Reckoner Redeemed Read online

  She’d paid the price. Her skin still bore the imprint of Shahh’s fading black glyphs, still hummed with pain; her eyes still stung with unshed tears, though she’d learned long ago to writhe and beg for him. Even so, the glyphmaster’s restraint revealed much about his desire to obtain Trevarr’s powerful benefactor.

  An entire village gone. Ghehera’s ultimate leverage over Trevarr, gone.

  It had been such sweetness, to hear his unfettered scream—his body wrenched completely out of his control, his immense strength of will irrelevant. The gauntlet crushed him with pain, with sorrow, with the viscerally clear memories of a small body flying through the air—

  She had crushed him. Taking him past the brink of survival. Knowing it.

  But now she stood at the doorway, watching him breathe freely and regularly.

  Alive.

  She did not care to guess how. No one should be able to reach him in this place. On Ghehera or off it.

  Her minions finished tending him, scurrying low in her presence. The squat, barely sentient beings forced sustenance on him and bathed him of blood with their own long tongues, using enslaved healing entities to tend internal damages. The natural marks of his kyrokha nature were etched clearly over the strength of his shoulders and biceps, curving to follow the distinct musculature of a back and spine now supported by warm stone.

  “Leave us,” she snapped to the minions, a rough edge over the usual silky smooth seduction of her voice.

  They hesitated just long enough to spike her ire, not quite finished; she lifted the perfection of her upper lip at them, exposing sharp fangs and feeling herself settle as they scurried away with the appropriate amount of fear. They were little more than dullbloods—there was hardly any sport in frightening them.

  Of course, some had once said the same of her.

  Until Trevarr.

  She stood inside the heavy door of the main interrogation chamber, her chest again rising with enough emotion to invoke fury. Nothing touched her with any depth these days. Nothing. She did not permit it.

  And yet he had.

  He lay against rock, head lolling, arms sagging against the heavy geas shackles. His breathing came evenly; his pain had receded. His old wounds were no longer swollen, no longer seeping. If he opened his eyes, she knew his gaze would meet hers directly, strong and clear.

  She would not play games with him now. Not any longer. One did not hold a being of Trevarr’s nature for long. If he strengthened, he would sooner or later strike back. Just as pushing her to lose control had been, in its way, taking control of his own destiny.

  Fark. She should have seen it coming. Only Trevarr knew her well enough to strike so hard, so deep, just right.

  Only Trevarr. Body mate, play mate, confidant, mentor...protector. He’d once given her control of herself. Of her destiny...of her heart.

  And now it seemed he would be the one to take it away.

  Only Trevarr.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 11

  A New Bob

  Even when the mountain needed saving the next day and a doomsday egg sat in her living room, Garrie’s garbage still had to go out.

  She gathered up the trash and recycling, taking the stairs her usual two at a time on the way down. She kicked the exit door open with the same vigor that had gotten her scolded by management in the past, and swung the bags into their dimly lit bins from a distance that would also get her scolded if she was seen.

  Okay, so once her downstairs neighbor had walked right into a sailing bag. But the woman should be expecting such things now, right?

  She probably wouldn’t be expecting that hot glow at the corner of the big garbage bin. Or the scent of hot metal, or that distinct scent of warming garbage in the midnight-cool air. Even Garrie wasn’t expecting that.

  But she found herself somehow unsurprised by it, because the instant she reached out with a quiet, testing little breeze, she found what she’d half expected. Not of this world. And distinctively reminiscent of Kehar—but just a little bit bent. Just a little bit damaged.

  “It’s been there all day. Where have you been?”

  Garrie jumped, startling a lot more than she wished she had. “Fark,” she said in annoyance, reorienting to the Bob who now leaned against the corner of her building.

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Boo.” The Bob lifted one shoulder in a remarkably self-contained gesture. He wasn’t much older than she was, a bike helmet under one arm, torn and remarkably fluorescent biking duds covering a biker-lean body. No big mystery what had happened to him.

  He tasted of surprise, a scant instant of horrified comprehension, and the characteristic tang of sudden death. But he otherwise barely tasted of anything. “I should have felt you there.”

  He snorted. His arm wavered, showed a glint of bone through a ripped sleeve, and then reformed again. “You think?”

  Great. A ghost with attitude. She frowned. “When did you happen?”

  “Yesterday.” The Bob crossed his arms and waited, a little too expectantly.

  It didn’t take her long. “You’re too new to be this put-together.”

  “You think?” he said again. And the strange part wasn’t that he was right, it was that he knew he was right. Because some ghosts learned the ropes before they moved on, some didn’t, and some simply fell into a spiral of diminishing self-realization right from the start. But those like Rhonda Rose were one in a...

  Well. One.

  A trickle of dread settled in Garrie’s stomach. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, fark. Yesterday. Yesterday...evening?”

  Just about the time she’d been roaring through town in a blazing gust of energy, outrunning a blood-red darkness.

  “Yesterday,” the Bob repeated. “Just before dusk, actually. Some asshole texting and driving at the same time. Wasn’t even scratched, of course. Still, I probably totaled his car. Then again, I’m not sure. Because, you know, the whole part about just being killed, and the fact that I’ve got no actual reason to hang around here. I was just kind of lingering a moment, ready to move on, and then—”

  Garrie closed her eyes. “Shazam.”

  He made an accusatory noise of agreement.

  No wonder she hadn’t felt his presence. It was, in truth, her presence—filling out the Bob, energizing him...giving him this unusual cohesion and structure.

  She spoke with emphatic precision. “Fark.”

  *Fark.* Sklayne’s voice echoed in her mind, tinged with dark amusement. Enough darkness to know he hadn’t forgiven her; enough amusement to know that it wouldn’t stop him from poking his nose in.

  The Bob leaned casually on his suddenly apparent bike. Great. He’d brought props. “So here I am, fully formed and pretty much anchored. To you. I would have been here sooner, but I was busy figuring out why I couldn’t just...you know...go.”

  “Fark. Fark, fark, fark.”

  *Probably means not what you think...*

  Shut up, she thought at him, raising the mental volume high.

  *Loud!*

  “Not as loud as it’s gonna get,” she muttered. She scrubbed her hands over her face, settling to tug at the hair behind her ear. “So look, Bob...I mean, I’m sorry. I wish that hadn’t happened. I didn’t mean for it to.” I was running for my life.

  “Dana,” he said. “Not Bob. Cute as that is.”

  “Dana,” she repeated, glancing over her shoulder at the smoldering metal of the garbage bin. So, you’re here. What can I do for you?”

  He responded without hesitation. “Free me.”

  “Free—”

  “From whatever you’ve done to me. From this anchor. I don’t want this, Lisa McGarrity. Let me return to my own destiny.”

  She released a quiet huff of laughter, dry and dark. “Looks like this is your—”

  “Free me,” he said, stepping on her words. “I don’t want to be here. And if you don’t help me, you won’t want me to be here, either.”

  She started to say something reason
able. Something calming. Instead a rush of unfamiliar thoughts skidded through her mind, and a garble of equally unfamiliar words tried to tumble from her mouth.

  What the—”

  Get a grip. It’s a ghost. It’s what you do. No babbling necessary.

  Except he was just a little bit more than that. He had unusual cohesion, unusual self-realization...unusual attachment to her, with a spiritual scent so like hers—so full of hers—that she couldn’t readily track him down. She had no idea what he could and couldn’t do—or what it would take to stop him.

  But she wouldn’t make assumptions. She found those calming words, the right calming tone. “I hear you. But this is new to me. I have to think about how I can do it, okay?”

  Sklayne’s breath tickled through her hair. *Do it for you. Snack.*

  “No!” Garrie said, blurting it out. “No, that would be—”

  Murder.

  Murder, for this man who was still as much alive as he was dead. And who now scowled at her, blood pulsing endlessly at wounds on his temple, his neck, his arm.

  “You never mind,” she told him. “I’m multi-tasking.”

  “Help me,” he said, “or I’ll give you plenty of reason to pay attention.” And then he was gone.

  “Great,” she said, not caring if Sklayne had lingered to hear her. “Entitled Bob. Kind of makes me nostalgic for Stoner Bob.”

  *San Jose Bob,* Sklayne agreed, with an appreciative undertone of purr. *Tasty.*

  “Oh, you did not,” she snapped.

  *Not,* he admitted. *But made you think.*

  “Awesome. Smart-ass not-cat, just when I don’t need one.”

  *Do.* Smug certainty suffused his voice, although his presence left a less robust impression than usual. Not distracted so much as thinned.

  “Don’t. Now let me get back to work.”

  *Putting out fire,* he said, his tones wise.

  Putting out— Garrie spun around, found the back corner of the bin already glowing hot, wisps of stenchy smoke rising from the cavernous innards. “Fark. I’m not a fire extinguisher! I can’t—”

  *Can.*

  She didn’t know if he spoke for her or himself, but right now she figured the hose to be a better bet if she could find it. A wood alcove surrounded those bins, nothing more than tinder in the desert, and who knew what else those flames would lick against—the juniper bush landscaping, the wood chips beneath, the picnic table beyond—

  *Can,* Sklayne said. He leapt from the bushes, revealing himself as faded as his voice. Tickling breezes turned to a bellows-poof of air against Garrie’s face, enough to stagger her back a step. Quite suddenly he was no longer ears and tail and whiskers in the right cat places, but a blanket with diminutive toes at the corners, claws extended. A short tail twitched midway along one edge and ears emerged to flick with amusement.

  “Sklayne—! Someone could see—!”

  He ignored her and floated down over the bin, stretching...streeetching to encompass it, then pulling in tight to pass through it, semi-ethereal and perfectly comfortable that way. His blanketed form disappeared into the bin, capturing the smoke along the way.

  For a long moment, silence settled around Garrie. Then her ears popped. She jumped a little, glancing furtively around. “Sklayne?”

  The glowing bin corner faded to bubbled blue paint. Sklayne emerged from the side of the thing, walking through the metal in cat form, a long, snakelike body dangling limply from his mouth. He deposited it before her with the aplomb of any feline hunter and, for a finishing touch, chittered with pride.

  “Awesome,” Garrie said flatly. Surely she should have simply felt gratitude, instead of this too-familiar feeling that things were once again spiraling out of her control. “I don’t suppose you know what it is.”

  *Dead.*

  “Totally awesome,” she said, even more flatly than before. “That’s my goal in life. Kill all the things. Even the ones that end up here through no fault of their own.”

  *Damaged,* he informed her, looking a touch more solid now.

  “True,” she agreed. The smoky ethereal taste of this thing meant it had come from Kehar. The barbed sting of its echo spoke of the damage done to it during its unwilling transit.

  If she hadn’t truly understood it before, she knew it now: the krevata portal harvest had weakened the walls between their two worlds. Either these semi-ethereal creatures were still stumbling through, or they’d been trapped here in greater numbers than Garrie had realized. She didn’t know, either, if they reacted to her in the way of her familiar ghosts—gravitating toward her, even agitating at her presence as they had in Sedona.

  She didn’t much like the way this one had shown up in her own back yard.

  She crouched to regard it, nudging its lingering warmth with a gentle fingertip. It could have been a small rat but for the satin smooth scales and its darker than dark color, a black so deep it seemed to suck away any light daring to touch it.

  Well, but for that and its flexible, elongated snout and the tusk-like fangs that overlapped both upper and lower jaw.

  “Did you have to kill it?” she asked, without truly meaning to—definitely not meaning to have such sadness in her voice. “Wasn’t there any way to help it?”

  *Damaged,* he said more firmly, as if that was that.

  “Yeah,” Garrie said. “Aren’t we all.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 12

  Kehar: The Misbegotten

  Anjhela sat on the edge of her plush bed—a thing of rich, rumpled bedclothes and satisfaction contained in a room of amenity and luxury.

  A place that was hers alone.

  Here, she could express her relief: the fugitive village was all but found. Publicly, she could show no relief, no hint of concern, for Anjhela could not be known to have concerns. Anjhela had only control and demanded only respect.

  She fisted her hand, pulling the mendihar to the surface—flexing her fingers to admire the play of lumelight over gleaming skin and smooth metal.

  Her salvation.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d failed Ghehera. Not to have her supplicant resist not just one interrogation but two and then three, to almost die and then—after all that—to pity and threaten her.

  She couldn’t remember the last time—

  Except then suddenly, she could. And the time before that, too.

  And the way they all connected to this same man.

  ===

  Remembering...

  ===

  ...Anjhela sat on the edge of her cot.

  It was a plain cot in a plain room of warm stone that held few amenities and no luxuries—except that now, finally, it was hers alone.

  She gazed at her hand with wonder, running the fingers of her freehand over those of her host hand, touching the sensitive skin, the hard, pointed nail...the beauty of what lay beneath.

  She never tired of the wonder.

  There was a cost, of course—not one that everyone could bear. There was the endless sensation of its itch to escape, the pleasure-pain of its emergence through skin, the constant need to maintain her guard against it. But even that still held a wonder. Because I can do it.

  Anjhela, the misbegotten. Anjhela, the half-breed runt. Anjhela, scooped up early from her village, brought up in Ghehera and always aware of her debt to Glyphmaster Shahh.

  Trevarr was different. He had come late to this place, and if he no longer frightened her, she was nonetheless frightened for him. For although Ghehera let him live, he felt no debt to its Tribunal.

  He despised them all. And he let it show.

  Mine.

  He is mine.

  The thought surprised her; she thought it might have come from the mendihar. But instead of squelching the intrusion, she tasted it. Rolled it around in her mind...liked it.

  After all, she was Trevarr’s equal now—more than his equal. For Anjhela was the one with the mendihar, the one now respected and feared.

  Trevar
r was simply reviled, as he’d been since his arrival at Ghehera. Sent on the worst of the off-world collection missions because of his ability to pass as human when necessary. Sent, always, with the dictate to succeed no matter the personal cost.

  Anjhela had helped put him back together often enough to know those costs.

  No such damage had ever happened to her—nor would it, now that she had the mendihar. And if Trevarr had helped her through the process of merging with it, that was only right.

  He’d best not assume it now.

  He quite suddenly stood in the doorway, as if drawn by her very thought—leaning and tired and distinctly worn. “Anjhela.”

  She started, jerking her fingers away from her host hand, her faintly scaled skin rippling in embarrassment. Just that quickly, anger followed. How dare he interrupt her? “Where have you been?” she demanded. “The Tribunal sent you on no errand these past days.”

  “Hunting.” He rarely explained himself. He didn’t seem inclined to start now.

  “Hunting what?” she heard herself say—and liked it. Liked the confidence in it, and the hint of demand. “Hunting where?”

  He straightened, no hint of his reaction showing except in those eyes of his, kyrokha eyes that grew bright with the power his body could stir. And more than that, there seemed some hint of sparking intensity around his form, something not of Trevarr at all. The glint of barely seen glass, of movement at the corner of her eye.

  “You did it.” That, too, came out as a demand. “Your secret little quest, the thing you think to keep from me.”

  The silvered eyes met her gaze more evenly than she would have thought possible—certainly more evenly than she was accustomed to, even this short time after her merging.

  No one met her gaze these days. But he not only did so, he did it with no apparent effort. And he did it long enough for her to understand the dismissal behind his regard before he turned away. “Be well, Anjhela.”

  In an instant she knew so many things.

  He would not be treated as anything less than equal. He would not bow before that which had changed her. He was what he’d always been—the one honest, reliable, true thing in her life. True to her, true to himself. Even in this.