by Liz Schulte
“Anything we do to him, she’ll feel. The better question is why did he choose her? Ol’ Tom here wasn’t inclined to answer that question for me. I thought you might like a crack at him.”
“How long will it take to get a coffin?” he asked, his gaze not wavering from Tom.
“How fast do you need it?”
“Now.”
“Give me a few minutes.” I left without looking back. I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to legitimately get a coffin without going through a funeral home, but even then I didn’t think they’d just let me walk out with it, so there was only one choice. We would have to “borrow.” I pinched a motorcycle parked on the street and went in search of a funeral home. After about fifteen minutes, I found one. It actually had a funeral going on. Bingo!
I shifted into a man who was at least 103 and wore a three-piece suit that was too short. A stogie sat perched between my nicotine stained lips, and my yellowing fingers grasped the handle of a steel-tipped cane. I hobbled inside, nodding to people as I went. After signing the guest book as Odell Hollingsworth, I stuck my head into the sparsely attended viewing room. But in the place of the body was a picture of an old woman and an urn. Damn it. I turned to leave and a younger man came up to me.
“Were you friends with Mrs. Jones?”
“Uh…I knew her many years ago,” I said in a froggy voice.
“I’m sure the family would love to see you again.” He put a hand on my back and all but shoved me back into the room.
I pushed back against his hand. “I was just headed for the restroom. The old bladder ain’t what she used to be.”
“This will only take a minute,” the slick little man insisted. Holden was going to burst into flames or shit a brick while was I was giving my respects to an old dame I didn’t even know.
I stopped resisting, deciding to make the most of it. So long as I had no choice, it was go big or go home. I eyed the two middle aged people sitting in the front row with a four foot gap between them. Kids probably. They certainly didn’t look close.
“This is mister…” The bland eyes of the funeral director looked at me.
“Uh, Hollingsworth.”
“Yes, of course. Mr. Hollingsworth. He knew sister Jones when they were young.”
Both heads turned toward me. I cleared my throat. “Yep. Sure did. Your mom was a real looker back in her day. And she had legs”—I glanced back at the pictures and the woman in question couldn’t have been more than a stocky five feet tall—“that were stout. Like tree trunks. I always loved a husky woman.”
The woman’s eyebrows pulled together and she frowned. “How did you know Aunt Agnes?”
“We dated.” They looked at me blankly, compelling me to expand. “Hooo boy, let me tell ya, she was a wild one. Dancing, drag racing, never met a struggle buggy she didn’t like—”
The man pressed his lips together in a thin line. “You knew her in Germany? Before she became a nun, I take it?”
Shit. “Yeah, I was stationed there. It was good meeting you. Better hit the head. Forgot my diaper today.”
The woman stifled a laugh with a gasp.
“Incontinence is not a laughing matter, dearie.” I all but ran toward the exit, amused but aware that time was passing me by.
The second funeral home was a squat tan stucco building with burnt orange awnings. A smattering of people in black milled about outside, smoking. I parked around the block and shifted into a woman in a snug black dress with a plunging neckline. Donning large black sunglasses, though the day was overcast, I headed for the door swinging my hips and sniffling. A couple mourners nodded at me as I went inside. I signed the guest book “Anne Marie Cooley,” and grabbed a copy of the program so I could see who died. An old guy named Winston Barnaby. I hovered around the doorway searching the room for someone who looked like they worked there. Finally my eyes landed on a man with a discreet golden nameplate pinned to his chest. I caught his eye and nodded slightly. He stopped talking midsentence and his ruddy cheeks brightened even more. I winked and beckoned him with a finger. Moments later he excused himself and headed toward me. I moved from the entry and went to the restroom door. When he was in sight again, I smiled and inclined my head toward the restroom, then slipped inside.
“Did you need something, ma’am?” He quietly shut the door and flipped the lock into place.
I ran a hand down my side shimming up my dress to expose even more leg. “You.” I sank my teeth into my lower lip and heaved my chest, showing off my amazing rack.
He fumbled for something to say but took steps toward me. When he was within a foot, I hit him. The rotund man dropped like a sack of flour. I took him by the ankles and dragged him into the stall, locked the door, then shimmed out beneath it. One more shift and I emerged from the restroom as him.
I headed for the back of the home. There had to be a back exit somewhere. I found a room filled with empty coffins, each next to its own brochure.
“Paul,” said a feminine voice. “There you are. Are we ready to start the service?”
I looked up. “Let’s give the family ten more minutes, then we’ll start.”
“Very good.” The door softly shut behind her.
I lifted the end of each display coffin, testing weights, until I found one I could lift on my own. Now I just needed a way to transport it. I went through two more doors before I found what I was looking for: the back alley with a hearse primed and waiting. I rapped on the driver’s window. He rolled down the window.
“Hey, man. You have a phone call in the office. You have time to take it if you want.”
The guy got out. “I’m so sorry about this, Paul. It won’t happen again.”
I waved him off. “Don’t worry about it.” I followed the man in, then lifted the lightest coffin to the ground and dragged it outside.
While Baker was gone I fixed the runes, rearranged the furniture, and learned three new languages. Well, two out of three wasn’t bad. What the hell was taking him so long? I’d said two hours. Two. It was clear, decisive, and I didn’t stutter. The kid would be fine if I left. There was nothing she could get into here and not much could walk through the door. I checked on her again and she was still out like a light. They leave the only sane woman to babysit. What a bunch of bullshit!
I pulled my ponytail over my shoulder and examined the ends as I lay on the couch. Finally the door clicked and Holden and Baker came barreling through, carrying a coffin. “Redecorating?” I asked.
Holden just glared as he charged forward, looking utterly pissed off. Baker trudged behind him, supporting the back of the coffin, and nodded to me. “Watch him,” he said—a line that sounded all too familiar. What? Was I carrying a “crappy job wanted” sign or something?
I glanced back at the door as a person came through, shrouded in a thick black blanket. What the hell was going on?
“Do you mind getting the door?” a muffled voice asked from under the blanket. It was vaguely familiar, which sent my curiosity into overdrive. I closed and locked the door. A moment later the blanket fell to the floor.
Bright blue eyes met mine, freezing me in place. The guy had the nerve to smile. “Surprise,” he said.
An arc of emotion seared through my mind, starting with shock that quickly faded to relief that skyrocketed into anger. I was beside him in two steps, my fist connected with his stupid ass jaw. It was hard to say whether the cracking sound came from my bones or his bone breaking, but I didn’t care. Son of bitch. I went to hit him again, but Holden appeared between us and caught my fist in his hand. We still hadn’t found a rune or script that could keep him from transporting which posed a security issue when Olivia freed the jinn.
Thomas stumbled backward, holding his face. Baker sprinted into the room.
“Let. Me. Go,” I told Holden. “This has nothing to do with you. Whatever he told you, it’s a lie.”
Holden merely shook his head, though he looked like he wouldn’t really mind me having a go at that ly
ing, cheating, rat bastard of a vampire.
“Whatever he did, kitten, you can’t hurt him just yet. We have to figure out some things first.” Baker stood next to Holden, making a wall of muscled chest in front of me.
I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t trust him.”
“Who said anything about trusting him?” Baker said. “All I said is we can’t hurt him at the moment.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He turned Maggie into a vampire,” Holden said, his eyes bursting with blue flames that were so strange I forgot all about wanting to kill Thomas.
“Maggie? Like your Maggie?”
“She’s my Maggie now,” Thomas gloated.
Holden’s jaw flexed. “Get him out of here, Baker,” he said.
“Will do, boss.” Baker grabbed Thomas’s arm, trotted him over to a cell, and shoved him inside.
The flames in Holden’s eye died down and he rubbed a spot on his forehead.
“What was that?” I blurted.
“What was what? I didn’t hear anything,” he said though his head snapped to attention.
“No, man. Your eyes.”
He gave me an impatient look. “What about them?”
“Well, they’ve burst into flames a couple times today,” Baker said.
Holden raised a dubious eyebrow.
“Blue flames,” I said, nodding. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally badass, but weird.”
Holden looked at us, then gave a half-hearted shrug. “I haven’t noticed but I don’t stare at myself in mirrors all day. Olivia would know better than me.”
“Well, you’re not hard to look at. There are worse things to stare at,” I said with a wink.
“Never mind about the eyes. We have a vampire situation?” Holden asked, ignoring me.
There was a knock on the door. Holden pulled his gun, unlocked it, then pulled the heavy door open. “What are you doing here?” he asked not stepping aside.
“The demons aren’t exactly thrilled with this most recent development,” Phoenix said.
“Not my problem,” Holden said, placing a hand on the frame and blocking the entire door.
“Come on, man. Don’t be a dick.”
“I didn’t tell you to free yourself. You’re the one who insisted. Deal with it.”
“Better with us than against us,” I said, interrupting their stare off. “We already have one weasel inside, might as well let in two.”
Holden shook his head, but stepped out of the way. Phoenix limped through the door, a chunk of oily black hair covering half of his bloody, beaten face—even his guyliner was smeared.
“How’d you get away?” Baker asked.
“I waited until morning, picked the handcuffs and broke out a window,” he said. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Lift up your shirt,” Holden said. Phoenix didn’t question him, just did it. Holden walked around him a couple times. He stopped by his back and leaned in for a closer look. “Femi, get Quintus.”
I absolutely hated taking orders from anyone, but I went outside and clasped my hands together. “Dear Lord, if you could send Quintus’s hot, though sort of boring, ass here, we would all appreciate it. Also what’s the deal with badgers? I mean why are they so mean? What do they have to be pissed off about? Seriously, they need to relax. Also while I have you, I might as well mention that I’m probably going to kill Thomas, so there’s that. I figure we’re good since he’s a vampire and technically already dead. Really, if you want to split hairs, I’m probably doing you a favor. You are welcome. Amen.”
Quintus was standing in front of me, the corners of his mouth twitching, when I looked back up. “That was quick.”
“Badgers?”
“What? They’re assholes.” Quintus laughed. The deep rumbling sound of it started in his stomach and lifted up, easing my tension about Thomas.
“And who is Thomas? How did vampires get involved in this?”
“Ah. That.” I took him by the arm. “Well, dimples, Thomas is the incredibly unfortunate vampire who betrayed me a few years back and now has somehow managed to turn Maggie into a creature of the night.”
All amusement vanished from his face. “He did what?”
I nodded. “Holden is taking it remarkably well if you don’t count his eyes occasionally bursting into flames.”
“Anything else I should know?” he asked, eyebrows drawn together.
I scrunched my nose as I thought about it. The coffin was probably for Maggie, not really relevant. “Nothing comes to mind. Phoenix is inside. I don’t know why Holden asked me to get you actually.”
He nodded. “Well, let’s not keep him.” Quintus held the door for me, then followed me inside.
Baker and Phoenix were making small talk, and Holden stood a little bit apart from them staring off at nothing. His eyes snapped to us. “Phoenix, shirt,” he said.
Phoenix sighed and took off his bloody T-shirt. He was thin, not as heavily muscled as Baker or Holden, but not bony either. Tattoos sleeved both arms and colored his chest and back. All in all not bad. Just below his clavicle, large script ran shoulder to shoulder and read: “Est. 1998.”
“Enjoying the view?” he asked with a pleased looked.
I raised an eyebrow. “What’s the date mean?”
“The year I made my deal.”
“Stupid,” Holden said. “If you are not an idiot—something admittedly questionable given how you look—you will possibly live forever. Tattoos and identifying marks make it harder to start over without being noticed. So congratulations, all of these have made your life harder.”
Phoenix rolled his eyes. “I had most of them before I died.”
“Hold still,” Holden said and pointed a finger at Phoenix’s back, careful not to touch him. “Is that a rune?”
Quintus moved in closer, tilting his head left then right. I moved around to look too. Baker had disappeared, probably checking on Maggie or the kid. The spot in question could have been part of the tattoo, but might have been something else.
“Only one way to find out,” Quintus said. He put a finger on either side of the mark. “Yes, it’s a rune—buried deep too, I’d say.” He frowned. “I’m going to need a knife.” Phoenix started, and Quintus nodded. “Yes, it will hurt. Sorry. You’ll need to lie down. The two of you should probably hold him.”
Phoenix lay flat on his stomach, arms to his sides. Holden pressed one shoulder down and I did the same to the other. “Do you want something to bite down on?” I asked.
“I’m good,” he said. “Just do it.”
Holden handed Quintus the angelic knife and the light in Quintus’s hand intensified. When its brightness rivaled the sun, he touched Phoenix, making him hiss, and used his fingers to stretch the skin around the stone, then made a small incision that sizzled and popped like bacon. Phoenix’s teeth clenched together, but he didn’t cry out. Once Quintus had an incision the length of the stone he grimaced. “You ready?”
“Just do it,” he said.
Quintus plunged two fingers through the cut and gripped the rune. Phoenix’s shoulders heaved, and his eyes squeezed shut. Blood ran down his back. Quintus pulled on the rune, but it might as well have been fused to Phoenix’s spine for all it moved. Sweat broke out along Phoenix’s forehead. “Hold him down,” Quintus said.
Holden and I increased our pressure on his shoulders, pushing him against the floor. Quintus yanked the stone, snapping it from whatever it had latched to; Phoenix collapsed in what appeared to be a faint.
Holden stood up and looked at the little stone in Quintus’s hand. “How did they get it beneath his skin? When did they do this to you?” he asked.
Phoenix had yet to reopen his eyes, but he was conscious again. “Fuck if I know. I didn’t even know I had it,” he said into the floor. “Next time, just set me on fire. It would hurt less.”
“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” I asked , still kneeling beside him. He opened one eye and looked at me. I s
lapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Maybe if you wore less makeup, you’d man up.”
“Have you been knocked out recently?” Quintus asked.
“No,” he groaned.
Quintus shrugged. “Maybe he’s had it a long time.”
I stood up and went to the couch, yawning. “If he doesn’t remember getting it put into him, what makes you think you don’t have one too, Chuckles?”
Holden stripped off his shirt and the air rushed from my lungs. It would be a great service to the women of the world if it were illegal for him to ever wear clothes.
Fingers snapped in front of my eyes. “You’re about to drool.”
I blinked and glanced at Phoenix who had his shirt back on and was about to sit down.
“Don’t get blood on the chair,” Holden said as Quintus search him for runes. “If I had one, surely Olivia would have found it by now.”
His rotten temper and generally bad mood aside, she was one lucky angel. I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture of him. I wasn’t really lusting after my best friend’s guy. I was just admiring a work of art. Damn.
“I don’t see anything,” Quintus said.
Holden slipped his shirt back on. “We have to get rid of that thing.”
“Olivia could destroy it. All I can do is relocate it.”
Holden nodded slowly. “I’ll take care of it.” He held out a hand and Quintus dropped the rune into his palm. “Have you gotten anywhere with that thing I asked you to do?”
“Not yet,” Quintus said.
“Secrets don’t make friends,” I said.
“Do you know if there’s a way to disconnect Maggie from the leech?”
Quintus shook his head. “No. I’ll go check on her though. Maybe I can ease her transformation a bit.”
“You don’t think your light will do more harm than good?” Holden asked.
“I don’t know.” Quintus slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’m really sorry, Holden.”
Holden’s eyes flamed again. “Maybe the animaphagist is going to prove useful after all. What do you think its soul-eating properties would do to a vampire?”
Quintus blinked. “Vampires’ souls are dead. That’s why they have to feed on ours to mimic life. If you put him in one of two things would happen. Either it would back fire and feed the vampire. Or he will wither and rot at an accelerated pace. It will probably kill him”—his head tilted to the side—“probably her too.”
