He throws me a look, then changes lanes and takes a corner too sharp. “You’ll win him over after Moloch’s already decided you’re in.”
“So Moloch’s top dog, and Seth takes orders from him? Just like you?”
He ignores the swipe. “Seth and Ishtar both are inner circle. Moloch recruited them straight out of the San Francisco mob. I’m not exactly sure what went down there, but when their boss was found floating in the bay, Seth and Ishtar were free to become Moloch’s lead disciples. Ishtar is fully on board with Moloch’s vision, but Seth is the true believer. And he doesn’t like the idea of sharing the future with just anyone.”
I frown, wondering where that leaves Zachariel in the scheme of things. “And what future is that, exactly?”
He slides a look to me. “Moloch will be the one to tell you, when he thinks you’re ready.”
“Well, maybe Ishtar will talk him into it,” I say carefully. “She seems to like me. And she and Moloch seem… close.” Now that I think about it, Seth was the jealous one, not Moloch. There appear to be a lot of moving parts in the relationships inside Gehenna—I want to make sure I know who fits where.
“Ishtar is Moloch’s other half. For the moment, at least.” He pauses. “Watch out for her, Wraith. She’s dangerous. And who she sleeps with doesn’t mean a whole lot—she sleeps with everyone.”
My eyebrows lift, but I’m not entirely surprised. “Even you?”
“I had to take a turn.” He grips the steering wheel harder.
I give his tone a skeptical look, which he misses because his gaze is fixed on the rambling industrial buildings we’re passing as we head back toward Sacramento. Ishtar’s not my type, but I can’t imagine any straight man having a serious problem with sharing her bed.
“How awful for you,” I say, just to prod him.
He takes a moment to glare at me, then looks back to traffic. “Right. Because my favorite thing to do is get between the sheets with a woman who could easily kill me, if she’s not careful. Or if I don’t please her exactly the right way.”
That shuts me up. And runs a chill straight into my heart. Because that’s precisely how I killed Glenn—a moment of passion and not being careful. Of course, I didn’t know at the time I was capable of draining all the life energy from him. I had no idea my touch could mean death. But not knowing didn’t bring him back.
I look out the side window and watch the buildings slip past. We’re leaving the industrial section where the Gehenna hideout is buried in a junkyard, but we’re still in a down-and-out portion of Sacramento. There are some apartments, a few businesses struggling to live, but most of the streets are empty of anything but junkies and trash. The leftovers of a city that might once have been bustling, but now just barely keeps going—it’s the inescapable decay that sits at the grimy edges and dank corners of every city I’ve ever visited. I understand that dark underbelly—I feel it, viscerally, like a part of myself. Because no matter what I do, no matter where I go, everything circles back to the fact that my body is built to traffic in death.
My silence must have stretched too long, because Zachariel speaks up. “Hey… you all right?”
When I pull my gaze from the decrepit streets, he actually looks concerned. “I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m not.
He doesn’t believe it. “Did Ishtar hurt you?”
“No.” I say it with enough conviction that he looks back to the road. I’m sure Ishtar could have hurt me, if she wanted to… she didn’t seem to want to. Then again, maybe she would have, if I’d let things progress. But it stirs up my curiosity, regardless. Glenn died because I drained him without realizing what I was doing. Would it be the same between collectors? I hadn’t ever given it a thought, especially since I never planned to be face-to-face with another collector, much less tongue-to-tongue. But these Gehenna collectors don’t exactly seem celibate. And yet they survive.
“How does that work?” I ask. “Sex between debt collectors.”
He arches an eyebrow. “So… you and Ishtar, then?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m just… curious. You said something about being careful. I just… never mind.” I look out the window, my cheeks ridiculously heating up. Like I’m a teenage girl, not a grown woman. But the truth is most teenage girls have probably had more sexual encounters than me, and the world of debt collectors is even further outside my range of experience. Zachariel chuckles low, which heats my cheeks more, but I keep my gaze out the window.
“I could give you some instructions, if you’d like,” he says.
“Shut up.”
He laughs outright.
“How about you tell me where we’re going and who I have to kill when I get there?” I ask, still looking out the window and hoping that will smother the belly laugh he’s having at my expense.
It works.
He’s silent for a moment, then turns into a parking lot next to a pale yellow brick building that looks like it’s about to disintegrate. We’re the only car in the tiny side lot. A junkie who’s probably over fifty, haggard looking and dragging his left foot and a substantial duffle bag, stumbles along the sidewalk toward the front. He disappears around the corner.
My spiked boots make a grating metal sound on the pavement, accompanied by Zachariel’s heavy-soled ones. When we reach the front, it’s a large industrial building with two roll-up garage doors and a small pedestrian one in the middle. The junkie limps to the door, opens it, and steps inside.
I give Zachariel a questioning look, but he just strides toward the entrance. Once we’re inside, I see the junkie isn’t alone—a host of people occupy the room, old and young, male and female, most looking like they spend the majority of their hours on the street. The building has been cleared out to hold dozens of beds, some stacked as bunks. As the door slides shut behind us, and Zachariel beckons me forward, the sound of my boots gathers a twist of heads from everyone. The slight mumbles and shuffling of goods and bodies hushes as everyone stares.
The creeping realization of why we’re here inches up my back.
We’re literally going to steal from the poor.
There’s a check-in table, where a gray-grizzled man sits, accounting for those who’ve come seeking shelter from the streets. Zachariel breezes past that, and I hurry to keep up. Past the table stands a curtained-off booth, probably twenty by twenty. Inside is an elevated cot, a man in a doctor’s white labcoat, and a small sink and cabinet.
Zachariel gives the man a short nod. “Franklin, this is Wraith. She’ll be doing the collections today.”
Franklin nods, but doesn’t look at me. His eyes are shadowed, like he hasn’t had enough sleep. Or too much skeet. Or possibly the guilt of what’s happening here has been etched in his face again and again… how many times do they do this? Does it happen every day? Franklin scurries out of the enclosure, and I peek past the opening. There must be fifty people in the shelter. They’re all still staring my way. I duck back inside.
“Tell me we’re not… what are we doing here, Zach?” My stomach’s churning so badly, I feel the sourness in my throat. I press the back of my hand to my mouth, already feeling sick.
“We’re not doing anything here, Wraith.” He leans against the cabinet and crosses his arms. “This is all your show.”
“I mean… how much?” I’m waiting for him to tell me I have to kill one of them. Or all of them? My stomach heaves.
He sighs. “Calm down, it’s not that bad. Just a few months each. Usually three.” He waves in someone past my shoulder.
Franklin ushers in an over-sixty woman with wild gray hair. She has a blue handkerchief on her head that tries to contain it, but the fabric mostly slides to the back. She shuffles forward, waiving off Franklin’s help and gamely climbing up on the cot.
She lays down and holds out her arm, like she’s getting blood drawn. Franklin hurries over with an antiseptic wipe and starts cleaning her arm. Her short, wrinkled legs end in even shorter feet. Worn and dirty canv
as covers them, and her toes poke from a hole in one. That foot wiggles back and forth, like she’s tapping to music only she can hear. Her blue eyes are filmed over and look off to the side. Either she’s ignoring the fact that two debt collectors in ominous black trenchcoats are standing next to her cot… or she doesn’t really know we’re here.
I can’t believe I have to take some of what’s left of this poor woman’s life.
Franklin’s done cleaning her arm—as if the worst that could happen here is that I might contract a disease from her. He steps back and disposes of the wipe. He and Zachariel are both watching. I edge forward and lay my hand on her arm.
She jerks, but still doesn’t look at me.
I tell myself I have to do this. I’m sure this operation of Gehenna’s—harvesting life energy from the poor—has been going on for a long time before I arrived. And it will continue a long time after I leave. I’m sure this is just a small piece of what Gehenna is about: the clinic in LA, this homeless shelter in Sacramento, a waning movie star in West Hollywood. And there has to be more, much more. The only way to stop Moloch’s plans, including all of his nefarious machinations for shifting life energy around, is for me to get inside his cult and see what he’s really doing. How it all connects.
The woman cocks her head to the side and slowly drifts her gaze to stare at my hand resting on her arm. Skin-to-skin contact, but I haven’t done anything yet.
I start to pull, just a little.
She seizes up, her back arching, and her mouth pops open for an “oh” that can’t get air to make sound. The rush of the life energy flowing into me twists my stomach hard with guilt. It’s killing me to feel the pleasure of the hit while she has that expression of horror on her face. Tears jump to my eyes, so I close them and focus on the flow of energy, tracking the time.
A few months. Three. I step up the rate, so I can end it sooner—both her agony and my loathing as the high starts to fill my brain. When I’m done, I open my eyes, blinking to clear the water from them. The air she gasps in covers my own exhale of disgust.
She’s shaking.
I step all the way back to the edge of the enclosure. Franklin lurches forward to help her off the cot and out to the waiting shelter beds. Zachariel stares at me, a frown carved deep in his forehead.
I swallow. “How many?”
He shrugs. “All of them.” He says it like it’s obvious.
And I knew that would be the answer, but I had to be sure.
“What do you give them?” I ask. They have to be getting something in return for this.
“A warm bed. A hot shower. Meals for a week.”
“A week.” I shake my head. I’m stealing their tomorrows to give them what they need today. Something wells up inside me: a need to rage against this. A burning desire to scream how horrible this is. The energy of the hit pumps through me and urges me to fling my hands against Zachariel, not the spindly old man Franklin is ushering in next. But it’s not Zachariel who’s making me do this. It’s not even Moloch. I’m doing this so I can stop all of it… and more.
“Wraith?” Zachariel asks. His voice is low and warning. Like he wants to make sure I know this isn’t optional.
“I can do this.” I clench both hands, saying it as much to myself as to him. I step toward the cot again. This time I don’t wait for Franklin to clean the man’s arm. If I’m getting my hands dirty, then it seems only right that I should take whatever comes with that. I clamp my hand on the man’s thin, quaking arm, and pull a hot rush of life energy out of him.
I grit my teeth through the surge of revulsion and pleasure that comes with it.
I’m flying so high from the collections, I can barely feel my feet. Which isn’t a good combination with killer heels and a crumbling parking lot. I stumble, catch myself, and teeter on toward the car. The sun is blood red as it sinks below Sacramento’s few towers in the distance, and the twilight turns Zachariel’s black sedan into a murky pit of darkness.
Three months times forty-nine people… my brain is swimming in so much life energy, I can barely do the math. Almost a hundred and fifty months. Over twelve years. Twelve. I’ve pulled a year or two at a time, and that alone sent me flying off buildings without feeling a great need to pull the chute. This high has me on a completely different planet. One where I’m disconnected from my feet. And my hands. And my conscience, which floats nearby, following me like a judgmental black cloud that carries all my revulsion at what I’ve done. It was too much to keep inside, so I had to spit it out. But my gut feels like it has been turned inside out in the process.
My foot turns on some unseen divot in the pavement, and I go down. Miraculously, I float in the air instead of splaying out on the broken chunks of asphalt. It takes me a moment to realize Zachariel has caught me. My head swims, and his face is blurry, but I can just make out his extreme look of concern.
I grab hold of his trenchcoat with both hands. “I need to pay out!” I demand fiercely, but it comes out garbled and barely stronger than a whisper.
He walks me backward, or rather kind of hoists me, a hand on each arm, because my legs are a quivering, weak mess and not doing much in the walking department. He props me up against the sedan and lets go. I manage to hold onto the hot metal of the car, left baking in the sun all afternoon while I stole the lives of the poor.
For the hundredth time in the last few hours, my stomach heaves, but nothing comes out.
Zachariel steps close again, and now he’s touching my face, rubbing my cheeks. It’s a sign of how far gone I am that I don’t even realize he’s making skin-to-skin contact until he pulls his hands away and wipes them on his trenchcoat. I’ve been crying again. I thought I ran out of tears an hour ago.
“Wraith.” He’s shaking his head. “Come on. I know you’ve done this before. You can do this. Pull it together.”
I nod in a way that’s not entirely up-and-down and probably only makes me look even more high, so I stop. Then I shake my head, deciding I actually disagree with him.
“Never this much.” My voice is shaky, so I suck in a breath and try to calm it. “Never this way. I can’t… I need… I have to pay out.” I blink and pour every effort into focusing on his dark brown eyes, which are pinched up. “Please tell me we’re paying out.” This time, it’s reasonably clear. I think.
“Yeah, we’re paying out.” But he looks uncertain. I think it’s for my mental state, not the actual fact that we’re going somewhere that I can expel all this guilt-ridden life energy from my body.
“Let’s go.” I use both hands to work my way around the end of the sedan, not trusting my feet. Zachariel grabs one arm to steady me, and when we reach the passenger side, he opens the door and helps me in. My legs are jumping up and down of their own accord. So I make fists of my hands and press down on my knees to keep them still.
I focus on my breathing and calming the jitters, not making conversation or even paying attention to where we’re going. The ride is long enough that the head-floating part of the high starts to pass. A little. The buzz is still raging in my head, and the gut-wrenching need to pay out only grows. I have no idea how much time has passed, but when I’m calm enough to actually notice where we are, the scenery has changed substantially.
Night has fallen, but I can still see the lush greenery that trims the walks and the million-dollar mansions hidden behind them. The streets are swept clean, and there is absolutely no one on them—even the streetlights are muted and elegant. It couldn’t be more different than the electric-blue-buzz of the east side streets of LA. I’m sure whatever the payout is here in the rich suburbs of Sacramento, it will be nothing like paying out to the sick children of Madam A’s brothel. Or even the barely-making-it patients that Jax’s nurse-friend finds for me. Even before we pull up to the sweeping front drive of the white-pillared estate, I know this payout will be the kind I normally visit in the night and steal ill-gotten life energy from. Only this time, I’m carrying a dozen years that I’ll be paying out
. My stomach lurches again as I realize: this one night is easily wiping out six months of my work as a phantom in the bedrooms of the rich and high potential.
We pass the string of luxury cars parked in the wide driveway, circle around a lit-up water fountain, then slowly wind around to the back of the mansion and park next to the catering trucks. A flurry of staff run back and forth to serve whatever party is going on inside. There’s no music, but there’s definitely an event of some kind.
Zachariel turns to me. “You ready for this?”
“As long as we’re paying out.” My voice is calmer now, less jittery. I don’t like where my store of life energy is going, but the churning need to get it out of my body remains. I flex my hands—they’re cramped from being clenched into fists for most of the ride—then I look back to him. “Are we paying everything out?” I’ll have to take it slow, but I’m hoping that paying it out will bring me back to some kind of level.
He eyes me, like he’s not convinced I’m ready for this. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” I say quickly to reassure him. “You should worry about your payout. Can they take everything I’ve got?”
He sighs and glances to the two-story mansion. A scattering of odd-shaped windows spear soft light into the back loading area. “We’ve got at least a dozen payouts tonight. They’re all big campaign contributors.” He gives me a side look. “They’re used to getting a lot of perks in exchange for their donations. I’m sure they can handle it.”
The whole thing makes me want to retch, but I keep my face neutral. “Spreading it out will help.”
He nods, and I think he’s finally convinced I’m stable enough. We climb out of the car. My legs are reassuringly steady under me, even in the spike-heeled boots. The staff notice our debt collector garb right away and skitter aside. We stride up to the back landing, through the rear door, and on into the kitchen. It’s not until we reach a large open room in the middle of the house that Zachariel checks our progress, holding me back with a brief touch at my elbow. He’s keeping us in a shadowed alcove, scanning the party for someone.
The Debt Collector (Season Two) Page 12
