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JUDE

Jude Alexander Holt

My name crawled through the air like stone grinding against glass. A shadow of Cthulhu-like chaos climbed the walls, tentacled darkness spreading across the ceiling like an oil spill made of nightmares.

The changeling.

He unspooled from the shadows like a memory I’d tried to bury, taking shape in the center of the room as some giant shadow beast without true definition. No eyes. No mouth. Just a mass of hunger given form. I should have known he’d come crawling when I tugged on the strands of my life and rang a thousand bells he’d placed to track me through time and space. I was his favorite entree after all.

Remi was still beside me, his face pale, his hands raised in that half-finished gesture of a spell that had nowhere to go. The shield net hummed around us, vibrating with energy, but even that felt thin now. Fragile. Like spider silk stretched too far across a chasm.

“Fuck,” Remi cursed, fear turning the weave of his soul ashen. “I better not end up in a jar again.”

“It’s the changeling,” I said, breaking our connection to put myself between Remi and the monster who’d been using my soul as a snack pack. “Not Erlik.” Not that I thought one was better than the other.

“Jude Alexander Holt.” The voice was low, familiar in a way that made my stomach twist. It knew me. It had been feeding on me long enough to know exactly how to make my skin crawl.

The changeling’s shape flickered—half shadow, half something that might have been a man.

“Do you have to be such a creepy bastard?” I demanded. “I’d have thought you’d have learned more from me in all this time.”

It shifted, turning into a replica of me. Same face. Same build. Same weary posture. But the eyes were completely black, and it smiled with too many teeth.

“Oh, that’s even creepier,” Remi grumbled at my back.

“Could have given you to him,” the changeling answered.

I flinched, understanding exactly who it meant.

Erlik.

“Why didn’t you?”

It had been feeding on me for decades. Hiding memories of its touch. Hiding my power. Keeping me small, ordinary, forgettable. It would have been so easy to hand me over. To let Erlik have me.

So why didn’t it?

The changeling, my face, my voice, my body, tilted its head. “You would have lived a thousand lifetimes if not for his touch.”

That was news. “I’m not immortal.”

“Nothing isssss...” it hissed. “But child of the—” It spoke a word that made no sense to me. “—and touched by the death goddess, you’d have outlasted most across the weave. I allowed the mate. Should that not be enough?”

“Allowed?” I snarled, ready to launch myself at him. “As if you’d have taken that memory too?”

What would be the point of existing for an eternity without Angel? Before him, I’d have plodded on, disjointed from reality, not realizing how much of my memory had been suctioned away. And losing that memory, I’d have gone back to that existence without any real purpose. Sure, I had Peanut Butter and Grandpa, but those were tiny stitches on the much larger thread of my life. Accessories. Not anchors.

“I could take that now.” The changeling sighed, sounding almost bored. “But there’s no point. You stretched yourself over them.” It made a dismissive gesture at Remi. “Not just the mate. And left yourself weak.” It glared at me, then held out a hand toward one of the remaining scattered motes. “Seeking what you’ve lost. Pointless.”

I blinked at it. “Without Angel, I’m nothing.” I’d been resigned to monotony, to a life of going through the motions. Even hunting serial killers had become mundane. “You bastard. Give the rest of it back.”

But even as I said it, I wondered, was there anything left of me to return? The memories that had come back were old, decades old. Like it had stopped feeding on me after nearly breaking me. Because if I died, it lost its meal. If I lived, it could keep taking pieces, keep building me back up just enough to be worth eating again

“Why’d you return him at all?” Remi asked. There was something in his voice beyond simple curiosity, like he’d pieced together something I hadn’t. “Changelings rarely abandon a life they’ve taken over.”

“Erlik hunts us,” the changeling answered.

“And taking sips of Jude helped you evade him?” Remi wondered.