The wind picked up along the ridge, and I shivered as it cooled the sweat on my skin. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“They’ve already loaded the boat, and they got the queen bee of the sea down there,” Tasha whispered. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Part of me was surprised that she was still tagging along, trying to make herself useful. She’d done what the contract demanded of her, and if Jenni had been in a position to honor it, Tasha could have punched her ticket by now and called it a night.
Maalik’s brow furrowed and he sent a desperate look up at the sky before dragging his hands down his face.
“That thingamabob that Warren gave you,” Kevin said, pointing at my wrist. “Isn’t it supposed to suck up souls or something?”
I gave him a horrified look. “You are not seriously suggesting I try this thing out right now,” I hissed.
“It’s either that or we wait to see if the guard can make it here in time before the sirens suck all those souls down the drain and off to the land of wherever.”
Maalik blew out an anxious breath. “It’s worth a shot. I’ll drop you on the boat to do your—whatever.” He nodded at the gauntlet as I rolled up my sleeve.
Kevin pulled an arrow from his quiver. “If they try to open a portal, I’ll create a diversion.”
“What about me?” Tasha asked, waving the switchblade around as if to remind us she had procured a weapon and had done us the favor of not slitting our throats with it.
Maalik’s jaw flexed as uncertainty and raging impatience warping his features. “Find their trail through the woods and see if you can stall them from loading the remailing souls,” he said. Then he scooped me up under the arms, not at all as gently as he’d handled Tasha, and yanked me into the air before anyone could protest the plan.
I wanted to remind him again that I was captain of this fancy new unit, however short-lived it might be, but the wind was crueler away from the shelter of the trees. It filled my mouth and nose, stealing my breath and fueling the panic I was already battling from being consumed by the absolute darkness. Up in the naked sky above the sea, there was nothing for the embers in Maalik’s eyes to illuminate.
I didn’t find relief until we dipped under the cliff. The wind whistled through the shallow cave, rocking a small ferryboat in the tide, its outline dimly lit by a lantern hanging from the balcony of the stern cabin. If it didn’t depart soon, the roof of the boat would reach the underside of the cliff and it would be trapped there, while everyone inside died a slow, agonizing death.
I spotted a siren in the water, her green hair fanning out behind her, bleeding into the inky shadow of the sea. And then a second and a third appeared. They moved through the water like snakes, slithering just beneath the surface. I lost sight of them as Maalik and I touched down on the deck of the boat.
It was empty, and I had a despairing feeling that we’d just walked into a trap, until the hatch opened and a barb-tailed demon crawled out. He didn’t see us at first, giving us his back as he walked toward the opposite railing.
He was smaller than the doorman but better built, and his attire suggested that he was from a more privileged caste than the desperate, downtrodden circles the rebels liked to recruit from. The boat was probably his, and the doorman and everyone else were likely on his payroll. If the ghost market had a top dog, my money was on him.
“All set,” he called to the sirens in the water. “Anchors aweigh.”
The boat rocked suddenly, and I was thrown forward, my axe clanking against the deck floor. Maalik was saved by his wings, lifting a few feet in the air rather than kissing the deck like I had.
“Check below. I’ll take care of this one,” he said as the demon spun around to face us, hissing and spitting his surprise.
The barbed tail seemed like child’s play now. The thing had three mouths and an overgrowth of eyes that consumed the headspace where most would expect to find hair. I was more than happy to let Maalik have him.
I grabbed my axe and crawled across the deck on my hands and knees as the boat pitched again, sliding me across the slick boards and to the hatch as if it were a home plate. I fell through feet first, missed the ladder entirely, and landed on my side with an undignified oomph.
Twenty souls were chained around the inside cabin wall. The shackles were medieval, as if they’d been salvaged from a castle dungeon. The fact that I wouldn’t be able to cut them free with my axe sent a wave of dread through me, but then I remembered Warren’s soul gauntlet. Maybe I wouldn’t have to get my lumberjack on after all. There was only one way to find out.
I rushed over to the nearest soul and held up the gauntlet, trying to decide if it mattered where I positioned the thing. The pamphlet hadn’t shown a diagram. I’d have to put that down in my notes for Warren. In the meantime, I opted for trial and error, pressing the dome on the cuff to the soul’s shoulder. When nothing extraordinary happened immediately, I moved the dome around, rubbing it over his face and chest.
The soul’s patience wasn’t much better than my own. His mouth twisted with annoyance, as if having me feel him up was somehow worse than being chained to the wall. Before he could say anything, the gauntlet whirred to life, and the soul turned a pale shade of blue. His features blurred, dissolving into a cloud of shrinking soul matter that was quickly sucked inside the dome.
“Ha ha!” I cheered triumphantly, while the remaining souls exploded into full-blown hysteria. “It’s okay,” I shouted. “I’m one of the good guys, really.” My disclaimer was poorly timed, and no one seemed to hear it.
I vowed to be more considerate in the future and moved on to the next soul, not wanting to be caught on the boat when Eurynome and her minions decided it was time to split. I only paused once, when I came across Jai Ling tucked away in the far corner. She was the only soul who didn’t scream in my face.
“Is Meng okay?” she asked, completely ignoring her own predicament.
I grinned and kissed the top of her head. “She will be now.” I touched the dome of the gauntlet to her arm.
The gauntlet grew heavier and hotter with each soul it consumed, and I remembered the eight-soul capacity warning only after I’d snapped up all twenty in the cabin. I was imagining Warren’s surprise at that revelation when a loud thump sounded on the deck above. I wondered how Maalik was faring and decided maybe it was time to lend him a hand with Captain Eyeballs.
As I climbed up the ladder to the hatch, an arrow whistled past my cheek and stuck in the deck floor a few feet ahead. I glanced up to find the culprit and realized that the boat had made it out past the ridge. Two nephilim guards hovered above the tree line. They manned a spotlight as wide around as a hula hoop, aiming it at the boat’s deck where I had just emerged. My eyes watered and I lifted a hand up to shield my face from the blinding light.
Kevin waved to me from the peak of a cliff, his bow in his other hand. “Sorry,” he shouted before stringing another arrow.
I huffed and hooked my axe on the hatch opening, using it to pull myself the rest of the way out. The gauntlet felt like a lead weight, and my shoulder pinched whenever I allowed my hand to rest at my side.
“Maalik?” I leaned over the deck railing and scanned the water for the sirens.
The boat was spinning, making me dizzy as it sped faster and faster. The spotlight flickered across my vision, blurring until I began to wonder if maybe I was at a rave and someone had slipped something in my drink. Was any of this real?
“Maalik!” I shouted and clutched my axe to my chest, grasping the railing with the hand rendered feeble by the gauntlet.
The stern of the boat tipped up in the air, and the bow dipped into the sea where a whirlpool had begun to form. Eurynome, the golden-tailed mermaid goddess and former rebel general, rose out of the funnel’s depths. Her pale hands beckoned the boat closer, as if pulling it along by an invisible rope.
My legs trembled, but I did my best to stay upright against the steep incline. I tucked one
foot between a pair of spindles along the railing and twisted my body, throwing my axe in a wild arc at the deck floor that was quickly tilting up into a wall at my back. My blade wedged between two boards, offering meager leverage that I already knew wouldn’t last.
Eurynome’s eyes met mine, and she smiled wickedly. “Come along, little reaper. I’m sure we can sell you too.”
My stomach churned and I couldn’t find my next breath. Everything bled together until all I could make out was Eurynome’s Cheshire cat grin and the distorted planks bending at an awkward angle toward the water.
Chapter 24
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” —Albert Camus
The sea rose slowly around me as Eurynome pulled the boat deeper into the whirlpool, and just when I thought we’d passed the point of no return, a flaming arrow hissed through the air, sinking perfectly in the pit of Eurynome’s throat. The boat jerked, tipping upright violently.
I tried to hold tight to my axe, but the deck floor splintered as the blade tore free, the handle ripping from my fingers with bruising force. I was flung out over the water, away from the glow of the spotlight and into the shadows, where I was sure the sirens waited to drown me.
Suspended over the sea, holding my breath and waiting to meet my watery end, I had a few final thoughts. They weren’t very coherent or organized, but that hardly seemed to matter at this point.
The first of these was that Kevin was one hell of a shot. I was quite proud of him, and I was sorry that I wouldn’t get the chance to express that more eloquently, his intimacy issues be dammed.
My second thought was that I had no less than twenty high-priority souls attached to my wrist, including Jai Ling. Maybe the guard could drag the coast and retrieve the gauntlet in the morning. I was pretty sure the three-hour maximum was as modest a guesstimate as the eight-soul capacity.
My hand felt like it was made of titanium and on fire. If there was a silver lining to be had in this moment, it was that the sea might just be cold enough to provide a sliver of relief before I up and died.
A third thought was on its way to me when a loud buzzing filled my ears. A swarm of flies circled my body, and I felt the sea spray my cheek. My fingers broke the surface for a second as the flies struggled to lift me away from the water. They concentrated themselves across my back and under my knees, and as the ridge came into view beneath us, Bub materialized, cradling me in his arms.
He set me down on the ledge with a strained grunt and gasped to find his next breath. “What have I been feeding you?”
“It’s this, not my ass,” I said, clumsily holding up my numb hand and the gauntlet.
Bub stared at me a moment, his amusement at our post-near-death conversation lighting his face. “Ready to skip town yet, love?”
“I want my cookie first,” I said, only half teasing.
A soft laugh whispered past his lips, and then he tilted his ear up, as if he could hear something I couldn’t. “I don’t have a cookie, but my tiny troops did retrieve this.”
Something sparkled in the dark, reflecting the traces of light that slipped through the trees as the Nephilim Guard filled the ridge further up from our little nook. The buzzing swarm parted before me, revealing my axe.
It was better than a cookie. I looped the strap over my shoulder and wobbled against the uneven weight of the axe, grinning even though I felt like I’d just had my ass kicked six ways to Sunday.
Someone shouted my name, and Bub snuck a kiss before taking wing again, dissolved into his swarm and scattering through the dark woods behind me.
“I’m here,” I yelled to the guards fluttering overhead.
Abe dropped down through the treetops and led me out of the woods to the clearing where the guard had gathered up the demons in league with Eurynome, including the extra mouthy one Maalik had tangled with on the boat.
Several sirens floated face down in the sea, arrows sticking out of their backs and blood staining the water around them like tar. It was a gruesome sight, and I imagined a necessary outcome after Eurynome bit the big one. Kevin’s steady bow was probably the only reason the guard hadn’t been sung off the cliff en mass.
An uproar on land drew my attention back to the ridge. Two nephilim guards dragged Tasha away while Jenni watched impassively.
“I have immunity!” Tasha shrieked. Her wild eyes found me and she thrashed against the guards. “Tell them. Tell them, Lana!”
I shivered and went to stand beside Jenni. I’d known the contract was a joke, but I hadn’t really expected the punchline to come so soon. The shock of it sent a jolt of guilt through me, but what could I do that wouldn’t put me in the cell next to Tasha’s?
“Where’s Maalik?” I asked as we watched Tasha and the guards disappear through the trees, heading back into the city.
“Meng’s.” Jenni sighed. “He broke a wing.”
“Well, I guess I can forgive him then.”
“How’d you manage to get off that boat? I didn’t see any guards out that far.” Jenni gave me a knowing frown.
I avoided her question by pressing the little button on the inside edge of the gauntlet, and the outer dome sprang open. The dial inside had melted, filling the cartoony meter with skunky, black plastic. Warren was going to kill me. I tried to remember how the thing worked and was rewarded with a squeal from one of the guards when I managed to press the right lever inside the gadget.
Blue soul matter spilled out of the smoking dome, dropping into puddles at my feet. They grew, spreading out across the ridge as they stretched and formed into humanoid shapes, slowly reclaiming their features until they were whole again.
Jenni’s eyes latched onto the gauntlet. I could see her wheels turning. The device’s potential for general harvesting wasn’t lost on me either. The future of Reapers Inc. was about to get interesting.
As the souls reoriented themselves, the Nephilim Guard made the rounds and checked them against their database. I was too tired to math, but I didn’t need a head count to know this wasn’t everyone on the list. For starters, I hadn’t come across Ruth Summerdale.
“What’s going to happen to Tasha?” I asked Jenni.
“That’s up to the council now.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “She followed through on her end of the deal. Went above and beyond, actually.”
Jenni gave me a tired smile. “Go home, Lana. It’s late, and you have a meeting with the council tomorrow afternoon.”
I shuddered and tucked my aching hand against my stomach as I turned to gape at her. “They’re not really going to go through with this ruling bullshit after tonight, are they?”
Jenni pressed her lips together, her smile looking less reassuring. “Go home,” she repeated. “Get some sleep. We’ll sort all of this out tomorrow.”
I left the ridge and followed the path the guards had tromped through the woods, thinking maybe Tasha wasn’t the only one who had been screwed. At least she was going down kicking and screaming.
“Wait up!” Kevin cut through the woods and ran to join me. “What happened to Maalik and Tasha?”
My shoulders squared. Explaining the backstabbing scheme to my apprentice hadn’t been part of the plan. “Maalik is at Meng’s. Something took a bite out of him,” I said, hoping that would buy some time while I figured out what to say about Tasha.
“I saw! It was pretty amazing. Maalik had that demon by the tail, like, actually by the tail.” Kevin’s breath hitched as he skipped along beside me. “He lit him up like a sparkler, but the guy jumped on his back and tried to rip his wings off. That’s when the guard showed up and the sea went all spin cycle. I lost sight of the battle when I moved to find higher ground. My arrows couldn’t reach where the boat had drifted out to.”
“Great shooting, by the way.” I slapped his back and then wrapped my arm around his shoulders, giving him a squeeze.
Kevin’s face flushed. “I almost
hit you.”
“Yeah, but you did hit Eurynome, thereby saving my ass, thereby earning my forgiveness, no apology needed.”
“Where’s Tasha?” he asked, scanning the grocery store parking lot as we exited the woods.
I sighed and looked down at the gauntlet on my wrist. It felt lighter now, like aluminum foil, and I had a hard time believing that it was the same burning weight I’d endured just a few moments before.
Kevin glanced over his shoulder, back toward the trail parting the woods. “Did she survive the battle?”
“I don’t know yet.” I crossed Westwood Drive and entered the travel booth on the corner, slipping a coin in the dash as Kevin joined me. The perplexed look hadn’t left his face, but he didn’t ask any more questions.
The booth glass went opaque, lights streaking through it in some mathematical, black magic sequence. When it cleared, Holly House waited across the street. A beam of florescent light stretched out across the front garden, coming from the parking garage, where Warren waited. His wings twitched nervously as I crossed the lawn.
“I’ll see you upstairs,” Kevin said, waving to Warren before he punched in his code at the front door.
“Well?” Warren asked eagerly, rubbing his hands together as he eyeballed the gauntlet.
“I can’t get it off.” I held my hand out to him, giving it a shake when he didn’t move as fast as I wanted him to. My wrist was itching something fierce.
Warren fingered along the outer rim of the cuff, pinching my skin a time or two before he finally found the release button. The gauntlet popped open with an audible click, exposing my blistered flesh underneath. I glared at Warren as he blubbered apologetically.
“I’ll add a layer of insulating foam to future models for more comfortable wear,” he said, turning the gauntlet over in his hand to inspect the soul dome. When the meter cover popped open, he gasped at the melted inner workings.
“Might want to consider more durable parts too.” I gave him a sheepish smile.
Ghost Market (Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. Book 6) Page 16
