by Anna Argent
Graffiti was scrawled across the hallway walls and floor. There were piles of leaves in the corners of the entryway, along with a couple of bent syringes and a puddle of dried vomit. The place smelled like body odor, mold and rancid grease. As they walked past each apartment door, they got a whiff of something new—cologne, cooking food, filth. It all wove together in a patchwork of vile, stomach-turning nausea.
Dim lights hung over each door, most burned out or missing. A concrete stairway marched up the middle of the building, as dirty and rundown as the rest of the place.
Viggo was nowhere in sight.
The men paused at the stairwell and listened. The sound of footsteps could be heard overhead, but there was no way to know if they were Viggo’s or one of the unlucky residents.
“You stay here,” Garrick said. “I’ll go up.”
Instead of agreeing as Garrick had hoped, Holt simply started up the stairs. “Stay if you want.”
He couldn’t leave Holt alone to face the man who’d slaughtered his sister, who he’d raised from the time she was four. As much as Garrick wanted to trust him to do the right thing, that would have been a stupid move.
He had to save Holt from himself right now.
He went up the stairs as quietly as he could, taking them two at a time. His gun was in his hand, the Glock’s weight a reassuring backup.
The rounds were designed to incapacitate anyone with shards, but they still did damage. They still broke the skin. Even Marvel’s taser design did that. If a man was determined enough, close enough, these bullets could still kill. A shot through the eye or the roof of the mouth would probably reach the brain. Hell, beating a man over the head with the butt of the gun alone could get the job done. Not to mention all the ways Holt could kill with his bare hands alone.
By the time Garrick reached the top of the stairs, Holt had a finger to his lips.
There were no more stairs leading up. This was the top floor with no visible roof access. There was nowhere else Viggo could go.
There were sounds of an argument nearby. A woman’s voice. A child’s.
Viggo was nowhere to be seen.
Had he slipped into one of the apartments up here? Was he still downstairs? Had he gone out the back door, using this stop as a ruse to get Holt and Garrick off his tail.
There was a muffled thud, like something heavy hitting a thin wall. On its heels was a woman’s cry of pain and a child screaming, “Get away from her!”
Before Garrick could once again warn Holt to be careful, he was already bolting down the hall toward the noise.
Garrick was right on his heels.
Holt busted through a door where the noise had come from. His gun was up, grip braced.
The door opened to a short hallway. The kitchen was on the right, bedrooms on the left. Beyond that had to be the living area, where a TV droned on in a canned laugh track.
Inside, someone was sobbing. A woman, a child? It was too dark to see who. The only light to be had was coming from the TV, out of sight of the front door.
Holt inched forward. Garrick kept his gun angled up toward the roof, rather than the residents in the apartments below. Chances were the walls and floors were thin enough he could hurt someone if he wasn’t careful.
He hunted often enough not to get rusty, but not so often that it was just another day at the office. His senses were on overload, straining to pick up any hint of information that would help him get everyone out alive.
He wasn’t sure Holt shared that same goal.
None of the neighbors pounded on walls to complain about the noise that had just settled. There were no sounds of sirens coming in to check out the disturbance.
Chances were, the people who lived here were about as likely to call the police as they were to clean up the weeks-old vomit in the entryway.
The sound of sobbing continued. Holt glided forward. Garrick gave him just enough room to maneuver, but stuck close, just in case he needed to stop the man from making a mistake.
They passed the opening to the kitchen on the right. It was tiny, dark and empty. Three feet inward, the hallway opened into the living area where the TV splashed out colorful lights across ratty, sagging furniture.
On the left were two bedrooms with a bathroom between them.
That’s where Viggo had to be.
Just as soon as that thought flickered through Garrick’s mind, he saw a blur of motion, as dim as shadow, rushing toward his head. He tried to dodge, but there was nowhere to go. Instead, he lowered his arms to block the blow, but was too late. Rather than knocking the thing headed for him away, he propelled it downward, into his own face.
Pain slashed across his forehead and cheek. His vision went red in his right eye. The thing that had attacked him flickered into the shape of a man standing in the kitchen doorway.
Garrick didn’t panic. He’d trained too long and too well for that. Adrenaline flooded his body and gave him speed and strength, but his mind stayed as clear and sharp as ever.
Had the man been in the kitchen all along and Garrick just hadn’t seen him? Or had he teleported there with some kind of bizarre Vires superpower?
Before his thoughts had time to sort out what had happened, Holt spun around to help.
That was a mistake.
Behind Holt’s head, out of Garrick’s good eye, he saw a giant of a man step out from shadows. He gripped the sides of Holt’s head in his huge hands and squeezed.
Red lightning cracked and sparked inside the man’s grip. It danced across the pained expression on Holt’s face and arced outward from his hair. A second later, Holt went limp and sagged. If not for the giant’s hold on his head, he would have fallen to the floor.
In the half-second it had taken for that to happen, the flickering shadow that had sliced across Garrick’s face had pulled back for another attack.
Garrick fired his gun. He didn’t know if he’d hit his target or not. All he could see was the blade of the knife winging toward him. In it were reflections of tiny red lightning bolts.
The importance of that detail didn’t hit Garrick until he felt his head explode with pain a split second before everything went dark.
***
Echo had just finished reading her mother’s letter for the tenth time when a noise pulled her out of her daze. She didn’t realize her phone was ringing until Stygian told her. She’d never heard the sound before, and it was strange to think that she had people in her life who would call her.
She answered with a tentative, “Hello?”
The word didn’t sound right to her ears, as if she was saying it wrong. How long had it been since she’d answered a phone? Had she ever done so? Mom never kept one. This house had one hanging on the wall, but she’d been so little at the time. She might not have been allowed to answer.
“It’s Harold. Harold Lionel, the librarian.”
“Oh. Hi. How are you?” The pleasantries seemed so odd, so foreign.
His aging voice wobbled on his words. “I’ve finally finished translating the entire page of prophecy and I was slightly off on my timing.”
“What do you mean?”
Stygian was watching her openly. He still had the strangest look on his face—like his world had ended—but he was alert and listening.
She asked him, “How do I put this on speaker?”
He took the phone from her hand and pushed the button just as the librarian said, “…moonrise comes right before sunset, and the spell must go off before then. That means you’ve only got until two minutes before sunset tomorrow to cast the spell. Eight-fifteen in the evening to be exact.”
She was wearing only a blanket wrapped around her nude body. This didn’t seem like the conversation one should have naked, so she grabbed her clothes and began to dress.
Stygian averted his gaze, and leaned toward the phone. “Did you find the spell?”
“Yes. It’s fairly basic. You’ll need a few things, but nothing exotic, no eye of dragon or unicorn horn.�
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Echo did not ask if those things were real. She couldn’t cope with the answer right now. Later, when all of this was behind him, she’d ask, but not a moment sooner.
“What things?” she asked as she pulled on her jeans.
“Salt, fire, water—that sort of thing.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Stygian said.
Harold added, “There’s a complex circle you must inscribe perfectly. And of course, you’ll need all those who contain Hazel’s shards present.”
“We don’t even know who those people are. How are we going to get them here?” she asked.
“That’s the other thing I deciphered in the prophecy. Hazel wants to be whole so badly, she will bring all of them to you. At least, that’s what I think it means. The language is a bit hazy. There’s a bit of doom to it that I can’t quite figure out.”
She pulled her shirt over her head. “Doom? That doesn’t sound good.”
“She was quite an unpleasant woman. For all we know, she’ll use this opportunity to kill some of you and become more whole that way.”
She and Stygian exchanged glances. The look of worry on his face made her stomach clench.
“How many vessels of hers are there?” he asked.
“That’s unclear. Eden doesn’t know, either. She says she’d never judged anyone with Hazel’s shards besides you two. Just trust in the prophecy and you’ll be fine. You did find the locket, didn’t you?”
“We’re working on it,” Stygian said.
“I suggest you work faster. You’ll have only one shot at this. If you miss your window, there won’t be another one. Hazel will be trapped in you forever.”
Or, at least, until they died.
Doom, indeed.
Echo heard a faint laugh in her mind. Hazel’s laugh.
Stygian tensed and closed his eyes. The cords in his neck stood out. A vein in his temple pulsed. There was no mistaking that he heard something too.
“We’ll find it,” Echo said, as much for her and Stygian’s benefit as for the librarian.
She was going to do whatever it took to free him from that bitch’s shards. And herself.
“I’ll have Marvel use her technology to send you the spell and the circle you must duplicate through the air so you can prepare what you’ll need. The symbols will take some time to draw. Just remember, moonrise tomorrow. That’s two minutes before sunset. Understand?”
“We got it,” Stygian said.
They hung up. Echo watched the light on the phone wink out. The room had grown darker, cooler. Stygian had lit a candle at some point, but that light didn’t do much to ward away the gloom.
She pulled on her socks and shoes. “I’m going to go out and start looking.”
“In the dark?”
“You heard Harold. We don’t have much time.”
“We have all day tomorrow.”
“What if that’s not enough time?”
“What if you fall in a hole and hurt yourself tonight? How will you keep looking?”
“I can’t sit around and do nothing. I’ll be careful. I’m used to creeping around in the dark. Living on the streets will do that to a girl.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t keep fighting her. “We’ll stay close together.”
She was hoping that was the case. The rat man was still out there. He still wanted her dead. He liked to show up at night. She couldn’t run away because the locket was here, somewhere. That was a recipe for disaster without a big, badass man by her side.
“Okay. Whatever you want,” she agreed.
“This isn’t about what I want,” he said. “Not anymore.”
***
Hedy woke up covered in blood. It was sticky between her fingers, drying stiffly on her clothes. She could taste the heavy, metallic tang of it on her tongue. The scent of it hung in her nose, filling it with pain and death.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but that didn’t make it any easier or any less confusing.
She blinked her eyes, but her lashes were stuck together with dried, rusty droplets. The tangled nest of lashes wove across her vision, covering everything with a red, spidery haze.
She was in a van. The dome light overhead was on, casting an anemic glow through the space. The white metal walls had been painted. The ceiling was streaked with more of the same dark color.
The engine was off. The air inside was warm, humid. Outside, she could hear insects singing and wind sliding by as if everything was normal.
It wasn’t. Not even close.
Something had happened. She could feel it in her bones.
She was different.
Hedy spit on her fingers and rubbed at her lashes until they were free of the blood caking them. She was in the back of the van. A man was lying in front of her. All of the blood and pulp that had once been inside of him was now painting the van’s walls a dark, chunky red.
He had deep cuts along his arms, more on his hands. A knife was embedded in his chest, stuck between two of his ribs.
He’d fought her. From the looks of it, he’d fought hard.
She’d still killed him.
Hedy couldn’t remember any of it.
She reeled back from the mess until she was plastered against the warm metal wall of the van. She could feel more of his blood clinging to her hair, her back, sticking her in place.
She had to get out of here.
She scrambled for the back doors of the van. Her hand was on the latch when she realized that she had no idea where she was. For all she knew, there could be a crowd of people surrounding her. Police. Strangers. Children.
Hedy breathed in through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to smell the stench of blood and piss. Her fingers shook as she dialed her phone.
Phoenix’s voice came over the line like cool, clear water. “You’re okay,” she said. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Had she known this was going to happen? Had Phoenix read about this gorefest in one of her precious prophecies?
“Phoenix, I…” she started, but didn’t know where to go.
“Is he dead?”
“Who is he?” Hedy asked.
“A gift. I sent him to you. Don’t you remember?”
The last thing she remembered was following Bernard to a seedy motel. She’d waited a few blocks away, sleeping in her stolen truck.
“I…. I don’t…” confusion vibrated her voice.
“Shh,” Phoenix said. “It’s okay. Everything is just fine.”
But it wasn’t. Something was wrong. People weren’t supposed to wake up covered in blood with no memory of how it happened.
“Is he dead?” Phoenix repeated.
Hedy didn’t need to glance at the man’s corpse to know the answer. “Very.”
“Good. That’s good, Hedy. How do you feel?”
“Sticky.” That was the first word that had popped into her mind. She was so far beyond filtering right now, it was also the first word that came out of her mouth.
“Hang on.” The line was silent for a moment, then Phoenix’s voice came back to her. “There’s a pond nearby. It’s isolated, private. I’m going to guide you there so you can clean up, okay?”
Hedy nodded.
“I need you to get behind the wheel and head west.”
She stepped over the man’s body and did what she was told. It took her a minute to adjust the seat so she could reach the pedals.
It was dark outside. She hadn’t realized that before—hadn’t realized that there was little light coming in from the windshield.
The headlights bounced over the rutted gravel road, lighting up the weeds at the edges and a few silver eyes glowing in the distance.
A deer darted out in front of her. She had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting it.
“Take a right,” Phoenix said.
Hedy obeyed.
Where was her stolen truck? She hadn’t seen it nearby.
“Go down until you see an aband
oned barn. The roof is caved in. There are old farm implements stacked outside.”
The barn appeared like a ghost in the darkness.
“I see it,” Hedy said.
“Park beside it, then walk around back. The pond is about a couple hundred yards away.”
Hedy parked and got out. She left the engine running because Phoenix hadn’t told her to shut it off.
She was a hundred yards into the sea of weeds when she had the presence of mind to ask, “How do you know where I am?”
The woman’s voice was a slow, soft croon. “Oh, honey. You’re far too precious for me to lose track of you. I always know where you are.”
A strange feeling rippled through Hedy’s chest, but she couldn’t figure out if it was warmth or suspicion.
Kill her, a voice whispered.
Hedy came to a dead stop.
She was used to the voices in her head. She’d had them all her life, except when Mom had sung to her or when she swallowed one of Phoenix’s potions. But this voice was new. Different. She’d never heard her before.
“What’s wrong?” Phoenix asked. “What did you see?”
She’d known Hedy had stopped. Was she tracking the phone, using that silver bowl filled with water, or was it something else?
Had the woman put something inside of Hedy? Had she put a chip in her like a pet? A possession?
“How did I get here? Who was that man?”
“I sent him to you as an offering. A sacrifice. I have read the prophecy about you. You weren’t strong enough for what is coming, so I took care of you, as I always have.”
Hedy liked that Phoenix took care of her, but her way and Mom’s way were completely different. There was nothing maternal about giving Hedy a man to kill so she could steal his power. And yet, she did feel something. Better wasn’t the right word.
Bigger. That’s how she felt—like there was more of her now than there had been when she’d woken up this morning.
That was Phoenix’s gift to her.
Instincts rose up in her, so ancient they had no name. A presence roamed through Hedy’s mind, swimming within her thoughts, claiming the territory as its own.
