Solomon's Seal

by Skyla Dawn Cameron

  ❇

  The dreary afternoon turned into a dreary evening.

  I’d returned to the living room and didn’t say anything about what I’d been doing, but my eyes were red from crying so the boys didn’t push regarding the lack of shower noises while I’d been gone. I sat and fought tangles in my hair, then worked it into a long French braid to hang down my back and out of my face. Had more bourbon. Talked idly with Dawson and Pru about royal afreet djinn, which as everyone had warned sounded pretty fucking unkillable. Prudence talked me into dinner and at least the peanut butter sandwich I wolfed down didn’t make me feel ill.

  At 7:18, Dick Moss texted me with an address.

  I stared at the message for about a minute and a half, fingers trembling around my phone, before I keyed in my thanks. He responded that he’d call but he was in a meeting and would talk to me later, and when I assured him there was no rush, I meant it—despite my gratitude. This stranger had come through over my father, and that tempered any previous irritation I had with him. But I truly could not talk then anyway.

  I had to move.

  Thomas and Pulaski were in the kitchen eating pizza. I sent a text to Denny across the room.

  It’s time.

  His phone pinged and he answered it, then glanced at me.

  I sent a similar message to Dawson to pass to Pru—no idea where her cell phone was now—except this time I included the address to Ashford’s place: in case I didn’t come back, she’d have to send the police somewhere and would need it, but I could trust she wouldn’t follow herself, unlike my ex. I followed it up with, Tell Pru don’t give it to Chase. A few moments later, she looked me, then Denny, then nodded.

  We were good to go, then.

  Pru rose and started for the kitchen, calling loudly over her shoulder, “Anyone want something?”

  Denny was already angling toward the back door. “We’re good, thanks.”

  I rose. Waited.

  Something crashed in the kitchen and I bolted around the corner, making a show of being concerned; Thomas had Pru’s arm as she struggled to stand, looking weak and faint.

  “My meds,” she gasped. “I’m so tired, and I forgot to take them—”

  “I’ll get them,” I offered lightly, backing up.

  Pulaski’s brows dropped into a deeper frown as he looked at me, immediately suspecting something was fishy. I started to say something, then my eyes purposely looked toward the back door, which Denny was already opening. My brows shot up, lips parted in surprise, and Pulaski took the bait, bowling past me to stop him.

  I didn’t want to throw him under the bus, of course. But I also didn’t want to worry about him while I was at Ashford’s, and a secondary distraction was the only way I’d get past the “guards” here.

  I backpedaled in a hurry.

  I ghosted down the hall, straight for the front door. My gun harness waited there, loaded and ready; I slipped it over my shoulder, tossed a long black coat overtop, pinched my boots under my arm, and silently eased the front door open. Denny was shouting at Pulaski at the back of the house and Thomas hadn’t left Pru yet. A glance over my shoulder revealed I hadn’t been caught, so I slipped outside and silently pulled the door closed behind me.

  The rain had eased a little but the pavement was cold and wet, and I sloshed through puddles as I raced for Denny’s black Cadillac Escalade. Pulaski still had my own car keys—he could follow, even if they didn’t have another vehicle stowed elsewhere. Once I popped open the door of the Escalade and stuffed my things inside, I pulled the knife from its sheath tied to my gun holster and punctured the two nearest tires of my own car. It would be money I didn’t have to fix later, but fuck it—I’d walk wherever I needed to go. The important thing was that they didn’t catch up to stop me.

  I cast the knife on the passenger seat, pushed the key in the ignition, and stepped on the accelerator in bare feet as I peeled out of the driveway. If they heard me, if they ran out the door to check on me, I didn’t know, didn’t see—my eyes were focused on the road ahead, gleaming in orange streetlight, and my destination on the outskirts of the city. The Seal of Solomon was, once again, tucked in my bra, and I was more than prepared to hand it to Ashford and beg for our lives if I had to.

  I’m coming, Em.

  34

  Freedom

  Ashford’s estate was a full-blown villa.

  The sprawling, three floor mansion branched out with various wings up front, sitting up a slightly inclined driveway I could see from the road that approached it. Garden lights shone up over white fresco and the textured roofs looked terracotta. Black gates lay open at the start of the driveway, no one out there to warn visitors away.

  He was most likely expecting me.

  The rain had completely stopped after a half hour of driving, though the tires spun through puddles on the way to the villa. I’d taken back roads to get there, then pulled over to the shoulder to slip on my boots, gun holster, and jacket before continuing on again, so I was ready to go. The driveway led straight for the house, past a dark, mowed lawn and artfully sculpted bushes. The place was very...proper. Very put together. Very formal, which shouldn’t’ve surprised me regarding Ashford, but I expected more of a villain lair, not a house I’d feel totally at home in. Of course, I’d known my share of privileged monsters and wealthy bad guys; I supposed I was merely used to a different sort of evil, like the kind who usually voted Conservative.

  I parked Denny’s Escalade in front of the house and climbed out with trepidation.

  Though I braced, no one darted out to meet or attack me. My gaze tracked the house—there were windows to climb through, no doubt multiple doors, but the main entrance lay ahead, lit and inviting. If he was expecting me to somehow find him, there was no sense in being stealthy.

  I climbed up the handful of wide, shallow steps, my footfalls quick and tapping on the cobblestone. Though my long coat covered my guns, I kept my hands at my side ready to draw. Potted plants sat tall, ominous on either side of the massive front doors. The knocker on each door was the face of a lion, and I skipped grasping the ring in their mouths, instead going straight for the handle.

  The door I tried opened easily. It swung wide and I stared, looking for guards or something.

  But it wasn’t within I had to worry about; a hand grabbed my forearm outside.

  I swung around, broke the hold immediately, and followed up with a strike to my attacker’s nose.

  Pulaski staggered back, cupping his face against the mess of blood my hammerfist had caused and mumbled something quite uncomplimentary. Thomas was at my other side.

  Great.

  “So you don’t know where Ashford lives?” I asked coolly, eyeing them and tensing for a fight should they try to grab me again.

  “We don’t. Didn’t.” Thomas had his hands splayed. “But we were tapped into your phone messages and had a car around the block.”

  “And took the main roads,” Pulaski added, voice muffled behind his hands.

  Son of a bitch. “I will shoot you both before I let you take me anywhere.”

  They exchanged glances. Finally Thomas turned to me with a sigh. “Backup? It’s best if we stay out of view anyway.”

  That, I could work with. I nodded. “Stay the hell behind me. Like, don’t enter a room until after I’ve been through it or I’ve signaled you—I don’t want him knowing I have help.”

  “What’s the signal?” Pulaski asked, his sleeve soaking up the blood from his nostrils now.

  “Probably me screaming. Em’s gotta be the focus—if you can, grab her and run like hell.” I turned back to the open front door, took a breath, and forced a step inside before I could talk myself into going in another direction, with the weight of two agents at my back.

  The foyer was open concept, floor marble, and two wide white staircases forty feet ahead curved and marched upward. Between them was a massive white arch and long burgundy runner than traced a path into a room beyond. Light flickered fro
m sconces and the chandelier above; past the archway ahead flashed flames in darkness, likely—hopefully—from a fireplace and not Ashford playing pyro again.

  Ashford had said—and Pru confirmed—that he’d had Em in his drawing room. Halls branched left and right, and with just the front of the villa as an example, I could be searching for hours, even with help from the others. And he could’ve moved her. Briefly I abandoned the plan to run room to room, hoping to get out before being caught, and instead marched forward. Carpet muffled my steps as I passed the staircases, though the fluttering of my pulse in my ears would’ve drowned it out anyway.

  Gooseflesh prickled my skin under my jacket, my heart sped. I glanced from side to side as I walked, but nothing moved around me, the place eerily still. The villa brought to mind Kadhim cave system, vast and foreboding; if dragons had popped out, I wouldn’t’ve blinked at all. True to their word, Pulaski and Thomas kept well behind, following my lead. I figured that would last about as long until West found out and yelled at them, but for now I didn’t object to having them at my back.

  I stepped through the archway, down another short corridor. Beyond, a massive room opened up, making it a good eighty feet long, half that wide, and ceiling going up three stories. Mirrored fireplaces on either side of me flickered flames against the darkness; otherwise only sconces and candles lit the expansive room.

  Furniture was relegated to the walls, antique divans, end tables, and potted plants aplenty; all were behind columns and shadowed. While the front of the villa was contemporary and bright, this was old world and lush, with dark wood and burgundy curtains over massive windows. Over tapestry-flanked fireplaces sat decorative scimitars in scabbards. Stairs ran along the back, curving like the ones in the foyer and leading to a mezzanine level that rounded the room, dark closed doors beyond.

  Movement caught my attention and I stopped to watch; Ashford walked along the second level on my left, strolling calmly with his hands knotted behind his back, head slightly bowed. His suit was again black, pressed, and probably not the one he’d been wearing while Kent House burned. He turned at the back of the room, went down steps to a middle landing, then down the stairs that led to the ground floor, and started forward. No hint of injury from the fire marred him; as he lifted his head and stared straight ahead at me, I saw nothing that even suggested burns.

  Ashford stopped across the room from me, holding my stare. I didn’t flinch, didn’t breathe, and certainly didn’t reach for my guns—not yet. No, I waited. He hadn’t looked over my shoulders, so with any luck the PTI agents were keeping well out of sight.

  “You have that look of knowledge now, Miss Talbot,” Ashford said. “It’s in your eyes. It’s aged you.”

  My face was also scraped and black and blue which no doubt tacked on a few years, but I caught his drift. “Yet I don’t think I’m as old as you, Musa.”

  “I have not used that name in a very, very long time.”

  I’ll bet.

  “Now do we need to have a repeat of our earlier discussion?”

  I swallowed and hoped like hell I could actually drag some confident-sounding words out. “No. No games. I just want my daughter—you can have the Seal, I’m not a part of this.”

  “Then hand it over unless you’d prefer I pluck it from your corpse.”

  If he was truly sure I wore it currently, I figured he’d murder me on the spot without a doubt. What stayed his hand was likely the possibility of it being missing and my death cutting off his chance to find it.

  I pushed. “Let me see Emaleth is okay first.”

  “Very well.” He unclasped his hands, let his right hang at his side while his left lifted slightly, gesturing.

  To my right, two figures stepped out of the shadows. Em was in her pink unicorn pajamas, probably what she’d been wearing when they grabbed her and Pru at night. Her eyes were wide, long brown hair hung disheveled, but she looked unharmed.

  She wouldn’t remain that way for long; the silver face of a long-bladed knife was inches from her throat, though at least out of her line of vision. I followed the hand that held it, up the arm in a dark shirt, past broad shoulders to a face I was quite familiar with.

  West’s eyes were dark in the low light, steady, face expressionless as he threatened my daughter. My chest heaved, rage rising at the sight, and it took everything in me not to give in and pull out my guns and put a hole in his fucking head on the spot.

  He was an operative, they claimed. Undercover. One of the good guys. He’d tried to keep me from giving the Seal to Ashford at every turn, and the man before me was admittedly a bad guy, so that put a check in West’s favor. He does his best given how he was raised, but he doesn’t see the world as you or I do, Mr. Rolph had said. West didn’t have mere issues, he had subscriptions.

  And being a white hat didn’t mean being virtuous; I wouldn’t trust Emaleth’s life in his hands for a second.

  “The Seal,” Ashford said calmly.

  My gaze flickered to him for a moment, then back to West. Buttons gave the slightest shake of his head—it could barely be considered a movement, but his eyes widened as well. No. No, don’t give Ashford the Seal. No, trust that despite the position he had my baby girl in, West wouldn’t harm her.

  Like if I just did everything I was supposed to for him, we could walk out of here alive.

  I glanced down at Em. No, I’d take my motherfucking chances with the madman on my own. I’d leapt in the mouth of a dragon three days ago; surely I could take a guy in Armani.

  I slowly raised my hand and pulled out the small black satchel tucked under my shirt, between my bra and skin. The ring slid out easily, pinched between my index finger and thumb, and I let the satchel fall. I’d removed the fake pieces with acetone just as West had suggested and there was no trace of the glue now, just the shining face of brass and gemstones.

  “Do hold up your end of the bargain now.” Ashford sounded weary, of all things. Not remotely homicidal, just as tired as his apparent age suggested. Three thousand years trapped here, supposedly, which raised more questions I wasn’t ready to consider yet. I didn’t care, damn it, not about the Pulse, not about this other world—I just wanted my kid back.

  “Give me my daughter first and I’ll toss it to you. It’s not like I have anyone from the Solomonic Dynasty here. I can’t use it to hurt—”

  “That ring is my freedom.”

  He took a few slow, steady steps forward; I eased back on instinct.

  “This isn’t the Disney version, Miss Talbot. We don’t sing a song and ride away on a carpet at the end. Thousands of years of confinement is something you can’t even comprehend and you will hand me my freedom or I will take it.”

  I squeezed the ring and it flared hotly between my fingertips in warning.

  My gaze darted between Ashford and West. This was between them, not me. Not my fight. A deep breath wasn’t helping; my heart pounded at a jackhammer pace, thumping hard against my ribcage like it wanted out. The agents still hadn’t entered—perhaps they waited just outside, perhaps they were finding another way to watch the room. Regardless, though the distraction would be nice, I still preferred it seeming as if I was alone.

  For a final time, I met West’s eyes, and he continued to give me the warning stare without actually moving. But he had to know how this would go—had to if he had received any kind of briefing on me, or done any kind of research, which he seemed to have done.

  Resolved, I looked at Ashford, rolled my shoulder back, and tossed the ring toward him.

  35

  Curse of the Pulse-Born

  The ring flew in a wide arc, spinning mid-air. Ashford’s eyes tracked it. So did West’s.

  I drew both guns at once; my focus was on the smaller target to my left, pointed at the Seal, while my right aimed at West. There was no hesitation as I squeezed both triggers.

  One bullet pinged the ring, spun it far to the left and tossed it somewhere in the shadows, because I have one hell of an aim wit
h my pistols.

  The second popped West; he jerked back, blood spraying dark across the floor, and the knife clattered at his feet.

  I didn’t wait to see where the ring landed, where I’d hit West—nothing. Instead I holstered my guns and beat across the floor for Em.

  She stood shaking for a moment, trembling like she was about to fall apart and hyperventilate, then she scrambled away from West and raced toward me barefoot, tears freely falling, her tangled hair trailing behind her. She didn’t get far as I was already there, crouching, ready as she jumped and landed hard in my arms. I staggered back on my heels but held her tight. Though she sobbed in my ear, I steeled my heart to it—I didn’t have time to break down. Her knees dug into my hips, arms tightened around my neck until I could scarcely breathe but I didn’t care, didn’t tell her to let up—I was too happy to have her in my arms again.

  “You need to run to the door, baby,” I said against her hair. “Run real fast.”

  “Mommy—”

  “I’ll be right behind you.” But I need to cover our exit. “Don’t look back, just run.”

  She reluctantly let me go and the moment her feet touched down, I urged her forward. I rose again on weary legs and looked back at West.

  I’d hit his chest, the side opposite his heart. The 9mm hole wasn’t big but the tear in his shirt leaked blood. He blinked up at me and shifted, once again showing a resilience few were capable of even though I’d weakened him.

  I cocked a brow. “Coming with us, Buttons?”

  He grumbled something and didn’t move; I refused to wait, instead turning to run.

  Em raced ahead, through the archway for the hall, and squealed as someone swooped down and grabbed her.

  I had both guns aimed, fingers on the triggers, but it was Thomas who scooped her up. She peered back at me with frightened eyes but I gestured for the exit. “He’ll help, just keep going.”

  She didn’t fight him, just went with it as Thomas started in the opposite direction.

  I hadn’t gone three steps when Thomas cried out and collapsed.