No Rest for the Wicked

by Krystal Jane Ruin

  “I really think you’ll come to like what we do here,” Gage says. “If you let yourself.”

  “I don’t want this money.”

  “Yeah, you do.” He gives the bald man a nod. “Go put that in her car, will you?”

  The man takes the envelope from me and carries it outside.

  “Manuel.” He nods to the blond man, who steps forward and presses a cold black rock against my palm.

  It’s smooth and solid and heavy in my hand. “What is this?”

  “A test.” Gage gestures to the man on the floor. “I need you to transfer his soul into that stone.”

  My throat clenches. “What?” My voice is low and shaky to my ears.

  “A simple transference shouldn’t be too hard for you.” Gage plops down in the recliner and dangles a long leg over one arm while he leans back against the other. “No hurry.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t do that.” And I mean that in every sense.

  The door behind me opens, and the bald man posts in front of it like they’re expecting me to run.

  “You can.” Gage pulls out his phone and starts playing a game on it. Something loud and obnoxious. The blond, Manuel, throws himself down on the couch and clasps his hands together behind his head.

  “No, I mean. I-I can’t. That’s not something I can do.”

  Gage scratches the tip of his nose and says nothing.

  I stand in the center of the room alone for several minutes while Gage ignores me, Manuel smiles at me encouragingly, and the bald man stares at me with a nasty smirk on his face.

  “You’re not going to help me,” I finally say.

  Gage looks up from his phone. “No, sweetheart.”

  Tears bite the backs of my eyes, but I hold them in. This is the last place I need to break down in tears.

  I kneel beside the unconscious man and place my palm on his back. I squeeze the stone tight in my other hand and listen to his breathing.

  This is going to kill him.

  And I thought it was bad when I was indirectly involved.

  But what’s the difference? All the people I’ve cursed—some of them could have died as a result. I’ve certainly crippled my share of people. I’ve hospitalized people. It’s not like I’m a good person. The combined weight of all the choices I’ve made in my life settle inside my stomach.

  I look up to find Gage staring at me, the smile gone from his face and replaced with a curious kind of pensiveness.

  “Why can’t you do this?” I ask.

  “I’ve tried.” His eyes narrow in disappointment. “It’s beyond my capabilities.”

  Beyond…

  I tune back in to the man’s breathing. No. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  The stone stays cool against my skin.

  Wait. Those bottles. There is something about those bottles that draws life from people’s bodies. And I remember what Emmerick said about the bottled souls being unstable. I close my eyes. Gage is right. I can do this. And he knows I can, or I wouldn’t be here.

  I press the stone into the man’s back and focus on drawing his energy up and into it.

  Before I can think too long on the consequences, a thread of bright orange catches my attention. I can see it slithering through his body and towards the stone as if drawn to it magnetically. It coils inside of the stone, slowly, causing the stone to hum and heat against my palm. But the stone can’t contain the light. It’s starting to slip out. Into the air. Into my body.

  A surge of energy travels down my arm, something I’ve never felt before. I wrap the energy around the stone like a cloak, locking the orange mist inside, trapping it. It reminds me very much of all the times I was locked inside my padded room.

  The blond man gasps behind me.

  When I open my eyes, the stone glows bright blue in my hand. The man underneath is gray and dry as bone.

  I immediately release the stone and stumble back. Nausea rolls over me in a hot wave. I’m going to be sick.

  Gage laughs, soft and incredulous at first. Then loud and hearty. He reaches for the glowing stone and closes his eyes as he rubs it under his nose and across his lips. He inhales slowly and breathes out through his mouth.

  “This is perfection.” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “You are the most magnificent creature in this world.”

  “I’ll be damned.” The bald man walks into the center of the room. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Gage pockets the stone and maneuvers around the body. He takes my face in his cold hands and leans in close. “You are worth your weight in diamonds, my queen.” He brings his cool lips to mine, and I shudder. Every muscle in my body tenses until he pulls away and looks over my head to Manuel. “Escort her to the next stop, will you? I’m going to run some tests on our new inventory.” He winks at me. “Though I have every confidence that it is exactly what I need.”

  He crosses the room and leaves with the bald man.

  Manuel claps me on the back. “You’re something else.” He grins and moves to the front door as well.

  I don’t follow him. I can’t.

  My chest feels hollow. I wipe at my lips with the back of my hand. Acid licks the back of my throat. Every cell in my body feels sick and heavy.

  “Tatum?” Manuel leaves the door and steps around me to peer at my face. “You look like you’re going to barf.”

  I double over and vomit on his shoes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Manuel pulls the SUV through a neighborhood full of large trees and equally large homes. We’ve been in the car for probably twenty minutes, but I have no idea what direction we’re traveling in. I originally meant to try and keep up, but he drives so fast, and I still feel nauseous, so it’s all I can do to keep what’s left of my stomach inside my body.

  I grip my phone so tight in my fists it hurts.

  Manuel’s expression is one of calm and relaxation, but he hasn’t said a word since I threw up on him. He stayed completely silent as he rinsed off his shoes and scrubbed vomit out of the dead guy’s carpet, his unnerving mask of calm never changing.

  It’s unnatural.

  “Your mom was kind of skanky,” Manuel says as the car starts to slow.

  “I know,” I say, my throat dry and raw and burning.

  “Are you kind of skanky?”

  “No.”

  “Pity.”

  Every single one of these guys seems to know my mother. They could have all been in my house that night.

  He pulls the car into a long driveway sandwiched between a freshly raked yard of too-green grass. A red SUV sits at the top of the drive, so shiny it hurts my eyes.

  “Carmen,” he mutters. He shuts off the car and turns to me with a smile. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  I slip out of the car and tuck my hands under my arms. This is quite possibly the second worst day of my life. And this would include the day they tied me to my bed in the padded room and stuck me with various needles once an hour until I passed out.

  The skin along my sides prickles at the memory.

  Manuel leads me to the front porch. He’s light on his feet and so carefree it borders on psychopathic. The windows above the wide oak door reach up to the second story. I’ve never seen windows that clean.

  Manuel follows my gaze. “Rich people, right?” He knocks twice on the door and rocks back on his heels. Under his feet, a mat reads: BEWARE OF TIGER.

  A very fit blonde woman of around forty opens the door, dressed bust to ankle in pink spandex. Her eyes drift to my face and then to his. They widen in alarm. Without a word, she steps back into the house and tries to shut us out.

  But Manuel is quick, like a lizard. His hand is through the opening and around her neck in an instant.

  Choking, she kicks and claws at his arm. He lifts her one-handed from the floor and steps inside.

  I follow him over the threshold and shut the door behind us after sweeping my eyes over the front yard. No one from the street, even
if there was someone out there, would be able to see us through the trees. Not clearly.

  The woman’s eyes roll back in her head, and her face turns a deep splotchy red.

  Then he just drops her to the hardwood, where she collapses in a heap like a noodle. She coughs violently and holds onto her throat with both hands. He grabs her arm and drags her from the foyer, through a large kitchen full of white cabinets and stainless steel, and into a room full of workout equipment.

  Here he dumps her to the floor behind a treadmill and then hops on the stair climber beside it.

  “You’re trying so hard, aren’t you?” he says, climbing away to nowhere.

  “Get out,” she says, wheezing. “And take that witch with you.”

  Witch? I’ve never been called a witch in my life. Which is funny given my profession.

  Manuel jumps from the stair climber and squats down behind her. “You’re not a very nice person, Carmen. You insult my friend. You don’t invite me into your home. After everything we’ve done for you? All we wanted was one measly week of community service. You clean a few cobwebs. Scrub a few floors. Spend a few nights at my place. We went easy on you.”

  He squeezes her chin in his hand, so tight she cries out in pain. I cringe and try to look away, but I can’t.

  “I really thought you liked me. Guess that makes me a sucker, huh?” He drops her chin and pins her long arms behind her back. “I wish I could kill you.” He brings his lips close to her ear. “But I’ll still get to feel the life drain from your body.”

  A sob rips from her chest, shaking every muscle.

  “P-please…I’ll do the service. You can add all the time you want. I p-promise. Please!”

  My stomach turns on itself.

  “Shh.” Manuel rocks her from side to side like she’s a child. “No, no. It’s too late to beg.” He frees a hand and digs into his jacket pocket. He pulls out another smooth black stone and tosses it to me. I catch it with both hands.

  “Please! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

  “No one cares, Carmen.” He continues to rock her. “No one gives a shit about you.” He shifts his gaze up to my face. “Go on. Work your magic, angel.”

  My stomach heaves, but only air comes out.

  “This is going to be a long day if you keep throwing up,” he says.

  A long day? I step closer to them, as close as I can stand, and drop down to my knees.

  She brings her watery eyes to my dry ones. “You don’t have to do this.”

  I hover the stone over the exposed skin above her belly button.

  Fresh tears spill over her eyes. Her belly moves rapidly back and forth as panic spasms through her body. I move the stone to her chest. That isn’t any more stable. I move it to her throat.

  “Please don’t. Please don’t! Give me another chance, please. You can’t just come in here and do this without giving me a chance.”

  Manuel rubs the back of one hand against her arm, up and down, in an agonizingly slow fashion. “We gave you a chance. You missed your appointment. No phone call. No text.” He lays his head against hers and closes his eyes. “It’s better this way, anyway. You don’t want to get old, do you, Carmen? Age is so unforgiving on someone with your complexion.”

  I press the stone against her skin, and it vibrates with the desperate cries pouring from her throat.

  Manuel shifts and wraps his arm around her waist, still rocking her. “Shh. Give in to the pain. It’ll hurt less.”

  The misty orange light is already making its way to the stone. I want to close my eyes. I wish I could. I stare at her and watch as the life drains from her body. As her cries lessen, as if Manuel is pressing a volume button on her back. The pink glow fades from her skin and turns a sickening gray. The lines flare out around her eyes and over her face. Her skin dries up and sticks to her bones.

  She stares back at me until her eyes stop seeing and the breath ceases in her body.

  I focus the rush of energy down my arm and into the stone, sealing her life inside. I pull the stone away and hold it in my hand. It glows with a warm blue light.

  When I look up from it, Manuel is watching me with the smile of someone who just woke up from the best night of sleep of their life. He discards her dried-up body and takes the stone from my hand. He holds it under his nose and inhales deeply, like he’s smelling something fragrant and delicious.

  My stomach heaves up air again.

  He helps me to my feet and strolls to the front door.

  I follow after him, my feet dragging under me and scraping against the floor like bricks.

  “If you had thrown up here, it would have been a lot easier to clean up.” He holds the door open for me.

  “How many more are there?” I can hear the defeat in my voice.

  “Five. Today. There’ll be more soon. Most people don’t pay.”

  Five? I can’t kill five more people. There’ll be nothing left of me. Assuming there’s anything left now.

  Numbness takes the place of nausea. I wish it was me lying dried out and empty on that floor.

  I climb into the SUV. “You just leave the bodies?”

  “There won’t be anything left in a few hours but unidentifiable ash.” He reaches across me to the glove compartment. He tucks the stone gently into the velvet bag inside and sits back with a satisfied sigh. “Buckle up.”

  I stare out the window as we drive back through the neighborhood. Everything looks exactly the same. It seems wrong that everything just keeps moving like none of this ever happened.

  There has to be a way out of this. I can’t do this five more times today. Let alone again next week, or whenever there’ll be more.

  I can just see them escorting me all over the country, perhaps all over the world, siphoning souls from people’s bodies.

  I can see what it’ll turn me into—an evil bitch with darkness where my heart used to be. I’ll get used to it. And I’ll start to like it. I’ll start to crave it. The rush of power. How easy it is to drain someone’s life into one of those rocks. The way it feels to holds their life in my hands.

  And I’ll stop caring about everyone. Gretchen. Tessandra. Kalin. Myself. Everyone.

  And what kind of person am I now? It was so easy for them to turn me into a murderer.

  What was it that Shepard said that night in the club? I promise this is a good fit for you.

  A good fit. This is the kind of monster people with my abilities turn into. This is why they burnt people like me alive in the dark ages. This is why they tried. I am why they killed so many innocent people.

  This would have been my life sooner if my mother hadn’t tried to keep me from them. As if she even could. She lost her life for nothing. My sister and my father…both for nothing.

  I don’t know how long we’re in the car this time. Twenty, thirty minutes? Forty-five. The sun is starting to set on an orange-and-purple horizon as we roll into the next town.

  “What are you doing with the souls?” I don’t really ask because I want to know. I just can’t stand the silence anymore.

  “We’re keeping some for ourselves.” He squints out the windshield at the street signs. “You know, food for the gods.” He laughs at this. “The service we provide makes all of our lives a lot easier. Not all of our kind is particularly sociable. Some find it much harder than others to screen the right people and get them alone. You can’t just walk up to some girl and eat her soul. People might miss her. Then other people might start sniffing around. Sometimes it’s safer, or just easier, to pay for your food rather than hunt it down yourself.”

  My skin grows cold. I wish I hadn’t asked.

  He stops looking at street signs for a moment and grins at me. “It brings in a lot of money, but it’s not just about the money for us. It’s about helping out our fellow brothers. And these new stones will allow us to expand our reach overseas. Of course, we also sell some. At a premium. Certain unscrupulous kinds of folks like to play with people’s lives. It makes them stro
nger, and it makes whatever they’re dabbling in stronger.”

  I think of Mona. Wouldn’t she love to have a voodoo doll infused with someone’s soul?

  I take in a shaky breath. “Great.”

  “It is great.” He makes a sharp right, and my shoulder slams into the window. “Sorry about that. Don’t want to miss my turn.” He pulls up to an apartment complex this time. And there are people everywhere. Young people, some of them younger than me. I catch bits of thoughts from various minds. Exams, fall break, condoms, beer runs. We’re close to a college.

  Manuel stops the car in an empty spot near the center of the complex.

  Panic claws at my back. I can’t kill some kid. This day is getting worse by the hour.

  When I don’t follow him out of the car, Manuel comes around to my side and pulls me out. A cluster of girls a few feet away side-glance us. Manuel gives them a nod and a friendly wave. A couple of them wave back, and they all go back to talking amongst themselves.

  My heart beats erratically as he links his arm through mine.

  “You’re not the kind of girl who causes a scene, are you?” He pulls me tighter. “Because that’s not cool.”

  What would happen if I screamed? These kids would probably just scowl at me. And that would only delay the inevitable. How far could I even get? I don’t even know where I am.

  The building in front of us is light bluish gray and three stories high. He half drags me up two flights of stone steps. The air is still warm, but contact with him sends shivers through my body.

  He pulls me along the corridor to the third door on the left and knocks gently, four times, on the cheerful red wood.

  A boy, long and skinny like a bean, answers the door. Can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. He shakes some too-long golden-brown hair out of his face and looks back and forth between us, smacking loudly on some gum all the while.

  “Who are you?” He blows a bubble, and when it pops, Manuel punches him in the face. A startled gasp escapes me. The boy drops like a brick.

  Manuel drags the boy by his hair into the large living area of the apartment and drops him in the middle of the floor.