Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5)

by Thea Atkinson

  "The ring, Ms. Hush," Errol said, pulling my gaze back to him. He had pressed forward another foot. Soon, he'd be close enough to snatch the ring from me or charm me into giving it over.

  I stole a look at Maddox and the Witchborn, willing them to move faster, but they seemed frozen in place beneath the cage. There was no sign of the big cat.

  I looked around me. The humans were all facing me. Some of them had even edged closer as though the ring was a homing beacon and they were weary pigeons.

  They probably were. I felt a moment of pity for them before that too evaporated. And it was the quiet calm that told me I was losing bit by bit whatever it was that let me feel compassion for someone else.

  We had to hurry if I was going to get out of there before I decided to leave them all behind and take the slaves with me.

  I silently urged Maddox to step it up, but he didn't catch my gaze long enough to read my message. He was too intent on the Witchborn.

  This was my payback?

  "Ms. Hush?"

  I shoved the ring into my pocket and hitched up the grimoire as I faced Errol.

  "I keep my word," I said. "I told you I would not keep the ring and I won't."

  Finally, I could feel Maddox's body heat as he drew up next to me. His smell, that of woodsmoke and whiskey curled around me, but it was saturated with something else. Sweat and what I imagined was blood.

  I lifted my chin as I met Errol's eye.

  "It's done," he said flatly. "The fight is stopped."

  "The Witchborn?" I said.

  He waved his arm toward where she stood in a pool of light with no other Kindred within a foot of her. There wasn't a single mark on her. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

  "She too is out of the cage and unharmed," he said.

  "Isabella," Maddox said as he tugged on my elbow. "You need to know..."

  "I'm fine," I said, without turning around. "I made a bargain with the incubus. Didn't I, Errol?"

  "Indeed." He smiled. "And I kept my word. Now you must keep yours."

  I took a step toward what I thought was the door and Errol matched my steps like a dancing partner. His eyes remained glued to mine.

  The humans came too. Proof that the ring held their spirits and freedom bound within it.

  "Come on, Maddox," I said. "We're free to go."

  I felt victorious. I'd won. I'd pitted myself against a Kindred and come out ahead. And I still had the ring and the grimoire. Pretty damn good for an out of practice thief.

  I twisted to look at Maddox just for a second and almost didn't recognize him. If not for the russet hair and height, I wouldn't have been sure it was him. He looked way worse up close than he had in the cage from a distance.

  "Sweet baby Jesus," I said. "She really put a licking to you."

  Errol stepped in front of me. I wasn't sure how he'd managed to get from one place to the next without me seeing him move, but there he was. Hand extended.

  "The ring, Ms. Hush."

  We were close enough to the door that I knew we were good. Nothing was going to get Maddox back into the cage. Every Kindred here had seen the bargain and would accept it. They'd have to. Maddox had done his part. Now I had to do mine.

  I reached into my pocket and extracted the ring. Errol's eyes fell on it greedily. He reached out for it.

  "I'm not keeping it," I said and turned to pass it to Maddox, who for a second seemed to have a hard time seeing me do so. I finally stuffed it into his hand and closed his fingers down around it.

  He shook his fist, as though to test the weight of the ring, but he frowned as he did so.

  "What is this?" Errol said. "This isn't the bargain."

  "It is," I said. "I told you I wouldn't keep it. I didn't."

  For a moment, Errol looked like he would lose an eye from sheer blood pressure alone, but his face regained its careful mask.

  Maddox said nothing, but he outpaced me long enough to push open the Kennel's door. It swung open with a roar that sounded like a hundred wolves about to strike.

  "Well played, Ms. Hush," Errol said from behind us. "You are not as insipid a human as I'd thought."

  I was about to retort that if he was going to use such big words as insipid, he should know what they meant, but Maddox grabbed my elbow and tugged me with him through the door. The Indentured followed along like puppies. When Maddox looked over his shoulder at them, a small, animal-like growl rumbled through his chest.

  He waited until we were through the door into the alley before he spoke, and when he did, it was raspy.

  And it wasn't to me.

  The sun was coming up over the buildings. In the light of morning, I could see three large men hanging around the door—a different door than I'd followed Kelly through. This one seemed very much like the outside of a human club with velvet ropes and bouncers barring entry.

  "You work for Errol?" he said, to the one with what looked like scarification designs on his cheek.

  The guy unfolded from his spot holding up the stone wall.

  "I work for the Shadow Sidhe," he said.

  Maddox nodded as though he should have known the answer. He didn't look happy to hear it, but he didn't look upset either. He just accepted it because whoever it was the man worked for, it wasn't Errol.

  He flipped the ring toward the bouncer who snatched it from the air halfway between the two of them.

  "Hey," I said in protest.

  Maddox turned his gaze to mine. I swallowed down sour fluid when I saw how battered his face was. The wound in his shoulder was a red mess of dried blood and tissue.

  "I stole that for a reason," I said, with disappointment when I noted that the Indentured halted at the door behind the bouncer.

  "I know," he said. "And I appreciate it."

  He headed in the direction of his library, carrying me along with him by force of his movement. I spent each step feeling grumpy about losing the slaves to another Kindred and followed silently out of protest.

  The bazaar was coming to life as we headed back to his office. Although I noticed that the life was unlike a human market. Things, what Maddox would no doubt call Kindred, sort of grew up from the cobblestones or the shadows that lay on them. Stalls that I'd not seen in the nighttime shivered into sight as though they'd always been there, patrons already in deep bargaining mode.

  I wondered if they'd been there all along and I'd just not been able to see them.

  He didn't speak either as we walked, and it was enough to prod me out of my own funk. I wanted the answer to two questions, but the first was the more pressing one.

  It was one that had been burning in my mind since I'd seen the humans flood after me and the ring, but didn't seem to affect the Witchborn.

  "What will happen to her?" I said, and didn't think I needed to say who I meant.

  He looked down at me through swollen eyes and sighed.

  "She is not bound to the Kennel by a ring," he said. "Her indenture is much more complicated than that."

  "So all I did was stop the fight."

  "Not all," he said, bumping playfully into me. "You rescued me."

  "But not her."

  "No," he said sadly. "Not her."

  He looked down at me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder even though he winced when I touched him. He coughed and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. I didn't say anything when it came away bloody.

  "You were brave to stay, Kitten," he said with an effort that made the words sound as though he had swallowed gravel. I knew the sound. I'd heard it in the men Scottie throat punched when they argued with him. His voice-box was probably injured.

  "Thank you for rescuing me."

  "Don't talk," I said. "It'll make things worse."

  "Okey dokey," he rasped.

  We walked for a few more minutes until I caught sight of the smoke-charred wood siding that meant we'd reached his office and the building it was housed in.

  I couldn't help asking one more question. The other one that had been bu
rning through my mind since we'd left the Kennel.

  "You took her pain, didn't you?" I said. "Everything you did to her since entering the cage. You took it all back."

  Half a smile lifted one corner of his bruised lips, but he kept his promise not to speak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MADDOX HAD TAKEN HER pain. He didn't need to say so. A sort of ache started up in my chest as we stood in front of the door to his library slash office. When he put his hand on the iron wrought doorknob that was nailed to the very center of the door, European style, I laid my palm on the back of his wrist.

  "Don't," I said, not sure I could meet his eye if he asked me to.

  I felt him move, a subtle shifting of one of his feet, a swinging of his shoulders. Even to me, it seemed hesitant and pained.

  I had a moment when that ache made my throat tight, and then it eased off almost as soon as I noticed it. The leaking, I supposed, because I knew what that fleeting ache was. It was longing. One so deep, that even the dissipating energy of my soul couldn't mask it. At least, not at first.

  I moved into him before I could think better of it. My arms slipped around his waist cautiously, afraid I might hurt something that already ached, a broken rib, a burn from the Witchborn's magic.

  When he didn't move away or wince from the gentle contact, I leaned in even closer. The toe of my boots met the spot where his arch would be in his shoes. The warmth of his breath moved over my hair. I could almost touch finger to finger along his back, but I still didn't want to squeeze too hard for fear he'd bruised his kidneys or liver. He smelled of all the atrocities he must have suffered in the cage. The blood had a distinct smell all its own, coppery and faintly of dirt. His sweat was acrid but not pungent.

  For a second, I felt the hammering of his heart against my cheek as I laid my face along his chest. It echoed in my eardrums.

  "I'm sorry you had to suffer all that pain for me," I said, and at first, I thought he hadn't heard me because he gave no reaction. Then he swept me from my feet, dragging me upward along his body as he hoisted me level with his gaze.

  If the contact hurt him, he made no show of it.

  With a practiced ease I hadn't expected from him, he cradled the back of my head in his massive hand. Those blunt, strong fingers that had balled into fists not an hour earlier and fought for his life, now splayed out in my hair. He eased me backward, putting a dip in my spine that let me see his face. There was longing in it. I could detect it in the way he set his jaw, as though an ache in his throat made the muscles clench tight.

  My arms slinked around his neck of their own accord because I had to do that or fall backward.

  His eyes searched mine as I tried not to look at the bruises and blood, and found the only place I could bare to look at without cringing was the blackness of his gaze. There didn't seem to be an inch of skin free of injury.

  "Kitten," he said with the same rasp as before, but clogged up with something that might have been an equal amount of longing to mine. "There's no pain as unbearable as the one where I can't have you."

  His kiss was soft but not hesitant. It teased a reaction from me, and I tightened my grip without meaning to. He tasted of all those same atrocities as he smelled of, but I didn't care. I wanted more. More of him. More of his taste.

  It was over all too soon, but he didn't release me. Instead he held me close. His arms wrapped around me tightly enough that I knew he was clasping his forearms with his hands. His heartbeat raced against my chest and I had to burrow my face in his neck to keep from pressing him for more. He needed comfort, that much was obvious. But there was more too. I felt his desire. It wasn't fair to use this vulnerable time to tempt more from him.

  And yet. I struggled not to. If it was the remnants of the after-effects of Errol's allure, or just the leaking of my soul, that made me not care about anything except my own desires, it didn't matter.

  I was pulling him to me again when the door we were standing in front of swung open.

  Kerri's elegant silver eyebrow lifted.

  "Apparently, she's a biter," she said as she took in the battered man standing on the transom.

  I scrambled out of Maddox's grip, and for a moment, I didn't think he was going to let me go. He only released me when Kerri ushered us in with an urgent hand.

  "I've found something," she said, indicating with a jerk of her chin that the pile of books Maddox had flung to the floor might have yielded something useful.

  She spun on her heel to face Maddox. She was barefoot, I noticed, but there was no noise to indicate her sole was even touching the floor. She looked him up and down with a thoughtful gaze.

  "I'd say it can wait until we tend to those nasty wounds, but there really isn't any time. It's a good thing you found her when you did."

  Maddox shrugged, as though he hadn't for one second considered taking the time to fix up his injuries.

  "What did you find?"

  "She's definitely being ferried," Kerri said, and she tossed Maddox a white cloth that she must have pulled out from the shadows behind her because I didn't see it until it landed on his shoulder.

  "The ferryman is weak." She indicated the limp looking serpent hanging from the upended box. "Which makes me believe the connection is coming to an end."

  She looked at me as she said it. "We can't argue about hiring one anymore, Maddox. If you love this mortal, you have to act now. If you don't, she'll have a body but no spirit for however long it takes till the body dies."

  He pursed his lips into a white line as he gingerly rubbed at all the blood with the cloth. He pulled off the shirt that was already in tatters and tossed it onto the fire. It smelled of burning plastic.

  "What?" I said, averting my eyes from his chest, because I really shouldn't be lusting after a guy who'd just taken and given a beating.

  "What's the big deal? If that's the worst of it, it's not all bad." I thought of the gradual lessening of fear and guilt and decided that maybe the freedom from all that might be pretty nice actually.

  "That's what you want?" he said, tossing the cloth onto the fire.

  His muscles worked beneath badly bruised skin as he dug into a drawer in his bookshelf and pulled out a grey t-shirt. Evidently, he had to change clothes often if he kept shirts in his office.

  I closed my eyes so I could think.

  "You are the one who was worried about my state of mind," I said. "I feel great now. I'm ready to work. Get me a job. I'll steal the boxers off Satan himself if you pay me enough."

  I dared look at him with bravado.

  His lips pressed so close together they all but disappeared.

  "Isabella," Kerri said, stooping to pick up the box the serpent had been delivered in.

  She held it up for me to see.

  "I don't think you realize the enormity of this. Kindred have something akin to a soul, but it's not the same thing as you ninth-worlders have. Some of us can travel the nine worlds without worry. The ferryman is one of them. Whoever rode this one rode it from hell. You stink of brimstone. So, you could very well be headed for Lucifer's boxers already when your body dies."

  I stared at her. I was young yet. I had ages to go before I had to worry about that. Maybe somewhere along the way I'd find a cure. A loophole.

  She shook her head as though she heard my thoughts.

  "You are fragile," she said. "Like all mortals are. Except unlike them, you have been introduced to a world of Kindred. Your odds of dying young are much higher now."

  I seesawed my glance from one to the other. Maddox's shoulders were tight and Kerri, while relaxed, kept a carefully guarded expression on her face that still couldn't hide the pity.

  "So?" I demanded. "We go buy my soul back. What can it cost?" I remember the grimoire, and realized it had somehow managed to transport itself along with me, without me so much as feeling for it or holding onto it. I wondered if it was valuable enough to pay for an entire soul.

  Then I realized what I'd just tossed back into the w
orld of Kindred.

  "Shit," I said. "Maybe I should have used the ring."

  Maddox didn't answer me, and I noticed that Kerri looked away toward the fire.

  "Thanks, Kerri," Maddox said to her in a tone that indicated he was good from there on in. He nodded at the woman who smiled thinly in return. "I appreciate everything."

  She lifted bare arms above her silver hair and made a flourish above her head. In a heartbeat, the woman had disappeared and, in her place, there was a grey hawk. It flapped its wings and then lifted off into the shadows of the corner.

  "Where in the hell is she going?" I said, thinking that I should have felt some sort of discomfort at seeing a woman transform into a bird. "And why didn't you ask her to stay?"

  "She's a goddess, Kitten," he said, and the gravel was still in his throat. He cleared it unsuccessfully before finishing. "She has good intentions, but working with a god can be tricky. They are fickle at the best of times."

  He strode toward the box and kicked the serpent back inside then stooped to put the cover on.

  "We can't afford fickle right now," he said, and I thought his voice had gained a bit of strength. Maybe in the light of the fire he had even managed to heal up a few of those bruises.

  "Let's go," he said. "If we have to see a soul merchant, then I have the last of them here in the bazaar."

  The bazaar was already crowded as we rounded the street corner from his office. He shouldered a way through for us both and I tried to find some sort of fatigue in his step. I felt as though I was lagging. My feet were heavy. I couldn't imagine how he was staying on his feet after what he'd been through.

  "Slow down," I said. "It's not every day a gal gets to see all this."

  He looked at me over his shoulder with a scowl.

  "That you're enjoying this worries me."

  I kicked a pebble toward the water fountain and watched it skip over the cobblestones and land near the base.

  "Don't be a killjoy, Maddox. I'm fine. I'm better than fine, even."

  It was true. The last vestiges of concern or worry had left as I'd stepped over his threshold. I hadn't felt it leave, but prodding at it now like a toothache, I realized I wasn't worried. I felt truly liberated. In place of all the humanity that bogged me down was a wonderment at the things in his bazaar.