A garbled sound came from Donatti. “You mean him?” he rasped.
I turned to find him holding the sheet gingerly away from the first body in the row, staring like it might jump out and bite him. And right away, I realized why.
Orville Valentine had died with a snarl on his face.
“Yeah. That’s the one.” I came over and drew the sheet off as Donatti shuffled aside. Nothing in me wanted to do this. Even dead and harmless, the sight of him affected me on a deep, primal level. I was torn between wanting to run as fast as I could, or smash his face into pulp with the nearest blunt object. “All right,” I said. “This is going to be … different. Just remember that whatever happens, he’s still dead.”
Donatti backed up a few steps. “I’m worried that I have to take your word for that.”
“It’s safe. I promise.”
Standing alongside the body, I reached out without moving until I felt the sensation of his cold, rigid flesh. His soul put up a massive fight. The instant he was in my head, it felt like my brain was on fire.
I pushed him out fast, projecting him onto his body. Which bolted upright on the table and turned to glare hellfire at me.
For the moment, I had to ignore Donatti’s brief, startled shout.
“You little bastard,” Orville thundered. No confusion about being dead or wondering how he got here. He saw me, and nothing else mattered. “You sent that freak, didn’t you? Was it one of your fairy friends?”
I had to keep hold of his soul the way Nyantha taught me, so he couldn’t escape. But the bastard wasn’t making it easy. The constant pull he exerted on the invisible string that connected us was practically a knife through my skull. “What killed you?” I said.
Somehow, Orville struggled even harder. “A jaguar. Boy, what the hell are you doing to me?”
“Not a damn thing. Now shut up.”
“You think you can tell me what to do?”
“Yeah. I can.”
He shut up, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long.
I glanced back at Donatti to see if the jaguar thing made any sense to him. He was wide-eyed and washed out, nearly as gray as the bloodless corpses, but he managed to shake his head. “Never heard of a jaguar clan,” he managed in shaken tones. “But Ian knows a lot more about this than me.”
“All right.” I turned back to Orville with a hot glare of my own. “You’re sure it was a jaguar?”
He managed to hold out a little longer this time before he answered. “Yes, I’m goddamned sure, and you know I am. Massive, gorgeous beast,” he said. “That pelt alone would’ve fetched half a million, easy.”
“Yeah, I don’t give a damn about the black market value,” I said. “Tell me everything about it.”
Another long pause. Finally, he flashed a wicked smile. “You can’t do it again, make me talk. Can you, boy?”
“The hell I can’t.” I was tempted to throw a spell at him, an extremely painful one, just to prove it. But that would be petty — not to mention a waste of magic I’d probably need. “Were there people with the jaguar?”
“Yes! Fuck!” His lip curled in a sneer. “So it’s only when you ask questions, that it? What are you, anyway?”
I really hated being reminded that Orville was just as smart as he was mean. “What I am is not your concern anymore,” I said. “Dead people don’t get revenge.”
The sneer deepened. “I might be gone. But my boys, they’ll catch up with you. And they’ll take enough out of your hide for me and then some before they kill you.”
Damn. He didn’t know about the rest of them.
“Orville, they’re dead.” I wanted to sound smug, but I couldn’t do it. “Look around you,” I said. “They’re all dead.”
It penetrated slowly. His features relaxed, and his ghostly head turned to the row of sheet-draped tables behind him, then the rest across the room.
All at once, the thread I still held yanked so hard that I gasped in pain.
“You did this!” Orville bellowed. “I don’t know how, but I goddamned know you’re responsible. I’m gonna take you apart inch by inch, you nasty little bottom-feeding freak!”
He was trying to get off the table. And it was almost working.
Before I could focus enough to pull him back in and get rid of him, a flat crack exploded somewhere behind me — and a sledgehammer of pain slammed into my spine, driving me to my knees.
CHAPTER 26
The bullet was cold iron.
That was one of many thoughts banging through my head as it lodged somewhere behind my ribcage and stayed there, burning and slowly killing me. I still couldn’t let go of Orville safely. Whoever just shot me was Milus Dei. I’d put my money on Frost. And Donatti was about to do something magic to her.
I couldn’t let him. Couldn’t risk her finding out what he was.
“I’m fine!” I gasped, forcing myself to stand quickly. The blood pouring from my mouth didn’t lend much weight to my statement — but I grabbed Donatti’s outstretched arm and pushed it down. “We’re cooperating,” I said as firmly as I could. A dribbling wheeze was the best I managed.
He looked absolutely furious. But he didn’t say a word, and I turned to face the shooter.
Of course it was Frost.
“Damn it,” she said. “I was hoping all that not-dying business they said about you was just a rumor.”
“So you were trying to kill him?” The edge in Donatti’s tone could’ve cut through marble.
Frost ignored him. “Now you’re breaking into federal property,” she said. “Last straw, Mr. Black. You’re going down. And what did you do to the victim?”
“Hell if I know,” the victim in question said. “I think you should just shoot him again.”
Agent Frost let out a strangled shout. The gun she’d been holding on me clattered to the floor. “You … is he … oh my God … ”
“He’s still dead.” I speared a wild look at Donatti. “If you want me, fine. But my friend isn’t involved in this,” I said. “He just drove me here.”
He seemed to understand what I wanted. But he wasn’t happy about it.
“Like I said, I’m cooperating,” I said to Frost. “So could you maybe stop shooting me?” Without waiting for an answer, I turned to deal with Orville.
He didn’t exactly want to be dealt with.
“Boy, when I get my hands on you, what I did to you in the swamps is gonna feel like a goddamned vacation!”
“You can go back to hell now, you son of a bitch.”
I yanked him into my head. The pain was explosive, but I managed to cram his soul back into his body with more force than necessary. “I hope that hurt,” I ground out.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT HURT IS, BOY!
I cried out and fell to my knees again, clapping my hands to my ears as blood burst from my nose. As if that would help. I’d forgotten this was two-way communication — the dead could talk to me, even if I didn’t initiate. But they could only use the daggers-in-my-head method.
“Gideon!” Donatti knelt next to me with a wary glance at Frost, who still hadn’t said a word. “What’s wrong?”
“Get me the hell away from him,” I managed through my teeth. “He’s—”
PULL YOUR GUTS OUT THROUGH YOUR ASSHOLE AND FEED THEM BACK TO YOU!
My ears popped and started to bleed.
With a sharp breath, Donatti put an arm around me and got me up, supporting me as we moved toward Frost. She was between us and the plastic strips, still frozen in shock. “Move it,” he snapped.”
Surprisingly, she did.
Once we were out of the body cooler, the volume of the shouts in my skull decreased. But not by much. “Get the fuck out of my head, you son of a bitch,” I gasped, trying to think of a spell that would get rid of him. The word I needed surfaced from somewhere inside the pain … a word that meant something like expel. “Ruaigh.”
My body gave out with the relief of silence.
Donatti caught me and he
ld. “You okay?” he said. “I mean, you’re not. But—”
“I’ll be fine.” I forced myself to straighten up a little. “We have to go now.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
Frost, shaken but determined, stepped around in front of us with the gun back in her hand. “Don’t know where you came from,” she said, looking at Donatti, “but you’re both under arrest.”
He glared at her. “The hell we are, lady.”
And suddenly, we were sinking into the floor.
CHAPTER 27
“Whoops.”
That was not a word I wanted to hear from someone who’d just magically dragged me God knew where. For a minute or so it’d been almost unbearably hot, but now it was freezing. And pitch black. “What do you mean, ‘whoops’?”
“Er. Think I went down too far. Hang on.” Donatti lowered me gently to a surface of some sort. There was a rustling, and then a burst of non-magical light as he switched on a flashlight and passed the beam around. “Yeah, this doesn’t look like a subway tunnel.”
I managed to relax a little. At least he hadn’t transported us to an alternate realm or something. I recognized the surroundings, more or less. I’d spent a lot of time in passages like these when I first learned about the Others. That was before Milus Dei torched the Hive, their underground village. “Whatever you did, you didn’t miss by much,” I said. “This is a subtunnel. We’re right below the subway.”
“So it’s not like the center of the Earth or anything, then,” he said.
“Yeah, I think it’d probably be a little warmer down there.” I decided not to try getting up just yet. Besides the blood loss and my throbbing head, the effect of the cold iron was ramping up. If I moved too much, I’d vomit. I should probably get that out soon. “How did you do that, anyway?”
“Tell you when I heal you.” He crouched in front of me. “You’re a wreck.”
“Wait.” I wasn’t sure how djinn healing worked, but I needed an extraction before the hole in me could be closed. “The bullet has to come out,” I said. “It’s poison.”
“Seriously? She shot you with a poison bullet?”
I nodded. “Cold iron. It’s only poison to the Fae,” I said. “They know our weaknesses, and they use them. That’s why I didn’t want her to find out what you were. If Milus Dei knew about the djinn, they’d come after you hard.” A shudder went through me. “And your families.”
His eyes closed briefly. “You stopped me from throwing down on her, so she wouldn’t know I was Other.”
“Yeah. She’ll probably think I did that floor thing.”
He looked pained for a minute, and then pulled himself together. “Thank you,” he said. “I can get the bullet out. I’ve done it for Ian before, more times than I like to remember. And he’s done it for me.” He flashed a crooked smile. “But I need to see the wound — so I guess you’ll have to strip.”
Great. Talking about my past was one thing, but people looking at my scars was still the hardest part. I always felt exposed, far beyond naked. But the poison had to come out. “All right,” I said, maneuvering my arms carefully from my jacket. “I’ll get a light going, so you can have your hands free.”
As he straightened and moved behind me, I activated the moonstone. Getting my shirt off completely would hurt a lot more than I was prepared to deal with, so I just lifted it to my shoulders and held it there.
After a long, heavy silence, Donatti said, “Nice ink.”
I almost smiled. “Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Is it glowing?”
“Er … no. Should it be?”
“If it was, that would mean you intended to harm me.”
“Oh. Really nice ink. You’ve got a personal alarm system.”
“Something like that.”
“Okay. Removing the bullet,” he said. I tried not to flinch too much as he rested a palm on my gouged back. “I’ll do this as fast as I can.”
Would’ve said thanks, but the sudden pain of burning metal moving through my body stopped me. The intensity of it didn’t last long, though. I could feel the damage healing as the bullet worked its way out. “You can ask about the rest of it, you know,” I said.
“The rest of what?” he said cautiously.
“The scars.”
“Oh, those.” The cutting edge was back in his voice. “After your little chat with Orville, I think I don’t have to,” he said. “And he’s lucky he’s already dead. Because if I knew about this, I’d have killed him.”
I had to close my eyes a minute. “Good to know,” I said.
It wasn’t much longer before the bullet came out. Donatti kept up the healing until I didn’t have a gaping hole in my back, and my head had calmed to a dull throb. “Any better?” he said when he moved his hand away.
“Yeah, thanks.” I lowered my shirt and slid back into the jacket. At least now I could stand without puking. “Usually I have to get out under the moonlight to heal that much,” I said as I got up.
He came back around. “So the Fae draw magic from the moon?”
“Yes.” I was surprised he’d figured it out that fast. “I take it the djinn draw power from somewhere, too.”
“Usually it comes from the djinn realm,” he said. “But I can draw from the earth, too, because — well, the simple version is because I’m mostly human. It’s also an element thing.”
I frowned. “What elements?”
“You know, the elements. Earth, water, wind, fire. There might be a few more,” he added with a shrug. “But every clan has a stronger element. Earth for Dehbei, air for Bahari. The Morai use fire, way too much.”
“And they’re snakes, right?”
“Someone’s been paying attention.” He grinned. “That’s one reason to know this guy’s clan. We can figure out his strengths, and his weaknesses. I’m clueless about the jaguar clan, but Ian has to know something.”
“Yeah, I hope so.” I looked around the subtunnel. This was one of the narrow ones, mostly dug earth, propped and shored with wooden beams. “Can your earth magic get us back to the surface?” I said.
“Not really. So far, I’m only good at down.”
It figured. “Well, I guess we’re walking,” I said.
“Any idea where you’re going?”
“Yeah. To find a service tunnel to the subway.”
He laughed. “Good idea.”
The light of the moonstone revealed a branch in the tunnel about fifty feet ahead. We walked that way and came out into a wider tunnel, paved with cement and slightly less than full dark, thanks to the occasional security light.
Both directions looked pretty much the same. Before I could pick one, a deep and unfamiliar voice behind us said, “Ah, there you are.”
We both turned instantly.
It was the jaguar djinn.
CHAPTER 28
I only had time to register the big black-and-gold eyes before excruciating pain shot through my entire body, and I was lifted two or three feet in the air. Beside me, the same thing was apparently happening to Donatti.
Through watering eyes, I realized that both of us were completely coated with a thin film of blood.
The pain faded to extreme discomfort as my skin seemed to draw the blood back in. But I was still suspended in midair, barely able to move. Donatti too.
He glanced at me. “Can you do anything?”
“I can talk.” I wasn’t even sure I could do that, until the words left my mouth. “I think that’s about it.”
“So we’re probably gonna die now.”
I didn’t want to agree with that out loud.
The djinn walked toward us slowly. Apparently he’d emerged from another side tunnel branching to the left, because a bunch more people were still coming from there. Half-naked guys with war paint. There were ten or twelve of them altogether.
None of them made a sound as they walked. Not a single footstep echoed in the tunnel.
I watched the leader. He was about my height, possibl
y a little shorter, so I guessed all djinn weren’t as tall as Ian. Maybe it was a clan thing. He was wearing a black bodysuit — leather or latex, I couldn’t be sure — with a row of chains strung across the chest. More chains on the pants. Emo-style hair, with shaved sides and blood-red side bangs.
He carried a staff in one hand that was taller than him. The top of it was a double hoop with ropes criss-crossing from the inner circle in an uneven pattern, almost like a dreamcatcher. There was something caught in the center of the web, and I finally made it out when he got close enough.
It was a patch of human skin. Pulled taut, and tattooed with the Milus Dei symbol.
“Now, which one of you is the djinn?” he said as he slowed. “I felt your presence … it’s you.” He stopped in front of Donatti and stared into his eyes. Had to look up to do it, since we were still involuntarily floating. “You’re a scion,” he said. “Oh, I’ve always wanted one of you. More than one, preferably. But I make do with what I have.” He swept his free hand back to indicate the followers, who’d gathered silently behind him. “My acolytes serve me well.”
Christ, this guy was powerful. I could feel it crackling around him like a thunderstorm, and I’d barely learned to sense Fae magic. I couldn’t pick out djinn magic if I tried — but with him, I didn’t have to. It was just there. And huge.
Donatti had the same look of barely controlled panic. He felt it, too. Probably stronger than I did. “Er. Congrats on the acolytes?” he said.
“I am called Zee.” I got the sense this guy didn’t really care what Donatti said. Or anyone else, for that matter. “What do they call you, scion?”
“Donatti.”
We had to do something. I figured I might as well try the sleep spell, since it’d worked on people more powerful than me before. If I could knock him out long enough to get us down, maybe Donatti could make us invisible. And then we could run like hell.
I focused on Zee, who still hadn’t so much as glanced in my direction. “Beith na codahl.”
City of Secrets (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 5) Page 10
