Death Rites (The Lazarus Codex Book 1)

by E. A. Copen

  Okay, so maybe the odds weren’t in my favor, but I’d be damned if I was going to let a little thing like probability get in my way.

  “You guys ready for this?” I looked to Darius who nodded.

  “Ready when you are, Magic Man.”

  I let out a breath, closed my eyes, and stepped out from behind the truck.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I expected to get blasted as soon as I showed myself. When that didn’t happen, I approached the gate. Darius took up a position on my right and another one of his guys, one of the cousins I’d smacked around in the bar, stepped up to my left.

  As we approached, the goon on the porch lifted his collar and spoke into a device I couldn’t see. After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped his collar and pulled a gun. I opened the gate.

  “That’s far enough,” the goon shouted.

  I stopped just inside the gate and planted my feet in a wide stance. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way, but I’m going inside the house.”

  Before the goon could make up his mind, Darius’ dog darted around him and broke into a dead run. The goon shifted his attention, brought his gun up, ready to fire, but he was too slow. Joeline barreled into him, knocking him back. The gun went off, but the shot went wide, hitting one of the cars instead. Terrified shrieks filled the air as the dog tore into the goon’s face.

  Darius left my side, running up onto the porch. I fell in step behind and reached the stairs at about the same time, cringing. Joeline had torn off half of his face and showed no signs of stopping.

  “Go on, Magic Man,” Darius shouted over the goon’s pained screams and Joeline’s vicious growling. “We’ve got the door covered. I’ll bring my boys through the front of the house. Go do your thing.”

  I nodded, swallowed the bile that had crept up my throat, and hopped off the porch to go around the side of the house.

  Gaston was waiting for me. The large guy sat on a branch about halfway up the tree, running a stone over the blade of a knife. His big, flat-top head lifted at my approach, the drawn muscles of concentration slackening, shifting. Was that a smile? It was hard to tell from that far away.

  “Man, if I’d come around that corner with a gun, you would be so screwed right now.” I leaned on my staff. My left side was still mostly numb, but he didn’t have to know that.

  “I hoped you would come this way.” He spun the knife before putting it into a holster on his belt and then dropped from the tree branch, hanging from it like an ape. When he dropped to the ground, he landed in a puddle, and it sent up an impressive splash.

  “Aw, I missed you too, ugly. Say, how’s about you put down the knife, and we work out our differences all sportsmanlike? I was thinking a rousing game of dominoes or crazy eights.”

  Gaston pushed up from the ground, his teeth clenched. A scowl. That was definitely a scowl and not a smile. He drew the knife he’d just put in his belt and another one besides as he stood. “I’m going to enjoy cutting out that smartass tongue of yours.”

  A light flashed in the second story window where I’d stumbled into the fascinum, and my head snapped up. That must be where Vesta has Moses and Naomi. Could be Moses trying to signal or another fire. Or gunfire.

  Gaston didn’t give me time to consider it before he lunged at me with both knives. I lifted the staff and swung it like a baseball bat, but he ducked low, avoiding the swing and the follow-through. He sliced at me. I only barely managed to stumble out of the way and avoid being ripped open.

  We both tumbled back a step, and I re-evaluated my decision to come to a knife fight with a staff. My weapon might’ve been bigger, giving me the advantage of reach, especially against his little butcher knives, but I had no idea what I was doing with it. Gaston had already demonstrated he was more than proficient with his knives. If I let him get inside an effective range, he’d dice me up. My best bet was to keep him away, but I didn’t have the strength and control needed to use the staff to do that. I’d have to fall back on my magic if I wanted to have any chance of surviving.

  But I hadn’t tested my new powers yet. Hadn’t even bothered to get the crash course on how and what I could do, though I could feel new power lurking there. It sat in my chest like a ball of electric ice, writhing and bouncing, begging to be let free. Letting loose could be really hazardous for everyone in the general area though, so I held back.

  Instead, I reached for the familiar pull of the recently dead, doing my best to dodge Gaston’s blades as I did.

  Normally, all I felt when I cracked my mental shields was a biting chill and a surge of power, but this time was different. The dusk colors painting Vesta’s lawn faded, the grass withering and dying before my eyes. The big tree I’d climbed up once before grayed, its branches suddenly growing brittle and lifeless. Vesta’s mansion walls crumbled with decay, as if no one had lived there in centuries. My world disappeared behind a curtain of gray death and rot, all but for the dozens of pure white lights.

  I blinked and stepped to the right as Gaston lunged again. The closest of the white lights shimmered inside of him like a tiny sun. It was hooked up to an interstate of paler light, pumping glowing matter all through his body. At first, I thought my new vision had given me the ability to see his circulatory system, but the ball in Gaston’s chest wasn’t heart-shaped, nor was it situated where a human heart should be. It rested dead center on his body, just below where his sternum would’ve ended. Right where I ached every time I thought of Odette since she’d left.

  His soul. I was seeing Gaston’s soul filling his body with life.

  “Holy shit,” I shouted and turned my head. All the other lights must’ve been souls, too. The city was alive with them. Somehow, I was seeing them through walls and barriers of all kinds, like I had some kind of soul-sight. It would’ve been cool if it wasn’t hella weird.

  Something bit into my gut and burned all the way in. I doubled over and backed away. In my excitement, I forgot I was in the middle of a fight to the death and lowered my guard. Gaston had gotten me with a good shot just below the left rib. I didn’t think he’d hit anything vital, but the whole front of me was sopping wet from blood.

  He jammed the other knife into my right side.

  I gasped and took a step back. My foot caught on something, and I fell, the motion somehow sweeping Gaston from his feet as well. He landed on top of me, driving the knife in to the hilt. The pain left stars dancing in my vision around the bright shining light of his soul, a pain I’d experienced before in Marie Laveau’s crypt. The pain of being stabbed to death.

  I lay there gasping and grunting as Gaston tried to scramble away. No way I was recovering from this, but I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try to take him with me.

  My hand shot out. I’d meant to grab him by the shirt, maybe hold him still long enough to get the knife out of me and shove it in him. But I missed epically. My hand plunged into his body as if it weren’t even there.

  Gaston looked down at where my hand disappeared inside of him. “What the hell?”

  One of the tendrils of his soul brushed against my hand, and I closed my fingers around it. He let out an ear piercing shriek in an octave a guy his size had no right to reach. Shivers wracked his body, and he quit trying to struggle. His eyes rolled back in his head, and white foam poured from his lips.

  I let out a curse and pulled my hand back. With a blink and a shake of my head, I dismissed the soul vision I’d called up. The gray veil of death lifted from my vision, and the souls disappeared, but it was too late. Gaston fell over, trembling and jerking, the foam leaking over the side of his face. After a few seconds, he stopped jerking and lay completely still.

  My fingers curled around my staff, and I used it as leverage to vault myself a few feet to land beside him and check his pulse. Weak, but still there. His chest rose with a strained breath.

  I surveyed the big man I’d just laid out and then studied my hand. It showed no signs of ever having been in Gaston’s guts. I almost
killed him, and all I did was grab one tendril. What happens if I pull a soul out?

  Gunfire erupted on the front lawn as more of Vesta’s goons poured out the front door. Dammit, they’d started the clock on the cops, and I wasn’t even inside yet.

  I used the staff to pull myself to my feet, wincing as the movement jostled the knife still in my right side. Blood leaked out of the wound on my left, but not enough to be life-threatening. It’d been a glancing cut, mostly superficial. The knife hadn’t truly gone in. This one on the right, however, was a problem. Blood seeped around the blade at regular intervals. Once I pulled the knife out, I’d have a geyser to contend with and probably get woozy. Definitely not optimal conditions for tree climbing.

  If I hadn’t been in a fight for my life and to save Moses and Naomi, I’d have called myself a squad, but they couldn’t wait for me to get stitched up. They needed my help now.

  In the end, I decided I was better off leaving the damn thing in, even though it hurt like hell, especially as I was pulling myself across branches. I did my best to stabilize the blade and not move my right side, but there wasn’t much to do.

  When I got as high as the window, I paused. The branch there still wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight, but with a knife in my side, there was no way I was going to attempt an acrobatic flip down from the roof. I looked down at the staff I’d managed to climb up the tree with. Time for plan B.

  I crawled out on the branch as far as I dared and squinted to see if I could pick out what was happening. A flash of light lit up the room, illuminating all the fascinum, but no sign of Naomi, Moses, or Vesta. I thrust my staff forward. It bumped against the glass pane with a dull thump. Not hard enough. I pulled back and tried again. This time, the glass shattered. It was loud enough anyone in the house would’ve heard my entry, but hopefully, all of Vesta’s goons were busy with Darius’ boys.

  Once the glass was broken, I swept the staff around the edges, knocking out the shards as well as I could manage. Then, I tossed the staff through the open window and watched it bounce on the carpet. Here goes nothing, I thought and flung myself from the tree.

  My fingers caught the narrow ledge of bricks jutting out from the windowsill, which was better luck than I’d hoped. At least, that’s what I thought until the rest of my body slammed into the bricks. The knife blade in my right side shifted, the blade jutting up inside of me as the impact moved it. I let out a scream and blinked away tears, but held onto those bricks with all my might.

  The next breath came out shaky and wheezy. Dammit, I really needed to hurry.

  Gripping the bricks, I grunted and tried to pull myself up. I’ve never been particularly strong, and chin-ups were never my strong suit, so it was difficult going until I lifted myself enough for my feet to scramble against the bricks. Note to self: get a gym membership when this is all over and spend some time getting ripped.

  Somehow, I managed to pull myself up and over the windowsill. Glass bit into my chest as I slid myself through, but I twisted enough that the knife didn’t get caught on anything. Once I was through, I lay face up on glass-laden carpet, trying to catch my breath. I was way more winded than I thought I’d be, and the wheezing was getting worse. And wetter. The knife must’ve finally punctured something important. I was dizzy when I got to my feet, adding further credence to that theory.

  With one hand trailing the wall, and the other securely gripping the staff, I pulled myself through the room toward an opening in the wall that hadn’t been there before. The low murmur of voices told me that if I was going to find the bad guys anywhere—or gals in this case—it’d be on the other side of that doorway.

  I wasn’t prepared for the scene in the next room. It was done up as if it were an ancient temple. Big columns stretched from floor to ceiling inside the octagonal room, one at every vertex. In the center of the room sat a big brazier with a dancing flame. Smoke drifted up through a hole in the roof, showing an unmarred vision of the Milky Way sweeping over the night sky. I hadn’t seen any smoke outside though, so maybe I’d stepped into a pocket dimension of sorts, just like I had when going down into Marie Laveau’s tomb.

  Naomi was splayed out on a bench in front of the brazier, her limbs tied around it. Dark bloodstains curled around her nose and the bruising suggested it was broken, but she was awake and aware. Her head turned toward me when I entered the room, and she tried to talk, but a cloth gag muffled her words.

  I scanned the room for Moses and found him tied to a bench on the other side. He was similarly beaten up, but he’d also been stripped and redressed in a white loincloth. Moses wasn’t awake.

  There was no sign of Vesta or Julia.

  I rushed to Naomi’s side and started trying to undo her bindings, but she didn’t stop talking at me, so I figured I’d better pull down the gag and hear what she had to say.

  She jerked her head free of the gag before I had it halfway off. “Get out! Go! It’s a trap!”

  Movement behind me caught my eye, and I turned my head just in time to see the spell careening toward my face.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The magic hit me, and time slowed. Force pushed me back in a cloud of neon blue, my limbs waving.

  As I flew through the air, it occurred to me that the spell might kill me. I could feel it pricking at my flesh, felt the knife slice through something else inside me, felt the possibility of the end hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles. But I also felt the pull of potential life. It burned at the edge of my awareness. At that moment, either was within my grasp.

  I could call on the death rising within me, harness it and unleash it in a single destructive blast. It was a new idea, one that had never occurred to me before, though I supposed this was the first time I was truly facing my own death and not someone else’s. But unleashing that power would destroy more than just my enemies. Naomi and Moses would be in the brunt of the blast. It would consume them just as it would Julia and me who stood, smirking with her hands outstretched, just beyond Naomi’s feet. But it would be a definitive end, one that felt worthy of the new power I’d just acquired. The icy electric power in my gut approved of that plan.

  Or I could resist the curse that’d just been thrown at me and choose life. It would be temporary, especially considering the blood now pooling in my body cavity and trickling into my lungs, but living meant I could save someone else. Maybe even both Naomi and Moses. It’d hurt a hell of a lot more, and it would almost guarantee I wasn’t walking away from this, and there would be long-term consequences—I could feel that possibility, too—but the innocents would live. Then again, so would Julia, and I might not get another chance to take her down.

  What did I come here for if not to save them? What good is all this extra power if I’m not going to use it at least once to make a difference for someone else? But was once enough? It felt like a drop in the bucket. Even if I managed to kill Vesta, then what? There were hundreds of other gods and goddesses, and Pony had said most of them would either try to kill me or use me. Was it really worth living to be someone else’s pawn?

  Images raced in front of my eyes, memories of pain and misery, of repeatedly dying in the dark, of my friends turning their backs to me, of Lydia lying lifeless on that gurney while they dragged me away in cuffs. But not all my life had been so bad. There’d been Odette. I’d loved. What more could a guy ask for?

  And there had been Emma Knight. Like a mirage, her image appeared before me, that cute little face of hers drawn up in a scowl, her gun pointed straight ahead. Rainwater cascaded down her limp hair and splashed to the ground.

  Rainwater?

  I blinked and called up my Soul Vision, still falling back in slow motion, propelled by the spell. Emma’s soul glowed brightly right next to me, like a diamond casting light on shadow. She was really there. But how?

  Time finally caught up with the speed of my brain. My back slammed into a column nestled against the far wall, but the neon blue light didn’t retreat. Pressure built up on
top of me. It felt like an elephant had decided to nap on my chest. My back popped all the way up and then strained against the weight. The crushing spell. She was crushing me to death, just as she had Brandi and Grace.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Emma shouted.

  Julia sneered and lifted another hand toward Emma, summoning more of the same blue magic.

  Oh, hell no. This bitch was not about to blast away the only decent woman I knew.

  I pushed back against the spell holding me down. At first, I just used my body, tightening every muscle against the onslaught of weight pressing against me. It wasn’t enough, so I reached for magic. The pressure lessened but didn’t lift enough that I could move. I needed more power, so I turned to Emma.

  The first night after we’d been psychically linked, I’d dreamed with her. I saw her nightmares, the ghosts that plagued her. The dead that she had put in the ground. Guilty or innocent didn’t matter to Emma, not when it came to killing. What mattered was that they were dead and she had done it. In my Sight, I could see chains clinging to her. Heavy weights kept her soul from rising to where it was supposed to be, each one attached to a piece of another soul. Guilt. She was carrying pieces of the people she’d killed around with her because of her guilt, and she didn’t even know it.

  But to me, those souls were fuel. I called to them, reaching to tap the icy electric power in my chest at the same time. One of the heavy weights lifted, the chain pulled taut. The piece of soul drifted closer, until I could make out the faded, dim light separately from Emma’s own light.

  With one last oomph of power from me, the fractured bit of soul popped free from Emma, the chain disappearing with its freedom. I pulled it to me and let the power inside take over. The broken soul slammed into me and disappeared, becoming part of the new, icy power. Strength surged into my limbs, not physical strength, but the strength I’d need to repel Julia’s spell.