He shook his head slowly and squeezed my fingers until I had to bend them or let him snap them. Then he pulled my index finger back up, preparing to rip it off. “Should I count to three?”
But before I could answer, a loud thud came from the kitchen. Something heavy crashed down the stairs, tumbling end over end. Nea jumped out of the way in time to avoid the rolling wooden cart, but the microwave hit her leg when it flew off the top. She went down, stunned, but not out.
Emma ran halfway down the stairs holding the rail in one hand and a steak knife in the other, and I blinked, sure I was hallucinating. I would never have expected fight over flight from her. Did she actually give a damn about me, even after I’d driven her straight into hell? Or did she just want the car keys?
Troy dropped my fist and ran to help Nea. I jerked my left hand from Desi and punched the other harpy. Then I stumbled my way through the piles of junk toward the stairs. But Emma was gone.
Pulse racing, I whirled around to find her in the middle of the basement, buried knee-deep in crap, eyes wide with fear, jaw stiff with defiance. Troy stood behind her, one arm tight around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. Just like in Syrie’s picture.
“Em, you okay?” I asked, as the three others gathered around them, heedless of the mess they stood in. All four sets of harpy eyes watched me, shining in the light from overhead. All four bodies looked tense and eager to lunge at me, finger-claws ready to shred flesh.
“Been better,” Emma said, and I was surprised by how steady she sounded. “What the hell is all this?”
“You were supposed to stay in the car.”
She shrugged, the gesture limited by Troy’s grip on her. “I told you I had to pee.”
“I think I’d rather have this than your tiny little finger.” Troy stuck his nose into Emma’s hair and she flinched, but remained resolutely, impressively still while he sniffed her. “She looks good enough to eat.”
If I gave her to them, they’d let me go. But though I was a predator, I wasn’t a murderer, and crossing that line would make Nash see me like everyone else did—as a monster. Hell, I’d see me as a monster if I left her, especially since she’d come down to help me.
But Em saw my moment of indecision, and that’s when she truly started to panic. “Sabine...?” She struggled against Troy’s grip, but he held her easily.
“Let her go.”
Troy’s mocking smile widened. “But she’s good for several meals, and I swear we’d savor every bite.”
“Get the hell off me, you sick fuck,” Emma spat. And I realized she was going to try something an instant before she threw her head back.
There was an audible crunch, then a screech as Troy dropped her to grip his ruined nose. Emma ran for the stairs. Nea and the other harpies lunged for her. Pulse racing, I spun in search of a weapon and grabbed the only possibility nearby—a human femur.
I turned as the redheaded harpy tripped over a box on the floor and went down hard, and I was already scrambling after the other two, Nea in the lead.
Emma hit the first step and grabbed the rail.
Stumbling over a cracked mop bucket, I fought for balance then swung the bone. The ball joint smashed into Desi’s skull, and I spared a moment to be thankful she hadn’t spread her wings, probably because of the low ceiling.
The redheaded harpy crouched and hissed at me as Nea grabbed a handful of Emma’s hair and hauled her down three steps to the floor.
I swung again as the redhead raked pointed almost-claws toward my face. Her nails scored my cheek. My club—someone’s bone—slammed into her temple. The old femur broke in half, but she was down for the count.
At the base of the staircase, Nea stood with one hand tangled in Emma’s hair, the other around her throat. Emma looked scared, but she was holding it together. I stepped forward, ready to fight bare-handed since I’d lost my club—until something heavy landed on my back.
I stumbled forward, scrambling to regain my balance, and Troy’s screechy voice whispered in my ear. “Shoulda just let me have her....” He threw his weight to one side, trying to knock me off balance. If he hadn’t been light—necessary physiology for anything that flies—that would have worked. Instead, I braced one hand against the wall and reached back with the other. My fist curled around a leathery handful of wing, edged by a long, thin bone, like the elongated fingers that frame a bat’s wings.
I pulled. Hard. Something tore with a satisfying, visceral pop. Troy screamed and when he fell, his wing ripped all the way to the pointed joint at the top. His screech hit notes that would have made a bean sidhe wince.
Troy would never fly again.
While he screamed and clutched what he could reach of his ruined wing, I race-shuffled through piles of junk toward the stairs, where Nea had already hauled Emma halfway to the first floor.
I jogged up the steps. Nea heard me and tried to turn, but she was confined by the tight space. I grabbed the base of her left wing and pulled, clinging to the stair rail with one hand. Nea screamed and let go of Emma. I shoved the harpy with both hands. She fell over the rail and crashed into a pile of old-fashioned metal toys.
“Go!” I shouted to Emma, as injured harpies got to their feet below us.
Em bent for something on the next tread, then raced up the last few steps and into the kitchen. On the first floor, I grabbed her arm and hauled her through the house, only pausing for a second when Emma gasped at the sight of Syrie standing in the middle of the living room floor, empty left eye socket aimed right at us, purple pencil clutched in one fist.
Then we were moving again. We ran out of the house, across the yard, and around the side of the store, ducking twice when a harpy lookout dove toward us from the sky. I dug the keys from my pocket and popped the locks remotely as we rounded the corner into the parking lot.
Em pulled open her door while I slid into the driver’s seat, and a second later, she slammed one hand down on her lock. I started the car, shifted into Drive and cut across the corner of the sidewalk, then shot toward the dark road.
“Who was that girl?” Em demanded, panting, as the speedometer bobbed toward eighty and I finally remembered to turn on the headlights. “The one missing an eye?”
“Syrie.” I glanced in the rearview mirror. They couldn’t follow us without losing their jobs and forfeiting their lives. But not checking seemed careless. “She’s an oracle. I don’t know where they found her, but they’ve been charging for her services for years.”
“She gave you this?” Emma plucked Syrie’s drawing from the center console, where it had fallen.
“Don’t...” I tried to grab the paper, but she unfolded it, holding it out of my reach.
“Uh-oh,” she said, staring at the image of her best friend.
I shrugged. “From my perspective, it’s more of a ‘Woo hoo!’ kind of moment.”
“Are you gonna show her?” Emma breathed, and I could feel her staring at me. “Are you gonna show Nash?” Then, before I could answer, she gripped my arm. “You can’t tell them. You don’t know that this is really going to happen, just because some half-blind little girl drew it on a piece of paper.”
“She’s never been wrong, Em. Syrie is how I found Nash in the first place.”
“Fine. But you don’t know the context. This could be nothing—unless you make it into something.”
And that was just one of the options I’d considered....
“Sabine, if you show this to Nash, I’ll tell him you nearly got me eaten by a harpy.”
“I’m not going to show him.” For now.
“Good. Then I guess I won’t dump this all over you.” She shifted onto one hip to dig in the opposite pocket, then held something out to me. “I found it on the stairs. It’s yours, right?”
I glanced at the vial of liquid envy cradled in her open palm and couldn’t resist a smile. “Thanks, Em,” I said, and she smiled back, like we might actually be friends someday. But we wouldn’t, because we lived in diff
erent worlds, and mine wasn’t as simple as black and white, truth and lie.
My version of the truth was that I wasn’t going to tell Nash—not yet, anyway. But that had nothing to do with her lame-ass threat and everything to do with not tipping my hand until the time was right.
I didn’t want to win the battle. I wanted to win the war.
* * * * *
LAST REQUEST
For my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, who said she was finally ready to hear from Nash—then told me the story should end from Tod’s POV. She was right, on both counts. Thank you!
Contents
Nash
Tod
Nash
Tod
Nash
Tod
Nash
Two years A. K. (After Kaylee)
“What makes you think he’ll come?” Sabine swept her long, dark hair over one shoulder and leaned closer to read the message I’d just typed on my phone. Her leg was pressed against mine from knee to hip, and the warmth of her skin through both layers of denim was a temptation I would normally have given in to with feverish abandon. But that day, I had a good reason to resist.
“He’s my brother.” I clicked Send on the text and set my cell on the coffee table.
Sabine took my hand and threaded her fingers with mine, her glittery-gray nail polish glinting in the overhead light. “He’s also a reaper. You can never be sure what a reaper will do.”
The same could be said for Sabine—the only mara I’d ever met—but unlike my brother, my girlfriend became a little easier to understand every day. I only knew one thing for sure about Tod. “She said he would always be there for me, and he won’t make a liar out of her. He’ll come.”
Sabine exhaled slowly. Her grip on my hand tightened, and for the millionth time, I wished I could read what she was feeling in her eyes. She usually said exactly what she was thinking, but interpreting the emotions behind those words was sometimes difficult because a mara’s irises don’t swirl; that’s a bean sidhe trait.
“It always comes down to Saint Kaylee, doesn’t it?” she said at last.
“For Tod? Yes.”
“And for you.” Her voice carried a complex blend of jealousy, resentment, and guilt.
“Sabine...”
“It’s okay,” she said, but as usual, the truth was more complicated than that.
“I love you.” I slid my fingers into her hair at the base of her skull and pulled her closer for a kiss. “If I hadn’t just texted my brother, I’d show you exactly how much I love you, in exquisite detail. But I can’t pretend she never existed. No matter how it started out, in the end she was a good friend to us both.”
“I know,” Sabine said, and the truth of that echoed in her voice. “She’s gone, and I miss her, too. That screechy little martyr had a way of getting under your skin.”
And staying there.
That was the thing about Kaylee—she had staying power. Death had come for her twice before her seventeenth birthday, and she’d come out on top both times. In the end, she gave up her own life to protect everyone she cared about. That was the only way death could keep her—on her own terms.
But death’s emissary—my own dearly departed brother—had lost her for good.
Even two years later, he was not taking the loss well.
“Hey, college boy,” Tod said, and Sabine laughed when I squeezed her hand in surprise. He’d been dead for four years, but I never got used to the sudden, stealthy appearances. “You texted? This better be important. That Twilight Zone marathon isn’t going to watch itself.”
I turned toward his voice and found my brother slouched in our dad’s old armchair, which my mom had hauled from house to house after his death. That chair was the biggest reminder of him left. I couldn’t decide whether it was ironic or appropriate that my undead brother now sat in it with one leg thrown over the threadbare arm.
He’d been almost eighteen when he’d died, trim and fit from football—an interest we’d shared—but much fairer than I. Tod had our mother’s blue eyes and blond curls, while I looked more like our dad. In the almost-four years since his death, I’d surpassed my brother in height, while he’d remained “frozen at the peak of perfection,” in his own words.
“I have a message for you.” I leaned forward on the couch and held his bored gaze. “From Levi.”
Tod frowned, dark blond brows drawing low beneath a mop of pale curls. “You have a message to me from my own boss? Why didn’t he send it himself?”
Sabine snorted. “He was hindered by the fact that you changed your number without telling him.”
Tod’s lips twitched in the first grin I’d seen from him in months. “Can’t imagine how that slipped my mind. Gotta go.” He stood. “They’re about to play that episode where the last man on earth has all the books he could possibly want, and nothing but t—”
“Are you trying to get fired?” I demanded, before he could disappear. Reapers only exist in the human world for one purpose—to reap souls of the dead. If a reaper stopped fulfilling that purpose, he would lose the right to his afterlife. In short, an unemployed reaper was a dead reaper. Truly dead—not undead.
“Now why would I do that, when I have so much to live for?” Tod spread his arms. “A fulfilling career. The love of my life at my side for all of eternity. Everlasting youth and beauty.” He donned an exaggerated frown, then shrugged. “Well, one out of three, anyway.”
“Lighten up,” Sabine said, uncharacteristically uncomfortable in the face of his pain. “Nobody likes a sullen, dead pretty-boy.”
Tod arched both brows at her. “Hollywood’s spent a lot of time and money proving you wrong.”
“Seriously, Tod, you can’t just throw your afterlife away. It would kill—” Me. “—Mom.”
For a second, I could swear he heard what I hadn’t said. Or maybe he saw the truth churning in my eyes, bean sidhe style. I’d never been good at stilling my irises in front of him, and even when I could, he seemed to see what I was hiding.
“You can call off the intervention,” he said at last, crossing eternally toned arms over his usual white tee. “I’m not suicidal. I just got tired of listening to the creepy little bastard’s voice mails. Have you ever heard a child order a hit over the phone?”
“He’s not ordering hits on people,” I pointed out, still unaccustomed to being the voice of reason. Maturity sucks. “He’s scheduling the natural deaths of those who’ve lived out their lifelines.” Which my brother knew better than any of us.
“Those two concepts sound remarkably similar over the phone,” Tod insisted, and I could see his point. Levi’d only been eight or nine years old when he died. He sported perpetual freckles and curly red hair. Everything the undead kid said and did was creepy.
“So, what’s the message?” Tod said, when I wasn’t sure how to reply.
“And with that, I’m out.” Sabine stood. “I have studying to avoid.” But really, she was just trying to give us privacy. While avoiding studying for finals. “Want me to bring over tacos later?” She was already digging car keys from her pocket.
“With any luck, we won’t be here. Thanks, though.”
“Why won’t we be here?” my brother said, as I pulled Sabine down for a kiss. A long one. Tod groaned. “Banish her, until she returns with tacos. I like tacos.”
Sabine let go of me to toss a smile in his general direction. “Play nice, boys.” Then she headed out the door in jeans so snug my mouth watered as I watched her leave.
“Why won’t we be here?” Tod demanded again, the minute the door closed behind her. “How did you even receive a message from Levi? And what do you have against tacos?”
“Nothing. I love tacos.” I turned back to him as Sabine’s engine rumbled to life out front. “And the message came through Luca.”
Luca was Sophie’s boyfriend. Sophie was Kaylee’s cousin and Sabine’s foster sister, briefly. She was a total pain in the ass most of the time, but she meant well, and sinc
e her father was involved with my mother, our lives were far too intertwined for me to foresee a future without Sophie in it. Especially considering that Sabine had become very protective of her, after Kaylee’s death.
“Damn necromancers...” Tod mumbled. “So what’s the message? ‘Come to work, or you’re fired?’ Wait, they’re not resurrecting Formal Fridays, are they? I don’t even own a black cloak that still fits.”
“Tod,” I said, and he sobered immediately at the gravity in my voice. “They got a trace on Thane.”
Silence met my announcement, and for one rare moment, my brother lost control of his eyes. Fury danced in the complicated shift of blues in his irises. I saw impatience. Pain. A hunger that had nothing to do with food.
“Levi’s going to let me go after him?” Astonishment and relief dripped from his every word, and I hated to squelch them.
“No. That part came from Luca. The reclamation department stumbled across one of the souls Thane sold on the black market.” As Kaylee had, Luca worked for the department of the afterlife responsible for reclaiming lost and stolen human souls from those who shouldn’t have them. “Levi just wants you to come back to work, and I need you to call and promise him you will, so you won’t get fired.” I waited a heartbeat, building anticipation for the rest of what I had to say. “So we’ll get a chance to go after Thane on our own.”
“We?” Tod started pacing in front of the coffee table. “No. You’re way out of your league with Thane, and you don’t want to piss off the reapers. The other reapers.”
“All of that applies to you, but none of it stopped you from sucker punching Thane and selling him to a hellion.” Probably the most badass thing my brother had ever done. I wish I’d been there to see it.
“That was for Kaylee.” He went completely still when he said her name, and I realized I hadn’t heard him say it in a long time. If hearing it hurt, saying it must have been agony for him. He still mourned her with every beat of his undead heart.
“This is for Kaylee, too,” I said softly. Thane had killed her, the first time. He’d killed her mother. He’d stalked Kaylee in the days leading up to her rescheduled second death, harassing her and watching her suffer. Then he’d double-crossed us all, which cost the lives of several of our friends. Catching Thane was the only thing Kaylee had left undone when she’d died, and if she were still with us, she’d go after him on her own.
Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My SoulFearlessNiederwaldLast Request: 4 Page 42
