The Singer Read online

  Contents

  The Singer

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  I.

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  II.

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  III.

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  IV.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  V.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  VI.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Work

  Copyright

  The next book in the Irin Chronicles, the contemporary fantasy series from Elizabeth Hunter, author of the Elemental Mysteries.

  THE SINGER

  Irin Chronicles Book Two

  When you've lost everything you love, how do you fight the darkness?

  Ava left Istanbul with a new identity, new name, and new magic she could barely control. Laid low by Malachi's sacrifice, she searches for help from the fabled Irina. But will the secretive women of the Irin race welcome or shun her? Ava's origins are still a mystery, and her powers are darker than any they've encountered before.

  The Irin world hangs in the balance. And as the children of angels battle their own demons, ancient rivalries among the Fallen threaten to wreak havoc on earth.

  Thousand of miles away, a warrior wakes with no memory of his identity or his people. Stumbling through the twisted schemes of fallen angels, ravenous Grigori, and even his own leaders, he must find a way back to the one thing he remembers. A single voice calls him. Malachi has one mission.

  "Come back to me."

  ”Haunting, mysterious and passionate, THE SINGER will seduce you at the first page and knock you breathless by the last one.”

  —GRACE DRAVEN, author of Master of Crows

  THE SINGER

  Irin Chronicles Book Two

  ELIZABETH HUNTER

  For my mother

  A remarkable, powerful woman,

  and an inspiration to her family.

  Prologue

  The Fallen appeared on the summit of Mt. Ararat. Golden eyes reached west, settling on some point unseen by the hawks circling overhead. The wind whipped past Jaron, brushing the black hair that fell to his shoulders. He wore his human form, content to cloak his true nature and enjoy the sharp pleasure of the sun on his skin. Ancient talesm covered his shoulders and chest, gold against bronze. He was a vision of glory, resting against the snow.

  His brothers appeared beside him: Barak with his wolf-grey hair, gold eyes watching the birds overhead; Vasu, already pacing, his lean human form dark against the snow.

  “You gave up your city, brother.” Vasu stared down as he spoke, seemingly mesmerized by the tracks his bare feet made in the snow. The angel chose to reside in warm climates, though none of their kind were truly bothered by either heat or cold. They commanded their senses at will.

  “You imply defeat. I simply chose not to fight for it. It no longer interested me.”

  Barak murmured, “And the rest of your territories? Are they secure?”

  “Volund knows better than to challenge me. I allowed his child to overrun Istanbul because it served my purpose. No doubt, he was confused to find my people withdrawn.”

  “Where are they?” Barak asked. “And do not underestimate Volund. I thought the same about him until he attacked. Now my children think me dead. They hide, afraid of their own shadows.” Barak’s lip curled. “I would cleanse the earth of their presence if doing so wouldn’t give away my continued existence.”

  “I am watching,” Jaron said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the city. Something was churning there. Some pain reaching out. The sun fell in the west, slipping below the clouds to shine pink over Asia Minor. “I am always watching.”

  “But for what?” Vasu asked. “I hope your visions sing true.”

  “Have they ever not? I warned you of Galal’s attack, didn’t I?”

  Gold eyes flashed from behind Vasu’s curtain of black hair. His talesm sparked gold. Black and gold, the Fallen glared at his brother. “And I allowed you to persuade me. Now my children think their father murdered by a foreign god. They fight to remain true, even as Galal’s soldiers slaughter them.”

  “Tell them to be more careful then.” Jaron shrugged. “When the time comes, you will breed more.”

  Vasu curled his lip. “I have not consorted with human women for years. You know I tire of their attention.”

  “I hear sorrow,” Barak growled, rising to his feet and looking west to the ancient city. “What is this? I thought the female was unharmed.”

  “She formed a bond with one of the Irin scribes. He sacrificed himself for her.” Jaron’s voice held a faint note of admiration. “She mourns.”

  “Does this change anything?” Vasu asked.

  “No.”

  Barak cocked his head. “Why did you allow the sacrifice? Did you foresee it?”

  “I did. I was… curious.”

  “And she mourns him?” Barak’s voice held no pity. His gold eyes were impassive as he stared into the distance, the evening sun flushing his pale skin a gold-tinted rose.

  “She does.”

  “You were curious?” Vasu asked, his voice holding more judgment than Jaron expected. Then again, Vasu was younger than his brothers, a mere boy when the Fallen had left their home. He had lived longer in the human realm than the heavenly. “Toying with humans is beneath you.”

  “His sacrifice was necessary for the pieces to be put into place.”

  The three angels rested at the peak of the mountain, the hawks circling above them, screaming at their intrusion. Jaron, bronze and gold in the light, eyes watching the distance, seeing beyond time and space. His children, when it served him, bore traces of his foresight. Vasu stood slightly behind him, dark and brooding. His physical presence dwarfed his brothers, not in size, for the tall, lean human form he donned was not imposing; but his energy, the tightly chained physicality of his presence, marked him as different, more terrestrial, than his brothers.

  Barak sat next to Jaron, his brother’s mirror in eternity. While Jaron saw, Barak heard. His solemn presence was the eternal and constant punctuation of Jaron’s curiosity. Friends. Brothers. The two angels had existed in tandem for millennia. And now they struggled to attain what others thought was lost.

  “Do you truly think it possible?” Barak asked, rising to his feet. “After all this time?”

  Jaron continued to stare. Something was stirring in his vision. “Seven years or seven million, brother. He does not see time as we do. It has to be possible.”

  A flicker. A wavering in the heavenly realm as the stars danced above. Jaron stood and walked to the edge of the cliff.

  Barak asked, “What is this I hear?” His eyes sought Jaron’s, which were wide and filled with a long-lost emotion.

  Wonder.

  “A… complication.”

  Vasu darted to his side. “What? What do you see?”

  “Look, my brothers.”

  Then Jaron opened his vision, sending it to the two angels at his side. All three looked curiously at the woman crouched
in a hotel room. All three heard the words she uttered, then the tearing of the heavenly realm.

  Vasu blinked. “Unexpected.”

  “Does this change anything?” Barak asked.

  “No. He was necessary to keep her alive. Other than that, he is incidental.”

  “The female did this,” Vasu said.

  “So it would seem.”

  Barak said, “We knew her powers would be unstable.”

  Vasu lifted an eyebrow, a decidedly human gesture Jaron wondered if he was aware of. “Is it any wonder our sons fear them?” he murmured.

  “She is a means to an end,” Jaron said. “That is all.”

  Barak and Vasu exchanged a look but did not argue with their brother.

  Vasu and Barak asked in unison, “Does this change our course?”

  “No,” Jaron said, his eyes narrowed on a dark riverbank. “We do what we always do. We watch.”

  Chapter One

  Anatolia, Turkey

  He stared at the whirl of stars overhead, feeling their loss even as the soft grass caressed his back. They danced, tremulous in his vision, as her voice floated away on the night breeze.

  Come back to me.

  As the words drifted away, he caught flashes of another life.

  Dark curls lifting in the breeze as the sun flashed on water. Rocking. Snatches of foreign voices and scents.

  “Do you like to travel alone?”

  “What?”

  “Am I not allowed to ask you questions?”

  “It’s unusual.”

  “Call me unusual, then.”

  He closed his eyes to the stars. Another vision. Arms and legs tangled together. Sun-darkened skin against milky-white. She arched above him, her hand pressed to the carved wall of the cave as she sighed a name.

  His name.

  “Malachi…”

  Her face flush with pleasure.

  Her face.

  Gold eyes and fair skin. Her mouth parted. She was speaking.

  Speaking.

  Screaming…

  Hidden in the shadows, he saw her. Surrounded by grime and the scent of foul water. Saw her eyes widen in horror. Then…

  Black.

  The man sat up with a gasp, looking around with wide eyes. The river was familiar. But not. The air didn’t smell as it should. There was an acrid tinge of smoke in the breeze and lights in the distance. He pushed to his knees, his legs feeling stiff and uncertain, as if he hadn’t used them in days. He stared down at his bare chest and arms, frowning. Something was missing. Something lacked. But he couldn’t find it in the jumble of his thoughts.

  Everything was confusion.

  He finally stood and, ignoring the rocks on the riverbank, made his way downstream. There were always humans if you followed the water. His father had taught him that.

  He thought his father had taught him that.

  The man walked for what could have been hours. He had no sense of the passing time. There was only night and one foot stepping in front of the other. The sound of water and the occasional low of a cow. Step by step, he made his way toward the lights.

  The lights appeared from behind a grove of olive trees. As he approached, he realized it was a home, but not like any other in his hazy memory. A dog began barking at him, so the man hung back near the edge of the trees, not wanting to frighten the humans.

  Humans would be afraid of his kind.

  There was a slamming door, then a man walked out, calling something in a foreign tongue. He looked like a farmer, his pants were stained with the mud from the fields, and his grey hair was mussed as if he’d worn a cap all day. The farmer’s voice rose as he shushed the dog and looked into the dark orchard.

  The man stepped forward, holding up his hands to show he wasn’t dangerous. As the farmer caught sight of him, he stopped. He shouted, gesturing for the stranger to go away, no doubt alarmed by the man’s nakedness.

  The farmer couldn’t understand him, and the man knew that was wrong.

  Shaking his head, he held out his arms, trying to make the farmer understand he wasn’t a threat. That he needed…

  What did he need?

  Come back to me.

  He needed to get back to the woman.

  He didn’t know her name, didn’t know where she was or who she was…

  Then he realized he didn’t know who he was, either.

  I don’t know who I am.

  He felt as if the air had left his lungs. His arms dropped, the farmer’s anger forgotten. The dog’s barks faded into the background as he closed his eyes and tried to control the panic.

  I don’t know who I am.

  Something in his expression must have given the farmer pause, because he stopped shouting and stepped closer. He said something else the man didn’t understand, but this time it sounded like a question. He ignored the human, clenching his eyes closed, trying to remember. Remember anything. Even his name—

  “Malachi,” the woman had sighed.

  His name.

  Her soft voice had named him Malachi.

  If he knew nothing else, he knew his name.

  Malachi opened his eyes and took a breath to center himself.

  The old farmer stepped through the gate. He’d grabbed a bedsheet from the line in the farmyard and held it out, speaking in a lower voice. Malachi took it, wrapping it around his body and cutting the chill of wind that had begun to bite his bare skin. The farmer motioned him closer, obviously concerned. He waved for Malachi to bend down, so he did. The farmer ran a hand along Malachi’s scalp, turning his head back and forth, muttering under his breath.

  Malachi realized he was looking for injuries. Moved by the human’s kindness, he instinctively stepped away from the farmer’s hands.

  He wasn’t supposed to touch humans. He did remember that.

  The farmer spoke again, motioning Malachi through the gate and pointing at an outbuilding that looked like a metal-clad barn. Then he raised his voice again, shouting at the house until the door slapped open and a female voice yelled back.

  There was a confused exchange as the old farmer led Malachi to the barn and flipped a switch on the wall that illuminated the interior with blinding false lights.

  No, not false. Malachi knew what they were. They were the electric lights the humans had invented, fed by the manufactured energy they used to power all sorts of things. Lights. Musical players. Machines. Malachi caught sight of the machine at the end of the barn.

  A tractor. The name popped into his mind before he had a chance to catch the source. Snatches of knowledge kept bubbling up, unpredictable and elusive. Disconnected from one thing to the next, he realized he knew the name of the tractor and what it did but had no idea what language the man was speaking. And some instinctive part of him knew that he should know. Knew that if he could just find some of the language written…

  There.

  Malachi blinked, ignoring the old man who ushered him to a chair by the workbench. He didn’t even notice when the farmer walked out; his eyes were glued to the paper on the table. He grabbed it as his heart began to race. Letters and characters always made sense. He sat down in the old chair and traced his hands over each one, learning its shape, letting his mind unlock its secrets.

  The curve of an S, like a serpent in the grass, hissing its tongue.

  The circled perfection of the O.

  The slashing strength of the V.

  His mind drank them up like a beast deprived of water. The letters turned into words, the words jumped into sentences. And as the meaning of the letters crept into his mind, Malachi felt a surge of power. The shouts on the other side of the wall began to make sense.

  “—could be!”

  “…looks hurt, not dangerous.”

  “…no head wounds. …if he was attacked? Do you want…?”

  Malachi glanced at the front of the paper. Then at the date. He understood the date, even if it didn’t make sense. The year seemed wrong, but then, what did he know? He read the
headlines.

  Protests Spread to Ankara

  Economic Forecasts by the EU Favorable into 2014

  Tourism Down in Istanbul for Summer Months

  The letters soothed his mind, ordering the chaotic thoughts that tumbled and twisted. More pieces fell into place. He was in Turkey, in Anatolia, where he had been born. But it was hundreds of years later, and he knew his family was no longer here. But others were, and he needed to find them. Others of his race would be able to help him. Perhaps they would know why he couldn’t remember anything. Did he need to go to Istanbul? Part of him latched on to that idea while a darker whisper warned him to avoid that ancient city.

  The woman.

  Where was the woman? He continued flipping through the newspaper, and every picture jogged different memories. Rush-hour traffic in Ankara. An airplane crash. Charts showing the ebb and flow of commerce. His brain registered it all as he read, but nothing pointed him toward the woman. Nothing jogged the memories he was so desperate to find.

  Malachi looked up when the barn door opened. The old farmer and his wife stood side by side, the man concerned, the woman obviously suspicious.

  “Thank you,” Malachi said softly, not wanting to frighten them. “I must have been… I’m not sure. I may be in shock. I don’t know how I came to be in your field.”

  The old man blinked. “So you are Turkish? We thought you might be a tourist who was robbed. Who are you? What happened?”

  “I… I’m not sure, exactly. I know my name is Malachi, but my memory…” He frowned and rubbed a hand through his hair. She’d told him he needed a haircut. He cocked his head at the bubble of memory. “I’m remembering more and more. But nothing makes sense. I was born here, I think.”

  “Tell us their name. We will find them for you.”

  “No… no, they’re all gone now. I just… I need to find—”