Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Read online

  Jaren replaced the cube and turned to face Teg. “Looks like they threw in an arm,” he said with a half-smile.

  “I just wanted to clear the air,” said Teg.

  “All right,” Jaren said. “It's no problem while we're both working for Mephistophilis. We'll sort out the rest as it comes.”

  As if in response the lights faded, and the deck pitched hard underfoot.

  45

  I can’t believe I’m doing this again, Nakvin thought as she stood upon the Wheel. A Steersman’s robe facilitated bonding with a ship, and fashioning the necessary glamer in a makeshift crimson smock made her realize how much she’d depended on Magus robe.

  At least I didn’t turn inside-out, Nakvin thought.

  Nakvin saw the infernal landscape racing by below; felt the ship’s engines blazing as if the Exodus shared her eagerness to leave. The Fourth Circle receded behind her. Arid desert gave way to arctic mountain peaks in an instant, only to be replaced by dark seas that stretched from one horizon to the next.

  A comforting presence enveloped Nakvin through the Wheel. She knew immediately that it was Elena. For perhaps the first time in her hellish journey, the Steersman felt at peace.

  The Exodus breezed through the gate between Circles Four and Five, and Nakvin once more lamented the steep price of her first crossing. The familiar scatter of weed rafts with their rowdy passengers flashed by within seconds. Through the ship’s ever-watchful eye Nakvin saw the bloated dead cease their eternal rioting to mark the ether-runner’s flight with expressionless stares.

  The floating islands of rolling, grinding junk came and went. Nakvin saw the inverted cone of Despenser's citadel and somehow knew that he wasn’t home.

  Nakvin frowned. The demon lord's absence begged troubling questions. Setting her fears aside, she flew past the outlying garbage islands and over the open waves beyond.

  The next gate was close. Nakvin could sense it, though no visible sign marked its presence. The Steersman extended her will into the colorless skies ahead. The gate responded to her mental touch like a flower unfolding for the sun. Far ahead, visible only through the ship's great eye, a wide green shore crested the horizon.

  Instead of serenity, the Wheel channeled agonized shock. The Exodus shuddered from its black pyramid of a stern to the baleful green eye in its bow. Nakvin had a vision of that eye opening on a hideous reptilian pupil, but the Wheel went dark under her feet, and she was falling.

  The sudden loss of her connection to the ship reduced Nakvin to staring numbly through the bridge window at the verdant hills rushing up to meet her.

  Drawing upon decades of experience, she slid from the Wheel and hit the deck.

  The crash sent Deim sprawling against the cabin wall. When the groaning and shaking finally stopped, his room lay canted at a shallow angle. Though opposed by gravity, the steersman was up and out his tilted door in an instant.

  The vessel had come to rest with its bow pitched forward and to starboard, turning Deim's frenzied race through the hall into an uphill climb. Knowing that the pain he’d woken to was Elena’s drove all other thoughts from his mind. The young steersman scrambled onward, plunging into the dark heart of the Exodus.

  Jaren and Teg sat on either side of a steeply pitched hallway, straddling a pair of door frames. They used the brief respite to smooth out rumpled clothing and tend bruises. Jaren was so busy binding a cut on his bicep that he nearly missed Deim climbing past him.

  “You see that?” Teg asked.

  Jaren's brows formed a deep crease above his nose. “I don't think he even noticed us.” Jaren touched the blue stone at his hear. “Captain to bridge,” he said. “Nakvin, please respond.”

  There was no answer.

  “The sending must be down,” said Teg. “You want to head for the bridge?”

  Jaren jabbed a thumb in the direction that Deim had gone. “We follow him,” he said.

  Deim’s trail ended at the open engine room hatch. Rose-colored light seeped into the corridor, along with the electric smell of ether.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Jaren wondered aloud.

  “Because Deim follows Elena like a lost puppy?” ventured Teg.

  “I just think it’s strange,” Jaren said as he moved toward the hatch.

  “What’s strange is how the deck’s leveled out,” said Teg. “Don’t know about you, but I didn’t feel the ship move.”

  Jaren drew his zephyr. “Maintain visual contact. No telling what's in there.”

  Teg nodded, and the two men crept into the hazy, domed chamber. Total silence reigned, and the dense ether limited vision to arm’s length. Jaren considered calling out to Deim or Elena but thought better of it. If something had gotten to them, it would hear him as well.

  It was Teg who found Deim, nearly bumping into him while following the room's single circular wall. Jaren was only a step behind, and when he saw the young Factor making the signs of the Compass, he quickly gripped Deim’s arm. He thought it wise to risk a few words in answer to Deim’s accusing glare. “No Workings!” he whispered. “This place is full of ether.”

  The steersman was about to retort when Teg hushed them both. “Listen!”

  In the renewed silence Jaren heard something big moving up the wall to their right.

  Teg pointed toward the sound. “There,” he whispered.

  Jaren's eyes followed Teg's gesture, straining to penetrate the thick, rosy fog. Then he saw it: a large dark mass clinging to the curved wall at an extreme angle. He puzzled over the ominous shape. It resembled a large man wrapped in a cloak of dark brown velvet.

  No, Jaren realized. Not cloth; fur.

  Something long, white, and curved glinted at the shape's upper right side. Jaren thought it was a sword, but the thick mist left him unsure.

  The thing must have noticed them, because it emitted an angry hiss that scratched the inside of Jaren’s skull. He was just recovering from the nails-on-slate noise when he saw the creature lunge at Teg.

  It’s not lunging, Jaren corrected himself. It’s flying!

  Amazingly, considering its bulk, the thing was gliding straight at Teg on membranes stretched between its limbs. The mercenary stood frozen, watching the oncoming mass of fur and claws with a dumbfounded look on his face—or was it something else? Recognition?

  Jaren shoved Teg to the deck at the last instant. The beast landed in the space that Teg’s upper body had just occupied. It struck the wall and hung there, screeching.

  None of the hellish depravities he'd witnessed prepared Jaren for his foe’s loathsome ugliness. Its coat was indeed a dark brown, but patched with grey. The thing's head was a surreal nightmare dominated by lupine jaws sprouting a set of chisel-tipped incisors. Its ears were large and conical but lined with intricate webs of cartilage. Yet these bestial aspects were less revolting than the dark human eyes that burned with hatred in its skull.

  And then Jaren saw the ultimate absurdity.

  The monster clutched its sword—for Jaren saw that he’d been right—in a gnarled claw that all too closely resembled a hand. The elegant, curving blade transfixed him. Its shape called to mind Vaun's ill-favored weapon, though in all other respects it was everything that the necromancer's scimitar was not. It seemed to be forged from a single length of pure white metal, though the cutting edge was purple, and reflections cast in any part of the sword appeared as violet shadows. It’s solid ether, Jaren thought.

  The monster gave another ear-splitting hiss. Jaren pulled his gaze away from the scimitar and saw again that look of spiteful recognition in the creature’s eyes. He glanced around the room and found himself alone. Teg and Deim had vanished in the rosy fog.

  So be it. If the job fell to him, he would see it through. Jaren holstered his pistol and drew his own sword, though he didn’t start it humming for fear of striking a spark. He darted forward, leading with his blade. A shock ran through his arm as the point struck the wall, having missed its startlingly swift target by a hair.


  Jaren spun on his heel. The beast had leapt over him and was gliding toward the door. Its dark form had almost vanished into the mist when a wet, sickening sound like a melon falling on a picket fence came to the captain's ears; followed by a deep, gurgling groan.

  “Teg! Deim!” Jaren cried.

  “I'm here,” said Teg, sounding somewhat disappointed.

  “As am I,” said another voice that seemed to echo from an empty well.

  “Vaun?” Jaren called back.

  “Indeed,” said Vaun. “Join me by the door. There's something you should see.”

  Jaren’s hesitation gave way to morbid curiosity. He arrived at the hatchway to find Vaun crouching before a crumpled shape. Teg came warily and stared at the still figure, his blue eyes haunted by some unnamed emotion.

  “Is it dead?” Jaren asked.

  “Quite,” said Vaun. “Though for the sake of inquiry, I refrained from adding its shade to my circle of special friends.”

  Jaren did his best not to shiver. Vaun was wearing his mask, but the cold porcelain surely hid a smile.

  Vaun gestured for his two shipmates to gather around the corpse, but only Jaren obliged. Crouching low to see through the dense ether, he was shocked to find a man lying at his feet; clearly dead of a stab wound.

  “It’s still in here somewhere!” Jaren said, casting nervous glances about the room.

  “Unlikely,” said Vaun as he tossed a bundle atop the naked corpse: a set of worn clothes, a travel-stained green cloak, and a peeling leather satchel. “He shed these before you met, but I believe they belong to our visitor.”

  Something about the body seemed hideously familiar to Jaren. He grasped the corpse’s sandy, salt-flecked hair and turned its head, revealing the dead man's face.

  “Now you know why I couldn't…” Teg began, his words lost in a heavy sigh.

  Jaren returned the head to its face-down position. It hadn't been a perfect likeness. The visage was deeply tanned and lined with at least another decade of wear, but there was no mistaking Teg’s face—his original face.

  Then Jaren saw the white scimitar clutched in the corpse's right hand—the same one wielded by the beast. So Despenser’s deal meant Sulaiman suffered Teg’s fate, Jaren thought. Can’t say I’d have turned down that offer.

  “Over here!” Deim cried from the center of the room. His desperation shattered Jaren’s grim reverie. Glad for the interruption, he sought out the steersman's voice. Teg followed.

  Deim knelt beside Elena, who lay unmoving on the deck. Her eyes were closed; her mouth half-open, and her face graven with pain.

  Teg dropped to one knee and took the young woman's hand. “Elena?” he said, trying and failing to hide his distress. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Mindful of the power outage that had preceded the crash, Jaren bent to inspect the girl's array of sockets. He wasn't surprised to find all five cables savagely cut. The stub of one cord still protruded from her back. Another socket had been hacked so deeply that it was almost sheared in half.

  A series of thin slits in Elena's dress alerted Jaren to the alarming fact that, despite the lack of blood, the girl had been stabbed several times. The guilt for her wounds and the resulting crash clearly lay on Sulaiman, but the priest’s return as a shapeshifting beast with a strange white sword posed more questions than it answered.

  Jaren turned to Deim. “Help me,” he said, taking Elena's feet in his arms. Her wispy build belied disproportionate weight. “We need to get her to the infirmary now.”

  Deim offered no complaint as he carefully lifted the young woman by her shoulders. Teg cast a final glance at the body sprawled on the deck before taking his share of the burden.

  46

  The shock of feeling Elena’s pain through the Wheel echoed in Nakvin’s mind as she raced along close, gloomy corridors on her way to the engine room. Please let her be safe, she prayed to any power that would listen.

  Jaren, Deim, and Teg came bearing Elena’s limp body, and Nakvin’s hope faded. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked. “What happened?”

  Jaren and Deim exchanged glances.

  “Someone attacked her,” said Teg, his sapphire eyes downcast.

  Nakvin smoothed a stray lock of ginger-brown hair away from Elena’s face and felt her forehead, throat, and wrist. There was no breath and no heartbeat. The storm-scent of ether clung to her, but the dim red light impeded further examination. I promised I’d get you home, Nakvin thought. But she only said, “Follow me,” before running for the infirmary.

  In the sterile light of the examination room, Nakvin found several narrow holes in Elena’s dress. She removed the ruined garment with a swift motion of her surgical shears, discarded the shredded white fabric, and rolled the girl onto her side. When she saw the jagged cuts and frayed cables that marred Elena’s back, the medic bit her lip but found it impossible to hold back tears.

  “You found her like this?” Nakvin asked, her voice trembling.

  “Not exactly,” said Deim. “She seems worse now. There was no blood before.”

  Deim’s statement puzzled Nakvin until she ran her fingers over Elena's wounds and found that they were weeping an unknown fluid. It had the consistency of blood but was as clear as water and evaporated quickly upon contact with the air.

  I don't even know if she's alive, Nakvin realized. Even if she is, I don't know what to do. She stared at the brutal stab wounds. “Who did this?”

  “It was Sulaiman,” said Teg. His voice held a bitter edge.

  A thousand questions crowded Nakvin's head. She asked the only one that mattered. “What kind of weapon did he use?”

  “A scimitar,” said Jaren.

  “Where is it?”

  Jaren scrubbed a hand through his red hair and sighed. “Back in the engine room.”

  A strange idea came to Nakvin. She wasn't bleeding in the engine room—in the ether!

  Nakvin started wheeling the surgical table into the hall. “Help me push,” she told Jaren and Deim. “We're putting her in quarantine.”

  “Why quarantine?” Jaren asked.

  “Because it's airtight,” said Nakvin. “Teg, get to the armory and bring back as many salamander tanks as you can.”

  Teg turned and dashed for the hallway.

  “Use a cart,” Nakvin called after him.

  Nakvin muttered a brusque word of thanks as Teg sealed the glass quarantine door behind him with a pneumatic hiss. She pushed the cartful of canisters over to the operating table with its motionless, bleeding occupant. Holding one of the ether tanks over Elena's back, she twisted the valve open. Concentrated, near-liquid ether flowed from the threaded coupling, bathing the patient's wounds. The powerful astringent smell numbed the medic’s nose.

  What am I doing? Nakvin wondered. Nothing in the annals of medicine ascribed healing properties to ether, but she had no other treatment for the girl whose internal anatomy diverged so drastically from anything human.

  The clear blood stopped flowing. The deep cuts in the young woman's flesh closed, leaving her pale skin pristine. Nakvin’s jaw hung slack as the cloven metallic sockets started knitting themselves back together. Having emptied one canister, she grabbed another and yanked the valve open.

  Elena stirred as if waking from a nightmare. She rolled onto her back and opened her rose-quartz eyes. Nakvin stared in shock at her patient’s impossible recovery for a long moment before remembering to wrap her in a blanket.

  Elena studied her ether-clouded surroundings for a moment. Then her face darkened with a look of final despair. “He didn't finish.”

  Nakvin's joy turned to anger. “Don't you dare say that,” she said. “Not ever.”

  “I'm a monster.”

  A wry smile bent the corner of Nakvin's mouth. Her lip brushed the point of one venomous fang. “So am I,”

  “Is it lonely for you?”

  “Not since you came along,” said Nakvin.

  Elena settled back onto the table, and Nakvin kissed her fo
rehead. “You should stay in here tonight,” she said. “I'll have a bed brought in.”

  Elena nodded.

  Nakvin would have stayed longer, but the large dose of ether she’d inhaled was making her lightheaded. “Remember your promise,” she said.

  “I remember.”

  Hearing Elena renew her vow eased Nakvin's mind. Feeling both relieved and weary, she turned her attention to the Freeholders who’d sought medical attention despite being dead. I guess anything seems normal after a while, she thought. Even living with dead people.

  Teg indulged every excuse he could think of, but an irresistible need finally drove him back to the engine room. He found the door open; rose-colored mist billowing into the hall.

  Why would Sulaiman attack Elena? he thought. Only one way to find out.

  The domed chamber held an air of solemn fear reminiscent of his mother’s cult meetings. Teg mused that she’d be happy if she could see him now. She’d always said he’d end up in hell.

  Teg took his time—partly to be thorough, but mostly out of dread for what he’d find. His fears turned out to be baseless when all he found was a shriveled heap of cold ash. A second painstaking search uncovered no other remains and no white sword.

  Jaren gathered a damage control team in the steamy bowels of the ship. Mikelburg was sorely missed, but Jastis and Trand put their heads together to sort out the mess.

  “Aside from the obvious, do we know what caused the crash?” Jaren asked.

  Trand’s youthful face was streaked with grime from crawling through the ship’s winding maintenance tunnels. “Somebody cut power to the drifters,” he said.

  “Sulaiman,” Jaren spat. “How does a man who never saw an ether-runner before last week know to cut the drifters before killing the main engine?”

  Jastis puckered his wrinkle-lined mouth and scratched his balding scalp. “They might’ve had primitive ‘runners in his day,” he said.

  Why would Sulaiman want to bring us down? Jaren wondered. “Just fix what you can,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going outside to check the hull.”