East of Ecstasy (Hearts of the Anemo) Read online

  Should he investigate her and her strange paintings? Because he didn’t have time for anything unrelated to defeating his father. The autumn equinox was in just eight sunrises and marked the day upon which Eurus would come into his full seasonal powers. If somebody didn’t take him out before then, he’d be nearly invincible until the new Supreme God of the North Wind, Boreas’s adoptive son, Owen, came to power in late December.

  By then, it would probably be too late. No, given Eurus’s evil and ambition, it would definitely be too late.

  So Devlin couldn’t afford to miss this window of opportunity. Hades, the world, couldn’t afford for him to miss it. He needed to get his head out of his ass and get himself under control. Like, yesterday.

  With intense focus and a fast hand, she added a few details to a rough sketch of a scene on the canvas. Her new painting was to be like the others, then, with the dark man at the center once more.

  Devlin studied the woman’s face, his mind a whirl of questions and anger.

  Were the images of him or his father? What exactly was it that the images depicted? And why in the name of the gods would this human be painting either of them?

  Devlin glared. Like he needed another mystery to solve when his own head, his own emotions, his own body, felt like a foreign country.

  All he knew was the bone-deep certainty that he had to stay. Had to see what this image became. Had to see how it fit in with the others she’d already done.

  From his position behind her, Devlin watched as Anna stood back from the canvas and stared at it, tilting her head as if assessing it. For a long moment, she was perfectly still, the only sounds in the room the loud, angsty rock music against the even drumming of the rain on the roof. Then she selected a paintbrush from a rack holding dozens in all shapes and sizes and leaned in over a palette with maybe a dozen globs of thick paint.

  Was it possible she’d met his father? Heat ripped through Devlin’s essence, but he fought against yet another knee-jerk response. No, couldn’t be. Eurus viewed humans as little better than the mud on the bottom of his shoe. Then how—

  The question died in his throat as Anna hovered her brush over the palette and the paints began to glow. With a shaking hand, Anna dipped her brush in the dark-blue paint, stepped to the canvas, and began to add color to the expanse of white. And the glow of the blue followed her like a sheer ribbon, streaking through the air, emanating from the brush, washing across the canvas. Darker, even, than the blue had appeared on the palette.

  What in the name of Hades?

  She worked painstakingly slow at first, and then faster. Precise strokes sometimes gave way to slashes of the brush against the canvas. The red, the orange, the teal blue, the white, the yellow. Each glowed darkly as if she were painting with light. Devlin watched, stunned and awed and suspicious as all hell as the image came together—the image of a man hovering in the sky in front of a massive dark and roiling supercell thunderstorm. The painting itself appeared nearly three-dimensional, the colors were so dynamic and vibrant upon the canvas.

  There is nothing normal about this woman.

  The thought immediately snapped him out of the stupor the human’s unexpected capacity for magic had caused and opened his senses. Divine energy. Subtle but unquestionably there. And coming from her. From Anna.

  But it wasn’t his father’s. Eurus hadn’t been here, hadn’t been around her, hadn’t marked her with his malicious unluckiness.

  Devlin moved closer, poised for attack or defense as circumstances warranted. Who are you, little human? And exactly who are you related to?

  Because this changed everything. Knowing this woman had a god swimming around somewhere in her gene pool meant there was no way these paintings were coincidence. Which meant he had to get answers to the questions ricocheting through his mind. Why was she painting these? Who gave her the information on him or his father? To what end? And what did she intend to do with the paintings?

  As he watched, Anna used a thin knife to carve texture into the thick paint. Her concentration was absolute and made her even more beautiful, paint smudges on her cheeks and all. And the fact that he devoted even an ounce of energy to appreciating her appearance only escalated the agitation clawing through his gut. Because he didn’t fucking have time for another mystery, even if it came wrapped up in such a cute, tight little package.

  Part of him wanted to materialize and confront her now.

  But another part argued that he should let her finish the painting first. The image she was bringing to life could be useful. His gaze drifted to the collection of finished paintings lining the far wall.

  In one, either he or his father pinned two glowing beings against the front of a building engulfed in flames. In another, one of them marshaled ocean waves that grew bigger and bigger. The third stirred nausea in Devlin’s gut—it depicted one of them badly burned and unconscious, or dead, in the middle of a burned-out field. Another had him or his father facing a trio of tornadoes as trees and debris whirled around the funnels. Devlin tilted his head to make sense of the next one. He wasn’t sure if it depicted a crumbling wall or ceiling, but through it he could see a sky filled with beings—some glowing, some deathly black streaks. A battle? The last one was small and depicted the man in profile, his black hair plastered against the side of his face as if he were turning into a hard wind. Was this him or his father? Devlin stared at what he could make out of the face looking for clues, because, of course, he was just lucky enough to physically resemble the man he hated most in the world. Then he noticed the man’s hand, raised as if shielding himself. And on one finger was a large golden ring with a red stone flanked by wings.

  Aeolus’s Firestone ring, the one Eurus had stolen.

  So this painting was definitely of his father.

  Devlin studied each of the images again, seeking out small details such as the ring, but on only one other—the man over the ocean—did he find a similar clue. He’d missed it the first time, but the dark man in that image clearly wore a long black cloak, similar enough to the long leather duster his father favored. That one was probably Eurus, too.

  But what of the others?

  Frustration roared through him.

  The only thing Devlin knew was that none of these images were familiar to him. That is, none of them depicted events about which he had any knowledge. For the sake of argument, if none of the scenes in these paintings had ever happened before, then that meant...maybe nothing. Or, just maybe, it meant they were things yet to happen.

  Which was way the hell out there.

  “Not right,” Anna muttered, frowning and shaking her head. Devlin’s attention flashed back to her just as she raised her left hand and waved over the painting. Shock vibrated through Devlin as darkly shadowed striations appeared in the swirling clouds and the light underneath and behind the supercell took on a sickly green hue.

  At the wave of her hand.

  He came closer and peered at her face. Did she realize what she’d just done?

  Anna shivered, but otherwise went to work again with the thin knife as if nothing unusual had happened. As if her paints weren’t glowing and she hadn’t just willed the light and shadow in her painting to do precisely what she wanted. As she resumed with the same frenetic intensity, it occurred to Devlin that she painted the way the music sounded—fast, loud, driving, intense.

  All his attention focused on her, the comparison stirred something dark and needy deep inside him. He shut the urges down fast. Even if he allowed himself pleasure, which he didn’t, now wasn’t the time. Besides, magical and attractive or not, she was human. Mortal. Weak.

  Over the next hour, Anna added depth and detail with layers of paint and occasional waves of her hand. The end result was spectacular in its realness and its horror as the threatening monstrosity of a cloud approached a small town, the lowest levels of the cloud jagged and craggy, like a giant fanged mouth swooping down from the heavens. Barely leashed power slithered through Devlin’s energy as
his concern and suspicion ratcheted higher.

  When she finally finished, Anna shuddered and retreated from the painting. “What the hell?” she asked, her tone full of disbelief and fear.

  Tension whirled through Devlin’s being, now even more confused by the reaction to her own creation. There were too many unknowns here to let this situation go unresolved. And he had no more time to let it play out by itself.

  He was going to have to confront her.

  Chapter Two

  Exhausted and strung out, Annalise Fallston stared at the painting, abject horror curdling her belly and crawling into her chest.

  She’d painted a horrible, deadly storm right over Jarrettsville. Her hometown. Anna recognized the houses, the curve of the road, the Baptist church spire.

  All of a sudden, nausea washed over Anna and the floor went wavy under her bare feet. She swayed and went down, catching herself on her hands and knees. Dread made it hard to breathe, and she sat the rest of the way on the floor, hugged her legs to her chest, and buried her face against her knees.

  Why does this keep happening to me? Why won’t these images leave me alone?

  Painting had always been Anna’s outlet, her refuge, her release. And her studio was the place where, in the safety of solitude, she could open up the well of creativity inside her mind and heart and let her truest self out. The one who, while painting, could see color despite her lifelong color blindness. The one who could bend color and light to her will with just a thought or a wave of her hand. Anna didn’t understand why or how she could do these things, only that she never felt more alive than when she was painting. As a child, she’d quickly learned that no one believed she possessed these abilities, and it often left her feeling as if no one in the whole world truly knew who she was.

  Which was why these new paintings bothered her so much.

  Normally, painting gave her such joy and a much-needed jolt of energy and contentment.

  These paintings did just the opposite.

  The image for the first of the Dark Man paintings had come to her six days ago. Now, similar images were all she could see. When they came to her, they felt foreign, as if they’d been forced into her consciousness rather than from her own muse offering up an idea for inspiration. Also strange, nothing about the experience of painting The Dark Man Amid Chaos series felt natural to her—not the subject, not the way the paints talked to her while she painted, not the tone or feel of the finished image. Nor had she ever painted so fast. In the past week, she’d churned out six paintings, a small portrait and five larger scenes, going as far as pulling an all-nighter, which she never did—both because her father needed her and because it screwed with her health. Which, given how much her chronic fatigue syndrome had worsened lately, wasn’t something she should be doing.

  Even when she wasn’t painting, Anna felt restless and distracted, as if the images were calling to her to attend to them. And when she painted, she felt almost manic with the need to commit the images to acrylic and canvas as fast as she could.

  It had become a compulsion she didn’t want, couldn’t control, and had no idea how to end. Nothing about these paintings was normal. Not for her.

  They left her feeling so drained, so hollow, so alone. Even more than her secrecy and CFS usually caused.

  God, she was tired.

  On a long sigh, she turned her head, still resting on her knees, and peered up at the painting. Technically, it was good, even if the subject was terrifying. Fantastic plays of light and shadow, and the clouds looked like they could come right out of the canvas. Her gaze settled on the dark man hovering in the sky. “Who are you?” she said. “And why do I keep seeing you?”

  Suddenly, her scalp and neck prickled, the kind of sensation you got when someone stood too close to you in an elevator or seemed to be following you in a parking lot. Anna looked over her shoulder, but there was no one there.

  Of course there wasn’t.

  “Stop freaking yourself out,” she said out loud. But as much as she tried to dismiss the sensation, her mind resurrected the weird thing she’d seen right after she’d run into the studio from the rain. For less than an instant, she could’ve sworn swirls of light hovered in the air in front of her. When she’d first caught a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye, it had scared her so bad she couldn’t breathe. But then the beauty of it filled her with awe. Just as quickly, it was gone again. If the whole incident had lasted four seconds, she’d be surprised.

  Which meant it hadn’t been real. Obviously a result of her eyes adjusting from the glaring light outside to the darkness inside. Or something.

  Anger and resentment welled up inside her. I refuse to be ruled by this anymore. Damnit.

  Hauling herself off the floor, she marched to the painting. With less care than she normally handled them, she lifted the canvas from the easel and carried it across the room. She leaned the back of it unceremoniously against one of the others in the series, grabbed a small clean canvas, and returned to her easel. Then she changed the music. Linkin Park could go to hell for all she cared. No more angry, angst-filled music about betrayal and loss and heartache. She cued up Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” with a take that! smile, then put it on repeat for good measure.

  Despite her weariness, she forced her mind to focus on nothing but the mechanics of cleaning her brushes and changing palettes and paints for her new piece. Something bright and vibrant and full of the splendor of fall, perhaps. After all, depictions of nature were her favorite and the thing for which she’d garnered the most acclaim. She selected a brush and waited. The shades of brightness she normally saw to represent color transitioned into actual color and, as it always did, the change stole her breath in gratitude and awe.

  This exact thing had been happening since the very first time she’d ever picked up a paintbrush as a child. At first it had bothered her that no one believed her, but soon she’d realized that hardly mattered when an otherwise colorless world came to life before her eyes. Now, all that mattered was the color. Because when you had monochromacy, the rarest form of color blindness, your world was black and white and gray. Most people with colorblindness struggled with the colors red and green, their vision differing from non-colorblindness because their brains interpreted the colors they couldn’t see as others—red-blind people saw red as black, for example, and were unable to distinguish between blue and purple, and generally had difficulty distinguishing colors on the red-through-green spectrum.

  But when she painted, Anna got the whole ROYGBIV spectrum and then some, and sometimes saw an even greater array of colors than she could find represented in paints.

  And not only could she see the colors, but they’d talk to her, too, telling her which to use, how to use it, how to blend. Like now, when the gray and brown and sunburnt orange demanded to be blended. Suddenly she saw the subject of her painting. And it was gloriously refreshing.

  The image that came to her was as if she were lying on a forest floor at the height of fall color. All around her, tree trunks soared to great heights like the columns of an ancient cathedral, and above her, leaves in every color formed a great domed ceiling, one made of nature’s own stained glass. One spring break in college, she’d been lucky enough to go on a study tour of Paris, and as she pictured the color of the leaves against the bright sunlit sky, she was reminded of Sainte-Chappelle, a medieval Gothic church renowned for its towering stained-glass windows set amid narrow columns that looked too dainty to hold up the great ceiling.

  What lovely inspiration. Nothing at all like the— No. She wouldn’t even let herself think about anything else.

  Anna tilted her head back and closed her eyes, and for a long moment she imagined looking up at the treetops. When she had an image good and set in her mind’s eye, she dipped her brush into the light sky blue and stepped to the canvas.

  She started with the bright blues and warm yellows of the sky, putting that on as a base against which the trees would stand. T
hen, using the brown she’d mixed, she painted the tree trunks, working slowly to get their proportions as they got taller and taller just right. Once she got the leaves in, she’d come back and adjust the light to reflect the sunlight. Next, she used the edges of a medium brush to dab in the red-orange leaves, leaving gaps where the sun and the sky shone through.

  All the while, Cyndi Lauper kept her company and her toes tapping.

  Once she got the leaves filled in, it was time to start playing with the light. Some white and yellow on the leaf tips to show the light dappling the canopy. A light-gray edging to some of the tree trunks, and a thin line of white where the sun shone through. The effect was charming, but still not the vibrancy she saw in her mind’s eye.

  She worked at it again and again, layering, shading, highlighting, until she got it just right.

  And then, she had it. It was beautiful and spirit-lifting and looked so damn real she wanted to stretch out on a carpet of needles and leaves and stare up at it while a fall breeze blew over her face. And, damn, she felt so much better than she had an hour ago. This was who she was. This was what she did.

  It wasn’t a masterpiece by any means, but the painting made Anna so happy she wanted to hug it. She wasn’t gone, then. At least this part of her was still here.

  And maybe, just maybe, that other part of her was done now. Maybe that was out of her system once and for all.

  Still smiling, she turned to her worktable to clean her palette and brushes.

  A man stood on the other side of the table.

  No. Not a man. Not just any man. The Dark Man.

  For a split second, Anna’s throat locked down, leaving her unable to breathe or scream.

  And then the scream pushed through and ripped out of her. She stumbled backward, her mind reeling, her heart pounding. Black eyes followed her progress, and he looked so damn real Anna thought she was going to have a heart attack.

  “No, no, no,” she cried. His mouth moved as if he planned to speak. “No!” she screamed. The room plunged into darkness, unleashing a moan from her throat and sending Anna’s pulse into a wild sprint. Especially since what remained in the darkness was a pair of glowing eyes.