Where the hell did they get those? I patted my pockets, including the ones inside of my jacket, and swallowed a curse. Shit. I’d dropped them in the chaos earlier.
Fury spiked again, hot and choking.
My doppelganger looked up as if he could hear the very intensity of my emotion. Eyes questing in my direction, he plucked the keys from the air with a negligent dexterity just this side of human. Keeping to the shadows behind the broad trunk of the tree, I clamped down so hard on my cowl it felt like I’d been shoved out an airlock.
His gaze faltered. I didn’t let myself relax—I couldn’t. The bastard with my face scooped up the helmet, popping it onto his head. A moment later the bike growled to life, and I froze in a paroxysm of indecision. I needed that motorcycle, but I couldn’t blithely march over and tear it away from him—not with all those cops around. It wasn’t just that they might arrest me—there were plenty of strings I could pull. No, it was that in situations like this one, the mortals around me had an ugly habit of dying.
Whoever this guy was, every instinct told me he was dangerous.
No more death tonight.
So I ground my teeth and watched him ride out of the lot on my bike. As he coasted past my hiding spot, a gust of pressure shoved against my cowl, like nothing I’d ever felt. The reflective visor of the helmet swiveled slowly in my direction. The sheen of lights on beading rain obscured his features, but I knew with bone-deep certainty he was staring right at me.
7
The roar of the four-stroke retreated in the distance. Westbound, toward Cleveland. I needed to get moving. That set of keys didn’t just work the Vulcan—there was a full set for locks on my apartment. Given his appearance, I had to assume my evil twin knew where I lived—and, if he knew that, he probably knew what I had there.
Things were going to get ugly.
The keys wouldn’t get him past the aggressive layers of wards I’d worked around my place, but that didn’t make me feel any better. If my doppelganger suspected the existence of even one of the things stashed in that apartment, he’d find a way inside.
Moving slowly, I quitted the cover of the sycamore. Every instinct jangled for me to rush, but I forced myself to play it cool so I didn’t attract attention. Head down, I shuffled along like some unfortunate caught in the fierce autumn storm. It was an easy enough ruse. From the tail of my eye, I kept watch over the activity at the Qwik-Fill. No one looked up, and no one raised an alarm.
Free and clear.
Finding a bench near the playground, I dared to pull out my phone, huddling over the harshly glowing screen in a weak attempt to protect it from the sheeting rain. The battery was so far into the red, I could barely see the sliver of color. With luck, it would last for one call. Choking down a double helping of stiff-necked pride, I pulled up Remiel’s number.
His phone went straight to voicemail. I left a long and rambling message. A beep cut me off about halfway through. The phone buzzed once as I pulled it from my ear and, excited, went to thumb the answer button. But it wasn’t a call. The screen flashed a low battery warning. 1%.
Quickly hammering a text, I cursed as the device refused to register a full half of my keystrokes. My fingers were too cold—not that I could feel them. Eventually, I managed.
Need a favor. Pick me up in Collinwood. Old Euclid Beach gate.
Remy would know the landmark—every long-term resident of the city did, and he’d been living in Cleveland since the 1800s. Racing to beat the last gasp of battery life, I appended the word URGENT in all caps and hit send. Hawkishly, I watched the screen to see if it went through.
It did. After a breathless hesitation, three little dots in a bubble told me Remy was typing. He’d gotten the message. Before his text appeared, the phone’s screen winked out. Morosely, I stared at my reflection in its black mirror.
He’d come. I had to trust it.
Haggard and weary, I retraced my path. It was a long walk in the punishing rain, but I didn’t dare stick close to the gas station. Reaching the arching brick landmark, I sat at the base of one of the tower-styled pillars, huddled against the downpour. Ugly whiffs of violence seeped through my shields from the nearby Crossing. Tired as I was, I couldn’t hold my walls against it. Tightening the layered cowl with flagging mental focus, I did my best to ignore it. The woman’s plight was long over, although the winking lights of the distant apartment building made me wonder if she were still alive—and if it would do any good for her to know that I’d borne witness to her suffering.
Probably not. Sympathy only salved my own conscience.
I settled in for a long wait. My thoughts drifted, and, despite the aches and the rain, I slipped from wakefulness by slow degrees. Weeks of insomnia didn’t help. The ugly emotions imprinted scant yards away colored my dreams, and I was plagued by fitful images of a woman calling my name. She was in danger, and I couldn’t save her. First she was Lailah, my lover lost on the lake. Then, the elderly black woman from the Crossing. Finally, she was a face seen only distantly, one I didn’t know but felt I should have—a round face, apple cheeks, piercing eyes.
The frantic notes of her voice chased me back to the waking world where someone gripped me by the shoulder. He shook fiercely, calling my name—first Zack, and then the older one. Needling shards of nightmare scattered, and I surged at my attacker.
I was scrabbling for a hold on Remy’s throat before my brain came awake enough to realize what I was doing.
“Goodness,” he said, utterly unfazed by my frenzied reaction. “You look a fright.”
With little effort, the Nephilim plucked me off to hold me at arm’s length until I stopped thrashing. My toes barely touched the ground—his casual strength was almost insulting. Blearily, I processed my surroundings. The nearby Crossing, the looming arch, the high grasses of the field crushed to sodden heaps by the storm. The rain had stopped, but every inch of me was soaked, and it was a good thing I didn’t really feel the cold, or else I’d have been hypothermic.
“Sorry,” I breathed. One of his lapels jutted at an awkward angle where I’d rumpled his expensive jacket, and I fought an urge to fix it. Instead, I shoved my hands in my pockets. Remy followed my gaze, putting me down, then fastidiously smoothing the wrinkles in the red and gold damask.
“No need to apologize.” His pale lips twisted in a fond, if rueful, grin. “I knew what manner of bear I was poking.”
Awkward silence fell as I tried for something else to say. Months had passed since I’d last spoken with Remy. He was, of all my many siblings, one of the few I counted as both a brother and a friend—but his ties to Sal made things complicated.
“It’s been a rough night,” I hedged.
“I can see that,” he replied. A subtle accent clung to his vowels, impossible to accurately place. Vaguely British, it made everything he said sound sardonic. “Do you need medical attention? You’ve got a gash on your neck that’s still bleeding.”
With a grimace, I touched my fingers to the stinging line of heat below my jaw. They came away slick.
“Must’ve reopened it fighting you off,” I grumbled. “It can’t be too deep or I wouldn’t have made it this far, right?”
“You were passed out when I found you.”
“Not passed out,” I said. “I was sleeping.”
One brow arched eloquently. “On the pavement,” he said. “In the rain.”
“I haven’t slept for shit in weeks,” I responded. “That’s why I was out here in the first place. I thought a ride would clear my head. Insomnia’s got its teeth in me again.”
“More than insomnia, judging from the state of your face.”
“That was the cacodaimons,” I explained, sagging against the pillar.
Remy’s eyes, an uncanny shade of azure, glimmered with their own light as he studied the wounds more carefully. We stood in a pool of shadow cast by the looming gate of Euclid Beach, but the darkness was hardly a deterrent for the Nephilim’s preternatural vision.
&
nbsp; “A hospital won’t do,” he murmured. “They’ll have questions. I’ll take you to one of my people.”
“I need to get to my apartment,” I said flatly. “I’ll clean it up there.”
Remy waggled a lean, pale finger in my face. “Your text phrased this as a favor, dear brother,” he reminded. “Favors come with a price.”
“Taking lessons from Sal?” I rankled. “This is important.”
At the comparison, the light glittered in his eyes. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he growled. “If you weren’t completely out of options, you wouldn’t have bothered to call me at all.”
“No, I—”
Brusquely, he cut me off. “You have been avoiding me as if I have something contagious.” He was annoyed enough to lisp around his fangs. “Now get in the car. I’d prefer not to have this conversation in public.”
His midnight blue Lexus idled at the curb, the driver’s side door slightly ajar. A soft, persistent “ding” emanated from the interior. I started for the vehicle, but lurched unexpectedly when a wave of vertigo spun my internal gyroscope. The whole world took on a sharp tilt. Instinctively, I threw my arms out for balance. Without a word, Remy seized me by the elbow, then steadied my steps till we made it to the sedan. Brusquely, he folded me into the passenger seat, and I did my best to help. Mostly I flopped like a flounder.
Inside, the vehicle was spotless, its gray leather seats smelling vaguely of mink oil. I almost felt bad for sitting on them.
“Seatbelt,” he reminded me tersely, then he closed the door. I was still fumbling to fit the metal tongue in the clasp when he slid into the driver’s seat. With a little frown, he took the apparatus from my hand and clicked the belt home for me. Offering no further comment, he put the car in gear and pulled back onto Lakeshore.
The tires of the Lexus whispered wetly against pavement as we sat in strained silence, each waiting for the other to begin what could only prove to be a difficult conversation. Neither of us was brave enough to take the first step. The quiet was so absolute, I wasn’t certain he even bothered to breathe—didn’t even know if he had to.
When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I reached for the radio. Faster than I could track, Remy slapped my hand away from the knob.
“No.” He uttered it firmly, but without heat.
The lights of the dash glittered on the gold trim along his cuffs, and for the first time, I fully processed what he was wearing. Frock coat of elaborate damask, ruffled shirt, velvet pants so tight they might have been painted onto his legs and—was that make-up? His long, black hair hung in carefully dressed waves, as rich as any kingly wig.
“Did you mug Louis Quatorze?” I choked. My brother had flamboyant tastes, but normally they ran toward fedoras and zoot suits. This was weird, even for Remy. Once I’d noticed, I couldn’t stop staring.
“I beg your pardon?” Remy asked.
“This.” I gestured at his get-up.
Flicking his eyes from the road, Remy offered me a disdainful moue. “Three months without contact, and the first thing you do is criticize my clothes?”
“But look at them!” I insisted.
“I did,” he replied. “In the mirror, when I selected them quite specifically for the occasion.” The fact that he wasn’t yelling only accentuated his irritation. “Perhaps, dear Anakim brother, if you’d paid any attention at all to my personal affairs, you would know that we had a performance tonight at Club Heaven. It went beautifully, by the way, right up until my unexpected departure.”
“Oh,” I managed.
“Oh,” he echoed in withering mockery. “What, no witty repartee? I would expect, at least, some Interview with a Vampire comment.”
“The book or the movie?” I ventured. Snark was preferable to stinging guilt.
“You forced me to watch the movie,” he sniffed. “The book was not to my taste.”
I tried to picture us binge-watching Anne Rice together. The image was ludicrous, and despite everything, I cackled. That actually eased the tension. Even Remy chuckled softly. Idling at a light, he regarded me with a wistful expression.
“When you’re not being a caustic ass, you are entirely ridiculous,” he said. “And I miss that.”
No words felt adequate, and even if I’d found them, they wouldn’t have fit past the knot in my throat. So I just hung my head. Remy mistook it for more evasion.
“I can understand why you are reluctant,” he began as the light changed. “What Dorimiel did to you onboard the Scylla was unforgivable. The depth of your loss—I cannot even begin to imagine.” He wasn’t just talking about Lailah, although her death rested firmly in Dorimiel’s hands. The power-mad decimus of the Nephilim had used his tribe’s stolen icon to attack my mind, sucking away memories until I was left a stranger in my own life. Remy seemed to divine these thoughts.
“I can see how my presence might serve as a bitter reminder, but you must know that he and his ilk do not represent all of my tribe.” With a gleam of hope, he glanced in my direction, easing down on the brakes as we approached another red light. The light turned green before the car came to a complete stop, and he coasted through it.
Squirming beneath his unearthly blue gaze, I struggled with everything I wanted to say, and couldn’t. This time, it wasn’t an overwelling of regret that stilled my tongue, but a magical compulsion. Remy’s boss, Saliriel, had bound me to an oath, and there were sweeping details about the Dorimiel incident that I simply couldn’t share.
Again, Remy misread my silence.
“Zaquiel,” he said. “You and I have very different worldviews, and it would be foolish to pretend that relations are functional between our two tribes, but despite all of that, we’ve been friends for a very long while. Why must that change now?”
Awaiting a response, he swung the Lexus into a parking spot along Euclid Heights. Somehow, we’d already made it to my Coventry apartment. The lights were still off in all the windows, and there was no sign of my Vulcan on the street. Hopefully that was a good thing. Beside me, Remy cut the ignition, slipping the keys into an interior pocket of his frock coat. Self-consciously, he smoothed its lines, but made no move to get out.
I put my palm on the handle, then hesitated.
“Look, it’s not—” I started, but the oath closed my throat before I could finish. Superficially, I was bound to keep silent about the Eye of Nefer-Ka, but so many of Dorimiel’s atrocities revolved around that ancient icon. The damned thing lay at the bottom of Lake Erie, but its power still wove creeping tendrils through my life.
Nothing I can do about that now.
In silence, Remy studied the chase of emotions that flickered across my features. After a moment, he spoke.
“You’re not the only person in the world laboring under an oath, you know.”
I stared at him, thunderstruck.
“What?” he asked. “I told you that I knew.”
“No,” I said flatly. “You didn’t.”
“Yes, of course I did,” he insisted.
A light scrim of steam began to cloud my window as I kept one eye on the apartment. Internally, I flailed.
“When?” I demanded.
“Back at the hospital,” he said.
“The hospital,” I echoed, rubbing my brow. “Which time?”
“After Saliriel resuscitated you on the lake.”
“What?” That revelation didn’t just derail my thoughts—it switched the tracks, sent me barreling over a chasm, and dynamited the trestle behind me. My stomach lurched. “You never said it was Sal,” I choked. Remy dipped his head so his long hair partially obscured his features.
“I hadn’t intended to let that bit slip.”
“Well, too damned late,” I said, striving not to picture it—but my brain was regrettably visual. Cheerfully, it disgorged images of Saliriel’s plump, pink mouth descending upon mine, then opening to reveal her unnaturally pointy grin. It was the fangs that did it. Shuddering, I scrubbed my lips with the back of my hand, wonde
ring what kind of toll Sal would exact, and when.
Probably saving up for a special occasion.
“Saliriel was the only one who knew the proper… technique.” Helpfully, he added, “I’ve made a point to learn it since then, just in case.”
“I don’t plan on drowning again,” I grumbled.
He sniffed. “I didn’t think you’d planned on it the first two times.”
On that point, he was wrong, but I tried to get back to the original topic. Tried to say, “Yes, I’m oathed,” but my throat locked tight around the statement. Instead of words, only a whistle of air came out. Resisting the urge to pummel the armrest, I counted silently to ten and made a second attempt.
The results were identical.
“Look, we really should continue this inside my apartment,” I managed.
In a blur of motion, Remy hit the locks. I didn’t have to test my door to know my own button wouldn’t work. Remy was one of the nicer ones, but he was still a Nephilim. I wasn’t getting out until he was good and ready.
The heat ticked up on my temper.
“There are always loopholes,” he urged. “Just talk around it.”
Deep in my throat, I growled my irritation. Remy was unimpressed. I lost the fight to save the armrest, pounding it viciously with the heel of my hand.
“I can’t even talk about what I can’t talk about!” I bellowed.
With a disapproving frown, Remy seized my wrist before I could savage his Lexus any further. The odd chill of his fingers clung wherever they touched my flesh. “Is this really why you’ve been avoiding me all summer?” he asked. “Honestly, Zaquiel, it’s like you’re fifteen again.”
“Give me a break,” I snarled, twisting to break his grip, but he kept my arm locked with no apparent effort.
“No,” he said. “I shall only let you go if you promise not to hit things.”
“More oaths,” I spat.
He reeled as if the words were a fist.
The Resurrection Game Page 4
