiled around their forearm, snaking up their skin as black tendrils of poison crawled through their veins.

  “Shaedir?” My throat was tight, barely eking out the trembling word.

  I forced Sez to help me up, and we hurried over to them just as they fell to the group, their gold eyes rolling back into their head.

  “Shaedir! Talk to me!”

  Snapping their face toward me in a crunching jerk, Shaedir locked their eyes on me, smirking wide. Their eyes were entirely black, and they tilted their head as a bubble of deranged laughter rippled out of their throat.

  “Sorry, honey. Shaedir’s not home right now. But Daddy Dearest still wants to play.”

  Twenty-Six

  There’s No Place Like Home

  Shaedir

  So many people believed that the Underworld was an endless void of darkness and soundless expanse. It wasn’t. There were realms contained in that neverending space, each with its own light and music and pain and peace. It was the grand cathedral where each set destination a soul would retire to was kept, endless doors lining endless hallways that either veered right or left.

  Wherever I was now, it was dark. It was dark, utterly lightless, and nothing but black took up the corners of my consciousness.

  Moreover, I felt detached. The usual chord of being that tethered me to my shadows or the corporeal form I called up was faded, floating farther out of my grasp with each moment.

  And then there was pain.

  Snapping connections, bruised bones that distorted and bent at the wrong angles to make the wrong shapes flooded everything that was Shaedir.

  Against it, I tried to force my eyes open. I clawed at the edges of my perception so that I might see what existed beyond the black until I thought I might split apart. But finally, a crevice of light emerged, and I followed it down the nonlinear hallway of my mind.

  When it opened up, I could see them.

  Briar! Sez!

  I didn’t scream for them. It was a thought inside this black well, but I knew immediately that I hadn’t called out. Just like I was suddenly aware of the fact that something moved me. My body lifted off the floor and rushed out at them, pulling my scythe from the ethereal plane and lashing it out in wild arcs toward my mates.

  No, this isn’t right. I would never. I…Wait.

  Something else was with me in the widening expanse of nothing. I could feel another presense where there should be none, and it seemed familiar.

  Oh, no. He’s caught on. Well, no matter. If I can’t contain a reaper, I’ll just puppet one from the inside.

  My muscles pulled taught, or whatever made up this spectral form inside my head, and I looked around for the source of the warlock’s words. He was in here. Briar’s father. His corrupted soul had infected my body. He wanted to use me as a weapon, as a new tool to avoid death and retribution.

  Get. Out.

  “Shaedir, stop!” Briar’s voice reached me across the chasm, and I could look through my eyes for just a moment, watching as my body wielded the scythe and flail against her.

  Oh, but I’m having so much fun. This is even better than having a reaper fused to your DNA. I can pilot you around by just commanding your body like a chained animal. You’ll do an excellent job killing them for me. Killing everyone.

  Pressure squeezed down on my essence from everywhere and nowhere, and my conviction faltered. It was long enough for my body on the outside to slow just a hair, and then fire licked across my arm as Briar tried to keep me at bay.

  The agony of charring flesh reached me even here, even as my body didn’t react. But it did give me an idea. I opened more of myself up to the pull of the Underworld, the part that wanted to claim Briar’s father no matter who he might be attached to.

  I felt myself flicker out of existence for just a second, and the body the warlock was controlling stumbled.

  No! Bad dog! We can’t have that!

  Control was pulled from me again, and I watched the cave fly past me and rush up toward me as my body was flung around like a damned ragdoll by the possessing spirit. I crumpled down, the injuries driving a wedge between me and existence more and more with each strike.

  “Come on, Shaed! Wake up! Snap out of it!” Briar’s magic shoved me backward as the warlock used me to attack once more.

  “Buddy! Kick him the fuck out!” Sez dodged blows that were swung down with wild abandon, the sharp flanges of the flail’s head dragging down the side of his arm during the last swipe. “Ahh! Fucking Hell, Shaedir! Please!”

  The desperation in his voice hit me, choking a sob from this sliver of essence that was still me. I couldn’t let that fucker win. He would kill them, and I wouldn’t allow some egomaniacal spellcaster on a power trip to hurt my mates.

  But I didn’t know what to do. All that had been useful was trying to let myself get reaped by the Underworld now that the gate was so close. The magic of Samhain had thinned the veil so much, and I could maybe use that to draw us both into the afterlife.

  “Ugh!” Briar’s effort called out from the mortal plane. “I’ve got him! Do something!”

  “Like fucking what?! I’m not the expert on possession!”

  Briar’s cage of magic was holding my body. This was it. I needed to let go, to will myself to the hereafter. But I didn’t want to leave them. I had no form, but sure as Hell, my being cracked further apart, an aching hole expanding through me as I tried to find the strength to say goodbye to them.

  Everything could die, it seemed, and for a being with no expiration date, it appeared my time had come.

  And I was not ready.

  Light filtered in, allowing me to see more of the cave where my animated body fought against Briar’s magic. I could see her sapphire eyes. I could see Sez at her right, his magenta curls swirling in the wind conjured up by her spell.

  “No, this can’t—Shaed! Come back to me!”

  Her words had weight, slipping through the invisible walls that kept me from my body. Heat and light whispered through this empty place, tiny cracks forming at the seams.

  “Please!” I could see her; her arms outstretched as she concentrated on the bars made of force and will alone that trapped me—trapped her father. “Shaedir, don’t let him have you. You belong to us…to me.”

  “Why won’t you just die like a good girl!” My voice tore through me in disjointed staggering, the anger of Briar’s father trying to become all I knew.

  “Leave him alone!” Briar conjured a whip of flame, cracking it down across my chest. “Please, Shaed, fight!”

  Fuck, Briar. I want to, but…he has to be stopped. I silently called to the Underworld, begging it to claim the warlock, who would finally be named after his corruption. Take him! Take Joshua Richard Goode to the end! Death, I bid you as your servant, reap this soul. I accept the cost.

  More light filtered in through cracks in this black pit. I could feel the call of the afterlife fighting to break free, and I could feel how my essence weakened. Beyond this place, my body fell to the floor.

  NO! You fucking useless reaper! I will not die!

  Somehow smiling, I could now feel the craggy rocks pressing into my body. You will. We both will.

  “Oh, shit. Shaed? Shaedir! Come on. Don’t do this. You need to fight.”

  I couldn’t respond.

  “No! Don’t you dare fucking do this!” Briar beat on my chest, tears slipping down her tan cheeks; I wanted to brush them away. “Shaedir! No, no, no. Sez, please. Can you get another demon or your boss or something?”

  My demon recoiled, blinking sporadically as he shook his head. I could feel his hand in mine.

  “I can’t do that, Briar. They wouldn’t help anyway.” He looked down at me, a glassy sheen over his eyes. “Shaedir, please. You can’t…”

  “Dammit! No.” Briar yanked me up, sliding her arm under my neck and putting her forehead to mine. “I didn’t finally fall in love with someone for them to be taken away. So you get the fuck back here. Right now.”

  She…loves me?

 

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