by Devon Monk
From the sigh he let out before he fell into step beside me, the answer was yes.
~~~
One would think the advantage of living in a small town is that there is always at least one person who secretly, or not so secretly, wished you were dead and would be more than happy to make that wish a reality.
I hadn’t thought it would be hard to find someone to kill me, temporarily, but Jame telling me he wouldn’t do it sort of put a wrench in my plans.
If my friend wouldn’t kill me for revenge, I’d just have to ask an enemy to kill me for fun.
“You want me to do what?” Brown asked, his voice a little too loud. I pulled my phone away from my ear. I could either go all police chief and demanded he do this for me, or I could try to tug on his heart strings.
Who was I kidding? Elves’ hearts were little blobs of wickedness mixed with bad poetry stuffed behind their ribs. I turned my Jeep toward my house, heading up the gravel drive to the top of the hill.
“This isn’t a favor,” I said. “It’s not a request. This is an order. You need to kill me tonight.” Yeah, I’d gone with the police voice.
“I don’t know what you’re smoking, but no thank you, Chief. I’ll just continue to live my life not behind bars.”
“Do you remember that evil you felt, the…” I tried to remember what he’d called it. “The ancient horror? We have a way to kill that. It involves me being temporarily dead.”
There was a pause on the other end. I didn’t even hear him breathing.
“Temporarily,” he repeated.
“Just long enough to kill the bastard.”
“That works?”
“I have it from a reliable source.”
“And your sisters are waving the pom-poms and cheering you on?”
“No. I haven’t told them, and I’m not going to. Because it sounds…”
“Crazy? Are you listening to yourself, Delaney?”
“You can tell me no. I’ll find someone else, Brown.”
“I didn’t say no. I just don’t know why you picked me. What about me makes you think I am capable of killing anything, anyone?”
“We aren’t friends.”
“That would be my point. Why ask me?”
“Unlike my friends, you aren’t falling over yourself to protect me like I’m made of glass. You can be trusted to do a job, do it right, and step away. You have slightly shady morals. This is a job. And I’m asking you to do it. Not as a friend, but as a citizen of Ordinary who has a chance to help make this town and the people in it safe again.”
Another pause.
Brown had said elves set down roots when they found their home soil, and I knew he’d chosen Ordinary as his home. He was a locksmith and security expert, so I knew he liked keeping things safe.
This should be something he wanted to do.
I waited, the cheery bright afternoon feeling wholly wrong with so much death and pain looming on the horizon.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll come over to your house. We’ll get it done.”
Relief washed over me for an instant, soothing and clean before it was gone. “Good. Thank you. I’m here now.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen. I expect the door to be locked when I arrive.”
“Promise.”
I parked the Jeep and sat there for a few minutes, just thinking.
Myra and Jean would kill me when they found out about this. I knew that. They were already angry that I’d been attacked—not my fault—and even more angry that I’d traded my soul for Dad and Ben—totally my fault. It had been my choice and I still didn’t think it had been the wrong thing to do.
But this?
Shit.
I lowered my head until it banged softly against the steering wheel.
This was wrong. Not telling them was wrong too.
And all the justification I was talking myself into, all the logic that pointed out it wasn’t wrong, that powering through and taking action was the right course to follow was falling apart the more I thought it through.
Bathin was a demon. He’d tricked Dad into giving up his soul, tricked me into giving up mine. Jame wasn’t wrong. Bathin liked pain.
But he’d saved Ben for me, for Jame. He’d brought him back as whole as he could. That had to stand for something, didn’t it?
He could be playing a long con. He might want something more than just my soul and the freedom to walk around Ordinary.
Hell, he might want me dead. And he might have just found a way to talk me into helping him kill me, by making me arrange my own death.
Holy shit, that was slick.
I pulled out my phone, stared at the screen, then thumbed through my contact numbers. I needed to call smarter people who had souls and could trust their instincts and their minds better than me right now. I needed Myra’s calm logic, Jean’s sharp insight. I needed Ryder’s decisive confidence.
I needed my family.
I hovered my thumb over who to call first, then pressed the picture of Ryder in his painted mask.
The phone rang once. “We got this.” It was a weird way to answer the phone.
“Good? What do we got?”
“Whatever you’re worrying about.”
“Who said I’m worrying?”
“I know that look on your face.”
I closed my eyes for a second, and sighed. Then I looked out the window. “Where are you?”
He stepped up and tapped my side window. His phone was held up to his ear. “Roll down the window.”
I could hear him on the phone and through the window. It was silly. And made me smile.
That made him smile, easy and warm.
I wanted that Ryder. Wanted to be the one who put that look on his face. But in order to do that, I’d have to be able to feel things. To have a soul. To have emotions.
Also, it’d be helpful if I weren’t dead.
And if I weren’t trying to push him away for his own good.
Why was my life so complicated?
I rolled down the window. “Officer,” I said.
“Chief. Nice afternoon.”
“It is. How was the riot?”
“Not as colorful as I’d expected. By the time we got there, Shoe and Hatter had it mostly under control. Myra stayed to help get some statements, mop up the crowd.”
“So you decided to stop by?”
We were still talking into our phones, which wasn’t necessary since we were just inches away from each other.
“I decided to find out why you’re driving around town telling people you want to kill yourself.”
And that, that was not joy, not love, not warmth.
That was pain.
I pulled my phone away from my face, and thumbed it off. Then I opened the door.
Ryder stepped back and I stepped right up into his space, my fingers gently on his hips, then, when he lifted his arms opening room for me, my arms wrapped around his waist so that I could press myself to him, tight, fitting us as if we had always belonged. As if he could be the heart that beat for the both of us.
“Talk to me, Laney. Tell me what you’re doing. Explain…explain it. Because I can’t understand this. Can’t understand what you’re thinking.”
His mouth was pressed to my temple, and I could feel the softness of his lips, the scratch of his stubble as he spoke, so close to me, as if he could bury his words, his strength, his worry, deep beneath my skin.
As if he were trying to reach me.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s a way to take Lavius down without risking him getting his hands on the book. It’s a way that will kill him. A way that he won’t expect.”
“By killing you?”
“Only a little.”
His hand was pressed against my back, his thumb rubbing a slow arc.
“How’d you figure this out?”
“You are going to hate it.”
“Bathin?”
I nodded.
We were quiet, an
d I counted his breaths, evenly spaced between the beats of his heart.
“Tell me.”
“It’s a vampire thing. An Achilles’ heel. He only bit me once, so I’m not dead and I’m not turned. That in between state gives us an opening to kill him without risking the book.”
“But we’d risk you.”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t have to.
“How do we do it?” he asked. “Talk me through.”
I hadn’t nailed down the death part, hadn’t wanted to think of how I would prefer it to go. “Bullet isn’t my preferred, but I don’t like knives either. Maybe suffocation? They say drowning doesn’t hurt.”
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Just. Don’t. I meant how do we kill him?”
“I thought Death could do it. If not him, Bathin. Maybe Rossi?”
“Beheading?”
“Rossi says it usually works.”
Ryder was still, even his thumb stalling. I knew I should move away. I didn’t want to, but life was made up of lots of don’t-wants that turned into gotta-do’s.
“If we do this, we do it with Rossi right here at our side. And your sisters. Have you called Than?”
I eased back, took a step, but stayed close enough my fingers still rested at his waist. He shifted his hands to my hips.
“You’ll do this? You’ll let me get killed?”
“I’m not committed to it, no. But I can see the…rules of the tie you have to Lavius now that you pointed it out. It’s fuzzy, but there is room in how the connection is implanted for the vulnerability to be exploited.”
“So you don’t think Bathin is lying?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s lying. But I think the connection could be a weakness for Lavius.”
“That’s…not what I thought you’d say.”
“I heard Rossi. As soon as he breaks the wards on the book to kill the spell on Ben, Lavius is going to be all over us. The way I see it…we need to strike, without putting the book in his grasp, and without limiting Rossi from being able to kill him.”
“Right,” I said, disappointed that he hadn’t put up more of a fight for me staying alive. “That’s logical. The one thing Lavius wants is the book. If we can keep that out of play and still have a way of killing him, then problem solved.”
“Problem not solved. I’m not going to let anyone kill you, Delaney.”
I just stood there staring at him. Because what should I say to that? I’d just wanted to hear those exact words. But they were the wrong words now. They weren’t the words that would solve our problems.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
There. That was the truth.
Ryder lifted one hand and cupped the side of my face. I leaned into that contact, his thumb stroking up the line of my cheek.
“We’ll make a decision together and stick to it this time, okay?”
“You and me?”
“Well, and a few others.”
That’s when I heard the tires on the gravel approaching us. I shifted away from Ryder, far enough we weren’t touching and I could pull my gun if I needed it.
Two cars came up my drive. One was Myra’s cruiser. No big surprise. The other was Rossi’s VW bus in all its restored-to-original turquoise and white.
“You already called the cavalry?” I asked.
“Nope. You did when you went around asking people to kill you. Never turn to a life of crime. You’d make a really sloppy criminal.”
I slapped his arm and he chuckled.
Myra got out of the cruiser, and so did Jean, who looked angry as a wet hornet with crutches and a cast.
Rossi’s van opened and Brown stepped out, dimples and good looks fitting seamlessly with the summer day and plans of murder.
Rossi slid out of the driver’s seat, stepped around the front of the van and then leaned against it, glaring at me.
“No one kills you.” It was the kind of statement only a creature of power can really pull off. The kind that makes the words hammer down into your bones so that you feel them in the soles of your feet.
“I know what you promised my dad. But this isn’t an end, it’s an advantage. Lavius won’t think you’d let me die because he knows you won’t let anyone kill one of your own.
“You proved how you respond to your family being harmed with Ben’s kidnapping. So let’s use this advantage he’s handily given us and take him down.”
“Death is not a toy,” Rossi said a little too loudly. “It is not a state of mind that can be entered into and out of like a room. It changes a mortal. Delaney, it will make you someone, something you are not.”
“I’m already something I’m not. Soulless, remember? So yeah, I don’t care about the changes death will force on me. After we kill Lavius, I’ll get my soul back from Bathin. After that I’ll find a way to deal with whatever marks death leaves on me, okay? I might be damaged, but this is not a permanent state for me. Not even close.”
Even without a soul I knew I was a little more than mortal. I knew the limit of my own strength. I knew I could handle a quick death and quicker resurrection and come out of it still standing. I was a daughter of Ordinary. My roots, my blood, generations of Reeds chosen by gods sunk deep in this earth. Ordinary would hold me strong, just as I had held strong for it.
There was no storm we Reeds could not face.
“Could it work?” Ryder asked.
“No,” Myra said, just as Jean said, “Oh, screw you, Bailey.”
Brown had spent all this time staring up at my house, a look of confusion on his pretty face.
Bathin might be up there, watching us. The elf hadn’t met the demon yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sense him. He’d said he could tell when darkness and evil walked through Ordinary, and Bathin had those words written on the inside of his shoes.
“Could it work?” Ryder asked again.
He didn’t need to ask Rossi that. Not really. He was all-powerful with the ability to see contracts, agreements, what would or wouldn’t happen between connections. He had already told me he could see how the tie and my death could be used to gut Lavius.
Now he was just waiting to see if Rossi was going to lie about it.
I had to admit it was kind of hot.
“Do you really care for her so little as to ask me that, Ryder Bailey?”
Ryder clenched up, his muscles tight, and I could feel the effort it took for him to force his body to relax, to not just yell with the anger those words lit inside of him.
“I love her, you ass.”
Holy shit. I think that was the first time I’d heard him say that word. Well, yell it, at a vampire, but still, it was for me. For us.
“Love her enough to know that this choice is hers. We can try to talk her out of it, we can offer other better options which is what I hoped we’d do.
“But her job is to keep Ordinary safe from all threats. And she is damn good at her job. Even when other people get in her way and keep vital information that could be the difference between her trying to do something on her own with nothing but a damn demon on her side, to doing something with the support of the people who love her.”
Oh. Oh. I had not…I didn’t think he’d see it like that.
But he wasn’t done. “Not that I think death is the right option here. But if it is, if it is the path we walk, then I want to know every detail of how we’re reducing the risks and getting her back. I will not be shy about writing this up and getting it signed in blood. Yours, if necessary. Understand?”
Something shifted in Rossi. He gazed at Ryder for a long, long moment, then back at me. There was judgment there, and sadly, disappointment. But there was also a sort of acceptance.
It wasn’t like he was blessing our union, or even that he was agreeing with Ryder. But it was pretty hard to ignore the claim Ryder had just staked on me. On my capabilities.
His faith in me was humbling.
Things were going to be done, and however we went forward, it was going to be
with full disclosure and a mountain of dotted i’s and t’s crossed in triplicate.
“Do you have a weapon that will kill Lavius?” I asked. “We’re not going to go forward unless we have that, and a plan B in place, which could be our original plan A of making it up as we go.”
“I have a weapon,” Rossi said.
“Is it the book or a dark magic spell?”
“No. It is a blade.”
“To cut his head off?”
Rossi reached behind his back and withdrew a dagger. It was short and wide, really no longer than his palm, and didn’t look all that deadly. I thought it might be made of stone, dark and brittle, but when the light caught it, I realized it was made of clay.
“That’s…that’s it?” It looked small. Insignificant against an ancient evil.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure it will work?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward. As if there was ever going to be any help coming from that quarter for him. “It will work. It is formed of the soil from the battlefield where he was originated.”
And by originated he meant turned.
Oh. That gave that little knife a whole new level of killability.
“Like a stake to the heart,” Ryder said.
“Better,” Rossi agreed.
And I took a second, maybe three, to contemplate that Rossi had not only gathered up enough soil from the battlefield where Lavius had been turned to make it into a knife, but that he had also been turned on that very same soil.
Was that knife in his hands intended for Lavius, or had it been an option, a choice, a way out Rossi had kept for himself in case this world and existence became more than he wanted to endure?
I looked away from the knife and into Rossi’s eyes. My answer was there, and that answer was, yes.
“Just the heart?” Ryder was asking, carrying on a conversation beyond the one Rossi and I were sharing.
“Any vulnerable point,” Rossi said. “Through the eye, heart, neck, brain, groin. The same kill points one would seek for a human. Any other blade would not be enough, but this one.” He stopped. And really, he didn’t need to say any more.
This was a different kind of risk than giving up the book. This was risking Rossi’s life. Because if the knife fell into Lavius’s hands, it could be used just as easily and devastatingly on Rossi.
