Flopping down in the chair I had been seated in only moments ago, I put my elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands. What a fucking mess!

“Women.” A heavy voice sighed from above me. “Who understands them?”

I jerked upright, pushing out of the chair while I reached for the knife that should have been hanging at my side but was nowhere to be found. I had left it in the car last night so that I wouldn’t upset Mira when I went in to initially speak to her. A short bald man with a potbelly stood before me in a rumpled white button-up shirt and wrinkled slacks. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his trousers and he shook his head at me as the corners of his mouth curled into a wicked grin. He didn’t look particularly threatening. In fact, he looked downright pathetic with his patchy day’s growth on his jaw and bleary, red-rimmed eyes. But he was also standing in the home of one of the most powerful nightwalkers within the region and neither Mira nor I had heard him enter.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?” I demanded, wishing I could back up a step, but the backs of my legs were already against the chair I had been sitting in. The living room was crowded with comfortable furniture, making this a poor choice of locations for a fight.

“I’m here to see you, Danaus,” he announced. “Surely you’ve been expecting me.”

“I have no idea who you are.” As I spoke, I sent my powers out from my body with the intent of scanning him.

“But you do!” He took a step closer. “We spoke last night.”

My brow furrowed. Last night, I met with Barrett, Gregor, and Nate. I distinctly remembered what each man looked like. I could recall the nightwalkers I had seen in the Dark Room. I had never seen this man before.

“No,” I said at last after racking my brain.

“We spoke in the park after the Fire Starter left you,” he said. A column of white mist flowered out of the man to his left and reformed into a slightly translucent image of the naturi I had seen last night. At the same time, the bald man blinked and looked slowly around as if he were coming out of a trance. The creature gave a hollow-sounding chuckle before flowing back into the man.

“Now you remember me,” the man snickered, his brown eyes once again lit by a grim red light. “I’m sorry it has taken so long for us to have these moments together, but I have to admit that it’s taken me a number of years to accumulate enough energy to push back into this world. I mean, prior to the few pathetic souls I’ve encountered in this wretched city, the last human I spoke to was your lovely mother.”

“No,” I whispered. I tried to take a step backward but hit the chair behind me and partially fell into it. I caught myself on the arm of the chair with my right hand.

“That’s right,” the man said. “Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about.” He pointed at me and a burst of energy hit my left shoulder, knocking me into the chair. I watched as the creature slid over and settled on the sofa across from me. He sighed as he settled back against the cushions and placed his right foot on his left knee.

“Bori,” I growled.

“Ahh…I didn’t think we’d really need to state the obvious, but yes. Or rather, I’m a bori that is temporarily inhabiting this rather undesirable body, but then one does not complain about one’s mode of transportation when one is desperate.” The man folded his hands over his large stomach and smiled at me. “I am rather proud of how you’ve turned out. I’ve always considered myself your godfather of sorts, watching over you from a distance.”

“You’re the one that made the deal with my mother,” I snarled as my too-slow brain finally started to function. He was the one that had held me damned in the afterlife. Pushing off the arms of the chair, I launched myself at the man, ready to wrap my hands around his meaty neck and choke the life out of him. I didn’t think it would succeed in killing the bori, but then I wasn’t thinking any longer. I just wanted the creature that had ruined my life to be gone from this earth permanently.

The bori simply chuckled as he raised his hand again. Another burst of energy hit me square in the chest, knocking me back into the chair.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you really must stay seated,” he said. “We’re not done talking. Besides, you can’t kill me. We bori cannot be destroyed.”

I didn’t believe him. Anything that lived could be killed, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it with my bare hands, considering that it seemed to be nothing more than a white mist. I also couldn’t kill it with my powers, as I had already proven last night. If anything, I needed Mira, but then bori had the ability to control nightwalkers, as I had seen in Spain. I was trapped and there didn’t seem to be any escape for me or the rest of Savannah.

“It really is a shame that you have to see me this way,” Gaizka continued when I finally crossed my arms over my chest and appeared as if I was willing to remain seated in the chair and listen to his speech. “For your mother, I appeared as a strong Roman warrior. Almost god-like in stature. She really seemed impressed with me.”

“In a body like that, why wouldn’t she agree to give away the soul of her unborn child?” I snidely replied, barely able to unclench my teeth so I could speak.

The creature across from me threw back his head and laughed deeply. “Your dear mother was so set in her desire for revenge, nothing could have deterred her from her course. I could have appeared as an old crone and she would have still sold you to me. Or at the very least tried to.”

“So in exchange for a little power, you got my soul,” I sneered.

“You make it sound as if you got the short end of the stick in this deal,” Gaizka said, slamming his right foot down on the floor. The bori wearing the large man shot across the room with more speed than I thought possible and grabbed me around the throat. His beefy hands crushed my windpipe, cutting off all air for a second before he threw me across the room. I slammed into a picture hanging on one wall, the glass splintering before my body and the picture crashed to the floor.

“I gave you amazing strength and powers. I extended your life more than a hundredfold. You’re a god among men! And through all these years I’ve asked for nothing from you,” Gaizka shouted.

“I never asked for any of this!” I shouted back at him, pushing to my knees. “I never wanted to be an outcast among humanity, to feel as if my very soul were damned to hell because my mother made a deal with a monster.”

The creature again darted across the short distance that separated us. He kicked me in the ribs, breaking two as I fell back against the wall with a heavy grunt. “It was a gift,” he bit out. “But we all know there’s a price for everything in this world. It’s time to pay the piper, as the saying goes.”

“I don’t owe you anything!” I snarled as my thoughts rose above the pain that beat at me. This thing was faster than any nightwalker I had encountered. I could try to use my power, but it would mean killing another innocent human being, and even then I wouldn’t be rid of Gaizka’s presence. It would still be in the house with me, able to finally crush me if it decided I wasn’t worth the effort any longer.

“You owe me for the life you’ve lived!” he screamed. This time the back of his fist crashed into my jaw, snapping my head around before I could dodge the blow. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t have enough magical skill to defeat him.

“What do you want?” I growled, rubbing my jaw as I sat against the wall. Glass crunched against my back from the broken picture that was behind me.

“Like the naturi, I want out of my gilded cage,” he said, flashing an evil grin at me that was reminiscent of the one I had seen on the face of the fake naturi.

“You are out,” I snapped, motioning with my right hand toward the human body that he now inhabited.