Blood Before Sunrise

bound to me as my Jinn, a mystical protector, and his Spidey sense must have been tingling. I held up a hand to quiet him as much as to reassure him. I wasn’t in any danger-at least, not yet.

I walked through the opening, surprised to find a storage space large enough to park a car in. From the look of it-not to mention the stale smell-no one had used the space for a while. Through the dark, I perceived the presence of another, and the feeling in my stomach tugged lower, like a rope drawing me to the floor. Squatting down, I roved the space with my eyes, marking a path of dirty blankets and discarded food containers, grateful for the ability to see through the dark. And at the end of it all, a body sat huddled in the corner, knees tucked up and head hidden beneath thin, bony arms.

“Hello, Delilah,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’d never considered it.” Raif’s thoughtful voice echoed as we walked down the staircase into Xander’s council room. The High King’s brother rested his hand on his sword, his hand gripping and releasing the pommel as if it were a stress relief ball. “Perhaps it was the lack of decision making that allowed you to find her. If you hadn’t settled on a course of action, there would be no future act for the Oracle to see.”

Sure, it made sense. Why not? But something aside from knee-jerk reaction had led me to Delilah. I was certain of it. We’d been searching for months, and she’d stayed just out of our reach each and every time. But tonight, she’d been handed to me on a silver platter. The only thing missing had been a large, shiny apple shoved into her mouth. A strange, otherworldly force had guided me. I couldn’t discount my feelings, though what they meant, I had no idea.

We came to a bookcase at the far end of the council room. Raif pushed on one of the books, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I snorted before reining in my gasp of surprise. The bookcase gave way to admit us into what I can only describe as a prison cell. It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill sparse concrete square like you see in the movies. Like everything of Xander’s, this room bespoke a certain regality that almost made me laugh. A full-sized bed, decked out with pillows, a petite sofa, even a toilet complete with a privacy screen, furnished the cell-and a small flat-screen TV, for shit’s sake. No windows-after all, the room was meant for containment-but the walls were adorned with lavish oil paintings of landscapes. The cell was nicer than most hotel rooms. And I’m not talking about a Motel 6. Muttering under her breath, Delilah sat on the bed, dirty, with downcast, unseeing eyes.

“Why didn’t you keep Azriel here after we’d captured him?” I asked, regretting the words before I could take them back. Since his death, speaking of him was forbidden in Xander’s house.

“Azriel was a crown prince.” Raif’s tone became stiff, his usual formal self. “I would not have dishonored him so.”

I opened my mouth to speak but reconsidered. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. “What are we going to do with her?” I asked.

“For the time being, she’s Xander’s…guest. We can’t have her out roaming the streets and causing trouble. The PNT Council will hear her case, and I suppose they can decide her fate.”

The Pacific Northwest Territories, as the area was called, encompassed the nonhuman population of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. They met once per quarter to address business pertinent to the supernatural community. Who better to decide what should happen to Delilah than a jury of her peers?

“Do you think that keeping me locked up is going to do you any good?” Delilah’s words came through clenched teeth, anger infusing every syllable. She rocked back and forth, her hands twitching in her lap. She brought a finger to her mouth and bit it, hard. Blood welled from her fingertip, and she passed it along the lines of her palm, studying the bright red pattern with frightening intensity for someone who supposedly couldn’t see. “Of her blood, they’ll drink like wine. Stronger, faster, changing still, she’ll be forced to do his will! From herself she has been born. All will die and none will mourn!”

Oh, just great. “Listen, Delilah. I’ve had enough of rhyming words and prophecy to last me the next thousand years or so. What’s done is done. You failed. It’s over. Time to let go.”

“He’ll finish my business,” she said, laughing like a lunatic.

“Azriel?” I asked, walking toward her. “Is that who you’re talking about? He’s dead, Delilah. He won’t be doing anything ever again.”

She burst into another fit of laughter that raised my hackles. “No,” she said. “Not Azriel. The Man from The Ring is strong. Stronger than me. He gave me a gift of glamour! The Man will come, and he’ll succeed where I failed. Then you’ll know what true suffering is!”

“We should kill her and do the council a favor,” Raif said, totally uninterested. “She’s useless and half mad.”

“Do it!” Delilah screamed, excited. “Do it now, and I can join my sister, who you killed!” She shrieked the last word, extending a bloodied finger in Raif’s direction. “Your wife went willingly! She paid the price, and you killed my sister for it!”

I turned and looked at Raif in silent question. His story had been a tragic one: His daughter was missing, and with nowhere left to turn, he’d sought an Oracle for answers. Her price for information about his daughter had been the life of his wife. When he refused, his wife had sacrificed herself. Raif hadn’t taken it very well. He’d killed the Oracle, Delilah’s sister.

Brow quirked, I waited silently for his answer. Raif shrugged as if to say he’d killed a hundred Oracles in his life and couldn’t tell one from another. A look of deep hurt, of past wounds reopened, marred his warrior’s face as he turned on a booted heel and headed for the door.

“I know where your daughter is,” Delilah said in a low, monotone voice.

Raif froze halfway out of the room, his hand jutting out to the wall as he steadied himself. I took several steps back, putting myself safely in the middle of the cell, shocked. “Raif.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He paused at the doorway and looked over his shoulder at the thin, dirty girl sitting on the pristine baby blue comforter. “Lies.” Grief and doubt tore at his voice. “She lies. Her time has run out, and she says it to torture me. My daughter is dead.”

“How can you be sure?” I said, wanting to comfort my mentor, my friend, and not knowing how. “What if-”

“No.” In two quick strides, he was back across the room, his hands gripping me just below the shoulders. He pulled me close, his mouth next to my ear. “It is a lie. Her mind is gone. She knows nothing, and every word from her mouth is insanity.” Without a parting word, he released his grip on me and strode from the room.

Delilah sat on the bed, her legs crossed in front of her as she rocked back and forth, back and forth. She’d resumed muttering to herself, laughing and pulling out strands of her matted hair, examining each like ticker-tape before letting it drift to the floor. I approached the bed and the mindless Oracle nested there. I bent low to her face, my voice a snarl as it tore from my throat. “Tell me the girl’s name.”

Delilah laughed, a smirk pulling at her thin, dry lips. “Brakae.”

Chapter 2

“Beware the Man from The Ring.”

Her lyrical voice echoed in my ears, so sure for a child so small. She couldn’t have been more than four or five.

“Who is he?” I asked.

The little girl skipped around me in a circle, arms outstretched as if she played a game of ring-around-the-rosy with invisible playmates. “He is the wolf of the battlefield. Once the right hand of the goddess Badb, and the first true protector. Wronged, betrayed, exiled, by those whom he trusted most. He will hunt you down and use you for his own devices.”

I just couldn’t understand what it was about the supernatural lexicon that required everything to be spoken in rhyme or riddle. Besides being annoying, it flat-out pissed me off.

“Honey, how about giving me a straight answer?” I said, spinning around, trailing her movement. As she skipped, her waist-length curly black hair bounced like hundreds of springs, framing her lovely pale face and sapphire blue eyes. A bright but serious smile curved her lips.

“He is coming,” she said, circling me one last time before running off toward a distant knoll where the swaying