Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 34: Even Keeled

"Take me upstairs," I said to Boras. "I want to go outside."

"I don't think His Majesty would approve." Boras looked as displeased as ever to see me, at least some things never changed.

"Boras, I don't give a rat's ass about what His Majesty will or won't approve of - or about what he wants me to do, for that matter. What I do know is that if I don't get some fresh air in the next five minutes I'm going to burn a hole clear up and out of this place and get it that way." I wasn't sure I could do that, not without bond magic and Keel's help, but as a threat, it sounded solid. The Nosferatu remained prone to overestimating my magical abilities.

Boras frowned, then turned and obeyed the command. I fell into step behind him, just as I'd grown so used to doing with Keel, allowing him lead me through the warren of hallways and locked doors out to the parking lot adjacent to the loading bay. I stepped into the night and gazed around. How many weeks had it been since I was outside last? Everything seemed so vast, loud, and surreal.

Beyond the explosions of electric light illuminating the parking lot and roadway, the overcast sky should have blanketed the fields in blackness, but the fences, trees and crops still had shape and distinguishable though murky colour. Bony protusions of greyish-black, brownish-black and impossibly dark green jutted up from the fields around the compound like so many misshaped monster hands. My sense of hearing and smell had received a boost as well. Not as much as when I was riding the high of Keel's blood, but enough to make me feel like a stranger in my own skin.

A shiver cut through me. Just some new senses. Relax. I didn't want this. It was one thing to temporarily borrow some of Keel's essence, but this...

"Leave me," I told Boras.

This time the look he gave me was a questioning one, like he was trying to decide what Keel would have him do. Tackle me maybe.

"Does it look like I'm going anywhere?" I gestured at my simple velvet dress and the fact that I carried zero belongings. "I just need some time... outside."

He shrugged and disappeared back through the grey metal door to the loading docks. I sucked in a deep breath. Even the air tasted different. Both sweeter and staler. It carried a hint of sourness too. And some decay. A carcass lay somewhere in the fields, slowly going back to earth.

I circled the facility until I found a fire escape that had roof access and then climbed the three storeys to the top. My limbs should have been stiff and weak from lack of use, but they flexed as if I was in peak physical condition. As I crossed to the far side of the roof, it reminded me of another roof on another night I had heightened senses, back when we thought a different one of us would die. I'd seen Keel's monster that night and still I hadn't run. And now I never would. His monster was within me too.

It drove me crazy trying to think of all the things that might mean. Heightened senses, heightened reflexes, and what else?

From the edge of the roof, I stared out at the dark fields and the line they cut against the deep blue hue of the night sky. I'd been born in the sun and my father had hidden me to keep me in its rays, but when I should have died and didn't, Keel and my father had given me to the night. Keel I understood. But Ephraim? His participation left a weird, strangling ache in my chest. For someone who fought so long and hard to keep me from the monsters, he was sure quick to make me into one.

A metallic creak sounded from the fire escape, but that wasn't what informed me I was no longer alone. The bond twitched, more than twitched; it positively sang out Keel's arrival, feeding me electricity and rightness and desire in amplitudes I was unused to. Another what the hell to add to the growing pile. I bled some of my discontent into dampening it, and it sank to a background roar.