Betrayer (Hidden Book 7)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “Once upon a time, I wanted to go into the Church,” she said. “I would have, if I’d had my way about it.”

  I studied her as the team milled about, searching the immediate area. Erin stood nearby, listening. “And what happened to prevent it from being so?” I asked her.

  “My father decided to marry me off,” she said with a shrug. “It was not uncommon. I probably would not have done well in the Church in any kind of official way, anyway. But I also refused to marry, so I ran away, which was how I came to be at the inn where I was murdered.” She gave me a wry smile. “It is ironic, isn’t it? I ran so I would not die a slow death married to a man I didn’t want, only to end up being murdered by another man I didn’t want.”

  “Did you manage to do any living at all in the time after you ran away?” I asked

  She nodded. “I did. I learned to read. Another girl who worked at the inn taught me,” she finished, her voice and expression softening. “I danced. I worked. For a while, all was well. And then there came a point where all of my days stretched on, each exactly like the one before it. The same work, the same grubby hands trying to reach under my skirt, the same reprimands when I wasn’t ‘friendly’ enough to the customers. The one who ended up killing me was merely the most insistent that he should have what he wanted.” She took a breath. “And while I was angry that my life should be cut short by the likes of him, I was also happy to see it all finally come to an end.”

  I watched her, struck by her words. I had heard people say before, that they were glad to die. Usually, they were old, or had lived life in such horrid conditions that escape from the sphere of the living was a relief. I had not suspected the same of Cathleen. Murder victims rarely felt that way, at the very least holding onto the wish that they could make their murderer suffer.

  She smiled at me. “Death was the first time in my entire life I was actually able to make my own decisions. Especially once I realized that the crows, that those like you, were not coming for me. It is freedom, and I am grateful for it all.” She looked back at the church. “I still feel a deep love for the Church, though. The traditions, the peace of it all.” She seemed lost in thought, or memory, and I nodded and stepped away. Erin approached her when I left, and held her hand.

  I caught Quinn’s eye. “This is one of the most concentrated areas of murders and missing people in the last month. I do not know if whoever is doing it has moved on already, but I want us to completely sweep this area. I can still feel the traces of energy signatures here, so I am hopeful. Perhaps we will find something of use here.”

  He nodded, and my team joined me as I started walking. The blocks around the cathedral were narrow; homes, apartment buildings, and storefronts giving each street we walked down a closed-in, almost claustrophobic feel.

  It was not long before the trace of an energy signature I was tracking became stronger, and I moved more quickly, my team keeping pace with me.

  Floyd Arthur. Murdered four days past. The information flooded my mind as a second energy signature flared to life. Genevieve Arthur. His wife, murdered at the same time.

  I held my hands out to my sides, and my team knew by now that this meant to take my hands, to join hands. Once they had, I focused, rematerializing us several blocks ahead of where we had been.

  A third energy signature now. Closer.

  Not the one I expected. I nearly choked on the realization, glanced at Quinn.

  “Mary is with them,” I said quietly.

  He shared a look with me, then I saw his face harden, and he continued running forward with them.

  We came to an empty house. It looked as if it had been vacant for quite a while, the “for sale” sign on the patchy front lawn faded, the sign hanging askew from its bracket.

  “They are in there,” I said. My team nodded, Cathleen crossed herself with a look to the heavens, and we charged forward. They walked through the front wall, and I appeared inside.

  The scene that met my eyes was not what I expected.

  The souls of the Arthur couple, wavery, most definitely not corporeal at all yet, were fighting back against the onslaught of the third soul.

  Mary.

  She had a man, a live man with her. Badly beaten, whimpering, tied, gagged.

  And it struck me that she had a fully corporeal form, if she’d managed to take a live human.

  “Mary,” I said.

  She turned to me with a snarl and attacked, slashing out at me with the knife in her hand.

  “Secure them,” I said to my team, nodding toward the Arthurs, who stood watching in shock as Mary slashed out at me again.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” the woman told Quinn, and I reached forward, trying to restrain Mary before she could do any more damage.

  I remembered this look well, among those undead we had had to put down centuries before, when they’d first figured out how to regain a living form. That crazed hunger in the eyes, the feral expression, the desperation and strength in their movements. The undead were intelligent, even able to manage some semblance of acting like any other human, except when hunger hit them. As I looked at Mary, who was even then trying to slash or bite me, I had to wonder what exactly they had done to her to make her this way.

  She was out of control, more animal, more beast, than the woman she had once been. Hungry, insane, and full of senseless rage. Mary was showing all of that now, and I had to push down the anger and guilt I felt, that she had been turned into this, undoubtedly, as a way to punish me. That one of the souls who had been helping me, who had been trying to do good in their death, and been turned into a raging, flesh-hungry monster… the knowledge and rage was a dead, searing hot weight within me.

  “I do not want to hurt you, Mary,” I said, and she snarled again. She was drooling, her mouth hanging open. I could smell her now, and she smelled like decay. “Surrender, and I will go easy on you,” I pleaded with her, and she lunged, the blade of her small, razor-sharp knife slicing the side of my neck.

  The Arthur woman gasped as my blood started flowing down my neck.

  I shook my head, trying to convince myself that there was none of Mary left there, that the beast that she was now left little room for the woman she’d once been. Whatever they had done to her to cause this particularly vile version of undeath, she now knew only hunger. It had become her entire existence, and I knew now that she was responsible for leaving this particular path of death and destruction around St. George in her wake, never satisfied, always hungering the next taste of living flesh.

  I swore to Hades in that moment that I would make whoever had done this unspeakable thing to her pay.

  I swore this to myself as I pulled my Netherblade from its sheath under my jacket.

  She noted the movement and flew at me, screaming wildly, the scent of my blood making her even more insane.

  I stabbed my Netherblade into her stomach as she charged me, and, while it slowed her down, it did not stop her from striking forward, her teeth clamping onto my bloody neck.

  “Boss?” Quinn asked, and his voice was tremulous. Shaken.

  I gave a shake of my head, eased the other dagger out of my jacket, and plunged it into her back, even as my body screamed in agony at the sensation of her teeth gnawing, beginning to rip my flesh.

  The second blade made her scream, releasing me. I gulped back a breath, took the thin chain from my pocket as Mary, or the thing that had once been Mary, writhed and screamed on the floor, her mouth and chin red with my blood. I wound the chain around her wrists as she flailed and wept.

  My neck burned, and I tried to ignore it.

  Once she was contained, I turned to my New Guardians, who had the Arthurs surrounded. Quinn held the male’s arm, and Cathleen held the female. Erin’s eyes were bright with tears, as were Claire’s.

  I pushed down my own emotions. Not now.

  “Tell me what you know of this one,” I said to the female. Genevieve.

  “She murdered us,” she said, staring at my
still-bleeding throat. “She murdered us, and we watched as she ate our bodies.” She clamped a delicate hand over her mouth, as if she was nauseous. I almost told her it was not possible for ghosts to actually vomit, but decided it was pointless. She was fairly newly-dead. She undoubtedly still felt alive, despite what she had seen.

  Her husband picked up the story. “We saw her come in here, dragging that fellow there,” he said, gesturing to the man on the floor, who was now watching me with a mix of horror and wonder. “We didn’t know what we were even doing, but we knew we wanted to try to stop her from doing the same to him. So we followed her in here. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to see us, but she did.” He paused. “How is that possible?”

  “She is also dead. She has done things, or had things done to her, that have resulted in what she is now,” I said flatly, and both of the Arthurs looked down at Mary’s still-writhing body. “This man owes you his life. He cannot see you, does not know you were here. Soon, he will not remember any of this,” I said, realizing that Mollis would have to work her skills on him as well. “Thank you for what you have done. I hope you understand that this is where your time in the mortal realm ends.”

  Genevieve nodded. “We do. We have no intention of running. God, what if we became that?” she asked fearfully, looking at Mary again.

  “Indeed,” I said under my breath. I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

  “Um. You’re still bleeding,” Genevieve said.

  “It will stop,” I said absentmindedly as I texted Mollis.

  I got her signal to come to our place in the church. I glanced at the New Guardians. “You will come with me this time. We have a couple of added complications,” I said, nodding toward the man tied up on the floor. I knew it would end my ploy of having separated from my Queen as far as my team was concerned, but it could not be helped. Quinn nodded his assent, still seeming dazed. He was able to look anywhere but at Mary. I hauled up the living male, then Mary, who screamed and thrashed. Cathleen took Mary’s other arm, and I nodded my thanks. Quinn kept hold of the male Arthur, and Erin the female. We arranged ourselves so all of them had a hand on me, and I focused, taking us to Mollis.

  “Oh, what the fuck, E?” the words were out of Mollis’s mouth the second we rematerialized before her. She rushed over to me, tilting my head to examine my wounds.

  “They will heal, Mollis,” I said, even as she continued looking at them.

  “Which of them bit you?” she asked, rage in her voice. She has a particular issue with biting, having been nearly drained by a vampire back in her vigilante days. It was one of those things that seemed to trigger her, though she usually managed to keep it hidden.

  “Mary,” I said quietly, nodding my head toward the still screeching undead I was holding.

  Mollis studied her, then closed her eyes for a moment. When she looked at me again, she reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Those fucking bastards. This was your Mary.”

  I nodded, swallowing the lump that seemed to have formed in my throat. “This is my fault.”

  She shook her head. “Stop. No.” She squeezed my shoulder and glanced at the human. “What’s up with him?”

  I glanced at my team, who were watching the two of us with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. I would have to try to explain all of this to them at some point. I was nervous about that. Could I trust them to keep this secret Mollis and I had been trying so hard to keep? I tore my eyes away from them and focused once again on Mollis.

  I explained about how the Arthurs had seen Mary drag the human into the empty house, most likely as her next meal. “So they have been a great help. I think he will need his memories of this time taken, yes?”

  She nodded. We both glanced at my New Guardians, all of whom (except for Cathleen, who was still holding onto Mary’s arm) were kneeling on the dusty stone floor of the church, heads bowed.

  “That’s not necessary. Stand up,” Mollis said, and they did.

  She looked around. “Okay. I’ll take his memories, knock him out, and then you can put him back near where you found him,” she said to me, and I nodded. “Then we’ll deal with the rest.”

  I watched as she untied and ungagged the human male. “I am sorry you got mixed up in this, but we are going to make sure you get home safe and sound, all right?” she said to him. He nodded, looking terrified, unsure. “All right.” Things were silent for several moments, and I knew she was in his mind, likely looking for anything else he had seen at the time of his abduction, then erasing anything having to do with Mary, me, or her. He slumped, unconscious, and Mollis silently handed him off to me. I nodded, rematerialized to St. George’s, and left him lying near the side of the cathedral. I gave him a final glance and made the jump back to Detroit.

  When I reappeared, my head was swimming, dizzy. My neck was still on fire, though it seemed to have stopped bleeding.

  I refused to let it show, that I felt weak. If I did, she would not let me continue working.

  “All right,” I said, and she nodded. The Arthurs were gone.

  “She already sentenced and punished them. It was fast,” Claire murmured to me as she came to stand at my side. “They seemed to be decent people.”

  I nodded. I did not want to watch what had to happen next. And I had the feeling it would not be good for my team to have to watch it, either.

  “Do you want me to take you back?” I asked them. Mostly Quinn, who seemed as if he still could not make himself look at Mary. His throat worked, and his mouth was set in a hard line, his face a mask.

  How stupid of me. I hadn’t realized how close they had become in the time they had spent traveling together. I wondered to myself if he had loved her.

  She reminds him of his sister. He feels like he’s reliving it all over again, Mollis’s voice came in my mind.

  “We can stay,” Quinn said after several long moments. “You need to heal anyway.”

  “You do not need to be here for this,” I said gently.

  “The fuck I don’t,” he growled. “This is the shit we’re fighting against now. I want this moment burned into my memory to use against every one of these goddamned monsters we come up against.”

  He stood, glaring at me as if daring me to disagree. I met his gaze, held it, refused to look away.

  Finally, he looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “We will stay,” I said in response, and he gave an almost imperceptible nod. I looked at Mollis, who was watching the whole thing play out. She seemed somewhat better than she had seemed the last time I’d seen her, and that gave me hope. Nether knows there was little enough of that going around of late.

  Mary was still shackled with the chain I had used to contain her. I walked over to her and pulled my Netherblades from her stomach and back. She bared her teeth, snapped her jaw toward me like a rabid dog. I did not flinch or jump. I watched her as she did it again, taking a small step back. Cathleen had one arm, and I took the other, keeping her still so that Mollis could work.

  There was no asking, no questions. Mollis knew better than to try to get answers from Mary in her condition. She stood, and her eyes glazed over in that look she got when she was focusing particularly hard on breaking into someone’s thoughts. Her eyes flashed, the bright light that usually came from them intensifying.

  As I watched, Mollis’s breathing became more labored, a slick sheen of sweat glistening across her forehead. It was absolutely silent, except for the occasional whisper or cry from Mary, who had long since stopped trying to fight any of us.

  After what felt like an eternity, Mollis let out a gasp, took a step back, and seemed to come back to herself.

  “I was trying to see if there was any way I could break what was done to her. I’m sorry,” she said, mostly to Quinn, whose face softened.

  “Thank you for trying,” he told her quietly.

  Mollis turned her gaze to me. “She was taken by your sister, which we already knew. It was Delo who gave her her first heart. She d
eveloped a type of bond to Delo as a result of that,” she added.

  “As a dog would to someone who feeds and cares for it,” I said quietly. She nodded.

  “When we took Delo, someone else took Mary under their wing.”

  “Let me guess. We don’t know who,” I said, and she nodded in irritation. “How did she turn out this way? This is abnormal, as far as I know.”

  Mollis nodded. “Whoever took her after Delo was gone made her suffer badly before her next two hearts. She was driven insane by hunger, by needing to complete the transition to undeath, and being kept, imprisoned, taunted with having to watch others devour the hearts she so badly needed. Once she was fully mad, they gave her the next two hearts. And then there is a blank spot in her mind again, and the next thing I can see is that the next thing she knew, she was in the area around St. George, and she was hungry,” she finished, anger lacing her words.

  “Stolen memories and new monstrosities,” I said with a sigh.

  “Same as before. But we do know now, at least, that Mary was the one responsible for the murders and disappearances from the St. George area. Whether she was just randomly set free there to cause chaos or whether there’s more to it, I can’t tell. If there was, she didn’t know.”

  “If one of my sisters or anyone working with them took her under their wing, it is bigger than just setting her free,” I said.

  “Agreed. I know you’re mostly focusing on the East End, and that’s where I need you. This wasn’t near there, was it?”

  I shook my head. “I was becoming frustrated near Whitechapel, so we decided to move on for a bit and try to make some headway elsewhere. Brennan had a list of the missing and dead from London, and that was the next nearest area to where we were, so I went there. I will look around the St. George area for any other souls we may have missed.”

  She nodded. “Thanks, E.”

  I glanced over at Quinn who was silent, watching Mary.

  “There is no point in punishing this one,” Mollis said, gesturing toward Mary. “There is none of her old self in there. It’s as if undeath took everything away from her.”