“Sal?” I bellowed, completely derailed. “Fuck Sal. When did that Cait Jenner wannabe get tangled up with one of my anchors?” I screeched to a stop as a blinking guardrail blocked my progress. Swinging the Hellcat in a messy U-turn, the wheels spat gravel as I punched the gas. Porch lights flicked on at one of the darkened houses. A silhouette drifted cautiously to the door, and I sped away before I could be spotted.
No one could catch me out here. So many reasons.
“What are you even talking about?” Remy asked.
“He tortured her and killed her because she was my anchor,” I said. “If Sal had anything to do with that, anything at all—” Words failed as I choked on rising fury.
“When did you anchor Marjory?” Remy queried.
“When the fuck did you marry her?” I shot back. “Does Lil know?”
“That’s nothing but paperwork,” he responded. “Why would Lil care? The State wouldn’t let Jory foster children without a legal husband. That’s all she wanted once Samantha died.”
“Sammy was a woman?” I asked dumbly.
“Zaquiel, in all seriousness, are you injured?” he persisted. “You really don’t sound right.”
“Thorns of the king—Lugallu,” I corrected, but king seemed right, too. The words banged uncertainly around in my brain. A memory—disconnected with the night’s events—shivered from scalp to toe. I’d encountered that magic before, or something very like it. The splinter of knowledge was buried so deep, it registered only as unpleasant emotion.
“What?” Remy’s voice thundered through the phone.
“Nasty bit of magic.” The shivers grew more pronounced. Comprehension remained elusive. “Still can’t feel my arm. Not really.”
“Zaquiel, listen to me. Is our brother still there?”
“Poofed,” I answered. The car swung from lane to lane. Dimly, I realized it was me doing it. “Took Lailah. Tabitha, too.” I curled both fists around the wheel, leaving the phone to skitter loose on the dash.
“Lailah? You really are delirious,” he muttered. The device started to fall as I took another turn. Traffic lights gleamed up ahead. “Please, just stay put. I’m going to—”
I never got to hear him finish. The light turned red. I tried to brake, but I’d lost track of my speed. Tires screeching, the Hellcat fishtailed through the intersection.
So did a pickup sailing down the cross street.
We both laid on our horns, far too late for anything else. Remy’s voice shrilled from the smartphone—all I heard was my name. I swerved hard enough to put the Dodge into a spin. The phone banged against the far window, then clattered beneath the passenger seat. It stopped making noise. Headlights, taillights arced around me in a blur. My seatbelt locked, cutting against my neck as the car banked so sharply, it nearly went up on two wheels. I thought I was going to flip right over. The brakes were useless. My foot was on the floor. A veering Honda, the rusted ass of the pick-up, a utility pole, they all swung by, way too close.
Miraculously, there was no collision.
Tires traded grass for pavement. The Hellcat lurched, then came to a stop, nose pointed into traffic. My head kept spinning for another minute or so. There was a huge neon sign inches from my door.
JESUS SAVES
I cackled madly in its yellow glow.
34
I was still laughing when the driver of the pickup appeared at my passenger side window. I hadn’t seen him jog up. He was a big raw-skinned guy in a Steelers jersey. That was funny, too, but for different reasons.
Cupping one hand, he bent and tried to peer through the deeply tinted glass of the Hellcat. With the other, he rapped sharply on the window.
“Hey,” he called. “You OK in there?” He seemed rattled, but unhurt. A light scrim of sweat shone greasily on his brow. He rapped again, harder. “Hello?”
I moved and the car lurched forward. With a yelp, he jumped back. Belatedly, I put the thing in park. Gingerly, he approached again, laying a palm against the window. It left a large, sticky print.
From under the seat on that side, my phone started to buzz. My seatbelt was still locked, so I nearly choked myself as I leaned in that direction. I fumbled with the strap and then the closure, finally shrugging free. At least I didn’t have to wrestle with an airbag. I spilled across the seat toward his door. Steelers Guy smacked a meaty palm against the frame as I felt around on the floor for the smartphone.
“Come on, man, open up,” he said. “I see you in there.”
The phone stopped ringing, but then it started right back up. The vibrations rattled against something metal deep under the seat, so the whole thing sounded like a joy buzzer. Still, I couldn’t get my hands on it. Only my left hand had any reach, and I could barely feel those fingers. The guy in the Steelers jersey watched my flailing contortions, going from concerned to annoyed the more I ignored him.
“What the hell is your problem?” he demanded. “You nearly killed us both.” Angrily, he thumped the Hellcat’s roof to get my attention. The whole car jostled. “Are you drunk or something?”
“Go away,” I yelled, my voice muffled because I was halfway under the dash.
“I want your insurance information,” he said.
“Go away,” I repeated. For a minute, I thought had it, but all I gripped was the housing for some of the wires connected with the seat adjuster. With a grimace, I shoved the chunk of plastic back under the seat.
The phone stopped ringing. I waited for it to start up again.
“Open this thing right now, or I’m calling the police.” Steelers Guy planted both hands on the doorframe, shaking the Hellcat like he meant to flip it with me inside. I banged the back of my head on the bottom of the dashboard as I jerked up to confront him.
The button to lower the window was right in front of my nose. I jammed my thumb onto it. Before the tinted glass slid halfway down, Steelers Guy was up in my face and yelling. A long string of spittle bungeed from his lower lip and I slapped it away—we were that close.
“I warned you,” I growled. All I saw was red. Then I reached up with my left hand and grabbed him by the throat. My thumb pressed deep against the startled jump of artery. His eyes bulged.
“Whoa. Hey. Shit!” he sputtered.
With casual strength, I pulled him halfway into the car. He had something I needed. I ached for its taste. His gut snagged on the door, legs kicking the side. One arm was trapped at his waist, and with it, he fought to brace himself against the frame. He struggled the other hand up to his neck, prying uselessly at my fingers.
“I got kids, man,” he choked.
As his pulse flooded down my arm, I saw them. Two boys and a girl. The boys were goofy meatheads like him, and he loved them, but the girl, Chloe, she was something else. Scary-smart. No idea where she got it. Putting her through college was going to hurt—but it’d be worth every scrounged penny.
Thoughts and memories flashed like dying bulbs in my head, all his. Copper rose at the back of my throat—blood. Like the memories, it wasn’t mine. All of it carried healing strength.
His name was Bruce Womack. His friends called him Goose. He’d grown up in Pittsburgh. Still loved all the teams, didn’t give a damn what these Brownstown losers said. Someday, when the Nicotine Queen he had to call mother-in-law smoked herself into an early grave, he would finally take his quiet wife and his not-so-quiet boys and that scary-smart daughter whose smile blessed his every morning and return to the city of his birth.
I pulled him closer, drinking the minutia of his life. His one trapped hand thumped rhythmically against the car, slower and slower. In the mirrors of his eyes, I saw my own, a red haze clouding their blue.
No.
This wasn’t me. This was the power of the Nephilim icon, reaching from its lonely resting place at the bottom of Lake Erie. I’d killed once under the influence of the Eye. That time, the artifact had saved my life, but I still couldn’t justify the cost.
Never again.
&nb
sp; With effort, I stopped myself.
“You never saw me,” I hissed.
He was weeping. His face went slack. Even that was a power claimed from the Eye—an irresistible command burned directly into his mind.
With a cry of disgust—for myself, not for him—I peeled my hand from his clammy skin and shoved him bodily from the vehicle. He staggered backward, arms windmilling for balance that remained tauntingly out of reach. The imprint of my fingers shone starkly against his weathered skin, the red so deep it looked purple in the sallow light of the church sign.
His legs wouldn’t hold him, and he fell with a grunt to the ground. Eyes wide and staring, he lay spread-eagled on the lawn, trembling as if the dry stretch of grass were a snow bank. A dark stain spread at the crotch of his khaki cargo pants and the scent cut sharply through the stink of burned tires still drifting from the road.
Trembling, but for entirely different reasons, I jammed my hand onto the button that sealed the window, then I threw the car into gear and peeled out of there like the Devil from every horror story galloped furiously at my heels.
I’d never met the Devil. Neferkariel was worse.
35
With desperate speed, I drove away from the scene, striving to escape my thoughts. For the first time since fleeing the basement I felt completely lucid—and it hurt. My brain replayed with punishing clarity my attack on an innocent man. The slick pallor of his face. The thudding frenzy of his pulse. The reflected light that spilled from my eyes—not Anakim blue, but crimson.
Halley’s “Red Man” had stood at my back, far too close for comfort.
What really stoked my self-loathing was how good it had felt. My head was clear. The ugly burn from the handcuff was mostly healed. I hadn’t checked, but I knew the instant I looked in a mirror, all the nicks and scratches from my fight with the cacodaimons would be gone. Even the gash at my neck no longer ached.
There were reasons why the Eye’s temptation was hard to resist. But the cost—Bruce had been alive when I’d left him, but I had no idea what kind of lasting damage I had done. Fleeting snippets of his life still floated through my thoughts, crushing with their middle-class sameness. My attack hadn’t been focused—the face of his wife, a minor scuffle between twin sons, the bright gifts of his daughter Chloe. How much would the poor guy remember?
Can’t go back and fix it.
The thought was empty consolation.
Chased by my guilt—for Bruce Womack, for Tabitha, for Marjory—I picked streets at random, pushing the Hellcat as hard as I dared just to feel the thrum of its power. It didn’t help. As soon as I saw signs for the highway, I started across town toward Club Heaven. I needed to talk to Remy before anyone else died because of Zuriel—or me.
Driving almost as fast as my raging thoughts, I crossed from Parma to the Flats in record time. The twin smokestacks of the old Powerhouse jutted darkly against the distant city lights. Rising beyond the industrial fossil, the uplit struts of the Detroit Avenue Bridge glimmered above the curving expanse of the Cuyahoga. The black waters of Cleveland’s infamous river trapped a shivering double of the gleaming landmark in their silty depths.
At this hour on a weekend, there was no parking left on any of the narrow streets. I swung around to the main lot. A placard sign declared SPECIAL EVENT RATES, so of course, the cost was doubled. Digging out my wallet, I grabbed a ten and a twenty to pay the bored attendant.
As she slid open the window to her glassed-in booth, the sounds of a captured Pokémon erupted from her phone. Guiltily, she flipped the screen over—as if anybody cared what she did to pass the time all night. I handed her the money, got a five back as consolation, then pulled forward when the white and orange bar lifted jerkily out of my way. The lot attendant returned eagerly to her game.
The place was packed, and it took several passes up and down the crowded lanes to find a space for the Hellcat. I ended up far from the crimson awning of Club Heaven, wedged between a Caddy and a Tesla.
Before I locked up, I remembered to finally dig my phone out from under the seat. Remy had called half a dozen times. No voicemails, but he’d sent a brief flurry of texts, his typing as precise as his accent.
Are you all right?
Pick up your phone.
Pick up, Zack.
Tell me you’re all right.
The last had been sent nearly thirty minutes ago. I raised my thumb, considering a response, but then I stopped. No point. I stood practically at his door.
Arming the alarm, I began the trek across the weather-warped asphalt. The lot was strewn with the detritus of debauched weekends—crushed cigarettes and shattered beer bottles, the dented canister of a whippet, and a pair of women’s panties hanging from a fence post like a flag. Whether they flew in triumph or surrender was anybody’s guess.
A chest-rumbling throb of dance music spilled from Heaven and into the night, reaching my ears long before I made it to the club’s doors. Sure enough, a thick-necked bouncer leaned idly against the bricks, his smart black suit and crisp white shirt making him look like an extra from a Bond flick. I recognized the guy immediately from Sal’s usual stable of goons—he’d been in the fight aboard the Scylla. I hadn’t been near Club Heaven in close to a year, but Captain No-Neck clearly recalled my charming face.
“Westland,” he said, no effort to hide his disgust. I wasn’t in the mood to be nice, either.
“Ivan,” I said. “Or was it Derek.” His thick brows beetled with annoyance. “Boris, maybe? All you blood-fed meatshields look alike.”
He extended a calloused hand that could have easily palmed my face. “Gimme your ID and shut the hell up.”
“I’m the boss’s brother. Both of them,” I said. “You still need my ID?”
He sneered. “Around here, we follow the law.”
I cackled. “Yeah, right.” Flipping open my wallet, I played along for the moment, holding the flap with the ID out where he could see it. “That’s my face, that’s my name. You know I’m older than any of those numbers on that birth date, so stop fucking around and get out of my way.”
“Take it out of the plastic,” the bouncer instructed. Meanwhile, he waved through a pair of obviously drunk women in clinging black microdresses. They couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I grumbled. I moved to comply, and then just lost it. I didn’t have time for his passive-aggressive bullshit, not from a guy my sister held on the same level as a well-trained fighting hound. Normally, it didn’t pay to argue with Sal’s security staff. Her bouncers weren’t just big, they were also hyped up on Nephilim blood to the point that they barely qualified as mortal. I’d thrown down with a couple of them, and they hit like runaway freight trains.
But after everything else tonight, I didn’t fucking care. I got right up in his flat slab of a face.
“You were at the Scylla,” I said in a hiss. “You know who I am. You know what I can do, and you know what I’ve survived.” He didn’t give ground, but his pupils opened wide with a growing flood of adrenaline. Maybe because I’d so recently used the Eye, I could smell the tang of it rising from the blood that jumped at the big artery in his neck. Digging half-moons of hurt into my palms, I clenched my fists and held them rigidly at my sides, fighting to control what I really wanted to do—drain him fucking dry. “I’ve got business in the club, and I’m going in whether you like it or not. So what you have to ask yourself is how much pain do you want to be in by the end of this conversation?”
Cords straining on his neck, he leaned into my threat, so close, our foreheads nearly touched. I could hear the angry grind of his teeth. His jaw ticked with a barely suppressed impulse to clobber me and then—amazingly—he retreated. Unclipping a walkie at his side, he thumbed the button.
“I got Westland at the front,” he barked. “Wave him past the metal detectors once he’s inside.”
A garbled voice chattered in response.
“Metal detectors?” I inquired. Th
ose were new.
He fixed me with a broiling glare. “Someone shot the place up about a year ago.”
“Wasn’t me, and you know it.” Striding past him, I stuffed my wallet into my rear pocket and headed beneath the awning. He shouted at my retreating back.
“She’s been waiting for you, Westland.” From his lips, it was a threat.
I just kept walking. Dealing with Sal was the price of dealing with Remy. But if it led to answers, it would be worth it.
Beyond the double doors, the entrance had been completely remodeled. Gone were the velvet ropes and stained curtains that barely covered the chips in the walls. A daunting chamber of brushed chrome, sweeping columns, black granite, and backlit sections of pebbled glass brimmed wall-to-wall with equally elegant people. Metal rails sunk into the floor corralled their advance toward the blinking monolith of a metal detector—painted with flowing scrollwork so that, somehow, it added to the slick attraction of the room.
Suited security staff, the Nephilim anchors immediately apparent, moved the crowd through the line so no one stood in one place for more than a few seconds. Pocket knives, lighters, chain wallets, and other weapons were located, removed, and politely presented to their owners, all of whom were given the option either to return the items to their cars or to pay an additional fee for a private locker.
Almost everyone paid for the locker. At twenty bucks a pop on top of admission, Sal had a regular racket going.
One of the suited security staff—another beefy lug I recognized from the Scylla—waved me over, walkie still gripped in his hand. Skirting the milling crowd, I made my way to his station. The special treatment earned me more than a few dirty looks, especially the way I was dressed. All the coiffed millennials in line sported their club-kid best and, to them, I probably looked two steps from homeless. More self-conscious than I wanted to admit, I put my head down and tried to ignore the prickling heat of their eyes. My beef wasn’t with these mortals. To Sal, they were food and cash flow—nothing more.
The Resurrection Game Page 21
