The Hollow Gods (The Chaos Cycle #1)
Chapter 34
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Chapter
Thirty-Four
Miya
Miya wasn’t sure if this was the past, the present, or the future. It was like being suspended in time—locked in a liminal space. It might have been a premonition or a memory, a dream or reality.
She stared at Kai’s hand, wondering if he’d pull her towards the tree. The willow’s wispy canopy seemed like shelter, gathering her up in its embrace and telling her not to be afraid.
She reached out and took Kai’s hand. It was warm, his grip firm as he curled his fingers around hers. Without a word, he tugged her from the glade.
They retraced their steps hand-in-hand. Exhausted after their sparring match, Miya didn’t protest as he led the way. Ama was waiting inside the cabin when they returned, drumming her fingers against the table she was seated at. She raised both her eyebrows as they dragged themselves in.
“Have you two made up?”
“Piss off,” barked Kai, dropping Miya’s hand.
Miya couldn’t remember when she last ate or slept, and she still didn’t know how much time had passed. It was unsettling—being unaware of her own bodily needs.
“Are we going to talk about what happened, or am I no longer needed here?” Ama asked while Miya stared after Kai. He moved towards the table and placed his hands on the backrest of the chair opposite Ama.
“Lambchop?” His eyes were still fixed on Ama as he spoke. Cuing into the invitation, Miya shuffled over and sat down. His fingertips brushed her shoulders—a quiet reassurance.
“Tell me what you saw,” said Ama.
Miya swallowed, willing herself back to the desert, the corpses, and finally—
“A shadow.” It was the first thing out of her mouth. “He was standing on top of a hill, covered in blood. I remember when he turned, he had yellow eyes,” she directed the statement at Ama, “but not like yours. They were different. Colder.”
Ama laughed, the sound sweet and light like the chime of a beckoning bell. “Did you think it was me?”
Miya shook her head. “I knew it wasn’t you. Eventually, it changed form. It looked human.” She hesitated, repainting the face in her mind. “The eyes stayed the same, but—”
“Did he look like me?” Kai’s voice dipped, quiet and guilt-ridden. He squeezed her shoulder, drawing her attention to him.
She leaned her head back and gazed up at him. “How’d you know that?”
“I’ve seen him before,” he admitted.
“Maybe he’s messing with you?” Miya reached up and poked his jaw when his eyes began to wander. “He can obviously shape-shift.”
“But he’s been consistent with his appearance,” Ama interrupted. “A shadow, and a man who looks like Kai. Both with the same eyes.”
Kai squinted suspiciously at Ama. “I never saw a shadow. Where else did you get that from?”
She looked between Kai and Miya. “You two aren’t the only ones who’ve encountered this entity. But that’s not important right now. Was there anything else?”
Miya was irked by her evasions, but she wracked her brain nevertheless. “He knows me.” She tiredly rubbed her face. The memories were already fading. “He told me that we’ve met before. And he seemed to want to hurt me.”
“How can he know you?” Kai let go of the chair and paced the room. He looked an eye-twitch away from murder, stalking back and forth at a dizzying pace. “He’s been with me since I was a kid. He can’t know you .”
“He called himself my king of spades,” Miya recalled. “Not too long ago, that card fell out of my playing deck. I saw it again at the diner. Maybe it’s no coincidence. Maybe he does know me.”
“Perhaps not from this life,” Ama said, her eyes downcast as she traced a circular pattern on the surface of the table. “What you’re dealing with is no ordinary spirit, from what I can tell. This Abaddon—I don’t think he’s just some ghost who’s lingering because he has a few petty regrets. Besides,” she quirked an eyebrow at Kai, “you may be a menace, but you’re still young. I doubt you’ve done anything bad enough to deserve this. At least not in this lifetime.”
Kai growled as she scrutinized him. “Why do you keep talking about lifetimes? I’ve only been here for one—”
“Wait!” Miya slammed her hand down on the table, jolting them both. “He calls himself Abaddon, right? That’s the name of a biblical demon. So that can’t be his real name—” She stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening as fragments of the journey flitted back to her. “But I already knew that. I called him out, and it weakened him, I think.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t have a single name,” Ama suggested, her finger halting on the table.
Kai too paused, then resumed pacing. “Who cares what he calls himself?”
Ama sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’ve studied spirits for a long time. Ghosts usually aren’t intelligent enough to give themselves names. If a spirit is intelligent, it’s because it belongs to an old soul—one that’s lived many lives. I wonder if Abaddon goes by a biblical name because he is ancient. What if he’s more than just the malicious remnant of one unhappy life, but the amalgamation of countless unhappy lives—all lived by the same spirit?”
“Amalga—” Kai whirled around. “A what.”
“A collection,” explained Miya. “A spirit that’s lived a bunch of crappy lives, right?”
Ama nodded. “And these lives must have ended in tragedy. Despite the constant effort to right past wrongs, this spirit likely repeated the same heartbreaking cycles over and over again throughout his many lives, until he became a monster.”
“But if there is such a thing as reincarnation, why wasn’t he reborn?” Miya challenged. “How does a spirit just stop the cycle?”
“Something fuelled only by the desire to destroy inevitably loses its desire to live,” she explained. “If wilful enough, a spirit can become a force capable of resisting reincarnation. It sustains itself by haunting the person it blames most for its misery.” She peered up at Kai, her amber eyes glowing as a shadow passed over from outside. “You.”
Kai halted his patrol, the words percolating between his ears as his face twisted through an entire range of emotions. Shifting his weight, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “So...he’s a cocktail of shit?”
Ama chuckled. “Sounds about right.”
“And here I thought I’d pissed off enough people in this lifetime.” Kai dropped his arms, looking skyward like he was mentally combing through a list of individuals he’d wronged.
“Whatever this grudge is, it runs deep,” Ama told him. “It’s probably something that’s been repeating for several lifetimes, if not more.”
Kai squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “All right, fuck all of this for now.” He spun around and headed to the bathroom. “I need a shower.”
Miya watched him leave, then turned to Ama, who appeared lost in her own world. She didn’t want to interrupt, but her tailbone was sore from sitting on the edge of her seat, so she got up and helped herself to the futon.
Her mind was preoccupied with the last thing she saw before she found herself back in her own body: the Dreamwalker. She glanced at Ama, wondering what the white wolf knew that she didn’t.
“Do you find it difficult to accept the notion of reincarnation?” Ama asked.
Miya propped herself up on her elbow. “I guess not after all this. I wonder, though—do you think it’s possible that I knew Kai as well? In another life?”
“That would be my guess, especially if Abaddon claims he knows you.”
“Do you think this was meant to happen? Like destiny?”
“You sound doubtful,” Ama laughed, “but reincarnation isn’t so straightforward. Things don’t happen just so you fulfill some arbitrary destiny. A person can have many past lives.” She pushed the chair back and stood up, then leaned over the table and stretched like a cat. “Kai’s past life with Abaddon may or may not be entirely separate from his past life with you. Perhaps the two of them have lived multiple lives together—some with you, some without you.”
“You said that Abaddon might be a spirit who’s been repeating the same cycles until it turned him into a monster,” Miya recalled. “Can someone really mess up so many times and never learn?”
“Sure, they can. It’s no secret that we’re drawn to what’s familiar, even if it’s something bad—like abusive relationships. No one wants to be in an abusive relationship, but if it’s what they’re used to, they’ll continue seeking out abusive people.” Ama whisked to the side as if prowling. “Sometimes, it takes multiple lives to learn one life lesson. You may not be conscious of it, but it’s all inside of you—the culmination of your soul’s experiences. It’s what you were born with; it’s your fate. And fate is always the beginning.”
Fate is the beginning. Kai too had said those words. His past life with Miya and his past life with Abaddon may have been two separate paths at some point, but they were now coalescing—here, in the present. Miya realized that the past, long-thought forgotten, had been right there with her all along. It was alive, and it was breathing down her neck.
“So why bother being so cautious?” Miya asked. “You watch your own skin. You don’t like danger. But if you get infinite chances, doesn’t life lose meaning? Isn’t dying irrelevant?”
Ama shook her head. “Life is precious. Every little thing we do leaves an imprint and affects who we become in the next life. If you’re careless because you think you’ll get another chance, it’ll come back to bite you. Besides, it’s instinct to preserve one’s own life. And instinct can be far more powerful than what we think we know.”
“Where did you learn all this?” Miya flopped on her belly. “You’re like a spirit encyclopedia.”
Ama shrugged. “I’ve lived with an old kook most of my life. He taught me a lot, but I learned some on my own, too.”
A light flapping noise caught Miya’s attention, and she looked over to see a raven perched on the window sill. “Hey! It’s you!”
Ama followed her gaze to the window. “Kai’s new friend. He seems to like it here.”
“Kai has a bird-friend?” Miya laughed as she imagined him sitting at the table and whipping scraps of food at the raven. “I’ve been seeing this guy everywhere. He was in the dreamscape, too. He helped me.” She turned to Ama. “I saw you with him while I was there.”
Ama smiled—a smile different from all the others. It was warm, laced with affection and nostalgia. “He raised me.”
“The bird raised you?”
Ama shook her head. “The master of the bird—and the bird.” Her lips pulled back further, the warmth giving way to mischief. “Who’s to say who is who? He’s very old, after all.”
Miya was flooded by an image from her dreams, of a small figure standing in front of a giant redwood tree, then erupting into a conspiracy of ravens. She recalled the yearning that welled up inside her when she first saw him and wondered if he was the one Ama referred to.
“Is that why you’re here? Why you know so much? Because you’re helping your caretaker?”
Ama’s eyes shifted to the raven. “Aside from my own curiosity, yes.”
“Why does he want to help?”
“The only thing that shithead helps with is crapping on my roof.” It was Kai, emerging from the bathroom with damp hair and a clean t-shirt and jeans.
Ama paid him no mind, ignoring his reappearance. “He’s a living spirit, a god with a mortal form. He’s been watching the cycles of time far longer than any of us can know, and this is a vital moment in those cycles.”
Kai took pause, his posture stiffening. “Living spirit? Like Abaddon?”
Ama shrugged. “Minus the malevolence. His existence isn’t rooted in a focused cause the way Abaddon’s is. And he’s sacrificed quite a bit to remain in this realm.”
Again, Miya envisioned the small figure by the redwood. “Is he going to interfere?” she wondered aloud. “If this is an important moment in the cycles, is there a chance to break them and get rid of Abaddon?”
Ama glanced between her companions, then sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know if he’s going to interfere. I can’t say my master is a force for good or evil. His alignment is more...chaotic. All I know is that he’s interested in what Abaddon might be up to. Perhaps he knew Abaddon, and others, once upon a time.”
“Others? Like the Dreamwalker?” Miya offered.
“He mentions her from time to time.”
“So are we just collateral damage?” Miya continued as Kai muttered under his breath. “Is he watching us through the raven because we’ll lead him to the Dreamwalker or Abaddon?”
“We’re bait,” Kai concluded, his voice dipping.
Ama leaned back in her chair, frowning. “I wouldn’t say that. He wouldn’t have sent me here if he only considered you slabs of meat to lure out the goblins.”
“Great,” Miya sighed, then noticed the orange-red glow of sunset gleaming over the horizon.
“You’ve been here quite a while.” Ama stood and headed for the door. “But you should probably stay the night. Once the sun goes down, it’s not safe out in the woods.”
Miya’s mouth popped open. “Why can’t Kai take me home? I’m pretty sure there’s nothing out in the woods scarier than him.”
Ama glanced back from the threshold, her bright, brassy eyes glistening. “Nothing of this world, no.”
Miya stared after her as the door creaked shut, and she was left alone with the Big Bad Wolf.
“Kai?”
“Hm?”
“Is Abaddon the reason you blacked out before finding Elle?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I think so.”
She turned to the window to see that the raven hadn’t left with Ama. “So, does the bird have a name?”
Kai grabbed a pear from his kitchen counter and threw himself down into a chair, clunking his head against the top of the backrest. “He’s not my pet bird.”
Miya raised an eyebrow. “Oh? But you named me after your favourite food even though I already have a name.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “Sorry, but you’re not my favourite food, Lambchop. I prefer bunnies. The cute, fluffy kind. Meat’s way more tender.”
“You’re evading the question, Big Bad Wolf.”
It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “The bird is not a pet.” He crunched into his pear, then smiled balefully. “But you are.”
Miya narrowed her eyes, then turned to the raven, grinning defiantly while Kai glared. “Maybe I’ll give you a name.”
“Don’t do it,” Kai warned.
“Kafka!”
Kai blinked. “What?”
“The raven.” Miya spread her arms. “I hereby christen him Kafka.”
“The bat-shit Czech guy who wrote the cockroach story? That’s—” His sentence was cut short as the pear vanished from his hand. Kafka, now a safe distance away, pecked contently at his juicy prize, having plucked himself a meal straight from the wolf’s jaws.
Miya laughed triumphantly and fell back on the futon. “You deserved that.”
Kai jumped to his feet and came at her with ungodly speed, grabbing her by the waist and yanking her towards him. She squealed as he darted onto the mattress and trapped her legs between his knees. He tickled her mercilessly while she tried to kick him off, but he evaded her attacks, then dove forward and nipped her neck.
Miya shrieked and choked on her own spit, coughing as she latched onto a pillow and curled into a fetal position, waiting for the assault to subside. Her eyes stung with tears as she dissolved into a fit of intermittent giggles and hacks. All the while, Kai grinned ear-to-ear as he rubbed her back to soothe her angry lungs, then crawled off her and helped her sit up.
She smacked him with the pillow she’d been clutching. “I like you better when you’re playful.”
“Playful?” He raised an eyebrow. “I heard tickling was a popular torture method.”
“Sadist.”
He leaned forward and bit the tip of her nose. “You love it.”
Miya squeaked and scrunched her face from the sting. “Maybe sometimes.”
Kafka finished his pear and watched them as though they were a spectacle. Noticing the attention shift his way, he sank his beak into his plush blue-black feathers, then dove from the window and flew away.
As soon as they were alone, Miya’s stomach growled. Loudly.
“...I’m hungry,” she said sheepishly.
Kai reached for his hunting knife. “I’ll go stab you a rabbit.”
“What!”
He flashed her a wolfish grin, his eyes filling with glee. “You know, those adorable, floppy-eared fluff balls that hump a lot.”
Miya whacked him on the arm. “ You can go hump a tree!”
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her with mock sincerity. “You won’t even recognize the mangled bastard when I’m done with him. And there are softer, fleshier things I’d prefer to—”
“Not helping!” she protested.
He snorted. “Would you feel better if I said I was going to stab a wild hare? They’re kind of big and ugly, so sticking pointy objects in them is cool, yeah?”
Well shit , she thought, he got me there . Defeated, she hugged her knees and pouted. “It’s okay. I won’t starve.”
He hesitated, then strapped the knife back to his belt. “Sorry.”
“Huh?” Had she hallucinated an apology?
“For not having more jerky. I’ve got whisky, though?”
A smile spread past her cheeks, but she didn’t dare ruin the moment with a quip. “I probably shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.”
He shrugged, then said after a pause, “I guess you are staying the night.”
Miya shuffled back against the wall. “Hope you wash your sheets.”
“Never.”
“Ugh!” She hugged herself and cringed.
He laughed, then got up and yanked the blankets out from under her before tossing them over her head. Miya felt him drop down beside her, his arm wrapping around her blanketed form and pulling her against his side.
“You get the wall,” he said as she finally dug her way out.
“Why do I get pinned to the wall?” she whined.
“Because you’re twitchy. If you roll off in the middle of the night and hit the floor, I’ll kill you.”
“Okay,” she squeaked.
“Good.” His lips quirked up, and he whipped the blanket into the air, letting it float down over their bodies.
“You know, you haven’t told me anything about your past.” She felt him turn onto his back. “Seems kind of weird lying next to a guy I know nothing about.”
“I don’t really talk about it,” he said curtly, then put an arm around her shoulders, his fingers absently running through her hair.
Miya took this as a good sign to venture forward. “Were you always alone?”
He shook his head. “Not always.”
Of course not . He probably wouldn’t have survived. “Did your parents teach you about human society?”
“They did,” he recalled. “But it was mostly an old woman, Alice Donovan. She took care of me for a few years.”
“But before that—your parents...”
“Shot dead by hunters when I was ten,” he answered bluntly. “Saw a kid roaming around with two wolves, assumed the worst and panicked. We just happened to be in different bodies that day.”
Miya swallowed down her discomfort. His tone was cold—too cold for someone talking about the death of his family. Like he’d sealed the grief away long ago, and the key to that vault was likely lost at sea. “I’m really sorry.”
“I don’t remember it in detail,” he told her like it didn’t matter. “Just bits and pieces. I know I attacked the hunters afterwards, and they hit me pretty hard on the noggin with their rifles. Made me lose my memories for a while. When Alice found me, I couldn’t remember a thing.”
“I mean, your parents were killed. That would mess anyone up. Maybe you pushed it down and repressed it?”
He took a deep breath, his fingers going still in her hair. “Probably. I recovered from the concussion. Some of the memories trickled back. But the change—that took a while to come back.”
“When?” she asked quietly.
“Six years later, when Alice died.”
“Shit…” Miya trailed off. “Did something happen?”
“Lung cancer. Her death hit me hard, and I got a little unhinged,” he confessed. “Ended up having to run away.”
She shuffled next to him, burrowing in the blankets. “How come?”
There was a pause before he answered, his tone the same as when he spoke about his parents. “I nearly killed someone, and not even for a good reason.” His voice sank to a whisper. “He was just a dumb teenager, like me.”
He stopped, like he was waiting for her to jump out of bed and run, or perhaps rain holy judgment down on him. When she did neither, he continued. “The kid got me pissed. When the fight started, I couldn’t stop. By the end of it, I could barely hear his pulse. Blood was everywhere. The sounds, the smells, the rush—it unlocked the animal in me.”
Miya watched his cavalier persona thaw away. She couldn’t judge him, but she was approaching some kind of understanding as the pieces fell into place. His poor socialization, his anger and disgust towards humanity, his seclusion from society; they were products of his experiences growing up, not merely his conflicted nature. Everyone he’d loved was taken from him too soon. Kai’s Hobbesian outlook—his belief that the world was cruel and barbaric—wasn’t just because he was a wolf.
Miya pushed herself up on her elbow. “Where did all this happen?”
“Granite Falls. A small town in Washington.” He adjusted his arm as she moved closer. “I fled to Black Hollow when I introduced Shit to Fan. And I’ve been living like this ever since.”
“You’re an American wolf?”
He reached over with his other arm and tapped her on the nose. “Siberian,” he told her. “My family’s from Siberia.”
“Russian?”
“Russian-Tatar,” he corrected. “Mom was Tatar, dad was Russian. You could say I’m a bit of a mutt.”
With her eyes finally adjusted to the dark, Miya drank him in as best she could. It was true—he didn’t strike her as someone with North American ancestry. “Did Alice know you’re a wolf?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I told her a few times, but she thought I was just being a typical kid, making stuff up. After a while, I stopped mentioning it. Didn’t matter, anyway, since I was stuck.” He raised an eyebrow, watching her curiously as the wheels turned in her head. “What about you?”
“Oh…I grew up in a house.”
“No one died, huh?”
Miya shrugged. “Only the goldfish.”
“That must have been rough, Lambchop.”
“The worst.”
“All right, let’s sleep,” said Kai as the conversation came to a close.
“Wait—why are we sleeping so soon after sundown?” she questioned.
“Because I’m tired.”
Despite suffering from insomnia, Miya’s eyes were peeled wide open. “But I’m not.”
“Don’t care.”
“But how am I supposed to sleep?” she griped.
“Count sheep. Masturbate quietly. Whisper sweet nothings to Abaddon so he leaves me the fuck alone.”
Miya’s head reeled at the prospect of staring at the wall trying to sleep. It was part of the futile cycle that resulted in not sleeping, and she hated it more than her basement cockroaches. So much so, that she was willing to stoop to new lows.
“All right.” She sighed. “You asked for it. One…Two...Three...Four...Five—” she counted in a monotonous voice while Kai remained motionless. She was almost certain he was holding his breath, trying to keep himself from throttling her. “This isn’t working,” she mumbled, so she threw her arms up and pretended to speak to the invisible presence she knew was lurking nearby. “Abaddon, baby, don’t be like this. I know you’re not as well-endowed as your marginally less evil punching bag here, but we all learn to love ourselves the way God—”
She was cut off by a low growl in her ear. “I think I smell a hungry grizzly outside.”
“Hey, I’m just following your suggestions.”
“You skipped one,” he cracked dryly.
“Then, don’t mind me.” Feeling facetious, Miya shuffled under the covers and slipped her hand into her jeans. But she hesitated, peeking over at her audience.
Even through the darkness, she could see the white of his teeth betraying that roguish grin. “Need my help with that?”
Miya’s hand shot out from under the blanket faster than an arrow. The thumping mass in her chest twisted and thrashed, but she smiled despite herself. Maybe Ama was right—maybe she did know this vulgar ass from a past life. She hardly knew anything about him, but she didn’t remember the last time she felt so at ease with someone.
Kai clicked his tongue as though disappointed. “All talk.”
“Sorry, I’m not bold like you.”
He stifled a snicker. “What makes you think I’m bold?”
“You seem like you don’t care for pretence,” she reasoned, then grinned coquettishly. “I could see you losing your virginity in an alleyway behind some seedy diner.”
He didn’t respond, a smirk crawling up the side of his face as he eased himself back down.
“Oh my God!” Miya sat up and shoved a finger in his face. “You totally lost your virginity next to a garbage dumpster! Or in a bathroom stall!”
“Maybe.” He playfully snapped his teeth at her finger, then grabbed her arm and yanked her down next to him. “And when are you going to lose yours?”
Miya yelped as she was toppled over, her mouth dropping like a fly trap. “You can tell?”
“Oops,” he simpered. “I guessed right, huh?”
She went off like a thunderstorm and whipped the pillow at his face. He turned away, laughing as she battered him with a bag of feathers.
“What are you so embarrassed about?” He snatched her weapon away.
“I don’t know,” she said, fumbling for an explanation. “People get weird about it. You’re either too young to have sex or too old to be a virgin.”
“Relax,” he snorted. “It’s not a real thing—just a way to let men fuck and judge women for it.”
Miya stared at him like he’d grown another head.
“I don’t care what you put between your legs.” He rolled towards her and threw his leg over her thigh. “Unless it’s mine. Then I might.”
She choked through her giggles as she kicked him off. “I have no intention of putting anything of yours between my legs.”
“Oh, really?” Kai grinned. “You were considering it a few minutes ago.”
“I don’t know yet,” Miya shot back coyly. “Might need to give you a test run before committing.”
He erupted into laughter, then pulled her into his side. “I’m a quick learner,” he whispered in her ear, sending a current of electricity through her body.
The hunger had moved lower. Miya wasn’t yet ready to bare herself entirely—literally and figuratively—but she had never been a person of extremes. Wedging her leg between his, she pushed him onto his back.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” There was challenge in her voice as she pressed her lips to his. He eagerly accepted and tangled his fingers in her hair, deepening the kiss as his free hand wandered down her body.
He was no longer interested in sleep, and that was fine by Miya. The Dreamwalker could hunt her in her dreams, but she wouldn’t be there tonight. Temptation lay on this side, and although she wasn’t prepared to fully indulge, it was where she intended to stay.