The Beyond Read online

  Praise for the Devil’s Isle Novels

  “Neill is truly a master storyteller!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Neill’s sequel to The Veil continues to prove her adept at world building and nonstop action. Claire’s honesty and straightforward attitude make her a great character for a harrowing time.”

  —Library Journal

  “[Neill’s] postapocalyptic New Orleans is so rich and full of detail that I felt immersed in the characters’ struggle[s] right alongside them.”

  —A Book Obsession

  “An action-packed, intense story in a dark urban fantasy world.”

  —The Reading Cafe

  “Chloe Neill continues to expand the arc with a compelling narrative, unique characters, and nuanced story lines.”

  —Smexy Books

  “The world building was fabulous; the characters were likable; the plot and tension provided a great ‘what’s going to happen next?’ feeling that kept me engaged.”

  —Paranormal Haven

  OTHER NOVELS BY CHLOE NEILL

  THE CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES NOVELS

  Some Girls Bite

  Friday Night Bites

  Twice Bitten

  Hard Bitten

  Drink Deep

  Biting Cold

  House Rules

  Biting Bad

  Wild Things

  Blood Games

  Dark Debt

  Midnight Marked

  Blade Bound

  “High Stakes” novella in Kicking It

  Howling for You (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Lucky Break (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Phantom Kiss (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Slaying It (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  THE DEVIL’S ISLE NOVELS

  The Veil

  The Sight

  The Hunt

  THE DARK ELITE NOVELS

  Firespell

  Hexbound

  Charmfall

  THE HEIRS OF CHICAGOLAND NOVELS

  Wild Hunger

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

  Copyright © 2019 by Chloe Neill

  Excerpt from Wild Hunger copyright © 2018 by Chloe Neill

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Neill, Chloe, author.

  Title: The beyond / Chloe Neill.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2019. | Series: A devil’s isle novel

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018055809| ISBN 9780440001119 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780440001126 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Paranormal fiction. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Occult fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3614.E4432 B49 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055809

  First Edition: June 2019

  Cover art by Blake Morrow/Shannon Associates

  Cover design by Adam Auerbach

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Praise for the Devil’s Isle Novels

  Other Novels by Chloe Neill

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Wild Hunger

  About the Author

  Come away, come away, death,

  And in sad cypress let me be laid;

  Fly away, fly away, breath:

  I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

  —William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

  CHAPTER ONE

  Magic was thick as humidity in the southern Louisiana air. And it felt glorious.

  Today, there was no hiding. No pretending. We were humans, but not just humans. We were Sensitives, and we were doing magic in public.

  My students stood in a line on a plot of green, facing downriver and staring intently at the small objects on the grass in front of them. A wooden box, a ceramic vase, a knitted cube, an old FM radio, and an agate bookend.

  “Get those shoulders back!”

  I turned my gaze to the man who stood beside me. He was nearly four feet of attitude, stubby black horns, and more magic than my body could safely hold. Moses was a Paranormal, one of the good guys, and one of my favorite people.

  He also had a sass mouth, as Earlene, the oldest of my Sensitives, liked to say. It was one of the things I loved most about him.

  “You look like trolls.” Moses hunched his shoulders. “Stand up straight, for crap’s sake.”

  “We talked about positive reinforcement,” I murmured, hands on my hips, as the sun bore down on us, hard as a punch.

  He held up a fist. “I’ll show them positive reinforcement if they don’t get this right.”

  “And Moses will be playing bad cop today,” I said to the group. A few managed weak chuckles, but the rest were fixated on their foci, the objects they’d attempt to fill with their excess magic.

  They were tall, short. Dark, pale. Big, small. Old, young. Magic was the thing they had in common—their unique sensitivities to the power that had crept into our world from the Beyond, the world of Paras. One could freeze matter, one could call animals, and one could communicate telepathically.

  Their powers were new, and they were untrained. I was here not to teach them how to use their magic, to make them better at freezing or calling, but to help them stay sane.

  Once upon a time, the Veil—a ribbon of magic that separated the Beyond from the human world—had kept the magic on their side. Nearly eight years ago, the Paras tore it open, ravaging the southern U.S., including New Orleans. Sensitives had helped magically sew it shut again, even if a little power had seeped through the stitches. But humans, being humans, had made a very bad mistake, and it had been ripped apart again. This time, it left a mile-long gap, and magic and
Paras had been streaming into our world ever since.

  A few “lucky” humans could sense that power, use it. About seven percent of the population, as far as Containment could tell. But human bodies weren’t built for the burden of otherworldly energy. Too much magic warped bone and broke down muscle, turning Sensitives into skeletal wraiths whose only desire was the very magic that degraded them, even if they had to kill to get it. And there was no coming back from wraithdom.

  I was teaching these Sensitives to find balance, to keep the right amount of magic spooled in their bodies. Enough to use if necessary, but not so much that it overwhelmed and broke them. This was the fourth group I’d trained since the Veil had been breached. Forty people who were willing to admit to their condition and get help for it. Probably not everyone affected. But I couldn’t make anyone face their demons. Even if that meant they’d face them as wraiths later.

  We stood in the pulsing heat on a greenway in Devil’s Isle, the neighborhood-turned-prison-turned–neighborhood for Paranormals. It had been the Fabourg Marigny, had become a prison for all Paranormals, and now served as a prison for some and a refuge for others, because humans had acknowledged not all magic—and not all Paranormals—were evil. It was only after the Veil had been opened again that the former Paranormal Combatant Command, and its Containment unit that operated Devil’s Isle, had finally admitted there were two groups of Paranormals, and only one group was our enemy. The Court of Dawn led the war; they’d magically conscripted their enemies, the Consularis, to fight.

  Containment had allowed the Consularis to leave Devil’s Isle if they’d wanted to, but kept the Court imprisoned. And as Court members slithered into our world again through the breach in the Veil, many of the freed Consularis Paras had stayed to fight. The PCC had become the Unified Combat Command, humans and Consularis Paras bound together to fight the Court of Dawn.

  And fight we had. It was good that they were still outside the perimeter Containment had been able to establish around New Orleans. But that had been a matter of will as much as of strength. Cracks of magic and pops of ammunition rolled like thunder across the city, which was down to military personnel and the thousand or so hardy humans who’d refused to leave their homes. But we’d stay as long as we could. As long as we could hold New Orleans.

  “Focus on your foci,” I said, realizing how corny that sounded only when the words were out of my mouth. I walked down the line, feeling out the magic that quivered around them. “And go step by step, just like we’ve talked about.”

  “Find it. Grasp it. Cast it. Bind it,” they repeated together.

  The rhyme had been my idea, a mnemonic device to give them something familiar to hold on to as they dropped their minds into the magic and tried to wring it out again.

  “I still think mine was better,” Moses muttered, scratching the edge of one dark and gleaming horn.

  “Yours was filthy,” I said, giving him a flat look.

  His grin was as devilish as the horns. “That’s what made it perfect.”

  Biting back a smile, I turned back to the Sensitives. “Find it,” I repeated, and they closed their eyes, began to feel out the threads of magic that permeated their bodies.

  “Grasp it.” Their faces were studies in concentration as they pulled the magic together—winding or braiding or balling it up—in preparation for dragging it out. Sweaty, narrow eyed, and red cheeked from working in the oppressive heat. But it had to be done. They had to learn control under even bad conditions. Because in the real world, they might not have a choice.

  “Cast it,” I said, and waves of power began to shimmer in the air like heat rising from asphalt. The foci began to vibrate as magic was stuffed into them, as energy fought mass.

  A little movement was fine; magic was a powerful thing. So I didn’t notice the wooden box hopping off the ground until Moses started shouting.

  “Incoming!” he said, and wrapped his short arms around his head.

  “Everybody watch out!” I yelled, and Sensitives darted for cover.

  The box exploded, sending a gust of magic and needle-sharp splinters into the air.

  Every hair lifted in the tingling air, I opened an eye and looked around. Moses sat up, legs extended, rubbing his eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He looked at me, blinked. “There two of you, or just one?” He squinted. “Or maybe just two of your hair. You look like an orange cloud.”

  “You keep complimenting me, and Liam’s going to get jealous,” I said, offering a hand to help him to his feet.

  He took it, snorted. “I don’t date orange clouds.”

  “My heart breaks,” I said dryly.

  Around us were torn jeans, ripped T-shirts, and blown-back hair. The air smelled faintly of burned things, and mine wasn’t the only puffy hair.

  “Lo siento,” said Mariah, the owner of the box, or what remained of it. She had light brown skin and long dark hair she’d pulled into a knot. Tendrils had blown out of the bun and surrounded her face like a Renaissance halo. “The magic got away from me.”

  A former Containment soldier named Dave, with tan skin and military-short blond hair, stamped out the smoldering remains with his boot-clad foot.

  “Well,” I said, “all things considered, I still think that went better than last time. Anybody lose a finger?”

  “No,” they all called out.

  “Definitely better than last time,” Moses said with a nod.

  “Happens to the best of us,” I said. “And I mean that literally. I exploded a cypress stump once upon a time.”

  There were relieved murmurs down the line.

  “You’ll get better,” I said to Mariah. Not just supportive words, but the absolute truth. Mariah had a literal spark—in her fingertips she could manifest power, tiny threads of electricity that were very handy in a place where the grid was inconsistent.

  “You’ve shown today that you can gather up the magic,” I said. “Next step is to get it bound without an explosion.”

  I’d intended to give them instructions, to remind them of our next scheduled practice. But before I could say anything else, at the back of my neck was a flutter, delicate as a caress but touched with magic.

  I glanced back, found golden eyes staring back at me.

  Liam was home.

  * * *

  • • •

  It had been six days since I’d seen him. Too long, especially now that he stood at the edge of the park, tall and muscled, a gleam of desire in his expression.

  Thick brows topped his blue eyes, his nose a straight wedge, his eyelashes thick and dark, like his hair. He wore jeans, muddy at the knees, and a V-neck T-shirt streaked with more dirt. A camouflage backpack was slung over one shoulder, and magic, invisible but tangible, hovered in the air around him.

  Liam wasn’t a Sensitive; like his grandmother Eleanor, he’d gotten his magic in battle via a strike from someone with power. That power had somehow transferred, giving him the ability to mirror another person’s magic.

  He was still dealing with that, with the fact that he now stood on the other side of the line he’d walked since Paras had first set foot in our world.

  His brother, Gavin, stood behind him with an identical backpack, but rolling his eyes. They were a couple of years apart but looked unmistakably fraternal. Same tall and muscular build, same dark hair, same sculpted cheekbones. Gavin was a little leaner than Liam, his features a little sharper, as if the second edition had been honed a little more than the first. I, of course, preferred the original.

  Liam and I walked toward each other, gazes locked.

  “Ms. Connolly.”

  “Mr. Quinn.”

  He tugged a lock of my red hair, his blue eyes piercing mine. Then he slid that gaze to the shrapnel spread across the ground. “Mos,” he said questioningly. “I thought you were going to k
eep her out of trouble.”

  “What am I, a freaking wizard? And not her fault, anyway. These damn kids,” he said with a shake of his head, even though I’d have bet some of those kids were older than he was.

  “Whom you’re supposed to be teaching,” Liam said with a grin that pulled the dimples in his cheeks. God, I loved those dimples.

  Moses waved a hand like he was swatting away the idea. “They’ve done all they’re going to do today. Practice tonight,” he told the group.

  Liam took my hand, linked his fingers with mine, and, when we reached the edge of the green, pulled me behind an oak tree with branches that gracefully arced over our heads before skimming the grass.

  “I’ve been waiting on this for a week,” he said, then fastened his lips to mine.

  Since I was sticky and hot, I decided his mud didn’t make much difference. I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him closer. “Same here.”

  “You taste like summer.”

  “I taste like New Orleans. Sticky.”

  I could feel his smile. “You taste like Claire.”

  “It would be awkward if I didn’t,” I said. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  He leaned back. “Did you spend the week binge-watching old movies?”

  “God, I wish. I don’t suppose you happened to bring back some reliable Internet access?”

  He felt his jeans pockets, front, then back. “Damn. I forgot again. So I guess no binge-watching.”

  “Unless you mean watching Sensitives destroy their foci. But no lost fingers.”

  His lips curled. Just seeing him smile—seeing happiness on his face—was enough to lift my mood.

  “That makes this a red-letter week,” he said. “Did you see the goats while I was gone?”

  “Not a single one.” Supposedly, Containment had imported three herds of goats to keep shrubs and plant growth in New Orleans—at least in the areas not already scorched by magic—at manageable levels. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s an urban myth. Or a post-urban myth.”