Soul Bite

by D. N. Erikson

  “Then make a tourniquet.”

  Right. That made sense.

  My wits slowly returned. It wasn’t every day you saw an immortal man die.

  I snapped the Reaper’s Switch out and began slicing up the expensive sheets. The dead man’s body slipped off, but a weight still pinned the fabric down on the other end of the bed.

  “Come on,” I said, heading around to move the obstruction.

  Orianne’s blank gaze stared back at me, her eyes clouded by death. Blood trickled from a single gunshot wound in her head.

  I dragged her body off the sheets. A phone tumbled from her grip.

  After I was done slicing up the fabric, I returned to Cross.

  His eyes were closed.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers in front of his nose. “Hey.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Wake up, jackass.”

  He mumbled something incoherent.

  I slapped him. Hard.

  His eyes flashed open. “Always thought you’d be into that.”

  “Keep the lines coming, Casanova.”

  “Although I’d imagined it under different circumstances.” He groaned as I wrapped the sheet strips tightly around his torso. Blood soaked the fabric immediately, staining it a deep shade of crimson.

  I wasn’t a doctor, but the situation didn’t look good.

  I tied off the knot, and he drew in a sharp breath. “I’m not going to make it, Eden.”

  “Don’t say that shit.” I reached for my phone, but the screen had shattered amid my earlier bullet-dodging acrobatics.

  I grabbed Orianne’s phone from the corner and flipped through it.

  I immediately recognized the first number that came up. I’d dialed it from backwater bars and seedy payphones enough times to know it by heart.

  Blood cold as ice, I pressed send.

  A familiar, chilly voice answered. “It’s not often I receive a call from a dead woman.”

  “Not dead yet, asshole.”

  “Eden?” Aldric sounded surprised.

  “I want to make a deal.”

  “We already have a deal.”

  “For Dante Cross’s life.”

  There wasn’t even a pause.

  “Those who openly defy me must reap the punishments.”

  “You promised not to hurt them.” My fingers tightened around the phone. “You’re soul-bound not to hurt them.”

  “Contracts are meant to be broken,” Aldric said, now recovered from the shock of hearing my voice. “You of all people should realize that.”

  “You’re a businessman. We can make a deal.”

  Cross choked on his blood by the doorway.

  “And now others will know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That I am not to be crossed. Ever.”

  “I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said, desperate to make a deal.

  But the vampire just replied, “No.”

  And then the line went dead.

  14

  “Bastard.” I hurled the phone at the window. Glass exploded as it sailed through, only to bounce off a mesh screen back into the bedroom.

  The phone tumbled to my feet.

  “I take it that didn’t go well.” Cross’s voice was weak and distant.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s—”

  “All right?” Cross snorted, then grunted in pain.

  I glared at him. But he couldn’t see me, since his eyes were closed.

  “Tell me something,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything.”

  “That’s a wide topic of discussion, Eden.”

  “You’ve never had a problem talking too much before.”

  Cross laughed, then groaned at the exertion. “Don’t do that.”

  “If you’re laughing, then at least you’re not dead.”

  “Maybe it’s time. Five hundred years is too long for a man to live.”

  “Save the existential whining for your therapist,” I said, racking my brain for ideas.

  But I had none. We were in the middle of the island, miles from any hospital or help. Cross would never make it back to the city, even if I could get him down the stairs without dying.

  That meant I’d have to save him up here.

  Cross coughed and spit. “Did I ever tell you why I killed Tamara all those years ago?”

  “Pretty simple. You didn’t want to die.”

  “It wasn’t just that.”

  “No?” I reached for Orianne’s cell phone. Other than a crack running across the screen, it was no worse for wear from its collision with the window.

  Who could I call? No names came to mind.

  “There are fates worse than death.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  If he was talking, he wasn’t dying.

  I cycled through her texts. A cipher-sorceress had to know other spellcasters, right?

  All I found, though, was an exchange between Orianne and Aldric. She’d cut a deal to save her own ass—the vampire being none too pleased about her accepting thirteen million of his stolen bullion in payment.

  Too bad he couldn’t be trusted to hold up his end of the bargain.

  “Well, I was pretty fucking scared about dying, too.” Cross grinned, like it was somehow funny. “A coward, really.”

  “That so?” I tapped the screen, out of ideas—and time.

  I reflected on how this was even possible. The vampire had signed a soul-binding contract on the beach with me watching. Promising, in writing, not to exact vengeance on the thieves—Rayna, Magnus, Cross, and Zoe.

  This wasn’t some loophole.

  My stomach did a backflip. Aldric had dissolved the soul-binding contract.

  And the only way someone could do that? With a piece of a god’s soul.

  But none of that gave me a damn clue how to save Cross.

  “Am I boring you, Eden?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You were silent.”

  “Just thinking.”

  Focus, Eden. My eyes returned to the cracked screen.

  “So, do you want to hear why I did it?”

  “Might as well,” I said.

  “Because I knew, if I died, I was going to hell.” Cross unleashed a racking cough. “And my encounter with that demon hunter showed me just how bad that fate would be.”

  “Think you made the right choice?”

  “You can create your own hell on Earth. One that lasts an eternity.”

  “Isn’t that the truth.”

  My mind wandered toward doom and gloom.

  Everyone is in danger. This whole situation is fucked.

  First Kai, now Cross? Who’d be next?

  I didn’t care about Rayna, Magnus, or Zoe much, but…

  Zoe.

  I practically screamed, “What’s Zoe’s number?”

  “Pocket,” Cross mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Phone.”

  I raced to his side and rolled him over to root through his pants.

  “A little rough for a first date, Eden.”

  “We’re just getting started.” The phone’s screen was slick with blood, but it still worked.

  I thumbed through the contacts and dialed Zoe.

  One ring.

  Two.

  Come on.

  Three.

  The fox shifter finally answered with, “Did you solve the map’s riddles, Dante?”

  “Hello to you, too,” I said.

  “Eden.” Zoe sounded like she would’ve preferred talking to the tax collector.

  “He’s dying,” I said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Dying?”

  I glanced at Cross’s ashen face. “He doesn’t have long.”

  “He’s fucking immortal.”

  “The blood soaking his shirt says otherwise.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “G
unshot,” I said. “Aldric’s men stormed the place and—”

  “Gotta be bullets laced with deicide arcana.”

  I’d had a run-in with god-killing magic two months ago—a couple had used a spell called the Turncoat Curse to kill a phoenix’s guardian in a desperate bid to revive their dead daughter.

  They’d succeeded. The kid was doing fine.

  One of them was dead, the other in jail, though, so not quite a storybook ending.

  I said, “How do we fix it?”

  “You don’t.”

  “You’re telling me you learned nothing in five years of apothecarial sorcery school?”

  “An apprenticeship,” the fox shifter replied sharply.

  Cross flopped over on the ground.

  I shook him.

  He didn’t wake up.

  I slapped him.

  Still nothing.

  “Goddamnit, he’s not responding.”

  “There is one thing.” Zoe sounded hesitant.

  “Tell me!” I tossed the phone to the side and dug my fingers into Cross’s shoulder.

  Still no response.

  I jammed my fingers right into his gunshot wound.

  He roared like a wounded lion, color returning to his face.

  Zoe’s voice chattered over speakerphone. “If you take the bullet out, he’ll bleed to death. But if you don’t, then that arcana will prevent him from healing. And he’ll die from the wound.”

  “Sounds promising,” Cross said, wearing a delirious smile. “Any alternatives?”

  “You’ll need something to keep him alive from the blood loss.”

  “I made a tourniquet,” I said.

  “He’ll bleed right through that.” Zoe’s fingers clicked on the other end of the call, and I imagined the short woman drumming her nails against a table.

  “Then pull the bullet out and hope for the best.” Cross kept the smile, but I could see the fear creeping into his usually confident eyes.

  Even after almost five hundred years, he was scared about where he might end up.

  Zoe said, “Are there any souls around?”

  I said, “How many do we need?”

  “As many as you can gather. They’re pure life energy. It’s a long shot, but…”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I hurried around the bed and harvested Orianne’s first, then the other gunman’s. I was about to go out into the hall, but Cross was looking sleepy again, so I stopped and said, “I have two.”

  “Grind them to a pure powder.”

  My head swiveled around the room, and I found an old steel bookend. I hefted it off the shelf and set to work, using a book as a makeshift pestle.

  The cracking souls sounded like a symphony of nails on a chalkboard as I worked.

  “Have I already gone to hell?” Cross struggled to speak.

  “Not yet, buddy,” I said. “Tell me something.”

  “I’m…I’m so tired, Eden.”

  “Tell me I was right about Orianne.”

  “Mmm,” Cross said, a smile flickering at his lips, “that’s the difference between you and everyone else.”

  “What is?”

  “We see the world.” His shoulders slumped, and the next words were barely a whisper. “But you see the truth.”

  I stopped grinding and pressed the back of my hand against his mouth.

  No breath.

  I yelled in the direction of the phone, “What do I do with the soul?”

  “Is it a powder?” Zoe asked.

  I tossed the bookend aside and glanced at the dusty fragments. “Crunchy style.”

  “You need to—”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Take the bullet out.” My knife was already slicing through the makeshift tourniquet and searching for the bullet before the next words came. “And insert the soul powder straight into the wound.”

  Cross didn’t react, even as the blade probed his stomach.

  The tip of my switchblade scraped against metal.

  I dug deeper, catching the bullet’s splintered edge, and pulled.

  It tumbled out, followed by a river of blood. I scraped up the powdery soul fragments and shoved them into the wound.

  It was like trying to plug a dam with a cork.

  The blood kept flowing, an endless red stream soaking the carpet.

  I kept jamming jagged soul chunks into his wound.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” I rubbed my bloody fingers against his pale face. “Not today.”

  No words came.

  Silence settled over the bedroom like a stifling blanket.

  I whispered, “Please.”

  And then Dante Cross said, in the faintest voice, “Only if you do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “Get off my foot. You’re heavier than you look.”

  15

  There was no time for happy endings and high fives.

  Cross was in bad shape, temporary soul salves or no.

  I helped him into the Porsche. His head rocked back and forth limply in the passenger seat, like a sleepy newborn.

  “Where are the keys?”

  Instead of answering, Cross dug at the makeshift bandage covering his wound. I’d crafted it from the remaining sheets. It wasn’t quite soaked with blood, but it had a decisive deep pink hue that made me nervous.

  When I yanked his hand away, he opened one eye and said, “It itches.”

  “Good,” I said. “Keys.”

  “I—I can drive.”

  “Sure buddy,” I said. “And I can fire lightning bolts out of my butt.”

  “You should’ve let me die.”

  “One of us has been to hell before.” I frowned. “Worse, actually. You don’t want to visit.”

  “Maybe I deserve it.”

  “Nothing’s set in stone as long as you’re still breathing.”

  “You should write fortune cookies, Eden Hunter.” His eye closed, and his head leaned against my shoulder.

  I pinched him, and he groaned. “Not getting off that easy. Keys.”

  “Just press the ignition.”

  When I did, the convertible sprang to life. The keys must’ve been in his pocket, in close enough wireless proximity to allow the engine to start.

  I was about to throw the car into reverse when he said, “You’re leaving behind a lot of souls.”

  “I’ll figure something out.” My eye crept over to the clock. It was nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. Plenty of time to deal with sundry annoyances like Aldric’s weekly quota, which didn’t come due until Friday.

  “Don’t fall on your sword for me.”

  I started to back up. “I’m a big girl.”

  “If you die because of me…” Cross slumped back in the seat and winced, the words going unsaid.

  So I put the convertible into park and said, “I’ll be back in five.”

  He nodded.

  Or maybe he was already asleep.

  I went through the foyer, jamming my Reaper’s Switch into the bodies. Aldric had sent quite the contingent of guards to dispatch Dante Cross: six, excluding Orianne and the body in the bedroom. It suggested that the vampire held a serious grudge.

  Nothing I didn’t know already.

  I took an extra minute to head upstairs and rifle through the cipher-sorceress’s drawers.

  Nothing but sexy lingerie and expensive jewelry. A woman of wealth and taste.

  I patted her down, and a piece of paper crinkled in her right pocket.

  When I pulled the paper out, I said, “Well, at least she was conflicted about killing us.”

  Because it was a list of names—a copy of a typewritten document.

  Maybe Orianne wanted to help us instead of selling Cross out to Aldric.

  But she’d made her choice. I glanced at her stiff corpse, eyes frozen in death. All the money in the world couldn’t buy her mercy from a ruthless vampire.

  As I vaulted over the driver’s side door, Cross said, “That
was way longer than five.”

  I held up the list. “Got what we came for.”

  “Glad to be of assistance.” Cross shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat.

  “Aldric’s not going to stop, you know,” I said. “He’ll keep coming for you all.”

  “I’m good at running.” Cross winced as the car peeled out. “Too bad I feel compelled to see this through.”

  “Why?”

  “Call it atonement.”

  I tasted his soul.

  Blood.

  Cannon shot.

  Gold.

  And, cutting through the dark undercurrent seething beneath the bravado, something new and unfamiliar.

  The unmistakable pulse of melancholy and regret.

  16

  Dropping Cross at the hospital was out of the question. Aldric had eyes all over the island, and the treasure hunter would be dead by sunset if I sought conventional medical treatment.

  But I also couldn’t play babysitter while he recovered.

  Having the list of demons meant I had a solid lead on this demon hunting woman Miesha.

  Find her next target and I’d find Kai.

  That left the woman who had helped me save Cross’s life via the phone: Zoe.

  The crew’s old hideout—an abandoned vet clinic in the island’s wilderness—had been compromised, burned to the ground by Aldric’s goons a couple months prior. But the crew had quickly found new digs.

  Or old digs, rather—The Loaded Gun, Magnus’s hipster dive bar located in the heart of downtown.

  A winter sun blazed fiercely above as I helped Cross to the thick door. Before I could knock, the door swung open, nearly clipping me in the head.

  A short woman with fiery red hair down to her waist slipped outside. Behind her, a man almost twice her size, blonde head shaved into a Viking mohawk, emerged.

  Magnus took Cross from me, picking the treasure hunter up with one arm.

  Zoe lifted up Cross’s shirt and shook her head. “I said crush the souls.”

  “Time constraints.”

  “Dante might’ve already healed had you listened to instructions.”

  “And he might’ve died if I had, too,” I said. “Weren’t you the one who called it a long shot, anyway?”

  Zoe huffed and then peeked behind the makeshift bandage. “Too much damage to treat with a poultice.”

  “Then what do you need?”

  “More souls.”

  I jerked my thumb back at the Porsche. “I have six in the car.”