by Jayne Faith
My reaper’s blade severed the gossamer strand, and the woman’s soul departed.
The knife disappeared from my hand, and I turned to look out at the mist-shrouded view. Something different called to me since the pull of the unreaped souls was gone. This realm had its own ley lines, veins of powerful magic that ran through the ground, and the sense of it pulsed through my veins. When I’d first touched the silver ley line magic of the in-between, it had rushed into me in a torrent I couldn’t control, and it had nearly killed me. I could channel it in manageable amounts, but doing so came at a price. Humans weren’t supposed to be able to use it, and every time I did, it brought searing pain and gave my brain a beating, increasing my risk of sudden death. I hadn’t touched the silver magic in many days, but I assumed I’d have to call upon it when I located my brother.
I went back to the first floor and then released my connection with the in-between, passing back into the land of the living and regaining my normal mortal form.
Barnes and Lagatuda were still waiting, but they weren’t the only ones left on site. I recognized Johnny Beemer’s Mustang parked next to the cruiser.
Ugh. Running into an ex, always a great way to end the night.
With a stifled sigh, I trudged away from the construction as he stepped out and slammed the driver door closed. I thought his gaze flicked my way, but he was too distant and it was too dark for me to read his expression.
By the time I’d joined the detectives, Johnny had retrieved a black case from the trunk of his car. I knew it contained one of his gadgets. Though not a magic user himself, he had a slew of specialized equipment that could detect various supernatural phenomena. He was in high demand as a freelancer, and I supposed it was only a matter of time before we ran into each other on a job.
Barnes stepped forward. “Everything go okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Three souls departed. The kid, a man, and a woman.”
She turned her head, her blond ponytail swinging over her shoulder, to watch Johnny approach. “We’ll just verify that the site is clear, and then you can go.”
Awesome, she’d called in my ex-boyfriend to check my work. I shoved my fists deep into my coat pockets. I knew his presence wasn’t anything personal, but it was still annoying. Johnny and I hadn’t split on friendly terms.
“Hi, Ella,” Johnny said, his voice low and tone chilly. His gaze skipped to me and then beyond to the construction site.
“Hello, Johnny.” I managed to sound friendly, I thought, but his face remained hard.
He wasn’t really a bad guy. We just kind of sucked as a couple.
He set his case on the ground, opened it, and removed a souped-up tablet that had extra little doohickies and wires attached it. Already focused on his task, he moved off toward the building.
I turned to the detectives, my thoughts already jumping back to my meager bank balance. “I don’t suppose you know of any more jobs I might be suited for, off the top of your head?”
Lagatuda, a tall man dressed in one of his many nearly identical suits, gave me a faint smile of sympathy. He’d taken an interest in my best friend Deb, who was pregnant, nearly divorced, and living with me in my tiny apartment, and knew that she and I were a bit financially challenged at the moment.
“You know I don’t have the authority to take you under contract,” Barnes said. “You have to go through the formal application process.”
I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. Did she always have to be such a hard ass? It was so incongruent with her appearance—she looked like a perky little former high school cheerleading captain—but maybe that was part of why she felt she had to act the way she did.
“I do know that,” I said patiently. “I was just wondering if you might have heard of anything coming through.”
“Let’s get the paperwork on this one finished, and then we’ll see,” she said.
She turned her attention to Johnny, and Lagatuda shot me a wide-eyed look of exasperation over her head. I pulled in my lips and bit down to keep from snorting a laugh. Maybe he was just taking my side because he had a crush on Deb, but either way, he was a lot easier to deal with than Barnes and probably my greatest ally at SC.
While we waited for Johnny, I tuned into my necro senses. I’d become much more skilled at commanding minor demons, the bat-like creatures that occasionally spilled through rips. My necromancy gave me the ability to penetrate their minds, control them, and see through their eyes. Rogan had been able to control multiple arch-demons at once, but I didn’t yet have the skill to penetrate the mind of even one of them. Seemed to be the story of my life lately: plenty of abilities, but not enough skill or experience to take full advantage of them.
After Damien had stolen Evan, I’d sent minor demons out to scour the city but had found no trace of my former partner or my brother. Setting up minor demons as lookouts was like expecting to identify a terrorist by monitoring only a handful of random security cameras, because I’d learned when Damien disappeared with Evan that the newly made mage had the ability to teleport. He literally could be anywhere at any time. But I’d had to do something, even if it was about as useful as screaming into the wind.
My fingers twitched with impatience as I checked in with each of my demon minions. If any of them had spotted Damien, I would have known, but I couldn’t help rotating my awareness around to each creature. It’d almost become a nervous tic.
I knew it was unlikely I’d find my brother on my own. That was why I’d had to turn to Phillip Zarella, the powerful but psychotic necromancer who’d been in hiding ever since he’d faked his own death. Zarella had his own reasons for wanting to get Evan back, but I’d worry about that once we’d recovered my brother.
Johnny finished his scan of the site and came back to where we stood.
He gave me an approving nod. “The site is clear of unreaped souls,” he said. “No trace of active rip activity anymore, either.”
“Fabulous,” Barnes said. “We’ll wrap this up on our end.”
“When can I expect payment?” I asked.
She shot me an irritated look. “What, do you think I’m in charge of accounting, too?”
I raised my palms, giving her an innocent, wide-eyed look. “Just asking.”
“Within ten business days,” Lagatuda supplied, taking pity on me.
“Thank you.” I gave him a pointedly sweet smile and then turned my exaggerated pleasantness onto Barnes. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
I wheeled around and walked swiftly toward my truck, suddenly feeling drained. It sapped a lot of energy to have to suck up to someone like Barnes.
In my pickup, I passed a hand over my tired eyes and then started the engine. Lulled by the heat blasting through the vents once the engine was finally warm, I went on autopilot as I drove toward home. It was late, and I wanted my bed.
A few blocks from my apartment, my phone began vibrating and chirping insistently on the passenger seat. I picked it up, wondering who could be contacting me at that hour. When I saw the name on the message, my fatigue fled.
It was the code name Phillip Zarella used. That meant he had news about Damien.
Chapter 3
ZARELLA CONTACTED ME using burner phones, so the number was never the same. But the name was one he’d picked, an unusual one so that I’d know it was him.
Meet me in your back yard when you arrive at home. –Alois
A shiver skittered up my spine. Zarella himself wouldn’t be waiting at my apartment. It would be one of the zombies he commanded. As a powerful and practiced necromancer, he could drive zombie minds and use them as his eyes, ears, and voice. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d carried on a conversation with him as he used one of his zombies as a ventriloquist dummy, but it wasn’t something I’d ever be totally easy with.
I steered through the streets of Boise’s North End, a neighborhood of sought-after pristine old homes, houses converted to businesses or apartments like my building,
and a few ramshackle places that hadn’t been kept up. As expected, the windows of my apartment were dark. It was way past Deb’s bedtime—hell, it was past my bedtime—so I parked at the curb, killed the engine, and went around to the back so I wouldn’t disturb her.
When I opened the gate, I spotted a too-still figure sitting in one of my deck chairs. Trying not to cringe, I closed the latch and approached the zombie. The area was saturated with the burnt sage smell of the strong magic that kept the rot at bay and covered the smell of a body that was animated, but not exactly alive anymore. Through the scent of the magic, there was an undertone of something wild and musky-smelling that I tried my best to ignore.
I swallowed hard as the figure stood in an almost-natural movement. Zarella had sent this zombie before—a lanky olive-skinned man. I pulled my jacket tighter around me.
The zombie’s mouth opened. “Ella, so good to see you,” he intoned. It was Zarella speaking through the creature’s throat.
The master necromancer was skilled, the movements of the jaw and mouth nearly smooth enough to be mistaken for a live human.
“Alois,” I said. I stood a few feet off, farther away than was socially acceptable in normal situations. But I wasn’t concerned with offending Zarella, and the zombie sure as hell didn’t care. “You have news?”
There was faint scratching at the back door, and Loki, my hellhound-labradoodle let out a soft whine. I silently willed him to stay quiet. The last thing I needed was to alert my neighbors that there was a zombie in the yard. Victims of the NECR2 virus, which caused zombieism, were supposed to be euthanized. The creature I was talking to wasn’t supposed to be roaming around.
“I do. I have located Damien.”
My heart skipped a beat. “What about Evan?”
“He hasn’t been sighted, but I assume he is nearby.”
“Where’s Damien?”
The zombie paused. “There is the matter of—”
“What, payment?” I cut in. “You know I have no money.”
I hadn’t expected Zarella to give his aid for free, but I didn’t have much to offer.
“No, not money,” the zombie said. “I want your promise of help, when the time comes.”
I frowned. “Help with what?”
It wasn’t going to be good. It couldn’t. Zarella was a psychopath who was supposed to be dead. He’d been imprisoned for a long list of atrocities and then faked his own death during a jailbreak. My uncle, mogul Jacob Gregori who had his own rap sheet of crimes against humanity, had been secretly providing Zarella asylum on the nearly impenetrable campus of Gregori Industries.
“I’ll need some assistance to permanently secure my freedom out here in the wild. But don’t worry, your task will be simple,” the zombie said. “There will be no blowback on you, rest assured.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not going to be involved in hurting anyone.”
“No harm will come to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said, shaking my head.
“What choice do you have, Ella? Would you refuse me and take the chance of losing your dear brother?”
My mouth pinched, and my nostrils flared.
“I hold you in the palm of my hand,” the zombie said. “We both know that. You’d best accept it.”
I ground my teeth. “No killing, mutilating, or otherwise physically harming anyone. And nothing that will land me in prison.”
“No, I would not ask you to do any of those things. You’re not a monster. I don’t desire to turn you into one. Nor do I desire to see you incarcerated.”
Gee, what a kind consideration coming from a man whose experiments had been on par with Nazi “research.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do your required task when the time comes. Now, where’s Damien?”
“He’s in San Francisco.”
“Can you be more specific?” I snapped, my patience wearing thin.
“There’s no point in you going there,” the zombie said. “He’s turned his quarters into a fortress. You’ll never get in.”
My arms clamped hard against my sides.
“You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do, Alois,” I spat out. “The only thing I care about is my brother. I’m not going to let Damien offer him up as a sacrifice.”
I didn’t have confirmation that was what Damien planned, but there was no other reason for him to take Evan. Everyone wanted my brother—Zarella and his chaos-loving cronies, my uncle, and the Order of Mages. Zarella wanted to prevent anyone else using Evan to close the giant rips that still threatened us, Jacob wanted to sacrifice Evan to finally atone for the sin of opening the rips in the first place, and the mages probably wanted to do the same as Jacob, except as a powerplay rather than atonement.
Damien’s life-long obsession with increasing his magical ability to mage level and finally gaining the approval of his powerful mage family made it obvious: he was going to give my brother to the Steins and the Order so Damien could have the acceptance he’d longed for since birth.
It was Zarella’s fault that I was in this situation in the first place. He’d offered Damien the chance to do the impossible—go from a Level III to a mage—in return for retrieving a small box. I’d found the empty box at Damien’s apartment but still didn’t know what it had contained. Zarella had warned us that the transition to mage would turn Damien into a different person, stripping him of his humanity. But my former partner had taken the deal anyway. And once he became a mage, he’d stolen my brother.
Yet there I stood, making another deal with the psycho and needing his help. It all made my brain hurt and made me long for the old days when all I had to worry about was walking my beat on Demon Patrol.
“I only meant that you can’t go in alone,” the zombie said. “You need backup.”
I crossed my arms. “I assume you have an idea about who that backup should be.”
The zombie nodded. “I have some like-minded friends who do not want to see the Order of Mages murder your brother.”
“You mean they don’t want the rips closed.”
Zarella believed that the rips—and whatever hellspawn and other catastrophes they brought—should remain as they were. Welcomed, even. He wanted darkness to surge into the world. He desired chaos. Rogan had warned me that there were others like Zarella in the Society of the Underworld.
“They don’t want the Order of Mages taking over the world,” the zombie countered.
I didn’t give a crap about the mages and their hunger for more power. I just didn’t want my brother to be a pawn in anyone’s scheme. Evan had been a troubled kid and an addict teenager, and at nearly twenty years old, he’d yet to have the opportunity at anything resembling a normal life.
I sighed as my former fatigue started creeping back. “Whatever. But I want a shot a Damien.”
“You’re no killer.”
I crossed my arms and looked off to the side. He was right.
“What’s next, then?” I asked.
“Your brother is safe for now, so just hold tight until I can mobilize the others.”
“Fine,” I said, and turned to go inside.
“A warning, Ella,” he called as I unlocked the door.
I looked over my shoulder.
“If you spook Damien and he disappears again, you’ll blow our chance.”
I went inside and locked the door behind me. Loki jumped at me, pushing his front paws against my chest and lapping at my face with his big, smelly tongue.
“Down, boy,” I said with a small laugh, fending him off with my hands.
He dropped to the floor and turned sideways so he could lean into me. I scratched behind his ears and then went to dump a scoop of dog food into his bowl.
While he chomped his kibble, I leaned against the counter, too tired to do much of anything but also too tired to get ready for bed.
Closing my eyes, I reached out with my necro senses and released the minor demons I had stat
ioned around a few places back East where I thought Damien might go. Then I pulled my awareness to the immediate vicinity and located half a dozen of the bat-like creatures lurking within a few blocks. Finding the active little points of energy that represented their minds, I pushed my power. It was like sticking your finger into a rotted orange, and I cringed every time. But within a few seconds, I’d penetrated the minds of the minor demons and sent them off to San Francisco. It would take them time to get there, and it was probably another pointless exercise, but at least I knew the general area where Damien was hiding out.
And despite Zarella’s warning not to interfere until he had his people ready, I wasn’t going to just sit around and wait. I needed to be ready to go to San Francisco at a moment’s notice.
I went to the living room and fell onto the sofa, not bothering to pull out the foldout. With one arm behind my head and Loki stretched out along my legs, I took out my phone and started doing some research on the San Francisco Bay Area.
Chapter 4
I WOKE WITH a start early the next morning with my phone vibrating on my chest. I’d been dreaming of my brother, and the dream was like an echo of the visions I used to have of him before I’d located him in the vampire feeder den. But it wasn’t a vision. My reaper never gave those to me anymore. It was just a plain old dream.
Sitting up and pushing my hair back from my face, I stretched and yawned so wide my jaw cracked. Deb walked out of the bathroom in her terry robe and with a towel turbaned around her head just in time to see my mouth gaping open.
Her brows rose. “Late night?” she asked, tightening the robe’s tie above the swell of her belly. She was past the halfway mark in her pregnancy.
I nodded and croaked something in the affirmative. I blinked hard, trying to clear the brain haze of sleep and strange dreams.
