She stared at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. “I refuse to be scared anymore.”
“You shouldn’t have to be.” He hated that she was. Then stay away from her.
“I need to find my brother. He’s the only family I have.”
“I know.” An impossible task, the way he saw it.
“I need the Aurelian for that.”
She was too determined for him to keep her from doing it. “If you think you’re going without me—”
“After what happened last time, you shouldn’t even ask.”
“So what’s your plan?” He almost didn’t want to know.
She held up one finger. “First, to see the Aurelian.”
“How are you going to get there without the signum on your back?”
“Dominic has a signumist. I’ve already sent him a message that I’m coming to talk to him tonight. I don’t know if the man’s any good, but I’m hoping he can put the correct sequence of signum into my skin again.”
Mal’s jaw dropped open and he sank back onto his heels. “Bloody hell. You’re in no shape to undergo something like that. Are you crazy?”
“Crazy mad, and I’m in fine shape.” Her hands tightened into fists, and a tarnished spark lit her eyes. “Once I get to the Aurelian, I’ll obtain the information I need, then slip out of the Primoris Domus undetected and find Tatiana.”
The name of his ex-wife and the woman who’d put him under his curse was like salt on an open wound. “Why would you want to find Tatiana?”
“Why else?” She held up a second finger. “To kill her.”
Mal ground his back teeth together. “I’m going with you—”
“I already said—”
He pushed to his feet and held up his hands. “Try to stop me and I’ll prevent you from going at all. You’d insist the same of me. You know you would.”
Chrysabelle was silent for an uncomfortably long time. “Fine.” She stared up at him expectantly. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked about the Aurelian’s answer.”
“I’m biding my time.”
“Because you think I’m not going to tell you?”
“The possibility had occurred to me.”
She eased back into the chaise, her chest rising slowly with a lengthy inhale. She let the air out again before she spoke. “She had a way to remove your curse, but”—a second sigh and she shook her head—“it’s almost not an answer at all.”
Tremors of possibility ran through him. “What? Tell me.” He’d do anything, anything at all to break free of the hellish weight pressing him into darkness. Even kill your pretty little blood whore? His jaw tightened, his anger at the voices almost unbearable. He forced the emotion off his face as her head came up.
Her eyes focused on him and yet looked emptier than he’d ever seen them. An unnatural coldness settled in his belly as she began to speak. “You must right a number of wrongs equal to the names on your skin. One for every life you’ve taken.”
He reached for something to steady himself. Finding nothing, he collapsed into the chaise beside her. “It’s impossible,” he whispered. A hurricane of laughter shook his bones. Even the voices knew what a herculean task that was. “I am never going to be free.”
“Mal, stop.” She grabbed his hands, her touch white-hot on his freezing skin.
He looked down. Beneath her pale fingers, blood seeped from his tightly clenched fists. He opened them. Deep gouges marked his palms. They healed as he watched, but the blood that dripped onto the carpet was there to stay. Like his curse.
“You vow not to prevent me from getting to the Aurelian and to Tatiana, and I will do everything I can to help you with this.”
Focusing on her was the best thing he could do right now. “I have a better plan. You go alone to see the Aurelian then come back through the portal and give yourself time to heal properly. Then, when you’re ready, we go together to Corvinestri and take care of Tatiana.” If Chrysabelle meant to kill his ex-wife, there was no way he wasn’t going to help. The voices cried out. He knew they believed Tatiana to be the cure to his curse. He knew better. “You know how dangerous she is. This isn’t something you should do alone. Not to mention I have enough of my own reasons to want her dead.”
She was quiet for a few moments, probably thinking. “Agreed. But we will also find a way to remove your curse.”
He closed his hands again, looking away from her. “No. We won’t. Because there isn’t one.” He stood and walked to the door. “Let’s go see Dominic about this signumist.”
Chapter Two
Dolores Linley Diaz-White, Lola to her friends and family, pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled the well-conditioned air of her city hall office. The report open on her desk was one of a hundred, maybe two, that had come in since the beginning of the week. Every day brought new ones, but they were all basically the same. Strange, unexplainable creatures had begun showing up in her city. The kind of creatures people called vampires and shape-shifters and bogeymen.
She glanced up as something swooped past her window. Something that looked very much like one of the gargoyles carved into the corners of the building. But she wouldn’t think that, because acknowledging that such a thing was even possible meant the things in her reports were possible, too. Instead, she shifted her gaze to the panel of wall monitors positioned across from her desk, the left side currently showing live feeds from Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Orlando, and Pensacola, the right showing feeds from various cities through the Southern Union. These creatures weren’t special to Paradise City. They were in every city in New Florida. All of the Southern Union, actually. New Orleans seemed oddly quiet, but then it had been that way since the rebuild after 2054’s Hurricane Edmund. As the mayor of a city that often took the brunt of such storms, she paid attention to those kinds of things.