Hellbent Halo Boxed Set

by E. A. Copen

  The one on the right gestured us forward. “Step out of the elevator.”

  As we did, Khaleda slid her hand onto his beefy forearm and smiled. Velvety soft magic slapped me in the face. I gritted my teeth against the urge to drop to the floor and sit at her feet like the dog I was.

  The guard, however, just stared at her hand on him. “I need to see some identification.”

  Khaleda’s face jerked. She was as surprised as I was that the magic hadn’t instantly made him hers.

  I put a hand on Khaleda’s shoulder and pulled her back a step, placing myself between her and the guards. “Look, fellas, there’s no need. I’m an old friend of Danny’s. He’s not expectin’ me, I know that, but I’m only in town for a short minute. Just let him know I’m here. Josiah Quinn.”

  The guard on the left showed me his teeth. “IDs. Now.”

  “Come on, mate. Just three minutes. It’s all I need.”

  More security closed in from the opposite direction, pushing us back into the elevator. The petite blonde woman at the receptionist desk picked up the phone and punched a single number, muttering into the phone. Christ, what a day for Khaleda’s magic to fail.

  One of the security guards grabbed my arm.

  “Joey?”

  I cringed at the nickname. The big goons let me go though, so I adjusted my shirt and turned around to find Danny had come out of his office personally wearing a million-dollar smile. My heart turned into an excited mass of butterflies at the sight of him. “Hello, Danny-boy.”

  Chapter Seven

  JOSIAH

  Danny’s office wasn’t as big as I expected. You watch those shows on the telly, and all the executive types have these huge, modern offices done up in white with big windows and modern chairs. Not Danny. His was small enough to feel intimate while still being large enough to communicate his position effectively. The wall to my right was a giant plate glass window, but the view wasn’t breathtaking. It was just a city view.

  Snow swirled by. Heavy gray clouds pressed down on the city, promising more before the day was out, but the weather held back for now. Maybe it’d hold until after my meeting at Casablanca’s.

  “Sorry about the security,” Danny said as we sat. “Can’t be too careful in New York these days. The post-Nine-Eleven world is a dangerous place. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  Khaleda offered a shy smile and declined. She’d already slipped into whatever character she was going to play. She thought she could seduce Danny with the right personality or turn of phrase, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.

  “Bourbon if you’ve got it.” I sat in one of the armchairs across from Danny’s desk. Not bad.

  He went to the bookcase that took up the wall directly behind his desk. “Still no ice?”

  “Not unless you want a black eye,” I replied with a smile. I couldn’t help it. The old banter was easy to fall into.

  Danny poured two glasses, one with ice and one without and offered me the straight tumbler. “I see you’re still carrying that old bag around.”

  I glanced down at the spelled bag sitting by my foot. “Haven’t found one better, I guess.”

  He nodded before sitting in his chair, focused on Khaleda. When Danny focused on someone, it wasn’t just a look. It was a predatory gesture, like placing a target on the other person’s forehead. He flashed his shark teeth and pretended it was a smile. “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “This is Annie Bennet,” I lied.

  Khaleda took Danny’s hand when he offered it. “So pleased to meet you, Mr. Monahan. Joey’s told me good things.”

  I clenched the tumbler in my hand tighter. I was going to make her pay for every time she called me Joey.

  “Oh, he has? That’s surprising, given how we left things.” Danny leaned back in his chair. “We didn’t part on good terms.”

  I shrugged. “Well, it’s been twenty years.”

  “Eighteen,” he corrected. “Eighteen years, six months, and eleven days since the last time I saw you. I do believe the last thing you ever said to me was that I should slink off and die.”

  Damn him and his near-perfect memory. I sipped from the glass and hoped it would lessen the tension in the air. I’d have sold my soul for a cigarette at that moment. “We were kids, Danny.”

  “It’s Daniel now.” He adjusted his tie. “But you’re right. Who can expect teenagers to know what they want, right?”

  The phrase was an ice-cold slap in the face. It triggered a memory I’d pushed into the deepest, darkest recesses of recollection.

  Tiny bedroom. Heavy air. It smells like smoke and sex. There are four of us crammed into the room: me, Evette, Hannah, and Danny. It’s so hot that everything feels covered in sweat, even the wall, though it feels cool against my back. The girls urge us on. How do you know if you’ve never tried it?

  Danny knows. He’s always known. It’s as much a part of him as the air we’re both breathing.

  But I don’t. I don’t know anything. I’m fifteen. I know I like magic and Metallica, but that’s about it. How are teenagers supposed to know anything about anything?

  “Come on,” Evette urges. “Hannah and me kissed. It’s only a kiss.”

  But it’s not. My heart is jackhammering in my chest so loud, I swear they can all hear it. It’s not just a kiss, some small thing that means nothing. This is Danny, and I can’t breathe because he’s too close.

  The memory fell back into darkness, and I shrugged. “It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? You seem to have done okay for yourself in the meantime. CEO. Good for you.”

  He put his glass on the desk. “Let’s cut the shit. You didn’t come here to congratulate me. You came because my freelancer caught up with you yesterday. What are you doing in my city?”

  “Your city?” He was bloody rich and amazing with magic, but last I heard no one person owned New York.

  All expression left Danny’s face, transforming him into a blank slate, a businessman on the verge of negotiating a deal. “Why are you here, Josiah? Business or pleasure?”

  When I didn’t respond, his attention went to Khaleda for a moment, considering something before he turned back to me. “You feel like a cigarette with that bourbon?”

  I stood a little too fast and felt dizzy but smiled anyway. “Fuck, yes.”

  We went to the roof for a smoke. Seventy-six stories up in the cold for a bloody dose of nicotine. Maybe I should quit.

  Danny went to the edge of the roof and put one foot up on the narrow lip, leaning over it. The red cherry glow of his cigarette against the gray afternoon sky seemed like the only color. He’d shrugged on a long gray coat. Black pants, black shoes… He always did like the darker colors. “It’s not personal, Joey. I promise.”

  “Just business. Is that it?” I struck a flame on my lighter and held it to the end of my own cigarette, watching the paper curl and burn away.

  “Everything is just business anymore. Know who comes and goes and everything he’s capable of. It’s how I learned to survive. Christian taught me that. Never let it get personal.”

  I frowned and walked to the edge with him. Christian was the one nightmare we’d both survived. A common enemy, something that should’ve united us when all it did was push us apart. “Christian’s dead.”

  “I know. I heard. Heard you killed him. That true?” Dark eyes scrutinized me. Was I a threat? Had I killed Christian to take his place?

  Is that what this is, Danny-boy? You think I’m him? “He went too far. He murdered Evette to fuel his magic. Poor bastard thought if he had enough power, he could become a god.”

  “He was a cult leader. What’d you expect?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t in it for the religion.”

  He smiled, a warm, genuine smile, not the shark grin from earlier. “No, not you. You were there for the magic. And Christian had that. He was good.”

  “You were better.” I regretted saying it as
soon as it fell out of my mouth. It felt like too heavy a compliment, even if it were true.

  “I am better. Here, watch.” He took a step back and kicked some snow aside to reveal a perfect circle had been laid on the roof. Was it steel? No, too much iron in steel. It’d have to be silver. Shit, he’d gone all out.

  Danny drew in the magic and expelled it with all the ease of a breath, a big grin on his face. “Go on! Hit me with something!”

  I sighed. “Danny, are ya sure, mate?”

  “Don’t call me ‘mate’ unless you mean it, Joey. Now hit me!”

  Fine, ya dipstick. You want me to hit you? I’ll hit you. I flicked the half-smoked cigarette off to a snowy corner of the roof and shrugged off my coat, so I’d have freedom of movement.

  “Don’t hold back,” he taunted. “I can take it.”

  I closed my eyes and extended a hand toward the snow swirling its way downward. Cold licked at my exposed skin. Snowflakes touched my hand and melted, trickling under my cuffs as icy water. The magic formed around my hand, a velvet glove with plenty of power. I formed it into a single stroke of energy and sent it careening toward Danny with a command word.

  The beam of frozen magic struck the edge of Danny’s circle and sailed straight through. Panic gripped me for a fraction of a moment. I’d sent something too strong. The poor bastard had overestimated his reach.

  But Danny batted it aside with a laugh and shouted, “Again! Something harder this time!”

  I obliged, this time with a shot of black fire.

  “Please!” He moved his arms, spreading his fingers wide to suspend the fire in place. With a few quick movements, he took control over my spell and made the fire march in a circle. Another twitch of his fingers and the fire changed into a dozen black butterflies that exploded into fireworks.

  Another spell and we were back in L.A., boys of fifteen and seventeen on a rooftop in unbearable heat, battering each other with fire, ice, and electric current. We batted raw magic back and forth, speeding up the exchange until eventually the spell would careen out of control and we’d have to race to shut it down before it killed someone. It was easy magic, but no less deadly for its ease. One wrong move and I could kill him. One miscalculation on his part and it could be me careening off that rooftop. And still, we traded spells laughing like grade-school boys.

  I didn’t know how long we stayed up on that rooftop, slinging spells at each other, but we didn’t stop until we were both senselessly drained and slick with sweat. We lay in a snowdrift, staring up at the way our cigarette smoke seemed to cut the flurries in two.

  “I haven’t done that in forever,” he said with a big, dumb grin.

  I hadn’t either, but I didn’t say as much. Now that we weren’t knee-deep in the magic, all I could think about were the eighteen years that had passed and how much he’d changed since the last time I saw him. “What’re you doing employing demons, mate?”

  He raised a hand to the sky and made a fist. “I wanted this building, so I worked until I could buy it. Then I decided I wanted to organize all the shithead demons in this city, so I did. They all work for me now. Christian never would’ve thought I could. I know he’s dead, but I needed to know that I could. That I could have whatever I wanted, no holds barred. I get what I want now, Josiah. Everything I want.”

  “That’s fire you’re playing with, Danny-boy. You’re going to get burned.”

  “I can handle it.” He lowered his fist, and we lay there in silence for a long moment before he continued, “You wouldn’t have come to me if I hadn’t sent him, would you?”

  “And why would you want to talk to me after all this time?” It didn’t make sense. I was the reason he’d had to leave our little group. After I defeated him in a duel and took his spot as Christian’s second, he chose banishment rather than to accept the defeat. I’d robbed him of more than just his dignity when I beat him in that duel. I’d taken away his teacher, his future in magic. Or so I thought.

  “Because you’re the only person who’s ever understood magic the way I do.” He shook his head. “Everyone else wants to use it as a means to an end, or else just wants to keep their magic under wraps. Like it’s some fucking secret. It doesn’t have to be. Give me twenty minutes and a big enough battery, and I can rule more than just the demons in Manhattan. I could have New York City. I could have the whole damn country. I could run Hell itself.”

  I sat up, suddenly cold. “If this is a ‘run away with me and take over the world’ speech—”

  “Why not? The idiots running things right now are making a mess of things. We always talked about how we could use magic to fix things. Why not do it? Now that there’s a position opened up, we can. The two of us together, we’d be unstoppable. It’d just like old times.”

  I stood and shook melting snow from my clothes before kicking aside a snowdrift to retrieve my coat. “No offense, Danny, but I’m not that pig-headed adolescent boy with delusions of grandeur that I was eighteen years ago. I can barely run my own life. I’ve got no interest in running anyone else’s.”

  Danny sat up, but he didn’t move from where he was.

  I made for the door down from the roof and pulled it open. “Thanks for the spar, Danny-boy. Good luck taking over the world.”

  “Josiah!” He fought to his feet, a strange gleam in his eyes. “I meant what I said. I want you back. The way we were before Christian fucked us up. And I always get what I want.”

  Something stabbed at my heart, an old, scabbed-over wound that went so deep, it almost killed me once. “Not today, mate.”

  I pulled open the door and left him alone on the roof all over again.

  Chapter Eight

  KHALEDA

  Josiah and Daniel didn’t leave me alone in the office but made me go sit in the lobby and watch Josiah’s bag. I spent the entire time angrily flipping through magazines under the watchful eye of the Monahan security team. He’d dragged me all the way downtown in the cold and ditched me again. Even forcing myself to go along with him hadn’t stopped him from running off to waste our time.

  This side trip didn’t help me get my soul back any faster, and it had nothing to do with me other than the trouble Josiah had gotten me into. If he’d just left me alone, God’s Hand never would’ve noticed me to begin with.

  If he’d left you alone, you’d be dead, I reminded myself. Those first few days after he carried me out of Hell were a blur, but I clearly remembered him sitting with me, forcing hot soup down my throat. When I first refused to bathe, he shoved me into the shower, leaned against the glass shower door, and smoked a cigarette to keep me from getting out. He’d insisted he wasn’t taking me to the airport covered in four days of sweat and vomit. I hadn’t even wanted to go to the damn airport. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to do anything.

  I turned the page. He liked to pretend he was a selfish bastard, but somewhere, deep down, he had to care about something.

  Footsteps came down the narrow row of cubicles, and Josiah appeared walking heavier than normal. He’d drawn his hands into fists. Underneath his coat, his nice shirt was patchy and wet. I’d never seen him look so pissed.

  I kept my calm and gently put the magazine aside to stand.

  “We’re going,” he announced and paused to collect his bag.

  I wanted to ask him what happened, but the guards and secretary were staring. With a smile, I turned and followed Josiah to the elevators, reaching him just as he jammed his whole fist into the down button. “I take it you and Danny aren’t getting the band back together?”

  “Fuck this cold,” he growled. “And fuck this city. The sooner I can get out of this place, the better. Can’t fuckin’ breathe here.”

  I’m sure that has nothing to do with the cigarettes you’re always sucking down. Normally, I’d have said that out loud, but he didn’t seem in the mood for verbal sparring. It was no fun to poke at him if he was already angry. There’d be no challenge.

  We got into the elevator. He was too distr
acted by whatever was pissing him off to hit the button, so I did.

  “Did you talk to him about God’s Hand?” I asked, stepping away from the array of buttons.

  He crossed his arms and stared at the elevator doors as if he could melt them with his gaze.

  “Josiah! Did you talk to Danny Monahan about helping us with God’s Hand?”

  “He’s no help.”

  He didn’t ask, the ass. I sighed. “Okay then, do you at least have a plan to track down the missing parts of my soul? Or am I own my own for that too?”

  “I’ve got a plan.” His voice was flat, deflated as if the whole world were crushing him into a pancake. What the hell had gone on between the two of them?

  I had to do something to bring him back to the present, or I was going to lose the only help I had, but what? The only things Josiah cared about were himself and that stupid spider. Threatening him would just make him dig his heels in harder, and if he even thought I was going to hurt his precious arachnid, he’d flip his lid. Maybe if I could get him to shift his focus to the work, give him something to work toward, he’d stop brooding.

  I leaned against the back of the elevator. “What’s your plan?”

  He shrugged. “Modified tracking spell. Wherever your soul is, it should be easy to form a sympathetic link since we’ve still got some to work with. The biggest challenge will be extracting a sample to work with. I can’t just pull out bits of your soul, but I will need to have unrestricted access for an unspecified period of time. It’s delicate work, and once I begin, there can’t be any interruptions. It’ll also take a significant amount of power. For anyone looking, we’ll be a beacon the entire time I’m working.”

  Meaning if God’s Hand was actively looking for us, they’d find us. No wonder he wanted to get them off our case before looking for the lost pieces of my soul. He could’ve told me that. Well, at least there was a way forward.