Yvonne Navarro - Highborn (The Dark Redemption Series)

No ambulance, Brynna said. I dont need one.

She pushed Redmonds hands away and turned toward the wall, trying for privacy, but Redmond circled around until he was facing her again.

Dont be stupid, he said. I dont need you dying on me.

Thats ridiculous. Im not going to die.

Youre shot, he pointed out. I cant believe youre still standing.

Brynna realized there was no way he was going to leave her alone. Fine. Let him watch. She reached under her T-shirt and found the wound just below the ribs.

Hey! Redmond said in surprise. Dont do that! Just put pressure on.

She ignored him and dug into the hole with her forefinger, hissing as fresh pain scissored through her muscles. The misshapen piece of offending metal came out with a fresh pulse of new blood. Brynna pressed her fist against it, warming the flesh until it heated and swelled, temporarily closing beneath her touch.

No, Redmond said. His voice sounded dull, almost mechanical. You cant have done what I think you just did.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Yvonne Navarro

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Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson Cover design by Anna Dorfman Cover illustration by Craig White

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ISBN 978-1-4391-9173-6
ISBN 978-1-4391-9174-3 (ebook)

For Wes
because of everything.

In no particular order, thank you to:

Weston Ochse

Martin Cochran

Don VanderSluis

Wayne Allen Sallee

Wayne Barlowe

Jerrett Cook

Scott Soukup

Laura Jimnez

Lucy Snyder

Tod Goldberg

Michael Whelan

Chris Golden

and

Mike Klesowitch, who is a real person but not the person in this book. He wanted me to use his name as long as he could be anything but a soul-sucking baby-killer. So now you know: There is no soul-sucking baby-killer.

Most of the time, Astarte could smell the souls burning.

Accompanying the heavy fragrance, the tortured screams below her window endlessly swelled and receded, strung together like notes pried from a twisted violin and seething with the burned-sugar scent of agony.

There had been a time, early on, when she had enjoyed this, had relished the eternal punishment being hammered upon the spirits of those creatures she and her longtime lover considered no better than the rats that infested their earthly world. No, not rats; mice, tiny, insignificant rodents worthy only of being food for those beings not much better than themselves. The shrieks had been musical back then, filled with blood and retribution, but eventually Astarte found that she barely heard the soundsthey faded to the background like the constant buzzing of ever-present insects.

But now the soul cries had changed. They should have been as natural as the blood that constantly oozed from the cracks in the walls of her opulent rooms, nothing more unusual than the eternity of time one second took to pass to another. But no; lately the undulating waves of suffering had begun to eat at her, stinging her psyche like hungry, biting blowflies diving relentlessly at the wounds of a dying beast. Sometimes she would lash out and silence the ones within range, her rage and impatience incinerating them instantly and giving her a few momentsjust thatof heavy, anticipatory silence.

Then, of course, the next shrieks would ripple across the plains as more souls were pushed forward to fill the void left by those she had temporarily destroyed. A hundred or a thousand seconds from now, the same souls she had just obliterated would be reborn into another cycle of their punishment and would be heard yet again. If she was lucky, their wails would fall upon the ears of another rather than herself, one who would grin rather than flinch at the sound.

But who in Hell was ever lucky?

She turned away from the sill and its vista of glowing scarlet rivers, a landscape that was dark but forever well lit. It was an arena filled with abominations that were always new and unspeakably dangerous, things that even now continued to surprise her when they crossed her royal path.

Everything in Hell watched everything else; it was a living thing, encompassing all, missing nothing, revealing everything to everyone. Even so, she neither knew nor cared who or what watched as her cracked and blackened fingertips lifted the only thing that remained of what she had once been.

A feather.

Its quill still glowed white, crystalline and pureeven the fires of Hell could not dim the light within its center. That the edges of the vane were singed and stained with sulfur and smoke took nothing away from the power it held over her. The pain she felt each time she held it was worse than anything a thousand demons could inflict, and the agony grew deeper and more overwhelming every time. The feathers light was an aberration in this room, a single spot of perfection that was impossible to disguise or hide in this city of sheer obscenity; as if to prove that, the screams of the damned would swell to an unbearable cadence of want if she held it toward the unshuttered window. That the feather had not been ripped from her possession was a testament to the fact that even she, with all her vile, hallowed standing in this place, was not above being personally tormented. Nothing reminded an immortal being of its own eternity like an everlasting memento of that which could never again come to be.

Hell had taught her many things, not the least of which was how to wait. She had spent countless days, each like a century, with one elbow resting on her knees as she contemplated the feather, that glorious relic of the time before her fall from Grace. As the heat of Hell swirled inside and outside of her, she had to wonder

Could she be redeemed?

It was said that nothing and no one could truly return from Hell, that time ceased to exist once those colossal black gates closed behind a weeping spirit. Any chance of salvation or forgiveness was left behind, as eternally unreachable as the Great Light of God Himself. But Lucifer was the King of Lies, and what better way to intensify the punishment of those who were forever condemned than to take away the one thing that had always kept even that weakest of creations, mankind, going?