Claimed by Sin: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Gatekeeper Chronicles Book 3) Page 3

  “Well, in that case, don’t you think you better tell him?”

  “No need.” Ajitah’s voice drifted in from the doorway. “I get the message. Loud and clear.”

  My stomach sank into my boots. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t…

  Drake exhaled heavily. “He’s gone.”

  Shit.

  4

  Ajitah was pacing his bedroom floor. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.

  “So you actually want to talk to me now?” Ajitah said.

  “I’m sorry. I was going to speak to you.”

  He stood, hands on hips and head hanging. “I hate that you felt you couldn’t.”

  My gut twisted. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  He gave a dry laugh. “Well, you did. You are. It fucking hurts that you told Drake how you felt before telling me. It fucking kills me that you felt you had to avoid me rather than tell me what you were feeling.” He raised his head to meet my gaze. “So what is it? What about us doesn’t work? Because as far as I can tell, you haven’t even given us a chance.” He reached for me. “Is it something I’ve done?”

  “Oh god, no. It’s not you. It’s me.”

  “I can’t believe you’re giving me that line.”

  This sucked. I couldn’t tell him he was married, but I had to tell him the truth of what I’d done. “It’s not a line. The problem is me. I… I cheated on you.”

  There. It was out, and he was looking at me with such hurt and disappointment.

  He blew out a breath and scanned the floor. “When?” he asked so softly I almost didn’t catch it.

  My ears grew hot. “When I went to Nagalok.”

  He exhaled sharply. “Garuda.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you…”

  “Did we what?”

  He arched a brow.

  Shit. He wanted to know if we’d… “No. No, god, we just kissed.” Passionately. But there was no need to go into detail.

  He nodded, lips turned down. “Just a kiss.”

  “Or two.”

  Dammit, why couldn’t I keep my freaking mouth shut? Or better yet, keep it off Garuda’s mouth. This was horrible.

  He finally met my eyes. “I appreciate your honesty, even though a part of me wishes you hadn’t told me. But now I have another question. And this one is the important one.”

  My stomach quivered. “Okay.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “Of course I do. It shouldn’t have happened. I was your girlfriend. It was wrong.”

  He smiled wryly. “You feel guilty.”

  “Yes!”

  “That you have feelings for him.”

  “Yes!”

  He backed up, swallowing hard.

  Crap. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. He wasn’t supposed to look as if I’d just ripped out his heart.

  I was making such a mess of this. “Look. I just… We were just—”

  “Don’t.” He caught his bottom lip between his teeth. “You’ve been honest with me, so I’m going to extend the same courtesy. I am in love with you, Malina. I have been for a while. But I can’t make you feel the same way. I can’t make you want me as much as I want you. And honestly, if you can’t feel the same way, then it’s better we end this now.”

  My throat pinched. This was really happening. “I’m so sorry…”

  “I’m going to need some space.”

  This was what I’d been afraid of. “Please. Don’t leave.”

  His brows snapped together. “What? Why would I—Oh.” He ran a hand over his face. “You really don’t know me at all, do you? If you think I’d be so petty as to shirk my responsibilities just because we…” He sighed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  His words were like needles stabbing at my eyes. I blinked and rubbed them, fingers coming away wet. He was right. I didn’t know him. Not the real him, because I’d never made the effort to delve deeper. I’d used him as a comfort blanket, a shield against my true nature and my growing attraction for Garuda. He deserved better. So much better than someone like me. In the absence of the whole truth, I’d give him what I could.

  “I care about you, Ajitah. I care a lot. But I don’t love you. Not in the way you deserve. I hope that we can be friends.”

  He offered me a wry smile. “Goodnight, Malina.”

  That was my cue to exit.

  Breakfast was an awkward affair—silent except for the boys’ babble and the clatter of spoons against cereal bowls. Ajitah wouldn’t even look at me. The boys finished up and whooped their way into the garden and the treehouse. Without their noise as a buffer, the room was suddenly a huge, echoing chasm of nothingness.

  Drake’s attention swung from Ajitah to me and then back, his gaze disapproving. Yeah, I knew I’d get shit for this, but the injustice of it grated. It wasn’t as if I could date Ajitah even if I wanted to. He was Yama, the lord of the underworld, and married to boot. But I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t relieved. After my revelation about my feelings for Garuda, Dad’s news had been like a get-out-of-jail-free card. On second thought, I was a horrible person. I deserved the glare Drake was shooting my way.

  Toto padded into the kitchen and sat by my stool, his dark eyes looking up at me with adoration. At least someone still loved me.

  Drake set down his spoon. “Okay. I’m going to address the elephant in the room. You guys have broken up.”

  I closed my eyes and hung my head.

  Ajitah snorted. It was a bitter sound. I whipped my head up to lock eyes with him. The flash of pain, the twist of regret on his lips, made my stomach hurt.

  Ajitah tore his gaze away and focused on Drake. “Yes, we’re no longer in a relationship, but like I said to Malina last night—I take my duty, my commitments, very seriously, and I made a promise to Eamon. I promised I’d look out for his daughter, no matter what.”

  Dad had made him promise that? “When?” My voice sounded hoarse. I cleared my throat. “When did he make you promise?”

  “When you were in Nagalok. We spent a lot of time together. We…we missed you.” He snorted. “I’d stay even if I hadn’t made a promise. This fight is more important than my feelings.”

  Dad had known. He’d known I’d have to break it off with Ajitah, that there would be a risk of him leaving, and so he’d made him promise. He’d claimed an oath from the lord of the underworld—a god renowned for his sense of justice and moral compass. Dad had been looking out for me even as death closed in on him.

  Ajitah rinsed his mug in the sink. “I’ll be in the garden with my boys if you need me.” He strode out, slamming the door behind him.

  Drake shook his head. “Well, that was intense.”

  I placed my bowl in the sink and turned on the tap. “Call Loki again.”

  If we didn’t get some action on this case soon, I’d scream. I quickly washed the bowl and popped it on the drainer.

  “Malina, it’s ringing!” Drake shoved his phone at me. I grabbed it just as Loki answered.

  “Hello?” Loki said.

  “It’s Malina. I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  “Meet me at the club. Buzz and Monty will let you in.” He ended the call with a click.

  “You want me to come with?” Drake asked.

  “Nah. You keep working on translating that journal. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Hopefully with some good news.

  Monty let me into the club and then led me across the empty dance floor and around the back of the bar into the corridor with the glowing symbols. He knocked on the second door down, pushed it open, and stood back to let me in. It was like stepping into a rainbow. The walls were painted purple, the carpet was a deep burnt orange, and the sofa set in the corner was red. The desk—a plain wooden affair—was the only piece of ordinary office furniture. Knickknacks cluttered his desk: a mini metronome, playing cards, paperweights, seashells, a pile of beads, and three different bottles of nail polish.

  “Malina. Come in
. Have a seat.”

  I gingerly slid into the chair opposite him. “Nice office. You decorate it yourself?”

  He grinned. “Doesn’t it just make you feel happy?”

  Shellshocked was more like it. I smiled. “It’s lovely.”

  “So what did you want to see me about? Do you have a lead on the Daughter of Chaos?”

  “Something like that.” I quickly filled him in on my trip to Nagalok and my conversation with the high witch. “I would have told you sooner, but you’re a difficult man to get ahold of.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I apologize for not being here. But let’s go back to what the high witch said. She mentioned an earth witch?”

  “Yeah. Do you know what that is?”

  Loki picked up a pretty paperweight and began to turn it over in his hands. “I knew, as soon as the Daughter of Chaos entered this world, that there’d come a time when I might have to reveal the truth about myself to you and your father.” He looked up. “It looks as if today is that day.”

  “What truth?”

  “I know who the Daughter of Chaos is. I know because I made her.”

  5

  Had I heard him right? “Sorry, did you just say you created the Daughter of Chaos?”

  He met my gaze with a level one of his own. His kohl-rimmed eyes gleamed bright in his head. “Yes.”

  “But I thought she was ancient. Like before-the-beginning-of-time ancient.”

  He nodded. “She is.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  He pouted as if considering where to begin. When he started to speak, his voice echoed with a strange resonance, as if I were listening to a recording made in a cavern. It gave his words an ominous, prophetic quality.

  “My world was a place of great superstition, where the gods walked openly amongst us. The Daughter of Chaos didn’t exist then. Back then, her name was Elara. Elara and her brother ruled our world. They were benevolent gods. They granted boons to those who showed the greatest diligence in their worship. I was a young man with stars in his eyes, wanting to be closer to these wonderful beings, so I applied to join the Guard—humans imbued with magical abilities. Their duty was to serve and protect the gods. And their power came from a unique connection to the earth.”

  I sat forward, my heart pounding. “Earth witches? You’re an earth witch.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I became powerful in my own right. Ambitious and, I’m ashamed to say, greedy. I meddled where I shouldn’t have and drew power not from the earth but from the void. The spell went wrong, and Elara’s divine form was infected by the void. The void remade Elara’s divine form and she renamed herself the Daughter of Chaos. She tore our world apart. We succeeded in putting her into eternal slumber but were too late to stop the unraveling of our world.”

  “So how did you end up here in our reality?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. I thought I was dead. Done for. But then I awoke under London Bridge, close to drowning. I pulled myself out and strode into this modern new world. I studied your history and lifestyle, and then I took a new name. Loki sounded…appropriate, considering my meddling ways. It’s a reminder to do better this time.”

  “So you’ve been here for how long?”

  “A few decades. Long enough to realize that the multi-verse has a plan for me. But it was only when the Daughter of Chaos surfaced, when I faced her in the club, that I understood why I was here. I was brought here to put right my wrong. In that moment, everything came flooding back, but…I don’t think she knew me at all. I sensed no recognition. The Elara I knew is gone. I’ve been doing my research in preparation for the time when I’d have to step up and show my hand.”

  This was it. This was what we needed. “What have you found?”

  “Lore on the void. The Mayfair Coven was kind enough to allow me access to their library.” He paused as if considering his next words. “The void is the antithesis to the skein. Whereas the skein promotes creation, the void exists to unmake. Before my meddling, it existed around us but out of reach, unable to affect the multi-verse, until I…I unwittingly created a bridge by tapping into it. Now it surrounds us, waiting to devour us. Held back only by the fact that a part of it is trapped inside the multi-verse, asleep. At the moment, we are dealing with a shadow of her power. I’m afraid that if she succeeds in fully breaking free from her slumber, then it won’t just be our reality that she unravels…she’ll unravel them all.”

  “Destroy the multi-verse?”

  “Yes. I believe—and this is just a theory based on my research—that she may be straddling all the realities. Influencing them in some way, but I think my being here means this reality is some kind of linchpin. If we stop her here, then we may succeed in stopping her for good.”

  Gooseflesh broke out over my skin. “You really believe that our reality is a linchpin?”

  “I do.”

  Laila’s vision came to mind. She’d been insistent I live. Maybe Loki was right. “So we find the hinn, free my mother, and weaken the Daughter of Chaos. Then what?”

  “Then we put her back into eternal slumber. I know the spell to do it. We ask the gods to lay her in a pocket of silence—a place where chaos can’t find her and raise her again. Some place where the darkness inside her cannot be fed. I have a compact with the covens. In exchange for limiting the use of my magic and refraining from fraternizing with their kind, they allow me to parade as one of them—an independent witch who uses the skein. But in this case, I figure if the high witch mentioned earth witches, she was setting you on a path to me. I think they’ll turn a blind eye for this one. And even if they don’t, it’s too important a task to shirk for fear of banishment.”

  Was the compact the reason he wouldn’t date Carmella? The rest of his words registered. “Wait. They threatened to banish you?”

  He nodded. “The thirteen covens casting together have the power to push me out of this reality, and goodness knows where I’d end up next. Probably back in time to my fragmenting world, to die with my brethren. And that’s okay, as long as I’ve done my duty by putting the Daughter of Chaos back to rest.” He pressed his lips together as if considering whether to tell me something.

  “Loki?”

  He sighed. “Seventeen years ago, when the breach in the Underground opened, Indra came to me for help. They needed my earth magic to help close the breach. The witches on their payroll were struggling to draw enough power from the skein to help—it does, after all, supply magic to every witch. So…anyway, I said no. I turned him down, even though I knew I could close that breach. I was confident they’d manage without me. Closing a breach wasn’t worth risking the coven’s wrath. If I’d known that my refusal would result in the fight lasting days instead of hours, that it would let a part of her essence into this world and result in your kidnapping, then I would have happily said yes, and damn the consequences.”

  He was looking at me as if he was waiting for something. Did he want me to bash him for a decision he’d made seventeen years ago? His actions hadn’t been vindictive. He’d acted to protect himself, to save himself for a bigger fight.

  “Is that why you befriended my dad? Is that why you offered to help me?”

  “That and the fact we’re on the same side. Yes.” He licked his lips. “I’m sorry. If I’d made a different choice, maybe you wouldn’t have been taken. Maybe you would have grown up with a mother and father.”

  “Or maybe the entity would have found a way out regardless. What’s done is done, and there’s nothing for you to feel sorry about, so please, just stop.”

  He blinked at me and swallowed. “In that case, we should get back to this hinn. I know what it is. An ancient being, made from smokeless fire. Hinn are brothers to the djinn, yet not as complex of heart and mind. My world was populated with hinn.”

  “But your world’s gone.”

  He tapped his fingers against the table. “If I could find a way to send you back in time…far enough to a point before the unraveling�
��” He shook his head. “No. It’s way too dangerous. Let’s leave that option as a last resort.”

  There were too many last resort options for my liking. I needed a plan of action we could use now. “Maybe Drake’s found something useful in the journal that Penelope gave him.”

  Loki cocked his head inquisitively. “What journal?”

  “It belongs to some ancient witch who used to visit different realities using the skein. He kept a journal of his adventures. This was before they banned skein travel, though.”

  “Interesting. Let me know what you find. If there is a reality out there populated by hinn, we can open a doorway using his method, but—”

  “—drawing from your earth magic.”

  He smiled. “Exactly. The last couple of weeks have left me fully recharged.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “Being in this concrete jungle saps my power, so I surround myself with nature for a few weeks, every so often, in order to recharge.”

  So that was why he’d been AWOL for two weeks. At least his recharge had been timely. “I better get back to the mansion. I’ll call you if we find anything.”

  “Do that.”

  I left him to his musings. A couple of months ago, I would have seriously doubted his tale. But my recent jaunt into Nagalok had taught me that almost anything was possible. The universe was an intricate, complex place filled with wonders yet to be discovered. I just hoped there weren’t any nasty surprises waiting for us around the corner.

  I found Drake in Dad’s study…well, it was his study now. I’d insisted he take it over. I wasn’t the pore-over-books type. But point me in the direction of trouble, and I was on it. Drake was the researcher in the posse.

  He looked up from the journal, his brow still scrunched in a frown. “Hey. How’d it go with Loki?”

  “Better than you’d think.”

  He placed a bookmark in the journal and closed it. “Do tell.”

  I filled him in on Loki’s revelation, then sat back and watched comprehension dawn.