Max stumbled out into the daylight, her stomach churning, head spinning. Having made his awful pronouncement, Kolbyr had left. She had been held, frozen in place, for too long, and then had not been able to stay one minute more next to where Kolbyr had been, surrounded by the cloak of dark magic and with the words he had spoken still hanging in the air.

  The Grey Gates. Someone might be trying to open the Grey Gates, dropping the barrier between the daylight world and the dark lord’s realm, letting the horrors of the underworld loose on the world.

  Memories flooded her mind, holding her in place. She had seen things she had no name for, but which dragged her screaming from sleep most nights. Bad enough to know that those nightmares existed in the world below. Worse - far worse - to imagine that they might be set free on this world.

  She drew a long, ragged breath and tried to calm herself. It was a possibility, not a certainty, that someone was trying to open the Gates. The other possibilities were not much better, but at least didn’t involve a waking nightmare.

  The memories faded a little and she was able to look around, take stock of the here and now.

  Kolbyr was long gone, the sleek black vehicle vanished. Cas and Pol were standing in the back of the pick-up, both of them watching her with their ears lifted. Cas gave a soft whine. Knowing something was wrong. Not knowing what it was.

  Max looked up at the heavy sky above. Clouds so grey they were almost black, the air thick with the promise of rain to come. As if the weather itself could sense something wrong in the daylight world. The possibilities that Kolbyr had referred to.

  A footfall nearby drew her attention fully back to the here and now with a snap. She was outside now. Away from Malik’s influence. Vulnerable. She could not afford to be distracted.

  She blinked, sure she had imagined it, but, no, there was Bryce standing a few paces away, wearing the same tight expression he had in the clinic a few days before. He was wearing more casual clothing than he had been, jeans and a faded, worn jacket that didn’t hide the shoulder holster or knives he carried.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, the demand out before she could check it. Her Marshal’s badge was still out, the silver gleaming.

  “When Lord Kolbyr leaves his house, we pay attention,” Bryce answered.

  Max was so surprised he had actually answered her question that she couldn’t think of anything to say. It made perfect sense that the Order kept track of powerful people like Kolbyr. There were a few people in the city with the genuine ability to shape the world, and he was one of them.

  “What was he doing here?” Bryce asked her.

  “I can’t discuss that,” Max said. The sort of reflexive response she had practised over the years. She was quite sure it would not impress Bryce. And it didn’t.

  “Try,” he invited, shifting his weight slightly in a way that drew attention to the weapon he carried at his side.

  Max laughed. She couldn’t help it. She had just been terrified by one of the city’s most powerful vampires, a magician steeped in dark magic, and her mind was ringing with the news that some idiot was possibly trying to open the Grey Gates, and here was Bryce trying to intimidate her? “Or what? You’ll shoot me? Honestly, I think that would improve my week. Good luck keeping track of Kolbyr,” she said over her shoulder as she headed towards her pick-up.

  “Miscellandreax,” Bryce said.

  The name rang through her. She had not heard it spoken aloud for eight years. Not since she left the Order.

  She checked in her stride, skin prickling. She stopped and turned, lifting a brow, trying to appear confused. “Sorry?”

  “Miscellandreax T’Or Orshiasa,” Bryce said. There it was. Her full name in the Order. Miscellandreax, apprenticed to Orshiasa. The Guardian’s name was venerated in the Order. One of the oldest and most powerful of the Guardians. Being trained by any of the Guardians to follow in their footsteps had been an honour, but it had been a particular honour to be accepted as an apprentice by Orshiasa. Or so she had been told, over and over. It had just felt like a lot of hard work from her perspective. And she didn’t have any right to that name. Not now. Not for eight years. The head of the Order had told her that Orshiasa himself wanted nothing to do with her.

  While she was distracted, Bryce had taken a step towards her, frowning as he looked at her. “I knew I recognised you the other day. You’ve changed a lot.”

  Despite the circumstances, she was impressed. He had barely known who she was when she had been in the Order. The warriors mostly trained and lived separately from the apprentices and Guardians. Yet he had recognised her despite the years and the changes in her appearance. Her long, dark hair was gone, her style now shorter and more practical, the colour different. And the things she had lived through and their memories had thinned and shadowed her face, making her look far older, far different, to the girl she had been. As impressed as she was by the recognition, it was also irritating. She had worked hard to stay away from the Order. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Max said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  She spun on her heel, heading for the pick-up. She hadn’t gone two strides before he was next to her, a silent shadow. She stopped and faced him. He was within arm’s reach. Too close for comfort. Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach for her gun. She held herself still with an effort. He was a fully trained, seasoned warrior. Apprentices were not schooled in advanced physical combat, and she had failed the magical teaching she had been given. He could overpower her with barely a thought. It would not be a fair contest.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, temper flaring. She thought she had escaped. Thought she had left it all behind. And here he was, digging up old names and old memories she did not want to carry.

  He looked surprised by the question. Or maybe it was her tone.

  “You left the Order. Ran away. A lot of people think you are dead. Is this where you’ve been hiding this whole time?”

  “I ran away?” she asked, voice rising in pitch. She remembered the day she had gone back to the Order. Standing in the familiar office with its dark wood panelling, the faint ticking of the clock loud in the silence. Until Kitris, the head of the Order, had spoken. You are not welcome here.

  She had known, even then, that she would not be welcomed back with open arms and celebration. That had not been the plan. The plan had been her sacrifice, although that little detail had been hidden from her. Most likely, Kitris and Orshiasa had considered it unimportant. She had been expendable to them. The cold dismissal still stung all these years later. And stung again as she realised that Kitris must have told the rest of the Order she had fled. Run away from her training and responsibilities. It made her wonder, not for the first time, just how Kitris had explained the fact that the Grey Gates were closed and Arkus safely locked away. But she was not going to go back to the Order to ask him.

  “What happened to the warriors that went with you?” Bryce demanded. From the way he was standing, and the deepening of his voice, Max realised that was the question he really wanted answered. He didn’t really care where she had been for the past eight years or what had happened to her. But he did care about the team that had been sent with her. Which made sense. He had not known her, but the warriors who had gone with her would have been comrades, perhaps even friends.

  “They are dead,” she told him, words clipped. She couldn’t meet his eyes, throat closing as the memories rose up again. Nine highly trained warriors of the Order. All of them dead within moments of each other, dying in screaming agony as trails of fire rose from the underworld, with her unable to do anything about it.

  “Did you kill them?” he asked.

  “What? No! How can you even-” she bit the words off before she could finish. Of course he could think it. He, and doubtless many others within the Order, believed she had run away. Turned her back on her responsibilities and duties and saved herself. Killing the team sent to protect her was a logical next step if he thought so little of her.

  He was frowning at her. Not satisfied with the answers she had given, she was quite sure. She told herself that she did not care. It did not matter what he thought of her. Not one bit.

  Somewhere behind her one of the dogs whined. A low, plaintive sound. Most likely Cas again, sensing something was wrong. But Max was not under direct threat, so the two shadow-hounds stayed where they were.

  The noise had caught Bryce’s attention, though, and he looked past her shoulder to the pick-up and the dogs. His brows lifted. “Shadow-hounds? How did you get them?”

  She could understand the surprise. Shadow-hounds were rare, and notoriously picky about who they lived with. The Order had had a few pairs when Max had been there, and she had always thought they were ferocious creatures, trained for war. Quite unlike the comedians that her pair could be.

  “They chose me,” she answered Bryce honestly, glancing over her shoulder at the two faces staring down from the side of the pick-up. Warmth bloomed in her chest. The hounds didn’t care that she’d been dismissed from the Order, or what her reputation was. They accepted her and loved her just as she was. “I have work to do,” she told him, heading for the pick-up again.

  This time he didn’t follow her, which was just as well as her hands were shaking so badly it took three tries to get the key into the ignition. The last sight she had of him was standing, still frowning, next to the empty space where her vehicle had been.

  She just drove, with no destination in mind, barely aware of her surroundings. Miscellandreax T’Or Orshiasa. She had been an eager student, taking her lessons seriously, doing her best to fulfil her teachers’ expectations at all times. She had loved the learning, but somehow she had kept failing to meet whatever standards they had set for her. She had kept trying. The other students seemed to manage, and she was sure she could do the same, if only she worked hard enough.

  That girl was long gone. Burned away along with nine warriors of the Order. That naive youngster would never have survived the antechamber to the world below. Would never have done the things she needed to do to survive. Max thought that girl had been left behind a long time ago, but she could feel her again now. Could feel the searing hurt of betrayal. The loss of all she had thought she had known and trusted. Raised in one of the Lady’s orphanages because - as her teachers told her - her birth parents had surrendered her there rather than look after her themselves, she had hoped to find a welcome and a home in the Order. It had felt right. And being turned away had hurt almost worse than the fires of the underworld.

  Miscellandreax had come back into the daylight world with her whole body on fire from the world below, her hair and clothes incinerated, lungs choked, landing in a fresh water lake and boiling the water around her as she cooled. She had swum to shore, somehow, through hundreds of dead fish, the blackened outer layer of her skin peeling off to reveal new, pink skin underneath so that by the time she had reached the shore and crawled out of the lake, whole body trembling with exhaustion, she was mostly healed, bare skin covered in mud as she made her way on her hands and knees to higher ground. When the mud had washed off, there were still traces of burns on her skin. The heat had scorched her to her very bones. She still did not know how she had survived. She had faced the same fires as the warriors, and yet she had lived.

  But she had lived, and ended up on the muddy shore of a lake full of dead fish.

  There had been an old sheet of tarpaulin there. Big enough for her to use as a makeshift blanket, the fabric harsh against her new skin as she huddled into it. There had been an old fallen tree to sit on and she had rested there, shaking and crying, as the lake cooled, the dead fish washing to shore and attracting predators. The creatures of the Wild were never ones to turn away easy meals.

  But every one of those predators left her alone, shivering and defenceless on that log.

  The wheels of the pick-up bounced over an obstacle in the road and she came back to the here and now with a skip of her heart, wondering if she had hit something. But, no, it was just a rough road.

  Her pick-up stopped apparently of its own accord and she blinked, finding her face wet with tears, somehow not surprised that she had ended up back here. The lake stretched out in front of her, serene in the late afternoon sun.

  She got out of the pick-up and released Cas and Pol, both dogs rubbing themselves against her, seeking reassurance and a few biscuits before they ran off towards the water’s edge.

  Putting off the moment she had to look at the lake, Max turned back towards the city. She was on a small hill, and the city stretched out in front of her, sprawling as far as she could see to either side. To one side, the buildings were more spaced out, with large patches of open land between them. The city’s farms, charged with keeping the citizens supplied with enough food after the Wild had taken away much of the farmland the city had depended on. Ahead of her, in the midst of the more densely built-on parts of the city, between the taller buildings that housed offices or flats, she could see the wide strip of different shades of green that ran almost the entire length of the city. The city green, a carefully curated bit of land available for all residents to use. Beyond the city green were several more blocks of buildings before the city tapered to a blunt wedge before disappearing into the mists that formed the edge of the world.

  Max drew a breath in, squaring her shoulders, facing the lake. There was nothing to show what had happened eight years before. Nothing to tell anyone passing by that she had burst from the underworld into the lake. She had left the Grey Gates closed behind her, her palms and fingers itching again at the memory of the molten metal. Legends might say that the Gates could only be opened from the outside and closed from the inside, but when she had found the Gates, she had also found a latch on the outside, sealing Arkus and all of His demons into the underworld.

  She had not been back here for a long time. She returned from time to time, somehow worried that the gate hidden underneath the lake would open again and spill the horrors of the underworld out into the daylight world. But the gate had stayed closed. Whatever Kitris had told the rest of the Order, and whatever Bryce might think, Max had done her job. The Grey Gates had been closed.

  Chapter nine

  It was fully dark when Max got back into the pick-up and headed home. Cas and Pol had thoroughly enjoyed their few hours by the lake, chasing each other in and out of the water. Just as Max was enjoying the sight of their play, they found some old bones and she was reminded of the predators they really were. Still, it was better than thinking about Lord Kolbyr or Bryce or the Order or the Grey Gates.

  As if on cue, her phone started ringing as soon as she reached the city limits, vibrating in its cradle by the steering wheel. She glanced at the caller ID and frowned at the unfamiliar number, then answered.

  “Marshal Ortis,” she said.

  “Max, my dear, you have a knack for finding trouble,” Audhilde’s voice echoed in the pick-up cabin.

  “What’s happened?” Max asked.

  “I was called to a second body today by Ruutti. She said you had an interesting conversation with Lord Kolbyr.”

  “More like a terrifying conversation,” Max said.

  Audhilde laughed, the sound warm and human, inviting Max to join her. “That is a common experience.”

  “You’re not calling just to chit chat, though, are you?” Max asked. She was almost certain of it, but could never be sure with older vampires. Sometimes they grew bored and needed entertainment, and with a lifetime of power behind them, thought nothing of disturbing anyone who crossed their mind. And Audhilde was more sociable than most. She seemed to genuinely enjoy human company.

  “No. I have completed my examination of the first body and started on the second. There are some things you should see. Can you come by the mortuary?”

  “Now? Yes. I’m about ten minutes away.” The city’s mortuary was on the outskirts of the inner city, and it was late enough that Max wouldn’t have to deal with too much traffic.

  “Good. I will see you then,” Audhilde said, and hung up.

  The mortuary’s examination room was lit with stark, white lights and smelled of cleaning fluids and decay. There were four bodies covered in white sheets lying on the cold metal tables, Audhilde standing near the foot of one of the tables, a tall metal trolley on wheels in front of her. She was typing into the laptop on top of the trolley, her fingers moving so fast they were nearly a blur. The vampire was dressed in blue coveralls this time, her hair covered with a paper cap, a mask draped around her neck. Contrary to the popular image of medical examiners, her coveralls were spotless and barely creased with wear.

  “Give me a moment, honey,” the vampire said, glancing up to acknowledge Max before turning back to the screen.

  Max nodded, and stayed where she was by the door. She was reluctant, as always, to move further into the room. This was far from the worst place she had to visit in her job as Marshal, but the smells got in her clothes and hair and the chill seemed to seep into her bones. She also did not like being around the dead. She kept waiting for them to open their eyes and sit up.

  “Alright. This is your first victim,” Audhilde said, leaving the laptop and going to the farthest table. She peeled the sheet to the body’s waist, exposing the pale flesh and cut marks.

  Max moved across. She would have preferred photographs, but Audhilde would not have called if it wasn’t important. So Max looked down at the victim, the pattern of the wounds clearer now that they had been cleaned. Audhilde would have the exact count and measurements. Perhaps in the report she had been working on.

  “The killer did not finish,” Audhilde said. “As you saw earlier, there are far more wounds on the other man. This one died quickly.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Heart failure. The young man had a heart defect. It probably went undetected in his life, but when he was under stress, it killed him,” Audhilde said in a matter-of-fact voice.

 

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