AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She wants him.”
“The world will turn without you.”
“You will be forgotten.”
I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes shut tightly, even though there was nothing to look at. Their voices, light like air, kept sneaking in.
“We will show her the way.”
“It will be painful. You have wronged her.”
“She will not be gentle with you.”
“Death is eternal.”
Strong arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me fully off the floor. I was so intent on blocking out the alien sound of the voices I didn’t struggle or fight, and I let myself be carried out of the room. Once I was back outside the apartment door, I cautiously dropped my hands from my ears and opened my eyes, blinking at Leo.
His hands were still on my waist, and he was looking at me like he had no idea what to say. Really, what was there?
“Did you hear it?”
He gave a slow nod, and a wave of relief washed over his features. “I thought it was in my head. I thought…”
“You thought you were going crazy,” I offered.
Another slow nod. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to believe you now. What was that?”
Now that I was out of the room and they weren’t messing with my mind, the answer was apparent enough. “The Keres.”
“The what the fuck? Cherries?”
“Keres.” I moved away from him, not wanting to let his touch linger long enough to become uncomfortable. Or perhaps too comfortable. Being touched by someone warm and alive didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world right about now. But I couldn’t turn to Leo for that comfort. Aside from barely knowing him, there was another warm body several hundred miles north I had more than enough conflicted emotion about. No need to throw more people into the mix, no matter how lovely their parts were.
“The Keres,” I continued, “are death spirits.”
“So they’re not real.” Leo glanced back at the open door of his apartment like he expected something to show up in the frame.
Personally I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder, worried the spirits would appear like the ghost from The Ring, all dripping wet and moving like broken puppets.
I knew better. The Keres had no form. They were born of the night, daughters of Nyx.
If Seth and Manea were A-list deities, Nyx defied classification. She was it, a supreme being in the truest and most astonishing way. Calling Nyx a she didn’t seem right. She was female, in that she gave birth, but she was not like any other goddesses. She was the night. She was the all-encompassing darkness that surrounded us, the lack of warmth, the deepest of shadows.
She rarely took form, and when she did, she didn’t bother pretending to be human. Her lovers were amorphous, intangible, and her children were the Keres and the Fates.
I began to shake, trembling from head to toe with the violent appreciation for how much trouble Leo and I were in. I wanted to call Cade, to tell him not to come. To say goodbye. I thought I’d come here to save Seth’s son, but instead I was acting as the engine of his terrible demise, trailing behind me a line of horrors each one worse than the last.
How did I come from playing with lightning to being here?
Leo was still looking at me expectantly, though I couldn’t have been hiding my terror well because his expression was growing more worried by the second. “Tallulah, are you going to barf again?”
I shook my head, but I wasn’t so sure. “This isn’t an ideal situation.”
“No shit. What are the Keres?”
“They’re three sisters, spirits born of pure night. They’re real…but not real. They don’t have bodies.” And those intangible bitches must have followed me down the night road. Of course. It was the only way someone who worked with Manea would know where I was, and by extension where to find Leo.
But it wasn’t pure dumb luck that had them stumble across me just when I happened to be there. The Keres were busy girls. Kakoi, Nosoi, and Lugra…evils, plagues, and banes. Yeah, they had their hands full. So for all three of them to be hanging around the night road during the ten minutes I was there with Hecate?
