What I still couldn’t figure was Findlay’s motivation in this. Geoffrey, the minder that the vampires had sent with me on our mission to the Everglades, had told me that his repulsive sister had caught Findlay dealing in black market magic. I hadn’t had time to stop and consider what the straight-laced and moral stickler Findlay had been doing trying to barter on the black market. He’d attempted to bust me a number of times for doing the very same thing when searching for Cat’s cure.
“Why are you helping them?” I hissed. “Last I knew you hated them just as much as we did. So what is all this? Was it all for power? For glory? Do you really hate the demi-humans enough that you’re willing to help the vampires wipe them out?”
I jerked a thumb at the wolves, still pinned to the deck by Findlay’s power. I’d never realized he had enough magical stamina to subdue werewolves. Usually, when a creature had human-level intelligence it was nearly impossible to control them completely. Findlay was controlling four. Someone had been eating their magical Wheaties.
Findlay’s face was a mass of frown lines. He seemed to age before my very eyes, regret piling weight onto his already small frame.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Natalia.”
My skin erupted in goosebumps. He’d used my first name for the first time in years. That alone spoke volumes.
“Enlighten me then,” I pleaded. If I could be civil for a few minutes I might surprise him into releasing his control on the wolves.
In answer, Findlay knelt, heaving an attache case into its upright position. He kicked it across the deck toward me. It came to a stop inches from my foot.
“You want answers? They’re in there. Algerone Lamonia sent this little care package in case you showed up.”
I was expected. I hated the idea that we’d been outmaneuvered so thoroughly by the vamps. But my cooperation kept this little charade from becoming a bloodbath for my people. I’d promised Kaya we’d come back in one piece. I couldn’t get her brother killed on our first trip out.
I knelt and pressed the latches. The case sprung open and revealed a handful of newspaper clippings and a single DVD. I stared at it incredulously.
“Your boss is sending me home movies?” I shot at Ashby. “That’s rather weak, don’t you think?”
Ashby’s good humor wasn’t even dinged by my sarcasm.
He crossed over to Dom, who was pressed into the bulkhead by a crowd of vamps. A particularly eager blonde pressed herself to his chest, panting against his throat like she was dying to take a bite. Ashby shouldered her out of the way, to my relief. He wrenched the spear from Dom’s grip, narrowly avoiding the right hook that Dom aimed at his jaw.
If I’d been next to Dom, I would have kissed him for it. There was nothing I’d like to see more than Ashby losing a tooth or three.
Ashby weighed the spear in his hand, considering the weapon. “Crude, workmanship, but I expect it was the best those filthy canines could do on short notice.”
“You can’t kill me,” I said. “You don’t know how many times I died on the island. Three? Seven? What if I’m one death away from going supernova?”
“You make a fair point,” Ashby said, inclining his head. “I’ll just have to kill your pets instead.” He hefted the spear up on one shoulder and craned his neck to glance back at Findlay. “Line the mutts up, won’t you, Louis? I think it’s time we sent the upstarts a message. A little wolf-kebab will do nicely.”
Ice formed in my chest, freezing my lungs in place. It was difficult to breathe.
I whipped my head around to stare at the summoner. His face appeared more pinched than usual. His eyes closed for the briefest moments. The swallow against a wave of bile was audible and his mouth turned down in disgust.
“Findlay, you can’t do this,” I begged. “None of this is their fault.”
His eyes snapped open and he fixed me with a look of steely determination. “You think I have a choice? Close your eyes, Valdez. It’ll be over in a minute.”
Findlay threw his power out in another hot wave. It lapped at my aura like a surf and breezed harmlessly past me. The wolves responded to the magic with whimpers and snarls, but slowly, grudgingly the huge beasts formed a line of furry bodies on the deck. Gerd took the lead, head held high. I could practically hear his thoughts. If he was going to die, he wasn’t doing it crouched like a house pet on the deck of the vampire-infested ship.
No, no, no. I couldn’t let this happen. Not when there was a way to stop it.
Ashby drew his arm back with a grin. “Goodbye, mutts.”
He heaved the spear with superhuman strength, sending it hurtling toward the wolves. It was fast. I was faster.
I reached Gerd seconds before the flying projectile and pushed him out of the way. The shock of my sudden flight must have loosened Findlay’s control because the wolves behind him were able to crouch low to avoid it.
The spear split my breastbone in two with a sickening crack and bore through me out the other side. It might have continued straight through, had my back not hit the railing. My vertebrae rattled from the impact and at least one shattered beneath the battering of the metal bar.
My vision dimmed to a pinprick and the last thing I registered before I died again, was the hoarse sound of Dominic’s scream.
chapter
12
“BACK TO THE HELL CRATER again,” I muttered to myself, crunching through the crust of ash as quickly as I could. It had never been enough to escape Valerius, but hey, a girl could dream.
The vaporous fog that had choked me the last two times I’d been in this hellscape only extended about a mile past the crater. Beyond that was thick, moving darkness that pressed back against me like tar the further away I got.
I had the sense that it wasn’t just Valerius brooding down here.
“What is this place?” I wondered aloud. And why was I seeing it almost every time I died? I’d done my level best to balance out my karmic scale before I’d bit the big one. Surely I hadn’t done enough to land myself in the Judeo-Christian hell?
Something huge crashed into the earth to my right, eliciting a squeak from me. I scrambled to my left and only succeeded in running into Valerius’ burning left leg instead.
“Shit! Don’t you ever announce yourself?”
Valerius’ sigh sucked the darkness into a whirling vortex, briefly changing my view of the surroundings. In the distance, I could see mountains and a sky filled with stars. Then the darkness settled and blotted out my vision.
“What was that?” I hissed. “Where is this?”
“Mictlān,” Valerius responded, his voice reverberating eerily in the void.
“Mictlān,” I repeated rolling the word around on my tongue. I’d heard it somewhere before. No…I’d read it. There had been a reference to it in the text Lamonia had faxed me before offering me the contract. I’d never had a chance to read the full text or receive payment. The stingy undead bastard.
“That’s the underworld, right?”
“Correct.”
Oh boy, things just kept getting better and better. Aztec myth was bloody as a rule. I didn’t want to know what the afterlife looked like for most people.
“Why are you keeping me here? Aren’t I more useful alive than dead? Let’s go already.”
“Your body is not ready to receive you. You’d only cause more damage. You’ll be safe here until the vessel is restored.”
I shuddered. He was talking about my body like a broken mug that could be pieced together with superglue. I shoved my hands onto my hips, not sure if the demon could see me in the limited light available.
“Although if you gave me full control, we’d heal faster.”
“Forget it,” I glowered. “I’m not ending the world just so you can have a temper tantrum about your mother. We all have parental issues. Get over it.”
My mind flashed unwillingly to a much earlier time, when I too had burned with rage a
t the injustice of losing a parent. I tried to draw the shutters on that painful memory, but it reared its ugly head anyway.
I had one brief moment to recall bending over the closed oak casket, Cat tucked into my side. My father had been beaten beyond recognition and the coroner hadn’t allowed us to have an open-casket service. I hadn’t even seen the warm, leathery face of my father one last time before he’d been lowered into the ground.
My empathy for the thing ran so deep it scared me. But I didn’t get to end the world because of my issues either, so I stayed put, glaring up at the dark shadow towering over me, and the burning embers that passed for eyes.
The demon’s frustration with me was palpable. It seemed to take ages for the thing to put its anger into words I could fathom.
“The world has already ended five times, small one. A sixth will not matter.”
I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. I wished I’d paid more attention in mythology class when I was a kid. I was sure Cat would have known what it was talking about. Well, there was no changing the past. When I got the chance I’d drill Dom for the specifics.
“It will matter to the people living,” I shot back. “Wake me up, Valerius. I’m getting tired of this horse and pony show.”
The demon reached down a finger the size of a cinder block and pressed it into my forehead. Images seared through my brain, along with a name Valerius had uttered once before. Cipactli.
Forget a face that only a mother could love, this mother was something only their children could adore. The thing was vast, spanning leagues of seawater with its many limbs. Scaly and dark, it scythed the water, searching for food, always hungry for more. Hungry, hungry, always hungry, it swam the endless black void. To my horror, I saw that every joint on its body had an extra mouth.
My God. This thing looked like it could beat up Cthulhu for his lunch money.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Mother,” Valerius crooned. “We must wake her.”
The thing in my vision turned toward me and the weight of its hunger pressed me down, down, down into the black oblivion. A mouth full of teeth darted toward me and—
I bolted upright in bed, screaming.
My vision swam with horrified tears for a few seconds before I had a chance to blink them away. How the hell was I going to reconcile with Valerius? There was no way in hell I was waking that monster up from its eternal rest. It wouldn’t just end badly for the gods who’d wronged Cipactli and her children. The monster would eat everything and everyone. Did Valerius know and embrace that his mother would happily devour him as well when everyone else was dead?
A hand pressed urgently at my chest, trying to push me flat.
“Lay back down,” Bly insisted. “Your wound just closed. I don’t want you reopening it—”
“Where are we and how long was I out?” I snapped.
Cold radiated into my back, reminding me of the frigid chill of the primordial water. I took stock of my surroundings. The room resembled an infirmary. There were several beds lined along the wall, bolted down to the deck to keep them from sliding. There were no guards in the room with us but if I strained, I could hear the low drone of conversation on the other side of the barred door.
“Still aboard an ironclad,” she muttered. “A different one this time. After that vampire skewered you he had us escorted here and took off for the mainland.”
I frowned. Ashby had been set on slaughtering the wolves for sport. I didn’t imagine that he and the rest of his cohorts couldn’t have done it during my death interlude. They must have been scared I really would explode. We were probably on our way back to the island.
“What happened to Gerd and the other guy?” I asked, noticing our thinned numbers.
“After you died, Gerd took out two vamps before he was killed. Jacob jumped ship. With any luck he made it back to the island. The rest of us… we couldn’t leave you.”
I sighed, pulling the thick wool blanket over my head. We’d failed, spectacularly, and now I was locked up with my ex-boyfriend and a pair of rabid wolves. At least I could nap without Valerius murdering me in my sleep. A quick glance at the room told me there were no weapons. Even the furniture was welded down. Dominic shoved past Bly, towering over my bed with a glower that rivaled my late mother’s in intensity.
“What the hell was that Nat?” he hissed, seizing my shoulders in his broad hands. He shook me for emphasis. “Why did you do that?”
“I couldn’t let Ashby kill them,” I snapped. “What did you want me to do?”
“Enchant it, maybe? Catch it, snap it in half, something other than jumping in front of it?”
I batted his hands away with a scowl. My head was throbbing from the intensity of the imagery Valerius had shoved inside it. My brain was too full, stuffed to the breaking point. I couldn’t dredge up the energy I needed to argue with him.
“I wasn’t spoiled for choice, okay?” I muttered. “At least everyone is still alive.”
Dom’s eyes swept over me, lingering for a long moment on my left arm. I followed his gaze and grimaced.
Every time I died a new Nahuatl ideogram sunk into my skin, shimmering like a dark opal in the light available. I now had four interlinked marks stretching from my left breast onto my shoulder.
Seeing evidence of Valerius’ increasing hold made me want to scream. How much longer before the monster took me over and ended the world?
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” Dom agreed. “Something you should have thought about before dying again, huh?”
Anger rippled through me, hot and uncontrolled. I’m not sure what I’d have done if Dom hadn’t continued in that same infuriating tone.
“I wish you’d have told me that these appeared post-resurrection earlier,” he said. “I think we can use them to extrapolate what new powers you’ve gained.”
The statement stopped my anger dead in its tracks and I stared at him in disbelief. “You know what these mean? Why didn’t you say anything before? You’ve seen them since I was resurrected.”
He’s seen more than that. My cheeks flushed with heat as I recalled our first night on the island.
Dom shrugged one broad shoulder and chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I thought they might be tattoos. And no, I’m not a hundred percent confident in my translation, Nat. But I think I can get the gist of it. South and Central American languages aren’t really my wheelhouse. If you’d asked me to translate Egyptian…”
“Cliffnotes are better than nothing, Dom. What do they say?”
Dominic traced the first mark and I didn’t miss the way his eyes darkened when he ran a finger over the lush curve of my breast. “As near as I can tell, this means fire. Or burn. I’m not sure. But your first ability to manifest was the ability to heat things around you. So I think it’s safe to assume the first ability you gained is tied to this mark.”
His finger reluctantly trailed to the right, pausing on the mark that lay beneath my clavicle. He pushed my bloodstained bra strap aside to peer at it more closely. “And this one means darkness.”
“And the third?” I asked, voice rising in pitch as I realized what this meant. Finally, I had some sort of inkling of what my powers might have been without experimentation. Thus far all my powers had shown themselves when I was angry or scared. Explosions of uncontrolled emotion weren’t conducive to my saving-the-world plan.
Dom traced the next symbol and frowned. “Killing or…maybe blood? It has something to do with sacrifice, I think.”
Ah lovely, more blood. Just what I needed.
I frowned. “Well, that’s enlightening. What’s the last one say?”
His tongue darted out to lick his lips nervously. I squinted down at the ideogram and my stomach lurched. One didn’t have to be a genius to know what a skull usually translated to.
“Death,” I muttered.
I’d been so distracted by Dom’s revelation that I’d almost entir
ely tuned out the small squabble going on between the wolves.
“She can’t take it,” Bly hissed at Jay. “If you cared about her as much as you pretend, you wouldn’t force the issue.”
Glancing sideways I saw the pair of them struggling over the case that Findlay had kicked toward me. Frowning, I considered the thing. Findlay said it would contain all the answers I needed. It didn’t look like much. Worn and cracked, the cheap plastic looked like it had seen better days. Hell, the thing had peeling stickers on it in places. It looked as if it belonged to a kid, not a Trust representative. I didn’t see how it was going to illuminate much.
When she caught me looking, Bly removed her hands from the case quickly and shoved Jay to the side.
I squinted suspiciously at the pair of them. “What’s going on? I feel like I’ve missed something.”
“Nothing,” Bly said in a chipper tone. It was so unlike her usual pessimism I knew she had to be lying. Something weird was going on.
“She deserves to know,” Jay muttered under his breath.
“Shut up,” Bly hissed back.
“What?” I said, slinging my legs over the side of the bed. My head still felt like an overstuffed cotton jar, but I did my best to ignore it as I pushed to my feet.
Jay hesitated for a moment before offering me the case. “There’s a message in here from your sister. That little rat-faced summoner set up a DVD player in the corner so you could watch it.”
I twisted around and, sure enough, saw that a small entertainment center had been set up in our little cell.
“How courteous of him,” I drawled, not believing for a second that whatever he’d sent me was something I wanted to watch.
Still, the thought of hearing Cat’s voice again was too great a siren call to ignore.
Jay didn’t resist when I seized the case from him. His mouth thinned and worry drew lines around his eyes. Even so, he didn’t try to stop me when I crossed the room to the DVD player and small television set.
The case split open with a creak, revealing a padded interior. Inside was a single disc, laid out like an offering on the thick material. Grabbing the disc as gently as my newfound strength would allow, I popped it into the disc player and fiddled with the controls until the television turned on.
Agent of Magic Box Set Page 29
