Page 10 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
If I were religious, I’d say it was almost… demonic. Not quite sulfur and brimstone level, but definitely burning. Some kind of hell.
I scanned the floor, but the institutional green tiles were smooth and unmarred. Squatting down, I sniffed again, but the scent was gone this low. Strange.
“You okay, Wild Man?” Detective Harris asked.
Ignoring him, I stood back up. Yeah. There. The scent was higher. Something that flew, maybe? So it couldn’t have been those skeleton things we’d seen at the hotel. The ceiling tiles were supposed to be white, but they were a little dingy. Maybe suspiciously dingy, actually. Now that I was looking, there was a darker smudge along one side of the hallway. Why only one side?
“Do you have a step ladder?”
“Uh, sure,” Dr. Mason replied. “Let me call maintenance.”
He stepped over to the nurse’s desk and picked up the phone.
I’d known Detective Harris for over a year now. He had suspicions about me, but he was a cop. He followed the evidence, just like my nose led me. Which was why I had to be careful. “What are you up to?”
As a cop, he could smell out a lie as quickly as I could track down my target. “I smell something.”
Eyes narrowed, he stared at me a moment. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. All those people I’d been able to find. When normal leads turned into dead ends. When even the families had given up hope. Even when the most organized and violent criminals did their best to hide the bodies, I could always find them.
He didn’t say anything, but I could see the question in his eyes.What the fuck are you?
A human male in his fifties brought a three-step ladder to us. Luckily, it didn’t take very long, because we were drawing a lot of attention from the staff. The nurses kept a close eye on our activity, and since this was the ER, people were rushing back and forth constantly, even during the day.
I climbed the steps, each one lifting me deeper into that burning scent. It was definitely stronger up here by the ceiling. Closing my eyes, I cracked my lips again, breathing in as deeply as possible. My wolf could sort out a multitude of scents that a human nose couldn’t even identify. But he’d never smelled anything like this either.
Opening my eyes, I studied the smoky-looking smudge. I used my thumbnail to scratch at the tile. It was definitely some kind of residue. Some of the patches were a bit darker, resolving into a pattern.
A pattern that didn’t make sense.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and took a couple of pictures. Then I stepped down and without a word, held my phone out to Harris.
He looked at the photo and then jerked his gaze up to mine. “Is this a fucking joke?”
“What do you see?” I asked softly.
He handed my phone to the doctor without answering. The maintenance guy looked over the doctor’s shoulder and let out a low whistle. “How’d we get paw prints on the ceiling?”
4
Karmen
Armed with a hand mirror, I sat in one of the chairs on the front porch and waited for sunrise. Helayna had looked at me strangely when I’d asked if she would mind if I broke some mirrors, but she’d found this heavy silver mirror instead. It was definitely easier to hold than a broken shard, yet still provided a good amount of surface to reflect back Ra’s power if any of the soldiers actually came.
She sat beside me, with one of her Blood on either side of her. The big one, Dörr, stood between us. He didn’t trust me. I didn’t blame him in the slightest. I didn’t trust myself either.
If the sunfires came with the dawn… What could I do? Would the nest keep them out? Were there more Soldiers of Light hunting me down? Where could I go if this nest wasn’t safe? Was anywhere safe?
Too many questions and no answers as the sky lightened.
The ugly statue I’d seen in the hallway dropped down from the sky so suddenly that I couldn’t suppress a quick jerk of alarm. When it—he—had moved earlier, I’d jumped so hard that I’d knocked my chair over in my haste to escape. Despite looking like a gigantic stone statue, he landed with surprising lightness, his wings just a whisper on the air. Rather like a bat, a silent glider on the night sky.
“I couldn’t find anything suspicious, my queen,” he said. “I didn’t dare stay in the sky any longer.”
I didn’t know why he said that, until his leathery wings shook and his entire frame collapsed inward, shrinking down to a man. The third Blood. I had no idea such magic was possible. “What are they?”
“Dark alfar,” Helayna answered, holding her hand out to the man as he came closer. He bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “They have several forms. In Hvergelmir when they rescued me, they were pitch black, just like everything else. But when we escaped, they turned into gargoyles. In daylight, their gargoyles turn into statues, frozen in place. But my Blood bond freed them to their human shape.”
“Your bond freed them? I assumed it was some kind of… I don’t know. Slavery, I guess, by the way Eivind reacted.”
