His Father's Eyes - eARC Read Online Free

weapon.”
    I glanced off to the side, exhaled.
    “Did you?”
    “It was hardly an assault,” I said. “I was asking him some questions, and he was having trouble remembering stuff. I was trying to jar the memories loose.”
    The cop laughed; even Felder allowed himself a chuckle.
    “But officially,” I said, “I never hit him.”
    “Good enough for me,” the cop said. “You can go. If we need you for anything else, we’ll let you know.”
    “Hey, wait a minute!” Darby called from the back of one of the squad cars.
    “His word against yours, Darby,” the officer said. He gave me a wink.
    Darby swore loudly.
    “Come by tomorrow, Mister Fearsson,” Felder said. “I’ll cut you a check.”
    “I will. Thank you.”
    I walked back to the Z-ster, favoring my bad leg, conscious as well of a dull ache in my arm. I guess this is what the doctors had in mind when they warned me about trying to do too much.
    Still, I was pleased. Sure, the police had shown up, but Felder hadn’t been too angry. And given how the evening could have ended—with me in a body bag—I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.
    Again, I thought of that frisson of magic. I hadn’t cast a spell, and I was certain that Darby was incapable of casting. Had I imagined it? Everything had happened in such a rush—it could have been a sensation born of panic and desperation. But how else could I explain the fact that Darby had missed me?
    I needed to have a conversation with Namid’skemu of the K’ya’na-Kwe clan, the Zuni shaman who had been my runemyste for the past seven years, and who had been dead for close to eight centuries.

CHAPTER 3

    The runemystes were created by the Runeclave centuries ago, their collective sacrifice an act so courageous, so selfless that it boggles the mind. Essentially, they were once weremystes, like me—sorcerers who had devoted their lives to the mastery of runecrafting. Thirty-nine of them were sacrificed by the Runeclave, the governing body of their kind, their spirits granted eternal life so that they could be guardians of magic in our world. They were essentially ensorcelled ghosts, although I’d learned over the years that they didn’t like to be referred to as such.
    As I understood it, Namid and others like him were tasked with training new generations of weremystes and keeping watch on those who might turn to the darker elements of runecrafting. In all but the most extreme circumstances, they were forbidden from acting directly on our world, but through their instruction and training of weremystes, they could help to keep wielders of dark magic from doing harm to either the magical community or the non-magical population. The renegade-turned-serial-killer I mentioned, Cahors, was one of the original thirty-nine. But he chafed at the limits placed on his powers by his fellow runemystes, and he found a way to escape their controls and assume corporeal form once again. More, by committing murders each month on the night of the first quarter moon, he was able to keep himself young and powerful. If Kona and I hadn’t killed him, he would have gone on murdering for as long as he wished to live.
    But Cahors was dead, and the runemystes now numbered thirty-eight. In the weeks since we’d killed him, I’d often wondered if Cahors had been training runemystes the way Namid did. Were there sorcerers out there who for years had been learning the darkest secrets of our craft?
    I could have asked Namid about this, but he tended to be tight-lipped when it came to answering questions about the runemystes. To be honest, he was that way about everything, which at times made him an exasperating teacher. And tonight I had other questions that were more urgent.
    I drove to my home in Chandler. It was a drive of no more than eight miles, and at this hour it took only a few minutes. At rush hour, which these days in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area stretched from dawn to dusk, it might have taken me three-quarters of