“Deal stands. Dags for the spell.” Though in truth I wasn’t really sure I had the power to give him that spell. I hated to think what’d happen if he delivered and I couldn’t.
“Kiss?”
“Fuck no.” I pushed at him and he grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to him. I started to struggle, not wanting him to go all tentacles and wrap himself around me.
But to my surprise . . . he didn’t. Instead, he pressed his lips to mine and gave me a very short, chaste smooch.
And then vanished.
WTF?
Nightfall came fast, and all the Revenants returned, many of them dressed to kill. What was it with being a First Born and a clotheshorse?
That is Jason’s influence, not mine, Mephistopheles insisted, as I entered the warehouse. Though I can’t say I’m not pleased by the feel of the fabric.
“Sensation is never lost on you, is it?”
Never.
But even as I smiled at the First Born’s comment, I stopped inside the doorway, my mouth dropping open. The warehouse had been utterly transformed in a single afternoon and evening!
A fourteen-foot drop ceiling had been installed, sealing off the high vaulted steel beams. Though I could sense there were Society agents all along those beams, dressed in black and out of sight. The floors were covered in padding and a soft beige carpet. To the right was an area for cocktails, coffee, and tea. A bartender wiped everything down. To my left was Loki, dressed in an all-white suit and blue shirt. His hair was extra spiky, and he wore several lip rings, sparkling in the newly installed fluorescent lights tucked inside the drop ceiling.
Okay, The Exorcist this was not.
“Feels more like a prom, doesn’t it?” Joe said as he came up behind me. He was dressed in his usual, only it was a blue plaid, and made of lightweight cotton, not flannel. “Rhonda’s boys usually do it up right.”
“Right?” I whispered. “They’re going to do an exorcism in here?”
“Oh. No.” He pointed to a set of closed, peacock-design stained-glass doors. “Through there.”
We moved together through the doors. And prom turned into Carrie, real fast.
There was no carpet in there. The floor had been cleaned but not covered, exposing concrete. In the center of the room was a table, where Lex’s body lay quietly beneath a red sheet. I could smell the chemicals keeping her body from decomposing—which was a key. A natural progression since the human soul was gone. But for the First Born?
Around the table sat a smaller group of tables, and on those were candles of white, red, and black. A thurible for charcoal and incense. Matches, and a whole array of odd-looking things in jars.
“Is all this Aleister Crowley stuff necessary?” I said.
“Dunno.” Joe shrugged. I noticed he had his gun and holster on. “I’m more of a shoot first and then mumble the incantation kinda guy.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and pointed to the only other exit. Double doors to the left. We went through those and got a grand shot of more woods. Floodlights illuminated the trees around us. “There are snipers all through these woods, on the roof, and in the roof. So, if something comes in, they’ll see it.”
Wow. I was a little impressed. Only a little ’cause, well, if this thing wasn’t solid, what were bullets going to do? I chewed on my thumb as he put a hand on my shoulder again. “We’ll find him. He’s fine.”
I nodded. “I think I know that. TC told me Dags was alive—but he doesn’t know where.”
“TC was here?”
I told Joe what the Symbiont had told me—leaving out the whole deal thing. I didn’t think that was anybody’s business but mine. “So we know he’s alive; we just don’t know where.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything from Alice or Maureen. And that bothers me. A lot.”
I nodded. “This whole thing does. Exorcising the magic? That sounds like a stretch.”
“It is a stretch.” He grinned. “It’s not real. It’s something they made up and put out there so whoever it is doing this will show up.”
I laughed. Not real? Oh my God. Well, no wonder that room was like so overdone in the occult crap. I wouldn’t be surprised if a neon pentagram dropped from the ceiling as an advertisement.
“You okay?” he asked me suddenly.
I looked up at him. “I should ask you that. I mean, given everything you’ve been through in the past few days. But you seem a little . . . off?”
He shrugged. “Rhonda and I broke up. Kinda knew it wasn’t working. She’s in love with someone else.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear this. And I’d always wondered how their relationship had withstood events. “And you?”
“I’m in love too.” He gave me a half smile. “But I know when to back off, Zoë. I just can’t help wondering if I had stayed—not been so frightened by what I felt when I kissed you—”
I wondered if his toes curled as well.
Joe reached up and touched my cheek. His fingers were warm. “Maybe if I’d have made love to you first . . . maybe I could have been the one to pop your cherry.”
Uhm. Okay. I was going to tell him that popping my cherry wasn’t the point of it. But before I could speak, his hand moved quickly from my cheek to my neck, squeezing hard. I couldn’t breathe and grabbed at his wrist, trying to break free. I looked up into his face and saw darkness there. And a slow, even red glow in his eyes.
PHANTASM!
30
OMG!
OMFG!
It’s here! In Joe’s body! I knew it just as I knew I was going to be so superfucked if I didn’t do something!
I couldn’t cry out—the pressure on my neck was too hard. I started to shift, but he shook Joe’s head. “Uh, uh, uh. You become the Wraith now, and I send word to kill the Guardian.” He made a sad face. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?”
Goddamnit!
I stopped the shift and continued to claw at his wrist. I couldn’t speak or scream. Why weren’t the snipers shooting at him. Didn’t they see I was being choked?
“Now, what we’re going to do, is walk together inside that warehouse, and we’re going to destroy that body. Understand?”
Destroy the body.
Why?
I could only nod. I felt my face turning red as I fought to get air into my lungs somehow. I called out on all channels HELP as loud as I could.
“You shouldn’t have done that—”
I heard the hiss and the thump first, before Joe tensed and released his grip on me. I fell backward, stumbling, then down on my ass as I looked up. An arrow was lodged in Joe’s neck, sticking out from the right side. He was scowling and reached up and yanked it out, tearing flesh. Joe was bleeding again. Damnit!
I wanted to shift, to take him out, but I wanted Dags to be safe. Oh God, he had to be safe.
Joe whirled and looked out at the woods. “I know you’re there . . . you fucking bitch!” he hissed, loud enough for me but not the snipers in the woods to hear.
Who? Who was there? I had my hand at my neck, coughing loudly, just on the verge of changing.
Changing is the only way to defeat it, came TC’s voice in my head. He was nearby, in those woods. I could sense him.
But he’ll kill Dags!
It’s a bluff, stupid. He wants that book. Now attack!
That gave me the go-ahead I needed. I shifted from where I was and launched upward, grabbing Joe’s body beneath his arms, taking him higher and up and away from the others, my wings beating as fast as they could.
“I warned you!” Joe said, and reached around and grabbed at my wings. He was messing with my flying, trying to crash us. I screamed at him and managed to bring my knee up and nail him in the balls.
He reacted at first, as if Joe were in control, but then straightened and grinned, and said, “My turn.” He reared his head back and cracked mine with his. I saw stars, literally, as I lost control of him, and we both went crashing down into trees and w
oods. My wings caught on branches and were ripped before I remembered to pull them in close. I hit the ground hard and lay on my side, trying to straighten out my vision.
Now I knew how wrestlers felt when they got that forehead-to-forehead crack.
My God that hurts!
And then, of course, I fell fifty feet from the sky. I picked myself up and looked around, too late to realize that the bastard was coming at me. He tackled me where I stood, and together we rolled over stumps and rocks and smack into another pine tree. Can’t throw a rock in Georgia without hitting a pine, ya know.
I shoved him away, using whatever Wraith strength I could muster. Like this, we were both out of our element. Him more so since he was all Abysmal. I at least could interact on this side of the universe within my Wraith body. Though I’d suspected I have more power in the Abysmal plane, I’d been a bit chicken to go test it. I mean, what if I screwed up and got stuck there? No body to bring my ass back!
I wasn’t sure what a Phantasm’s limitations were when overshadowing a human. I was thinking not as strict as when they fuse with them. But I was also worried about hurting Joe. He was still human, and he’d already lost a lot of blood. And by the look of the wound on his neck, losing a shitload more.
By this time all the ruckus we were making had sounded an alarm. I could sense people in all directions coming at us, surrounding us there on the ground. I stood just as he did, and to my surprise, he fired some weird-ass purple light out of his left hand at me. Instinct took over, and I held up both my hands, blocking the attack with a blue shield of my own.
Crazy.
This is crazy.
Mental note: this is freak’n crazy!
Though his purple thing didn’t hit me, it felt as if it’d zapped something ’cause I got dizzy. Maybe it was supposed to do that? You know, make me defend myself so he could zap energy cells.
Villains were cunning like that.
I called up the sword I’d used against the Horror. It’d been different then—all flaming and such. Now it looked like a combination of both ice and fire. Opposites in the planes. I waved it like a big stick and pointed it at him like they did in animes—and damned if it didn’t shoot out a white light at him.
I squinted at the bright show and realized I’d signaled “Hey, we’re over here!” to just about anybody within a five-mile radius.
Sweet.
I opened my eyes and staggered, seeing him do the same thing. Though I wasn’t sure if that was because I got him or because Joe’s body was giving out. How much of it was Symbiont and how much human power? I needed to get him out of Joe’s body. And that led me to a whole new string of thoughts.
I liked it when I got those.
Phanty had shown himself to me incorporeal several times, as simply a visual of someone. As a clown once, and as a hooded man at the construction site the night I made the deal with TC. And again in the hospital when we were fighting over the Eidolon. It was possible he could manifest as something in the physical plane.
So, why was he actually in a body this time? The only answer I had was that he had intended on manipulating the physical. He needed to touch something physically in this plane.
And all I could think about was the book.
But which one?
“They’re over there!”
“Don’t shout, asshole!”
Well, thanks to Lieutenant Asshole, we knew they were coming. I charged forward with my sword again, intent on ramming him with it, thinking maybe I could bounce him out of Joe’s body or something. What I hadn’t counted on was him counterattacking with something of his own.
Joe’s body.
I saw him throw himself in front of the sword and altered the attack just in time, nearly skewering Joe right through the center. The movement cost me momentum and balance, and I would have fallen if I hadn’t unfurled my wings and moved up a little. But not before Phanty made this incredible roll and jump, reaching up and grabbing my ankle right above my bunny slipper.
He yanked me down and tossed me like a dog tosses a toy in his mouth, throwing me a good hundred feet into another fucking pine.
Owch.
I lay on the grassy ground as a hooded figure jumped on top of me. I reached up to toss this bastard off, thinking it was one of Rhonda’s men, when the hood fell back and I saw his face.
Daniel.
It’s freak’n Daniel!
Oh shit! And he had me in a very precarious position.
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head as I hesitated, and he grabbed both of my wrists and held them to the ground at my sides. He came closer, and I could see—he looked good. He was going to kill me—but he’d look good doing it.
I expected he would shoot me or stab me, or maybe even use some spell he’d found or something. What I didn’t expect was for him to kiss me.
Long, deep, and hard.
He tasted like wintergreen. Not like a breath mint, but really of wintergreen. I found myself in a wood of ferns and tall, gnarled trees decorated in moss. And he was over me. But the voice in my head was purely feminine.
Zoë . . .
I looked up at him, not sure if this was a dream or if maybe Rhonda had some nice Tolkien-looking spring meadow on her property. No . . . I could still feel his lips on mine. Somewhere.
Take this and use it . . . it will remove her from his body. I will help you as I can.
With that, the meadow faded, and I was under Daniel. He was pulling back now, letting go of my arms. And I was human again, looking up at the man I’d loved, who’d tried to kill me.
He smiled. “Zoë . . . I’m sorry. I am. I love you, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He reached under his robe and produced one of Randall Kemp’s stun guns. “I took this from the police station. Use it.”
“Over here!”
“It’s Detective Halloran! He’s been shot!”
Daniel looked up as we both heard branches cracking under boots. He smiled at me and stood, then helped me to my feet. “I wish you’d told me . . . about the Wraith. I would have understood.”
I moved closer to him and tentatively reached up to touch his face. It was real. He was real. And he was . . . “Daniel . . . what happened? You’re not . . . you don’t want to kill me . . .”
“No.” He shook his head.
And then I sensed it. A Symbiont. And as I looked at him I realized . . . no, not a Symbiont.
A First Born.
He was hosting a Revenant now.
And a name came to me from the pages of the book. Inanna. “You were in the shop. You took the copies.”
“I tried to. But they were already gone.”
“There he is!’
And, abruptly, Daniel was gone.
I stood by that tree in the dark, and as they came closer, I tucked the gun under my shirt in the back of my pants. Six or so armed Society agents appeared. Rhonda and Gunter came as well.
“It was Detective Frasier,” a voice was saying in the dark. Joe’s voice. “He attacked me, then went after Zoë.”
That bastard was still inside of him. Lying. I waited until he came forward, helped along by Mom.
Mom! Get away!
Rhonda looked at me. “Was it Daniel? Did you see him?”
I narrowed my eyes at Joe. “No, it wasn’t Daniel.” And then I pulled the gun, aimed, and fired at Joe.
The blast was brighter than I remembered, but it had the same effect. I’m afraid I kinda caught my mother in the blast as well, but I wasn’t going to let that thing linger inside of Joe any longer.
People yelled out, and before I knew it, I was on my front with someone’s knee in my back and a gun to the back of my head. Growling, I shifted to Wraith just as one of the bastards fired, then I went incorporeal. The shot went though my left shoulder, and it smarted pretty bad. I stood and faced the one who did that, shoving my hand inside of his chest. Asshole . . . you do not shoot me. And just for that, I’ll take a little of your miserable life to heal me!
“Zoë!”
I wasn’t insane. I was pissed off. And when I’d taken my fill of his soul, I turned and pointed at the creature now rolling on the floor a foot behind Joe’s still body. “There it is, Rhonda. Shoot it!”
All eyes turned to see the form shift and move as it turned into something more understandable. Once again, it became Mr. Muscles in the hoodie with the hidden face. He pointed at me. “That bitch gave you that gun. But it won’t help you. Tell my sister that—tell all of them I will come for them and destroy each of them just as I destroyed Yamato.”
I waited a few beats before clapping.
Yes, I got the look of the utterly insane from those around me, but I just had to reward genius. “That is so much bullshit.” I stepped over the body of the idiot that shot me (no he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t going to be digesting food well for a while) and approached the Phantasm. Nona and a Society medic were over Joe, treating the wound in his neck. The whole area was lit up from Society flashlights as well as mine and Phanty’s luminescence.
Did I spell that right?
“You are so full of bullshit. You have so many people afraid of you . . . but not me. No . . . because I just realized who you are.”
THAT got some serious looks, not just from everyone around me but from the Phantasm as well. He reached up and pulled his hood back, revealing the same chiseled redheaded man I’d seen before. He looked like a singer, a rock star, and he was neither. “How dare you . . .”
“Oh, I dare all right,” I said. Now . . . let’s get something straight. I am not this brave. And I was shaking all over. But I wanted to push the situation. I wanted to know what it knew. I wanted . . .
I wanted . . .
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. I had Daniel’s kiss lingering on my lips but Dags on my mind.
Puffing up, I stalked forward even closer. In this form, I knew he had no power. What I didn’t know was why.
But I would. Soon.
“You.” I pointed at him. “You betrayed your father . . . took his throne . . . tricked your siblings into becoming Revenants, then stripped your youngest brother of his memories and his power so that he could do your bidding as you waged war with the Ethereal plane. Am I right? It was you that caused the barriers to be raised. It was you that shut down communication with the Seraphim. You brought the heart of darkness.”
Revenant Page 25
