“You’re a troublemaker. It’s unsurprising you would try to steal sensitive documents.”
“I didn’t try anything, asshole.” My teeth were gritted. “I straight up stole them.”
“Fair enough.”
“Do you know what the Phoenix Protocol is?
“Not my department.” His voice was totally cool—he honestly didn’t care what words the files contained. He compartmentalized his work: He had a job to do, and he would do it well. I wondered if he was a demon, his uglier features cloaked by powerful magic.
With panic flooding my veins, it was hard to read the hit team’s souls. I didn’t try. That information wouldn’t save me, anyway. It didn’t matter if they were wolves, vampires, or interdimensional spaghetti monsters.
They had guns, and I didn’t, which placed the odds heavily in their favor.
I leaned against the chair, breathing heavily as I estimated the remaining distance to the window.
Fifteen feet. Twenty, max.
The warm sheets of the protocol were clutched to my chest, like a precious loved one.
“Should you surrender quietly, the aftermath will be merciful.”
What a nice offer.
“Too bad I called the FBI before,” I said, trying to stall for time. “They’re not gonna be happy finding you jackasses shooting up a library.”
“We know everything about you, Miss Hunter.”
Damn. Apparently that included my tendency to, ahem, charge ahead without backup. But since when had the library been so damn dangerous?
I’d have to take it up with Aldric. This neighborhood was really going downhill.
Then again, Rayna had known everything about me, too. And she’d ended her night on a nice steel cot. So I tried one final bluff. “Then you should know I’m armed.”
A snort. “Everything means everything.”
“You sure about that?” I channeled energy from my lantern sigil through my fingers. Its official name was Firework, but I called it the light show.
The kaleidoscopic light formed a swirling ball.
It had fooled the crows.
Maybe it would fool DSA agents, too.
I slowly extended my hand from behind the chair.
The light splashed across the cracked walls.
“You’re not a sorceress,” the man said.
“You willing to bet on that?” I asked. “You’re the asshole who knows everything.”
One wild card about magic: You could be prepared, but you could never be sure you knew everything. Slight hesitation entered his voice. “It’s a trick.”
But slight hesitation would do just fine.
“Trick this.” I flung the ball of light over my head without looking. The men discharged their weapons, shouting in panic.
None of the bullets came my way.
I got up and sprinted straight for the large window. Frantic, confused yells scored my escape. My eyes scanned the environment for something to break the glass with—other than my face.
I snagged a small stepping stool in my path and hurled it at the large window. The warm papers fluttered to the ground like wounded ducks—sacrificed so that I could live.
A chorus of gunfire exploded behind me as the glass shattered.
I hunched my shoulders and leapt through, feeling a pinch in my right arm. I rolled as I hit the asphalt, leaving behind a bloody streak on the white line. Tires screamed as a sedan braked, its wheels inches from my fingertips. The driver cursed, but I didn’t need to tell him to shut up.
The thunderous stream of bullets raining down from the library’s second floor did that for me.
I slid over the hood and ducked behind the door. The driver looked shell-shocked.
My bike was next to the library—way too close to the hail of bullets.
Then I spotted my lifeline, parked beyond the row of palms: the DSA’s SUV. Its doors were still open, beckoning me inside. I sprinted behind a tree, chunks of bark splintering as the gunmen peppered my position. When they reloaded, I hauled ass to the back seat and dived inside.
Bullets glanced off the bulletproof chassis as I slammed the door.
Groaning from the bullet lodged in my right arm, I climbed into the driver’s seat. It was an older model—2005 or 2006—meaning no keyless ignition. They hadn’t been nice enough to leave the keys.
I used the Reaper’s Switch to pop off the plastic beneath the steering column and then dug out the rat’s nest of wires. Futile shots continued buffeting the side panels. But what would you tell Lucille? That you just watched as your target jacked your ride and played you for fools?
I twisted a red and green wire together. The car started with a throaty roar, and I slammed on the gas.
The tires screamed as they searched for purchase. I popped the clutch and threw it into first gear, making the SUV violently surge forward like it’d been cattle-prodded.
Bullets nipped harmlessly at the SUV’s bumper as I peeled out and took a hard right at the intersection.
Good thing I’d learned how to hotwire cars.
And good thing Dad had taught me how to drive stick.
I glanced at my wound. Blood dripped from the hole, staining my jeans. A through and through, right near the lantern sigil.
Well, that hadn’t gone as planned.
But I still had the USB drive.
And I knew something else, now, too.
Lucille would kill to keep whatever was on that drive a secret.
Which meant the Phoenix Protocol was somehow even worse than I’d imagined.
36
At a literal crossroads—a three-way intersection branching back to the city, out to the suburbs, or toward the eastern wilds—I let the bullet-battered SUV idle as the stoplight flickered between green and red.
I glanced in the rearview, finding a wild-eyed woman staring back.
Almost dying will do that.
I bit my lip, trying to calm my nerves. It was hard to do with a goddess on your ass. Good thing Rayna releasing the file had been a bluff. If that information had gone public, they would’ve found my corpse scattered to the far corners of the island.
As it stood, I was alive—but for how long?
Sticky blood dripped from the steering column. My pants were torn, studded with glass shards from the broken window. I ripped part of my sweaty shirt and tightened the fabric around my wrist. A red stain gradually seeped through.
The hospital was out. Lucille’s agents would be monitoring the emergency room.
But I did know one place that offered off-the-books surgery. Even if I liked the proprietors only slightly more than the deranged rain goddess.
Beggars, choosers—that old chestnut.
So, with a deep sigh, I charted a course for the Happy Paws Vet Clinic. Fragmented slivers of sunlight fought through the thick jungle canopy as I headed deeper into the eastern part of the island. Each bump in the poorly maintained road sent a jolt of pain through my wrist.
Teeth gritted, I rounded the bend, noting the broken almond tree where I’d crashed trying to escape from Cross’s crew a couple months back. The dilapidated clinic sat a few hundred feet beyond.
It wasn’t much to look at. The roof sagged, and the windows were covered in yellowing newspapers. What had once been a parking lot had been ransacked by grass and stubby jungle flora. If any happy paws had ever been treated here, it hadn’t been for at least a decade.
Dante Cross’s gleaming Porsche Boxster was the sole vehicle present, parked right in front of the crumbling concrete stairs. I parked next to it and cut the engine. Smoke trailed from the SUV’s hood. The car must not have been as bulletproof as I’d thought.
I slipped out of the car, wincing as I put weight on my feet. Despite my parkour roll, the two-story drop had still bruised my bones. Nothing was broken, but I’d certainly felt spryer. As I limped toward the entrance, no one came rushing out of Happy Paws’ broken doors to head me off like they had last time.
I paused to peer inside Cross’s
convertible. The top was up, its leather interior as immaculate as ever, save for a collection of vodka bottles on the passenger side floor. Guess he wasn’t done drowning his Tamara Marquez sorrows.
The clinic’s broken doors creaked as I stepped inside. Happy Paws had the ambiance of a slasher film set, where a hooded killer seemed liable to pop out from behind a rusted gurney. Thin strands of light wormed their way through the yellowed newspapers, giving the peeling linoleum a sickly tint. Water stains bloated the walls.
“Hello?” I received no answer. Nothing moved.
From the small waiting area, the clinic branched off into left and right halls. I peered at the footprints on the dusty tile. A fresh set headed down the right corridor, so I followed them.
Light seeped from one of the closed exam rooms—where the footprints also stopped. My first inclination was to charge in and catch Cross off guard.
But he was acting a little erratic these days, to say the least. So I rapped on the door softly.
Metal clanged inside the exam room, and I heard a familiar British voice curse. Then I eased the door open. Cross looked mildly embarrassed—like he’d been caught doing something naughty. He kicked a large knife with an ornate handle into a shadowy corner. His gaze quickly hardened into an angry frown.
“Can’t take a hint, Eden?” Cross’s sun-bleached hair was greasy, and he smelled like booze. “A little clingy, showing up like this.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, jackass,” I said, holding up my bloody wrist. “What were you just doing?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cross glared at me in the small, dim room, as if waiting for me to leave. An unmade cot sat in the corner beneath a poster imploring owners to spay and neuter. Discolored tiles marked where the exam table had once stood.
“You’re sleeping here?”
“Well, the DSA burned down Jack’s house a couple months ago,” Cross said, rubbing his jaw. His usual designer stubble had slipped into drunken hobo territory. “But you wouldn’t know that, since you’ve been busy blowing me off. Hiding your little map and digging up secrets and all.”
“They agreed to leave you alone,” I said.
“Well, Eden, that’s the thing about contracts.” Cross snatched a vodka bottle off the floor with a drunken flair. “You gotta read the fine print.”
Since Lucille had agreed to spare him, she must’ve torched the house of spite. Not surprising, seeing as how he’d broken a trial of his own with Lucille—gaining immortality in exchange for staying in one place forever. That had lasted all of two months before he’d up and left.
That was over four hundred years ago.
The goddess had been hunting him ever since.
Her minions had been hunting me for all of two hours, and it had already gotten exhausting.
“Look, about Tamara—” I started, but he held up his hand, vodka swinging.
“No.”
“No what?” I furrowed my brow.
“I don’t want to hear your bullshit web of lies.” His soul’s fragments enveloped the room until there was nothing left of the debonair swashbuckler, and it was just blood—blood and guilt and a streak of unpredictable darkness.
“Web of lies, huh? You make it sound so Machiavellian.”
“You’re too clever for your own good, Eden.” Cross smiled joylessly—cruelly, even. His words were slurred.
“I’m not being clever,” I said, hoping my flat denial would prove the point.
It didn’t. “You remind me of her. Just a little bit.”
I decided to go for it. “I know where Tamara is.”
Cross’s fist balled up, and he punched the wall. His knuckles split open, blood slashing down the ruined plaster. He didn’t make a sound. Even after getting his ass kicked at the Loaded Gun the night before, he was still into the whole self-flagellation thing.
“You know what she used to say to me, Eden?”
“What’s that?”
“Men are driven by two principal impulses: either by love or by fear.” He took a huge pull on the bottle and scratched his cheek, leaving behind manic, bloody streaks. “And, in the end, she told me I was ruled by fear. Right before I took her life.”
“Now who’s Machiavellian?” I said, but I don’t think he got the reference. “As much as I want to hear your sad-ass story, I’m bleeding over here.”
He ignored me. “I was dying. Sepsis from a musket ball. And then Lucille descended, offering me a way out. All I had to do was make a simple choice: Tamara, or me.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “And I didn’t even hesitate. Killed the only woman I’ve ever loved, and took her soul.”
I’d have said different times, different rules, but that was pretty ice-cold, even for the seventeenth century. Still, not really a burning issue, at least from my perspective.
I sighed and said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a little vodka left, would you?”
Cross turned the bottle upside down, and a few droplets trickled out.
With a drunken grin, he shrugged and then dug beneath the cot. He tossed me half-full fifth. Instead of drinking, I unwrapped the makeshift t-shirt tourniquet and doused the gunshot wound in vodka.
The ensuing scream hurt my own ears.
Cross barely noticed, torched as he was.
After I’d stopped panting like a stuck pig, I said, “Well, forgiveness is probably too much to ask for. But hey, you never know.”
Cross said, “Want to know why I returned to this island, Eden?”
“Not really,” I said, being honest.
His drunken, glassy eyes brimmed with four-hundred-years of sorrow. “The thing they don’t tell you about immortality is that you can’t die.”
Ah. Drunken wisdom. Nothing better.
“Kind of the appeal, don’t you think?” I considered taking a pull on the vodka, seeing as how other pain management options were lacking. “You could’ve let Lucille kill you. She’d be more than happy to oblige.”
“And let that bitch have the satisfaction?” Cross unleashed a bitter laugh. “I’d rather live in hell forever.”
“If you’re not coming with me, then I’m leaving.”
Cross swayed in the hazy light. “You want to know why I want the Sword of Damocles?”
“I’m taking that as a no, you’re not coming along.” The vodka burned as I poured some more on my wrist. At least the wound was clean.
“Because it’s the only way I can die.”
His smile was mirthless.
Then Dante Cross passed out face-first on the grungy cot.
37
Well, the visit to Happy Paws had been a complete bust.
I remained wounded. Cross remained unhelpful. And the DSA remained on my ass.
It dawned on me that the DSA probably had tracking systems installed in all their vehicles, which made hanging around the clinic a bad idea.
Cross snored loudly on the cot. I emptied the vodka bottle on his greasy head. He awoke with a shivering startle.
“Rise and shine,” I said.
His eyes flickered with angry recognition, then closed.
So I kicked him.
He yelped and fell off the cot. “Leave . . . leave me alone.”
“Lucille is coming.” I crouched next to him on the dirty linoleum. “You want her to get the last laugh?”
After a long silence, he said, “No.”
“Then we’re leaving. Now.” I helped him up off the floor. It took longer than necessary to get back outside, but we made it. Cross groaned when the sunlight hit his face.
“Make it stop,” he said, rubbing his temple.
“Sure. I’ll just pray to Lucille for rain.”
He groaned and then projectile vomited in the lush grass. I took the liberty of swiping his keys. The DSA’s smoking wreck of a vehicle could stay here.
I got in the driver’s side of the Porsche, and he limped up next to me. “I’m driving.”
“Only one of us is immortal, asshole.” I jerked my thumb to
the passenger seat. “You’re riding shotgun.”
After holding his scowl for a minute, Cross finally complied. He was asleep again before I’d pulled the car out of the grassy lot.
Three minutes later, we passed a phalanx of SUVs heading toward the clinic.
I called my sister through the car’s Bluetooth system.
“Christ, E,” Sierra said, her voice barely a whisper. “I cannot talk to you right now.”
“Anything to do with those jackasses who tried to kill me at the library?”
“They’re saying you stole the protocol.” She made it sound like I’d heisted the Mona Lisa. Although, given the DSA’s response, the Phoenix Protocol was ten times more valuable. “They’ve got almost everyone out looking for you.”
How flattering.
“I guess that means I won’t be going home for a while.” I bit my lip, thinking of Khan. Lucille struck me as the kill your family and your pet type. “Anywhere else that’s off-limits?”
“Like, everywhere.”
“Thanks for narrowing that down,” I said. “Deadwood hasn’t tried to kill you yet, right?”
“Glad you’re so glib,” Sierra said. “Seriously, E, you need to patch this up with Lucille.”
“I’ll think of something. See ya.” I went to end the call.
“Wait!” Sierra’s shrieking voice made the speakers distort. “Word is, the big day is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I bit my dry lips. “They’re going to torch the entire island tomorrow?”
“Lucille wants to be decisive. Doesn’t want the other gods auditing her, I guess.”
“Well, then, her plans are changing tomorrow,” I said. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
After ending the call, I wondered how I would make good on my statement. Lucille had a small army of highly trained demons, wolves, and other fearsome creatures to enact her plan.
Me? I had a drunk cliché who smelled like puke, and a Field Director who seemed more interested in watching me squirm while under the influence of weird magic than actually wrapping this up.
But I did have one reliable ally.
Which is why I called Kai next.
“What happened with Rayna, Eden?” FBI HQ buzzed in the background. All hands on deck.
Soul Fire Page 17
