Blood Before Sunrise

I thought as his hand cupped my breast. Vasily and Lorik too. As long as I had Azriel, I didn’t need anyone else.

My mind swirled with innumerable thoughts and memories, clouding my focus. Azriel had known all along that once my existence became public knowledge, a shit storm was soon to follow-understatement of the century. Rather than slow down, my world spiraled out of control, rotation upon rotation, problem upon problem. And as I made my way to Reaver’s empty house, I laid out my troubles like strands of thread, each representing a singular nuisance in the braided bullshit of my life.

The Man from The Ring, the raven-haired Shaedes, and the pendulum became a single strand. And next to that lay Delilah, Raif, Brakae-and unfortunately-Fallon as well. The third strand represented Tyler, his strange behavior, the attempts on his life, and an unknown threat-aimed at driving him out of his mind. Somehow, they all came together, weaving in and out, constructing a solid length of rope. But who or what wove them together was lost on me.

Reaver’s house, only a few blocks from Volunteer Park, might well have been considered a mansion by someone who’d never seen Xander’s impressive estate. The residences had one thing in common, though: They both favored old-world elegance. Perhaps it connected the owners to their pasts, to eras they couldn’t reclaim. The Victorian beauty of Reaver’s three-story home struck me as almost too elegant for someone who came off as menacing with the potential for great violence.

After checking the garage to make sure that Reaver had, in fact, gone out for the evening, I hovered near the front door, pacing along the tiled covered porch, sensing the powerful wards designed to protect his property. My body hummed with energy, like an itch just under the skin that I couldn’t scratch. The pendulum in my pocket responded as well, heat pulsing from the emerald warming my thigh. I should have dropped the damned thing in the middle of Puget Sound, but for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to part from it since the falcon had returned it to me.

Wondering if I should trust Fallon’s word, I continued to pace. “You are only one of three people who would be able to pass those wards unharmed…” How did he know? The sound of my teeth grating against one another resounded in my ears. I stretched my neck from side to side, unclenched my fists, and inhaled a deep, cleansing breath to release the tension that pulled my entire body taut. I would find peace only by unraveling the mysteries strand by strand; finding Brakae was the first step.

I decided believing Fallon was my only option, so I closed my eyes, taking a leap of faith as I passed through Reaver’s front door as nothing more than a wisp of darkness. The wards slid over my incorporeal form, like hunting dogs tracking scent. Magic snaked around me, twining and searching, pausing for the briefest moment before retreating and dissipating into nothing.

The air left my lungs in a great rush of breath, and muscle by muscle, I began to relax. Though I felt the presence of the wards, they seemed to ignore me, as if I belonged in the house and posed no threat to the secrets Reaver was trying to protect. Fallon had been right. I could pass through the house without harm. With any luck, he’d tell me why that was, once he had his prize-and I had Delilah.

Five thousand square feet was a rather large amount of space to search for something no bigger than a drinking glass. If Reaver was smart, he would’ve hidden his bauble in a safe, behind a false wall, as I did. But then again, I deduced Reaver’s cocky, deadly attitude, coupled with the wards, might offer him the peace of mind to leave his half of the hourglass on display somewhere that he might look upon it.

I didn’t take solid form, but rather swept the house as a wraith, moving from room to room. Reaver kept an especially tidy house. I doubted dust particles dared to rear their ugly heads in his presence. From the foyer, I wandered through the kitchen, formal and informal dining rooms, the sitting room and the living room. The media room, complete with home theater and a sixty-inch flat-panel TV, led to a library and a small office. Two bathrooms were completely uninteresting, and a coat closet-again, boring-was empty, save a couple of jackets; it wasn’t exactly piled with board games and playing cards. I got the impression Reaver didn’t host many “family game nights” with the neighbors.

A search of the upstairs proved equally fruitless. He kept the six-bedroom second floor as immaculate and uninteresting as he did the downstairs. The master suite, predictably sporting a king-sized bed and attached sitting room, looked Architectural Digest ready. I marked the passage of thirty-three minutes and cradled my head in my hands. I was running out of time, and still I had found no sign of anything more than human, let alone made of magic. Tyler would be back soon. If I wasn’t there when he got home, I doubted I’d be able to keep my plans secret any longer.

Drifting through the floor, I found myself once again on the first floor of the house. I had one more area to search-the basement. Another flight of stairs led from a small door beneath the staircase down to the bottom floor. I expected old and musty and rickety wooden stairs and crumbling concrete walls. What I saw instead blasted me with the force of magical energy. The basement was the only floor of the house that hadn’t been kept true to its period design. Marble stairs and marble-lined walls glowed with silver and gold symbols, the shapes swirling and moving, illuminating my path deeper into the basement.

Magic burned hot and heavy here, the sensation of thousands of tiny feet traveling the highways of my skin driving me to the point of near distraction. The emerald in my pocket blazed, no longer pulsing with warmth but almost searing through my pocket and screaming for me to notice. At the same time, the sound of time quieted within me, and I didn’t need to gaze into the emerald or stand in another world to feel it. Iron butterflies swirled in my stomach, much too heavy and foreboding to be light jitters of nerves. I’d need hip boots to get out of this mess because, as I suddenly realized, I was wading in deep shit.

As I descended lower into Reaver’s basement, my body became corporeal, the sound of my boots echoing eerily on the marble steps. All around me gold and silver light led the way, runes flashing and symbols swirling. The wards that protected the house felt stronger here, mingling with the already present magic and causing my teeth to chatter. But as before, whatever protected the Sidhe’s property paid me no mind.

I took the last step, a feeling of finality stealing my breath as a soft glow of light that seemed to come from nowhere pulsed from the ceiling. Finally, I could see the full scope of the basement, and what a room it was. At first sight, it reminded me of something out of a decadent 1950s reenactment of Cleopatra, or some other epic tale. But as I took in the whole of it, I realized it held to an older tradition, dating to pre-Christian civilization-Celtic more than likely. Beautiful didn’t begin to describe this room. Reverent wouldn’t do justice to the emotions swelling in my chest. This sacred place assaulted my senses, my emotions. I’d never felt so safe, or so right. Somehow, a kinship formed between me and this place; I was meant to be here. I had to stop, shrinking to my knees as I caught my breath and stilled my quaking limbs.

Trees lined the walls. Growing out of nothing, they were yet vibrant and living. Rowan, alder, ash, birch, cedar, and other trees I couldn’t name shot up into an impossibly tall ceiling-too tall not to be an illusion. Like the sky, it twinkled with stars and then changed, showcasing a dark sky and a full opal moon. White candles burned, the wicks never seeming to diminish and the flames unwavering with the disturbance of my passing. A long, rectangular pool ran the length of the room, splitting it down the middle, and sparkling orbs of different colors swam about in light blue water.

As I walked, the false sky changed again, lightening by slow degrees, streaked with pinks and deep burnt oranges. The basement became bright with the light of morning sun, and I could sense the leaves of the trees shifting and reaching toward sustenance. In the full light, I could finally see to the end of the room, its length and width again too vast to be real. And at the end of Reaver’s basement, atop a granite column, sat the hourglass.

It looked like any other, really, except that it was one half of a whole. Grains of golden sand glistened inside it, gathering at the bottom as if they poured from the top half that used to be there. When at last the glass filled, the flecks of gold reversed their path, floating upward and disappearing into nothing. I watched in awe as the cycle repeated itself once more, my hand resting at my thigh, cupping the pendulum in my pocket.

As I stood there staring at the broken-and somehow functional-hourglass, I had an Indiana Jones moment. But I didn’t have a bag of sand to trade with the relic, and I wondered at the possibility of setting off an epic set of booby traps, rolling boulder and all. But I thought of Raif: friend, loyal brother, and wronged husband. I thought of his grief, the lengths he’d been willing to go to find his missing child, and the lengths he refused to go to despite his pain and need for answers. And goddamn it, if someone needed a ray of sunshine in his life, you could bet your ass it was Raif.

Screw it.