Erin Kellison - Soul Kissed

Mason felt his concentration narrowing as he aimed down the barrel. He knew soldier Jack had seen a lot of action in his thousand years of toil on earth, so he should be able to recognize an impasse when he saw one.

The hard gaze didn’t waver. “You cannot protect Fletcher. Webb can.”

I’ve protected him thus far.

The mere thought of life without Fletcher hollowed Mason, a sharp pain whistling around his empty ribcage.

They’d managed eight years. Through all sorts of upheaval and danger. And a mage toddler is just about the most fearsome kind of mage ever. They might be strays, but they were getting by just fine.

But you are not a stray, Mason. You are human.

The angel’s voice in Mason’s head sent him staggering back.

Jack looked sad and tired. And I was able to find your hideout on this hellish mountain because you have a soul. Any angel could find you.

Mason laughed and refocused his aim. Jack Bastian was full of surprises. “Wicked trick. You have three seconds to leave, and then I’ll fire.”

And the reason why you and Fletcher survived the May Fair Massacre is because the plague doesn’t kill humans, and your soul shielded him.

They’d survived because they were lucky.

Webb and Bran were lucky. You had a soul.

“Stop that! Get out of my head!”

Jack leaned forward. “You are a parent, and to be a parent is to bear all sorts of excruciating pain and fear. If magekind discovers you have a soul, that you are human, Fletcher, who is a full mage via his mother, will never be accepted. He will be a pariah at best during this, the advent of the Dark Age.”

Mason’s aim faltered; the room went hazy. “I’m not human . I use Shadow every day.”

“All humans use Shadow—in dreams, nightmares, inspiration, art.”

“No, but I use Shadow.” All the things he’d done . . .

“You craft with Shadow. You animate with Shadow. It’s not so different from how other humans use Shadow. Your mage mother increased your ability. But your human father gave you a soul. And anyone with a soul is human. You can’t tell me that you didn’t suspect—you’re too canny about such things.”

“I’m a mage, a stray.”

“Your son is a mage, a stray. Nature is unpredictable that way. He wasn’t born like you; he favored magic. And he has a chance to be fostered within his kind, safe behind the wards of a strong House.”

“You’re insane if you think I’ll give him up.” Never.

“I know you will. You’ll fight me, you’ll fight Kaye, and you’ll scream at the sky. But you will give him up to save him from the mage plague and to save him from magekind itself.”

A queer feeling overcame Mason’s nerves. “We’ll stick together; we’ll be fine .”

Jack’s gaze finally dropped to the floor. “Fine? You have barricaded yourself in a cabin on this desolate mountain plateau, shotgun at the ready, to keep him safe. This fight is just beginning. It may very well ravage the world.” The gaze found him again. “Tell me you can do better than Webb House. That ‘fine’ will be enough . Even if you were simply a stray and not human.”

“I’d die for my son.”

Jack nodded. “I know. But would you let him go?”

The angel slid that sword into Mason’s belly with surpassing skill, but then he’d had millennia of practice. Mason was bleeding, guts shredded.

“I’m sorry, friend.”

Mason’s insides hurt too much, like a vital organ was being cut away with the angel’s invisible blade. He couldn’t speak, though his mind raced: He could agree to this for now, while the threat was pressing. Then later, when it was safe, find a way to dissolve the contract. Or if that didn’t work, kidnap Fletcher and . . .

“And Brand would bear the repercussions,” Jack finished for him.

“Stop reading my mind.”

“Fine,” Jack allowed. “I know you’ll think through this proposition over and over and come to the same conclusions that I have: This world is not safe. There will be some new dire threat after the plague has passed. A storm is most definitely coming. Do you really want to go into negotiations on behalf of your son with the intent of not honoring the contract? And how would you feel if Brand and Webb were to do the same?”

Mason pulled the trigger, blasting a hole in the back of the house. He knew the gun had fired, but hadn’t felt the report or heard the boom. Dust motes wavered in the new rays of sunlight.

He was going to vomit.

Jack leaned back again, as he had at the beginning of their conversation. “Once again: Brand has done you the favor of negotiating this safe place for Fletcher.”

Oh, they were back to that. What had come next? Right. Mason numbly lowered the shotgun. “And Brand doesn’t ever do anything for free.”

Mason felt strangely bodiless, as if he were no longer in sync with his flesh. He’d sworn to keep Fletcher safe.

Jack nodded once, shallow. “She does not. In return, you will hunt the source of this plague and end it.”

“Because you think it can’t kill me.” He still didn’t believe he had a soul. He’d have known if he did have one. Surely humans could sense their own souls. The angel was lying.

Jack raised a brow, as if he wasn’t going to dignify that last thought with a comment. “Your soul, combined with your knowledge of Shadow makes you ideal. Magekind thinks that you have contracted and survived the plague. We’ll have to scar your body to make it look as if you have. I suggest you immediately bend your skill with Shadow to shrouding your soul. I know it can be done, and with your facility with magic, you should be able to do it.”

Mason heard the words scar and shroud, but they passed by him. He stared at the false wall, behind which Fletcher was hiding. He’d wanted to earn a place for them together.

“You’ll have a partner—one who is not aligned with the Council—so that all mage Houses will cooperate with your investigation,” Jack went on. “Cari Dolan’s father was recently murdered by this thing, but she survived the illness. And she has agreed to use her House’s ability to see the antumbra of a mage’s Shadow to identify and locate the perpetrator.”

Mason’s mind fractured into the abstract. Cari Dolan. He’d known her when they were dumb teenagers. Livia, Fletcher’s mother, had been one of her friends.

Jack continued, “You’ll have to be careful though. And clever. If she or anyone else discovers that you’re human, Webb will have grounds to renege on the fosterage contract. He won’t have reason to protect Fletcher.”

“He’s a father, too,” Mason argued.

“A father who would appear to all magekind as having been duped by Kaye Brand into sheltering not only a Stray, but the offspring of a human.”

No mage liked to look like a fool. Few could afford it. Not after the “cleansing” the last High Seat had inflicted on the Houses—any mage with a soul, any mage weak in Shadow, had been killed to purify their race.

Fletcher.

That Jack could come here with this message revealed the angel for the unflinching bastard he was. The angel was heartless. But then, the Order was well known for its cruelty.

Jack stood, his business obviously concluded. “The Order is not the architect of your suffering. This situation is wholly mage-made; they are all agents of chaos, including, God help me, my Kaye.”

The angels of the Order were killers, Jack here among the best of them. Just look at the carnage he’d wrought today.

Jack stalked to the front door, opened it, then paused on the threshold. “When next you receive a call from Kaye Brand, you will take it, and you will hear her out.”