Soul Bite

by D. N. Erikson

  I set Sierra down on the grass and headed over to the body. Murphy’s ruddy face looked like raw hamburger.

  I reached down and rifled through his pockets, pulling out a wallet. A quick inspection revealed a handful of hundred dollar bills. I held one up to the light.

  Counterfeit. Only way a reporter could get staked for a poker game.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Investigating.”

  “Last I checked, you didn’t work for us anymore, Hunter.”

  “Then arrest me.” I tossed the keys to his rental car into the grass.

  But I also found a room key card for the Oceanview Motel.

  “What’s that?”

  “A lead,” I said, pocketing the card. “Murphy was investigating me and the string of murders. Maybe he had a bead on Miesha.”

  “Unnecessary.” Rayna glared over her shoulder.

  I turned to see who she was looking at.

  Kai straightened his broad shoulders as he walked over. “I think you dropped this.”

  In his large hand was my Reaper’s Switch.

  I grabbed it and said, “So what, we’re friends now?”

  “There’s something different about you, Eden.” His forehead creased with concern.

  “You abandoned me,” I said.

  “I was trying to keep you safe.”

  I flashed my bite marks. “And how’d that work out.”

  “Are those…” Kai’s hand trembled as he reached to touch it.

  I backed away.

  “Two days.” I held up two fingers. “Until I become Aldric’s vampire slave for all of time.”

  Rayna cleared her throat. “As much as I’d like to hear your sad story, Hunter, I don’t have time.”

  “So sorry to bore you,” I said.

  “If we do not stop his goddamn sister from making scenes like this, none of us will be safe.” Rayna glanced at the body and then nodded to Kai. “Call this in and then get out of here.”

  “Sister?” I asked, turning to Kai for an explanation.

  But the agent was already walking away, on the phone.

  Doing his job.

  And protecting someone he loved.

  41

  With the scene overrun by agents—and Rayna and Kai jetting off to investigate who-knew-what—that was our cue to leave.

  I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “That’s heavy stuff,” Sierra said, breaking the silence. “His sister is chopping up demons?”

  It explained everything.

  The darkness buried in his soul. A latent anger that I had only seen brief flashes of.

  I recalled Cross’s words: Her darkness will rub off on you. And that is something that can never be washed away.

  That was the secret Kai had been hiding. It wasn’t about him.

  But the one he cared about most.

  A lightning bolt hit me, and a puzzle piece slid into place.

  “The one who has seen death,” I said.

  “I don’t follow.” Sierra’s lips twisted in confusion.

  “That’s what Moreland called Miesha.”

  “Okay…”

  “Those are the same words that appear on the map’s cipher.”

  I texted Zoe, asking for the exact wording.

  A minute later, the fox shifter responded with: Many will seek the Sword. But only a man of great strength and a woman who has seen the dead may melt the ice that encases its unparalleled bounty.

  I read it aloud to Sierra and said, “See?”

  “So Kai and Miesha are the keys to finding the Sword of Damocles.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But where is it?” Sierra asked.

  “That remains a mystery.” I traded texts with Zoe to see if they’d made any progress.

  None. Cross was still banged up, even if the repurposed antidote was speeding his recovery.

  “Anything?”

  “Nope,” I said, tapping the phone against my knee in frustration. “Nothing.”

  “You could always kiss and make up with your boyfriend,” Sierra said.

  “He doesn’t know how to crack the map.”

  “Maybe you don’t need the sword. Maybe the FBI would be enough to kill Aldric.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “I’m just saying, it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.”

  “There is no other plan. He has Lucille’s soul. He has an army. And for all we know, he’s working with Loki.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like we’re all gonna die.” Sierra frowned and looked away.

  “Let’s just handle what we can,” I said.

  “Which is?”

  I pulled out Byron’s room key card. “Let’s see if our intrepid reporter discovered anything we don’t already know.”

  42

  The Oceanview Motel was a utilitarian budget motel located at the city’s outskirts. Unlike what its namesake suggested, it was nowhere near the ocean.

  I pulled into the almost empty lot and stared at the row of beige doors.

  Sierra pulled a magazine from the glovebox and reloaded her pistol.

  “You got an extra one of those?”

  She looked at me funny, then dug behind the car’s owner manual, handing me a .22. “It’s not much, E.”

  I felt the cool metal in my hand.

  No burning sensation.

  The new normal was strange indeed.

  “Better a small knife and a small gun than just a knife.” I glanced in the mirrors, looking for activity.

  No FBI vehicles or people milling around.

  I got out of the car and headed to the door. Since the key didn’t have a room number on it, I had to try it until lucky number seven popped open.

  I fumbled for the light as I stepped inside. A flickering, dingy bulb illuminated the double bed and pockmarked nightstand.

  But I wasn’t looking at the furniture.

  I was looking at the walls.

  Plastered over the peeling paint were hundreds of photographs and news clippings. It looked like the secret lair of someone planning a terrorist attack, except the attack was on me and the FBI, and the methods were legal.

  And the weapon would be the truth.

  Connections between the information were illustrated with tidy bands of colored string.

  The door slammed behind us as we took in the scene.

  I finally broke the silence. “This doesn’t look good.”

  “It doesn’t.” Sierra walked to the start of the timeline. “You called Mama after you died?”

  “Lapse in judgement.” I closed my eyes, needing a moment to breathe.

  A knock at the door made me jump.

  Sierra drew her gun and peeked out of the frayed curtains. “Looks like the manager.”

  “Just don’t shoot him,” I said.

  We didn’t need to add to our problems by accidentally offing the night manager of a fleabag motel.

  A little part of me said, You gotta do what you gotta do.

  I reckoned that was the vampire talking.

  Conjuring up my best smile, I swung the door open and slipped into the cool night. “How can I help you?”

  “Saw you tryin’ all the doors.” The hunch-backed man dragged on a cigarette, giving me the stink-eye. “You two hookers?”

  I looked down at the tight t-shirt and jeans that stopped at my ankles. “Off the clock.”

  “No way that weirdo could pull a broad like you.” The guy shook his head, causing the three remaining hairs to wave like a centipede’s antennae. “You gotta be a hooker.”

  “Just a friend,” I said, barely clinging to my last shreds of social charm in the wake of his less-than-sterling personality. Sierra’s huge pistol glinted as the curtain swayed.

  Hopefully he didn’t notice that.

  “Tell Murphy he pays me before you.” The guy dragged on his cigarette. “Otherwise I kick his ass out.”

  �
��You know what?” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the fake hundreds. “I think we can work something out.”

  I tucked them in his ratty breast pocket.

  “That’s good for two weeks.”

  I offered him another bill, and he snatched it before walking away.

  “Hey,” I called after him.

  “I’m missing the goddamn game.”

  “How long has Murphy been staying here?” I asked.

  “Thought you were his friend.” The manager turned around and flicked the cigarette butt my way, like he had me dead to rights.

  I shrugged. “Do you really give a shit?”

  “Checked in the day after New Year’s. That makes it a little more than three weeks.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He dug out another cigarette. “I look like I’m unsure, lady?”

  I gave the manager a thumbs up and watched as he retreated into the grimy little shack that was the Oceanview Motel’s office. Confident he wouldn’t bother us again, I slipped back into the room.

  Sierra the gun back into her waistband. “I think he likes you, E.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, returning my attention to Byron’s information wall.

  One thing had to be said about the recently deceased Byron Murphy: he was nothing if not diligent. Pieces of my life that I’d almost forgotten were rendered in size fourteen newsprint and blurry photographs.

  Like a scrapbook that could spell the end of me.

  I looked at where all the strings terminated.

  An older question had been crossed out: What happened to Sierra and Emma Miller?

  Replaced by a much more potent one: Where do the gods reside?

  Old Murphy had skipped right past Is magic real and gone straight for the jugular.

  I must’ve been blinded by ego to believe that I was the story. One con artist’s resurrection was small potatoes in comparison to the possibility of verifying that the gods were real.

  Career-making indeed.

  He’d have been remembered for all eternity. Too bad Shaw had shot him in the head.

  “After you called up Mama, she went down to Louisiana and visited every police station in New Orleans.” Sierra tapped the left side of the wall. There was so much information on the walls that Murphy had started posting the papers right at the edge. “After she struck out there, she went to any reporter who would listen.”

  “I guess she found one.”

  “Not exactly. Looks like Byron found her—through a message board a month ago.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, scanning the timeline.

  Over the ensuing month, Byron had painstakingly assembled details about our past heists, our deaths in New Orleans, and then little scraps of information about Atheas. Most of the materials pegged it as a tropical resort: an Aruba or Jamaica in the South Pacific.

  Past that, though, Byron had quickly altered the trajectory of his investigation.

  “He find the gods?” I asked, stepping back to view the timeline in full.

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  I spotted a stack of glossy photographs sitting on the nightstand. Most of the people were familiar: me, Sierra, Rayna, Kai, and a bunch of FBI personnel.

  But the snaps had also captured a young woman with wild, unkempt hair and a similarly manic look in her eyes. The large gun in her hands glowed so brightly that the image was overexposed.

  “Check this out.” I slid the photo across the threadbare blanket.

  “I didn’t get a good look at Miesha.”

  “It’s her,” I said. “No question.”

  “That.” Sierra poked the bottom of the black and white image. “I know that place.”

  I took the photograph from her and stared at the bottom corner. “What am I looking at?”

  “Look at how the trees grow.”

  “It just looks kind of sickly,” I said. “So what?”

  “That’s where the demon hunter is hiding,” Sierra said. “Out in the Forgotten Quarter.”

  43

  Without any place else to go, we stayed in the Oceanview Motel for the night. I woke up a little after nine as light seeped in through the curtains. After a shower and a vending machine breakfast, I checked in with Zoe to see how Cross was doing.

  “He feels up to searching for the treasure,” I said, glancing over at Sierra.

  She bit into a protein bar—the healthiest thing in the machine by far—and chewed. “When do they want to meet?”

  “Didn’t get that far,” I said.

  “Found this while you were sleeping.” Sierra handed me a newspaper clipping.

  “This sounds impossible.” It was one of those tabloid rags that proclaimed a woman had given birth to aliens and that Elvis was still alive. Except this time, they were claiming a “portal to an unknown world” sat beneath the old Golden Hind hotel.

  Which was now the FBI’s headquarters, colloquially known as the Getaway.

  “Have you ever been down to the basement, E?”

  “I didn’t know there was a basement.”

  “See. There might be something to it.” She stretched out on the bed, looking satisfied.

  “I’m not chasing rumors,” I said.

  “Could be an alternative to getting the sword.”

  “You’re pretty big on those.”

  “Because you guys don’t even know where it is!”

  “Ow. My ears.”

  Sierra looked sheepish about yelling, but still said, “You have tunnel vision, E.”

  “Get the sword. Kill Aldric. Have the FBI pick up the pieces. That’s the plan.”

  “And what if one of those pieces doesn’t work? What then?”

  “They’ll work.”

  “I know when you’re lying.” Sierra crumpled the wrapper and tossed it in the trash.

  “It has to work.”

  “Just think about it.”

  I said, “Sure,” but I didn’t mean it one bit. I got up and started tearing down Byron’s work.

  Couldn’t exactly leave it here for someone else to find.

  The story would die with him. It was really for the best.

  The world wasn’t ready to hear about demons and gods and people rising from the dead.

  Sierra helped me clear everything out of the room. We walked across the parking lot with armfuls of paper.

  “We should burn this,” I said as we approached the dumpster.

  “It might be useful, E. Insurance.”

  I mulled it over. “Then pull out everything to do with us. And the gods.”

  It took us another twenty minutes in the lot to erase our presence from Murphy’s report. What remained was a tale of an FBI corrupted by sleeper agents and the serial murderer who was dispatching their problem for them.

  We dumped the rest in the garbage, and Sierra lit it aflame.

  My hands itched as we walked to her car. My skin was turning pink.

  The side effects were getting worse.

  After tossing the papers in the trunk, Sierra got in the car. I made no move to follow.

  “What’s going on, E?”

  I stared at the cars whizzing by on the two-road for a second before answering. “It’s time I had a little chat with Kai.”

  “Finally.”

  “And you,” I said. “Go find Cross and work on the map.”

  “I’m not really a puzzle solver,” Sierra said, brushing her hands through her platinum hair.

  “You are today.” I texted Kai on her phone and then tossed it to her. “Be safe.”

  “Will do.”

  “And feed Khan. He’s probably hungry after spending the night alone.”

  “Aw, you miss him.”

  “Doubtful,” I said, shaking my head much too hard in vigorous denial.

  “Think about that basement portal,” Sierra said, and got in the car.

  I pulled out the clipping as she drove from the lot, skimming the text once more.

  I almost let it s
lip out of my fingers and into the wind.

  But some little voice told me that maybe—just maybe—it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a Plan Z.

  Even if it was total bullshit.

  44

  Kai’s SUV arrived ten minutes later, pulling to a stop next to me.

  I got in.

  Neither of us spoke as he pulled back onto the road and left the Oceanview Motel behind.

  A concrete jungle of cars and unnatural light greeted us as we rolled through the city.

  “So you know about the Forgotten Quarter,” Kai said, breaking the ice by getting straight to the point.

  “I do.”

  “Then there’s no keeping you away, is there?” His sigil flickered amidst the tattoos on his right arm.

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “She’s my sister, Eden.”

  “I don’t want to lock her up like Rayna,” I said.

  “But you looking for her at all risks her exposure.”

  “I think cutting up FBI agents and dangling their limbs from the rafters did that, actually.”

  A darkness settled over the interior. “My parents took her in when she was just a baby. They believed they could handle this…ability.”

  “So you’re not related?”

  “Not by blood.” But sometimes other bonds were even stronger. I didn’t doubt for a second that he would do anything to save Miesha.

  Even if it meant breaking his own principles.

  “I just want to speak with her,” I said. “Is that too much to fucking ask?”

  His grip tightened on the wheel. “It depends on the questions.”

  “I was hoping to find a way to eliminate the demon hunting problem without her magical cannon sending up signal flares all over the island.”

  “It’ll be tough to convince her of alternatives.” Kai sighed, like he’d tried to convince her many times in the past.

  “Well, if this shitshow continues, someone other than Byron Murphy is going to look into you guys. And when they do, the whole Bureau is going to unravel, and Aldric is going to steamroll the island.”

  “Don’t you want to leave, anyway?”

  “I can’t leave if I’m his vampire Reaper, now can I?” I crossed my arms. “So let’s try to fix this power dynamic, okay?”