Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5)

by Thea Atkinson

  Then I realized I was out of luck no matter which one was clenched in that fishy-smelling bite, because unless they were both alive, I wasn't going to get my soul back.

  "Nice cat," I said quietly, that thought top of mind. It wouldn't do to spook her.

  I inched forward on my knees and got caught up in the jeans that were still around my ankles. I ended up toppling forward and scaring the cat. She flipped over herself and somehow landed on the floor feet first. She looked back at me over her shoulder, the serpent draped over her ruff and hanging along her ribs and behind her like a second, ill-placed and monstrous tail.

  "Oh fuck me," I said. "You pick this time to decide to bring me a present?"

  I scrambled to the edge of the bed, hitching my jeans up as I went. It was either get them on or get them off, and I had the feeling I was going to have to race to the hospital and would need every spare second.

  She, of course, was off like a shot.

  By the time I got both feet on the floor, the fabric was cutting into my buttocks and I had to suck in my breath to get the last bit hauled up over my backside and zippered.

  "Here, cat," I said. "Good cat. I love the present. Can I see it? It's mine, right?"

  I passed by the counter like I was on the prowl. I didn't dare make too sudden a move. I spied her food dish on the mat at the foot of the sink. It never moved from its place next to the water cooler.

  "Pissed at me, are ya?" I said, figuring she had been scratching at it in vain and decided to investigate the smell she'd captured in the hallway.

  I tried to tell myself if the snake that the cat had in her teeth was Kerri, she'd have shapeshifted back into a goddess already. I tried to reason that she'd be too quick for a mere cat to get the best of her and that she was probably somewhere in my apartment, or worse, pissed off and gone.

  Thinking that didn't make me feel any better. Because if the snake that the cat was currently dragging along behind her up the stairs was the real ferryman, I was most royally screwed.

  I grabbed a bag of treats from the sideboard as I passed by and shook it vigorously. It was her favorite flavor. Nothing.

  I shook it again, this time calling out to Kerri to no avail.

  The cat was already up the stairs. She'd dragged the snake along with her and dropped it halfway up the stairs. And there, lying in the hallway was the second snake, coiled tight, its face buried under its belly.

  My mouth went dry at the sight. Whatever heartbeat managed to clock along in that second stuttered as my chest tightened like a fist.

  "Oh sweet baby Jesus," I managed to get out before I recovered my wits and sprinted across the room.

  I fell to my knees next to the snake on the floor, my hands running along the air above it in panic because I was afraid to get too close. How did one tell if a snake was dead anyway?

  I didn't know if I should touch it, nudge it, pick it up, or what. I didn't want to even think about the fact that both of them might be out of commission. And I absolutely was not going to entertain the thought that my cat had killed a goddess.

  "Bad cat," I yelled up the stairs. "Bad, bad cat."

  I sank onto my heels as I studied the one in front of me. Maybe I should poke it. Or shimmy it into the bag or box. The bag. That was what. I was going to assume this one was a stunned Kerri and the ferryman that the cat had decided on as a plaything was the real one. Because I'd seen the cat take on a rat when she was nothing but a kitten.

  A chewed-up ferryman where I lost my soul was preferable to taking a few bites out of a goddess.

  Wasn't it? It had to be.

  Don't mix them up. The last thing Maddox had warned me about. Well, I'd have to do my best.

  I took a deep breath and let it go in a gust. This was a minor setback. That was all. I glanced at the clock on the wall. There was still time to gather them both up and get over to the hospital. If I was lucky, both would recover by the time I got there.

  I used a spatula from the kitchen drawer to scoop both snakes up and drop them into their containers. I held the box in one hand and the bag in the other as I headed down my stairs onto the street. I caught a cab quickly, fortunately enough, and we pulled up in front of the hospital a few minutes before one.

  I paid the cabbie and got out. The sun shone from behind me, casting a short shadow on the cement. I shook the bag, hoping some movement inside would alert me to Kerri's recovery. Nothing moved from inside.

  I'd put the snake without the teeth-marks in the bag with the hope I was right and now I was even more worried that the snake in the box, with several chew marks wasn't the original ferryman.

  But what could I do? Sticking to the plan seemed the most prudent in light of the FUBAR. If this had been a Scottie heist, he'd take nothing but death as an excuse.

  I squared my shoulders and decided to press on. I headed into the building, inquired at the desk about Mr. Smith, and made my way to the elevators.

  The hallway I stepped into smelled of antiseptic and in some places, sweat, as I passed harried nurses and orderlies. He was in Emerg, apparently. In a room to himself since his insurance seemed in order. I didn't consider Mr. Smith a man to have anything really in order until I'd seen inside his apartment. Having witnessed the cleanliness and perfect organization, I was willing to bet he had standing orders at the hospitals in the area.

  The door to the room was open and a nurse was fiddling with his IV bag when I found his room. I presumed she was adding meds or liquids to keep him hydrated. It was obvious he was unconscious but he wasn't attached to a ventilator, so that had to be good, right?

  I watched her check her watch and feel for his pulse. She noted something on a clipboard and then ran her palm down his sheets in a soothing way. She brushed his unruly hair out of his eyes.

  I cleared my throat and she turned to face me with a smile. Thank god for nurses.

  "He's doing well," she said. "Not out of the woods, but his readings are stable. You're family?"

  I nodded. It was sort of true, and it was what I'd told the paramedics.

  "I have some things for him," I said, lifting both bag and box high for her to see. "Just some essentials in case he wakes."

  I smiled broadly, showing probably more teeth than I wanted. I had the feeling she could read the tension in my shoulders. I just hoped she'd imagine it was worry and concern. Maybe it was. I wanted to think so.

  "I'll just leave you, then," she said. "You can talk to him if you like. I'm sure he'd like that."

  "I will," I said and made a show of looking around the room. I pointed to a magazine that sported a man holding up a large fish of some sort, backgrounded by lush green trees and white water. "I'll read to him a spell."

  She nodded and tucked the clipboard under her arm, then touched the IV bag again, tapping it with her index finger.

  "Well, then," she said and seemed to be hesitating. "I'll close the door so you have some privacy."

  She was halfway to the door before I realized what she'd been waiting for. The old Isabella wouldn't have missed it at all.

  "His prognosis is good?" I asked, spinning on my heel to face her. My tennis shoes squeaked on the tiles.

  This time her smile was broader. "Yes," she said. "We can't find any evidence of toxin in his blood. We pumped his stomach. The only thing that seems to be keeping him asleep is the trauma."

  I tried to let my shoulders sag and was surprised to discover they relaxed considerably. "Good," I said. "He's a fighter. I'm sure he'll be up in no time."

  I didn't truly breathe again till she closed the door behind her, and I didn't stop staring at the door till it clicked closed. Then I sidestepped toward the bed and yanked the curtain to conceal both of us even more so.

  The blue plastic chair by his bedside was just inches from the head of his bed. The stamp of the hospital stuck out against the whiteness of the sheet. A matching blue eyelet blanket was tucked up beneath his armpits.

  His arms lay outside the sheets, palms facing do
wn. Several wires and cords disappeared under them and exited again from beneath the bed. The IV looked like it was creating a rash on the skin where it had been taped down.

  "Mr. Smith?" I said as I approached the bed. "It's Isabella. I came to help you."

  I didn't expect a response, but it didn't hurt to wait for one.

  I set the velvet bag down on the plastic chair. I wasn't entirely sure what I should be doing, and I was beginning to have serious doubts that either ferryman was even alive anymore, but I had to do something.

  The bag flopped over, with its mouth hanging forward in a frown. Not a great sign. I blew out a bracing breath and placed the box on Mr. Smith's belly, then used the Set blade to lift one corner of the lid so I could peek inside without risk of getting bit again or worse.

  I didn't see any movement within.

  "Rats," I said and poked inside with the handle end of the blade. "I swear if you're dead in there, I'm going to kill that cat."

  I flipped the cover off with Maddox's warning ringing in my head.

  "I have no idea if any of this is going to work, Mr. Smith, but there's no harm in trying."

  I used the knife to scoop a coil and yanked it out of the box. The serpent lay there inert, the tiny puncture holes in its side goading me. I grumbled to myself and tried to keep my eye on it as I reached out for the bag on the chair.

  The snake on the bed flicked its tongue out. Not far. Just enough for me to see it and realize it wasn't dead, or at least it had enough energy left in it to move. I whooped unintentionally and then clamped down on the sound. I didn't want the nurses thinking Mr. Smith had somehow come-to and rush in to whisk me out.

  "That's it," I said to the serpent. "You're going to be alright."

  I leaned in to get a better look, trying to figure out which one it was... goddess or ferryman.

  In the same moment, a searing sensation shot through my wrist and up my arm. I gasped and bit down on my lip.

  I suppose I should have felt panic, but all I felt was elation.

  And then, both of those feelings were swept away in a tide of terror.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I WASN'T SURE WHAT I was expecting, but it wasn't to get bitten a second time, and certainly not for it to hurt even more than the first. I staggered and fell against the bed as my knees went to wet bags. I grabbed for the railing with one hand and did my best not to faint.

  All that ran through my mind was that one sentence. Don't mix them up.

  I hauled in short breaths to keep from fighting off the serpent because this might be the last chance I had to reclaim my soul. If Kerri needed to hurt me to get my soul back, then so be it. I'd have to suck it up like a big girl.

  But it hurt. It hurt like a firebrand on my skin, like acid in my veins, like a vacuum sucking out my lungs. I'd taken my share of beatings from Scottie in my day. I'd been assaulted by his henchman till I was nothing but a bruised bit of skin, but this. This felt like everything that I was and had been, was being compressed into tiny, hard stone.

  I leaned against the bed, propping myself on Mr. Smith's legs with both elbows. I knew I was digging in, that I was probably bruising his skin, but I couldn't help it.

  I could hear myself wheezing. The sight of that black serpent clinging to my arm with its mouth puckering my skin was almost enough to make me want to puke. It writhed as it drew on me, coiling around on itself and uncoiling again. The tip of its tail seemed to be seeking something. It wasn't finding it.

  It writhed faster.

  It clamped down harder.

  I almost cried out, but bit down on my lip with enough pressure to keep the sobbing at bay. Tears stung my eyes and blurred everything except the inky black line crawling along my arm beneath my skin toward my chest.

  It moved at a pace that worried me.

  Back in my days with Scottie, he had his goons collect a fishmonger from his stall in the market who owed him money. They'd strapped the poor man to a car creeper in a deserted garage. Part of their orders were to bring along with them the knife the man used to fillet fish.

  Scottie had gone to work on the man with the man's own knife, full of fish guts and blood. They let the man lie there, cut up and bleeding for two days before they let him go. I'd sneaked him in food and water and I'd witnessed how the man sweated as he lay there. I'd seen a suspicious looking line creeping beneath his skin toward his heart. I'd had to beg Scottie to let the man go or he'd never see his money.

  Scottie called in a doctor to patch up the worst before sending him to the Emerg with a concerned 'son' to speak for him as the doc inspected the one cut on his arm that the man swore had been the outright result of his own stupidity.

  In a way, it was. No one got away with owing Scottie money past the recollection date he graciously set.

  The fishmonger ended up on I.V. antibiotics and had to return to the Emerg three days in a row with the stent embedded in his arm so they could hook him up for an hour at a time.

  This creeping line looked very much like that.

  Except mine was black. Coal black.

  Not just that, but my skin was starting to feel as though a hundred fire ants were trying to defend a hill of sand. As if it wasn't bad enough, the snake somehow sprouted a dozen tiny clawed from its belly.

  Small as they were, I had a close up enough view from my near prostrate view on Mr. Smith's bed that I could tell they looked like eagle's feet. Small. Sharp. And taloned.

  Whatever was happening, I just knew it wasn't good.

  "Kerri?" I said. "Please tell me that's you."

  I rolled over to my side, barely able to lift my head from the bed by now. Both snakes were in view. One of them, lazily coming to, its tongue darting out to taste the air, the other drawing so hard on my wrist that it convulsed with each new inch of line that crept up my arm.

  Now that I wasn't lying face first in the mattress and sheets, I could scent the fragrance I'd caught when the snake had first bit me back in Mr. Smith's hallway. It was the same smell that clung to him as he lay on the floor, the same stink that was in the box.

  That thing that had hold of me was not Kerri.

  It was the real ferryman, and no doubt the writhing it was doing was in a vain attempt to grapple its way back to Mr. Smith.

  "Oh no," I gasped out. "Oh fuck no."

  That thing was not going to finish what it started.

  I knew it for sure when that writhing body sought out my landlord's arm that rested outside the sheets just a few inches away. A fuzzy sort of light started to emanate from its taloned feet.

  Magic. Some sort of awful, soul-casting magic doing its best to seek out the connection it had made. I couldn't be sure, but I had a feeling the carrier magic was doing its level best to connect to the host it had mistaken for me. It didn't take a mage mind to know why.

  It needed to connect to siphon off the soul it had mis-planted or to transfer what I had left.

  "Hell no," I said, and mustered the energy to yank on the ferryman before it got a chance to dig its talons into Mr. Smith's arm. Just in time too.

  It flung its tail sideways in frustration, seeking to fight me and reach its target.

  I was blacking out now. Whatever the thing was doing to me, it was juicing more than just my remaining soul. It was immobilizing me. I was helpless as that black tail wormed its way, talons opening and closing, toward Mr. Smith's wrist.

  I think I might have sobbed. Or hiccupped. Or screamed. I wasn't sure. I made a sound, I know that, and I made it the moment something whipped into view from my peripheral. It struck the ferryman with a lightning speed that reminded me of the slow-mo shots of snakes in nature. Then both of them twitched sideways, wrenching the ferryman's jaw and pinching my skin as a result.

  It wasn't enough to free the bite, however, and I felt scalded where the ferryman had fought to stay impacted.

  Through hazy eyesight that was already blackening at the sides, I saw Kerri subdue the ferryman. She bit down on its tail, swall
owing a good inch of serpent down her throat. The macabre ouroboros bastardized itself even further when Kerri sprouted the same claw-like feet and dug them into Mr. Smith's arm.

  Immediately, the ferryman attached to me spasmed. It clamped down harder, and I thought I heard Lucifer's throaty laughter, felt the raging heat of his realm. Whether the scream of pain in my head came out through my voice box or not, I knew it was more than just a response to pain. It was the primal scream of something dying. Or coming to life.

  I couldn't be sure.

  I just prayed, really prayed, that the snake milking Mr. Smith's arm of something I swear I could taste, was Kerri and not the other way around.

  Then to my relief, my taste buds were flooded with candy apple, sweet and dopamine releasing. There was a hint of something rotten beneath it all, as though the Granny Smith coated in candy had begun to go soft and bad, but I welcomed every bit. I swallowed as though my life depended on it, and even if I had the sense that it was all metaphorical and magical, I wasn't taking a single chance.

  The fog began to lift. The sense of smothering was replaced with the feel of a warm river breeze.

  It was done. I felt it. I knew it was over.

  The snake detached from my arm and I sagged backwards, rolling from my side to my back. My feet hung inches from the floor and I realized I was laying almost parallel to Mr. Smith. I couldn't remember writhing along the mattress but in my pain and delusion, I must have.

  I hitched in a few breaths, expecting Kerri to already be standing at the side of the bed and the ferryman to be nothing but an inert coil of scales.

  "That was almost too easy," I murmured to myself.

  "Isabella?"

  Mr. Smith's voice. He was awake. It worked.

  I pushed myself to an unsteady and weak half sitting position.

  "Mr. Smith," I said. "You're alright."

  A look came over his face when he heard my voice. One of alarm or recognition or fear or maybe all at once. He shoved me hard enough that my back went into the railing of the bed.

  He held the Set blade above his head and was just starting the arc of swing downward when I croaked out a plea for him to stop.