He was right. There was nothing stopping the Wake from sending Empyreals, or its other new, twisted creatures, to hunt people or beings they wanted dead. Just as they’d sent him to Estwood to take out Lynch after the Spectre failed to kill Professor Westmoore and steal her supernatural art collection.
‘Even if Empyrealsdon’tknow,’ Callum said, ‘the Wake’s donors might.’
Kyan pressed his lips into a tight line. He rarely met the donors, except during very high-profile missions or rare, awkward events where he was used as a staid example of one of their finest killers. Those things reminded him too much of his early days as their gladiator.
How many of those wealthy supernaturals were in on this mutation process?
The idea made him sick to his stomach.
Likely the Wake had encouraged them with the same propaganda they’d imbued in him: that without the protection of the Wake, supernaturals would be vulnerable; that there might be another Dark Age in which creatures would run rampant through the world, massacring everything in their path.
‘What’s your bet the Old Bailey is just an administrative building?’
Callum gave him a look that saidZero.
‘You want to break in,’ Kyan realised.
‘How else are we going to be sure? All you know is they took the bodies there. That could’ve been for reasons that have nothing to do with this.’
‘Like what? Feeding them to some of the prisoners awaiting trials?’
Callum’s lip curled in distaste. ‘Possibly. But you know as well as I do there aren’t that many creatures that feed ondeadbodies.’
Kyan resumed pacing. ‘I’ve been thinking about the other part of Freya’s message: “A cure to the oath must be found … Perhaps only the God of Oaths himself will know.”Do you think it means who I imagine it might?’
If therewasa way, a real way, to be freed from the Wake and their oath, he’d sever that connection however he could, even if he had to cut out his infernal scar himself. But he had a suspicion that wouldn’t sever the bind. He knew the deep power of it was more like an ancientgeis.
Like a spell, or a curse. It was unbreakable and often destructive. If you didn’t follow its order it could kill you. Irish myth was full of gods and heroes who were bested by them.
Callum slid him a look. ‘And if it is?’
‘Well, it’s impossible. The gods are gone, and even if they weren’t, the Druids—’
The Druids are dead.
He didn’t need to say it for Callum to understand, but his friend made a thoughtful noise.
Kyan frowned. ‘Don’t you think so?’
He had felt the gods long ago, felt them like he felt the air and his Empyrean power. But after the battle that killed his Druid family and sent him from Ireland, that changed.
The Druids had been the main beings capable of communicating with the gods, though many tales told of how the Irish pantheon appeared to humans or heroes, and came or went or intervened at their pleasure. Now, their only answer might lie in the mythology and research.
One more reason to find Nicole.
Kyan shut down the thought.
Callum was quiet for a long moment. ‘I think there’s a lot we don’t know.’
‘I have one more problem: my medical is this afternoon.’
‘Ah.’
‘The second they check me they’ll ask about the binding scar. I thought it might have been flagged when I scanned in to the buildings or accessed mission files, but the ID scanners only seem to pick up the Wake’s mark.’
‘Makes sense,’ Callum mused. ‘Empyreals are often covered withblood, mud or any assorted gore. If it picked up every mark we wouldn’t get in the buildings.’
‘But I’ll have a bunch of techs and the doctor checking me over. They’ll see it, and I don’t know how to explain it away. Empyreals don’t just acquire new scars. I can’t say I got it in a fight, it’s too perfect. I can’t say Lynch did something to me, they’ll try and investigate—’
