“For the third time, I’m telling you, it was Alejandro’s idea! He did it, not me!”
“That means you let it happen. I know you were there. You killed Ward and Kevin, and you tried to kill Alejandro the other night until Phira stopped you.”
“Just like I’m going to stop you now,” I said, yanking my arm free of Muses’ hold. I stormed toward where the two of them fought, brushing past a null and two of the bouncers as I did.
“She lived in my neighborhood,” Jenkins said, as though he’d not heard me. “She was under my protection.”
Murph smiled at him, wiping the blood from his mouth.
“Then I guess you did a shit job, didn’t you?”
Jenkins’ eyes flashed a golden light so bright I had to look away for a moment. When I refocused on him, I saw him lunge for Murph, hand drawn back with claws fully extended. I felt a surge of energy press around me just before Jenkins slashed Murph’s face and neck, sending him flying to the far side of the room. He crashed to the ground in a lifeless heap. Jenkins’ face went slack as he looked over at the motionless body.
“Holy shit,” he said, rushing over to Murph. “I didn’t mean to…I wasn’t trying to kill him. I’d been hitting him with everything I had this whole time and barely damaging him beyond some superficial wounds. How did this…? I don’t understand…”
A ruckus in the entrance echoed through the building as my brothers, Cooper, TS, and the Fates arrived. Some of the witnesses tried to exit, but the PC kept them inside. TS started toward me, sensing danger.
I looked at the others in the room, my eyes eventually falling on the null, Dex, just as an arc of power slithered past me, as if it were trying to get by me unnoticed. But it was impossible for that to happen. My gifts wouldn’t allow it.
“You!” I said, pointing at the null with the chip on his shoulder. “What did you just do?”
“Me?” he asked, stepping forward. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Come here.”
“Phira?” TS called to me, his pace quickening.
“Muses questioned you before to see if you could turn off your field, didn’t he?” I continued, staring the null down. “You said you couldn’t…”
“Yeah,” he replied, moving closer to me, keeping close to the wall and giving the PC a wide berth. His energy was nervous, which didn’t bode well.
“But he didn’t ask you if you could channel it? Aim it at a particular object or being?”
“I did not,” Muses said, answering for him, “because such an ability is unprecedented.”
I stopped for a moment, letting my mind catch up with the thoughts running wild within.
“That’s how you did it,” I said, approaching Dex carefully. “That’s how you killed them. You drew back your field from one fighter just enough to allow his powers back, unbeknownst to him, so he would kill his opponent. It would look like an accident, and if it didn’t, oh well. You wouldn’t be blamed.”
His wicked smile was confirmation enough.
“Almost worked the third time until your crazy ass barged in and shut the fight down.” He pulled out a gun and trained it on me, releasing the safety. Everyone in the room froze. “If any one of you moves, I’ll pump a round of bullets into her and kill her powers. You can watch her bleed to death unless you let me leave here.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the building. The PC had encountered nulls in their time, but they hadn’t met one with the ability to mold his field to whatever shape suited him best. Or one as deeply unhinged as the one pointing a gun at me.
Dex was so fixated on the PC that he seemed to have forgotten about Jenkins, who was off to his left and likely out of his peripheral vision. But he wasn’t out of mine. I could see him inching closer, quiet as a mouse. I had no idea if he was within Dex’s field, but judging by the look of determination on his face, he didn’t care. He was banking on taking out the null before he could get a shot off.
“Why did you do that? Climb into the cage like that?” Dex asked. He clearly thought he had the upper hand and sought to gloat for a moment. Hubris—the downfall of all evil pricks.
“Because I knew that someone was about to be killed.”
“Oh yeah? And how did you know that, clever girl?”
“Because the ghost of a murdered witch showed up and told me so.”
His face went deathly pale and his weapon faltered, if only for a moment. My words had paralyzed him, and Jenkins took that moment to pounce on him, sacking him from the side. I watched as they fell to the ground in a twisted heap. Without thinking, I darted toward them, hoping to do something to help.
Then the sharp pop of the gun going off rang through the building. Pain shot through my body, and I stumbled back a step, looking down at my stomach to find the wound, but none existed. At least not on me.
Jenkins groaned, drawing my attention. It was only then that I realized I’d felt his pain as though it were my own. Anger blossomed in my cheeks as my body coiled, ready to strike down the null.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said struggling out from under Jenkins’ body. I felt the power of his shield fall upon me again, and I stumbled back out of its radius with the others. “You make one move, and the next shot is going in his head. If you don’t let me leave—alone—I’ll stand here next to him while he bleeds to death like a human.”
Muses shifted beside me.
“You make a fatal assumption with those demands,” he said, his voice the epitome of unfazed.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“That we care if the wolf lives or dies.”
The null’s beady eyes trained on me and he smiled, even in the face of his impending doom.
“She does—I’ve seen the way she looks at him. She won’t let him die. Not willingly.”
“She is not in charge. She will do what she’s told.” Again Muses shifted beside me, moving an inch closer.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I asked under my breath, staring at him where he stood to my right.
“You’ve never really been in charge of anyone, niece—not even yourself.” His dark eyes narrowed at me, menacing as ever. “Not in Little Church. Not at Sinful. Not at the penthouse. You need to understand that. And now would be a good time for that to happen.”
My kneejerk reaction was to argue with him, but it faded quickly when I realized what he was saying—what he’d so cleverly coded in his insult. Muses knew that we needed Nyx to end this, and given the press of her in my mind, she agreed.
“Now?” I asked, the hatred in my voice for show. “That’s your plan?”
“My plan is for you not to blow this situation to bits—do you understand me? I’m ordering you to stand down. Right. Now.”
“If he dies because of this,” I whispered to him, “you’ll be next.” I looked over to where Jenkins lay bleeding on the floor. His pale blue eyes appeared even paler with the amount of blood he’d lost. He didn’t have long.
While Muses negotiated with the null, his voice muffled by the blood pounding in my ears, I took a step back, wanting to appear obedient. Wanting the enemy to think I’d withdrawn.
“Do you have a plan?” I mumbled to myself, taking another step in retreat.
Do you trust me?
I had to think about that for a second.
“Yes.”
Then I have a plan.
Without another word, she shoved me out of the way, her vision focused on a pile of pallets a few feet away from where Jenkins lay.
Shit…
“Magic might not work on the null,” she whispered, closing her eyes so that we were both enwrapped in the darkness, “but shrapnel will.”
Her eyes flew open wide as she flung her energy out across the room. It hurtled toward the pallets, exploding them in an instant. The building shook with the force of it, and the blast made her hair dance wildly around her. Dust and debris and smoke surrounded us, but she didn’t care. She marched through it all toward her tar
get, ignoring the others as she made her way to Jenkins and Dex. Muses was already there, disarming the null, while Alek and Nico dragged Jenkins away from his field.
When the air cleared enough for her to get a good look at her intended victim, she smiled at the sight. A large plank of wood had impaled his abdomen in the same spot where he’d shot Jenkins.
“Karma,” she said, crouching down in front of him. “She and I have so much in common...” She grabbed hold of the jagged wood and tugged on it sharply. He shrieked in pain. “Now you’re going to tell me how and why you did this before you die. Do so, and I’ll end your suffering. Don’t, and I’ll make it so much worse.”
Dex was breathing hard and shallow through his teeth, blood seeping out around the edges of the wood that impaled him. Every time he tried to speak, he winced and stopped. Nyx ran her finger along the end of the plank again and smiled as his eyes went wide at the sight.
It was then that I felt Sasha hovering nearby. Even with Nyx in control, there was no denying her presence.
Nyx…
“I’m busy having a chat with my friend here, Sapphira.”
The ghost…she’s here.
Nyx looked up to see her standing only a foot or two beyond her, looking down at Dex. She followed Sasha’s gaze down to the man and back up again. The pain on her face was obvious to Nyx, even in her lust for vengeance.
“You did this for her,” Nyx said, as though the null could see the ghost. “You loved her…”
“Those fuckers killed Sasha,” he managed to say, though it clearly pained him to do so. “We were trying to get out of this town. She did that job to get us the money we needed to leave. It was supposed to be the last time she did anything like that.”
And it had been. That job had cost her her life.
Nyx looked up at the ghost. “Is that true?”
The girl’s dead eyes fell upon Nyx, then back to the null. Confirmation enough.
“How could you know who killed her?” Nyx asked, leaning in closer to Dex. “Her case was unsolved.” Dex smiled at her, a show of teeth that said ‘fuck you’ in no uncertain terms. When he opened his mouth to reply, no words came out—only blood. As he coughed and sputtered, Nyx pushed for an answer, leaning on the wood plank again. “I want to know how you knew…”
Dex’s eyes fluttered closed, his breath coming faster and shallower. He was barely conscious.
“TS!” Nyx yelled for him to heal Dex enough for her to get the answers she wanted. But before TS made it to him, Dex took his final breath.
We wouldn’t be learning his secret anytime soon.
Nyx relinquished her position, clearly frustrated by the turn of events, leaving me to stand face to face with Sasha’s ghost.
I knew what I had to do.
“I’m so sorry it came to this,” I told her, reaching for her hand. “You can rest in peace now.”
She stared at me for a moment, then disappeared.
I heard movement from behind me, where Jenkins had fallen, and turned to see him walking toward me. His bloody shirt was gone, and his stomach was healed. I nearly cried at the sight.
“So I guess it’s a good thing you really did forgive me after all,” Jenkins said, wrapping his arms around me to hug me. “I owe you one, half-breed.”
“One?” I replied, choking on a laugh that conveniently hid the emotions straining my voice. “Oh, I think you’re gravely underestimating just how much I saved your ass.”
I could feel his chest rumble with laughter beneath my cheek. When I pulled away from him, he was smiling at me.
“And I think you’re underestimating just how much you’d have missed me if you hadn’t.” He flashed that panty-dropping smile at me before letting me go and walking back to the boys, leaving me and my flushed cheeks alone.
Then I looked up to see TS staring at me.
“Are you all right?” he asked. His gaze fell beyond me to the blood-soaked corpse on the floor, then back again. “I take it your visit to the alpha was fruitful.”
“Yeah. Muses and I got what we needed, in a sense. The information led us to Murph, who inadvertently led us to the real killer.” I felt a tug at my heart as I said those words. Though I couldn’t agree with his methods, I fully understood Dex’s motivation. Had I been in his shoes, I’d have gone after the ones who’d hurt someone I loved too.
TS’ bright hazel eyes assessed me, looking me over for what I could only assume was damage sustained in the explosion. Until that moment, I hadn’t thought much about it.
“It appears Nyx can control who she targets,” he said, still observing me. “It seems as though you really don’t need me any longer.”
I felt impaled by his words, leaving me almost as bad off as the null: maybe worse, in some ways. At least he was with the one he loved.
“But I want you…” My voice was low and hollow and raw, my emotions undisguised. It had been a long night, and he’d caught me off guard. “To stay, I mean. I want you to stay,” I said, trying to smooth over what I’d said so he didn’t see the real meaning behind my words. The real feelings I didn’t know whether he shared.
He quirked a brow at me, doing his best to stifle the smile I could see lighting his eyes. He was enjoying my faux pas a little too much for my liking.
“Then I shall.”
“Good. Glad we got that cleared up. Now, there’s the small matter of the body trail we’ve left behind, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to step aside and let you do your thing.”
The smile widened. “As you wish.”
He strode off toward the bodies while the others headed for the exit. TS liked to work alone, without an audience. It was somewhat of an unwritten rule in the PC, so we all went outside to leave him to it.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I sure as fuck could use a beer,” Jenkins said, running his hand through his blond hair. “They’re on me. Any takers?” My hand shot up immediately. “Any other takers? The kind that aren’t going to drink my establishment dry?”
We all shared a look that didn’t inspire much confidence in Jenkins, but he’d already thrown the offer out there. He’d soon learn that nobody could drink like the PC boys. Not even an alpha werewolf.
“You’re going to be sorry you asked that question in a couple of hours,” I said with a laugh.
“I think I already am...”
The others laughed and made their way to their respective vehicles. I hung back for a second, wanting to make sure TS knew the plan.
“You coming, Phira?” Jenkins asked as he stood in front of his open driver’s side door.
“Yeah, just a second.”
I stuck my head back into the building, purposely not looking in TS’ direction.
“We’re going back to Jenkins’ bar. You want me to wait and go with you?”
I heard him let out a hard exhale. “No, I’ll meet you there. I still have the alpha to deal with after this.”
“Sure, okay. I just wanted you to know where we’d be.”
I started to pull my head back out again when his words cut me short.
“Never forget, Phira—I will always find you.”
That statement made me smile, whether or not it should have. I walked back to Jenkins’ car wearing that smile proudly. We’d all escaped one hell of a day unscathed—or at least relatively unscathed. A night of whiskey with the people I’d kill for seemed like the perfect ending to it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The bar was packed when we arrived, a side effect of being one of the few bars in Chicago open until four a.m. Alejandro’s death was fresh enough that word hadn’t gotten out yet, so there were no rumors circulating. No tension thick in the air.
By later that night, I doubted that would still be true.
When Jenkins took the stage with the band, everyone started cheering—especially the women. His muscles strained against the threadbare t-shirt he’d found in his Jeep as he put his guitar strap over his chest and settled the instr
ument where he wanted it. He strummed it once, bringing the room to a dull roar. Apparently when Jenkins played, the people listened.
The band started the intro to a song I knew all too well, and my blood ran cold for a second. Then I saw Jenkins staring me down from the stage, a wry smile playing at his lips before he spoke.
“This one’s for my girl, Phira. She’s had a rough week. Hopefully this will put a smile on her face.”
Or make me turn beet red with embarrassment.
Everyone nearby turned and stared while I buried myself in my tumbler of whiskey. Jenkins sang, changing the words at will to adapt the song to suit me: the song he’d caught me singing to myself only days earlier.
As the chorus neared, I knew what was headed my way. It was confirmed after he finished the verse, when he shouted at me to ‘get my ass up there and sing’. Knowing that he’d come down and get me if I didn’t, I took a deep breath, steeling my nerves, and pushed my way through the crowd. I hoisted myself onto the stage and stood before a grinning Jenkins, who couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself if he tried.
Too bad he didn’t know I was going to kill him after the bar closed.
I had little time to contemplate that, though. The chorus started, and I joined in with him, my middle finger flying in his face the whole time just to make my point. He backed away from the center mic, laughing along the way. That left me alone with the bright lights and expectant eyes and the pit in my stomach growing tighter.
I never thought my Kryptonite would be stage fright.
Some badass I was.
Then I started to sing the second verse, and the feeling seemed to flow from me with every note. Instead of standing rigid in front of the mic, I began to move ever so slightly. A sway. A bounce. A smile.
By the time the bridge came around, I’d forgotten about everything else around me. All I felt was the cathartic sensation I’d always experienced when I sang. The one that had kept me sane when nothing else could.
Then Jenkins was back, sharing the mic as his bright eyes stared down at me, attempting to tell me something. What that was, I couldn’t quite tell. I was too overrun with adrenaline to read his energy.
Dead Zone (Blue-Eyed Bomb Book 3) Page 25
