by Stark, Jenn
“I wasn’t going to let her die.” I don’t know if I said the words aloud, but Death could hear me all the same.
“And you are more powerful than you should be,” she agreed. “But with every use of power, there are consequences. Consequences we cannot fully understand, because nobody has done this before.”
“Bullshit,” I said, my heart racing as I watched Sariah’s skin slowly return from a charred and bloody hulk to restitch together, stripes of healthy pink flesh appearing amidst all the ruin. “I’m not the first person to go into Hell and bring out somebody who shouldn’t be there. There are stories about that going back to the dawn of time.”
Death chuckled drily. “That may be, but most of those stories end up as cautionary tales. I think maybe you forgot that part.”
“There, yes. There,” Armaeus whispered again.
Though I kept a line of communication open with Death and the Magician, I didn’t forget the primary job at hand. I mentally traced over Armaeus’s every touch, adding my strength to his. I watched with a strange disconnect as Sariah’s body continued to heal. Her eyes remained locked on the Devil, but even when her skin had largely re-formed, she gasped and whimpered as I tried to edge away. I shot a concerned look to Armaeus, and he held my gaze, his voice filling my mind.
“You have become two people, but you were not always so. You once were one. The heart doesn’t forget. But you must…you must take what you’ve taken and step away from her, Sara.” His voice sounded strangely fraught, and I didn’t miss that he used my first name. That…seemed odd. “You must.”
I nodded, and Death’s hand firmed on my arm, pulling me gently away. Beneath me, Sariah convulsed, and it was all I could do to keep going until I had pulled myself off her, my momentum sending me backward, hard, until I landed on my ass. Death still held me by the arm, which I thought was nice, but not necessary. And then I realized that my arm was bent at a seriously awkward angle.
I glanced down and jolted. My arm was no longer attached to my body.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“Consequences,” Death stated, her voice flat, matter-of-fact as my own hysteria grew. “In the extremity of your fear, Sariah’s pain has become yours. Her injuries, yours. You must let go, Sara.”
“Let go of what?” I bleated. “You have my hand.”
I gasped in horror as I looked down at the rest of my body, the pain only now hitting me. Though my face appeared to be intact—I could see with both eyes and speak—the rest of my body was now as charred and shattered as Sariah’s had been. My legs sprawled out, no longer connected to my torso, and Nikki knelt beside me, holding my left arm tight to her body. Her beautiful neon-blue minidress was now stained with blood, and her eyes spilled over with tears that tracked down her face. I blinked at her, suddenly distracted.
“How come your mascara doesn’t run?” I asked, my thoughts scattering and coming back again, a kaleidoscope of crazy.
“Dollface,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Miss Wilde,” Armaeus said at the same time, using his outside voice. I looked up. The Devil and Sariah were gone.
I stiffened automatically, but he lifted a hand. “She’s safe. She could travel. You, however, still cannot. You must heal. You must let go.”
I jerked my chin up, my gaze meeting his. Death had said the same thing, but I still didn’t understand. “Let go?”
“Your need to protect Sariah was so great that you were able to pull her out of a death prescribed by the minions of hell. As long as you kept her in a cocoon of safety, connected with her, you were also protected. Now you have released her, and though she will heal, your body will only get worse.”
“Consequences,” Death murmured.
“But…” I said, or I started to say, but the words were garbled in my mouth. I moved to lift my hand, only I didn’t have one. Yet I could feel the blood filling my mouth, pouring out over newly cracked lips. I looked at Armaeus and could only see him through one eye.
Fear jolted through me. He moved forward even as Death barked a sharp rebuke, but Armaeus, for all that he could no longer remember me, knew me through and through, and some deep and primal center of me recognized him and welcomed him home. He blasted through the last of my defenses, and a shower of sparks erupted between us, my mind suddenly clear of the fog of pain as electrical currents raced through me, healing my body, dousing the unholy fire that burned within. Death and Nikki burst into action, bringing my limbs in close as the Magician placed his hands on my shoulders, his eyes hooded and dark, his lips moving in a constant stream of arcane spell craft.
The moment I regained feeling in my fingers, Nikki gripped my hand with both of hers. She trembled uncontrollably. Death, on my other side, held that arm down. She was also beset with tremors. Then I understood. Death and Nikki weren’t the ones shaking. I was.
“Slowly, slowly,” the Magician said, his voice finally reaching me. “Slow.”
Suddenly a scream rocked through the room. Sariah’s scream, and I jolted in Nikki’s and Death’s arms, my heart nearly surging out of my chest. They piled on, pressing me to the floor, as I looked around wildly.
“Where is she—what happened?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with Sariah?”
Magician cocked his head, then shook it. “She’s fine. She’s resting peacefully. She hasn’t regressed.”
My lungs heaving, I sagged back. I hadn’t imagined that scream. One long garbled sound, the words strung together incomprehensibly, but still clearly a command, a command I couldn’t ignore, a command I wouldn’t ignore, not anymore.
“She tried to draw them out,” I whispered. “That’s why she was dressed like me. That’s why, at least in part, she was with Brody. They thought she was me. She wanted me—to act. To fight. To…”
I fell silent as the Magician shook his head. “You don’t know that.”
I grimaced, but he was wrong. I did know that. That was exactly what Sariah had done. Once again trying to act before she was prepared, willing to trade the temporary uptick in her abilities that she’d gotten through proximity to us, to leverage those borrowed powers to draw out the Shadow Court. Not because of any exalted desire for justice, or to protect the Connected community, or even to preserve magic for all…simply because she wanted to fight.
When would she learn?
Or was it me she was trying to teach the lesson to?
I let the Magician pull me to my feet, my legs like Jell-O. “I need to speak to the Council,” I managed.
Then I collapsed again.
11
Apparently, dragging your better half out of Hell took a toll on a body, even a body as used to physical trauma as mine.
The first and most overriding sensation I had was of pain, a deep violating agony as I relived the sensation of having my limbs ripped from my body over and over again, then shoved back together, cauterized, the stench of smoking flesh and the squish of raw tissue combining into an endless loop of horror.
It wasn’t a horror I could easily float above either. Because I wasn’t alone in the shadows of my mind. The Magician was there, a far-off island of safety, ready and waiting for me to flail his way. But I could only swim during the brief moments that my body was all connected. When it wasn’t, I was tossed on a churning sea of sickening sensation, thrown up, then plunged down. Dimly, I understood that I was assimilating something, learning it, but I couldn’t quite figure out what that something was. Only that I would never willingly go out on a boat again.
Eventually the periods of time that my body hung together lengthened, and I was able to make more headway to the distant island of safety. Not only safety, peace, I decided. The peace of connection, of knowing. That was what the Magician represented to me. He was a person in this world who understood what I was, supported it, and was willing to defend it. Without him, I might as well be shark chum. Not because he was stronger than I was, but because we were infinitely stronger together than we were apart.
I slept for twenty-four hours straight. When I woke up, Armaeus was waiting for me. Waiting next to me, in fact, his dark eyes fixed on mine, his face taut and concentrated. He evinced no surprise when my eyelids fluttered open, but his gold-rimmed eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“You will want to eat,” he said.
“I need coffee,” I muttered, pulling myself upright. My mouth felt like chalk, and I shook out my hands experimentally, beyond relieved when they remained attached. I manfully managed not to cry. “How’s Sariah doing?”
“Her recovery was far less traumatic than yours, you’ll be happy to know. She slept without seeming to dream, her body at rest. With the help of Dr. Sells, we dropped her into a deeper medical coma, but the connection she formed with the Devil allowed her to retain awareness and lack of fear throughout the process. She understood she needed to rest. Or she simply didn’t fight it.”
“Yeah?” I tried to settle myself against the pillow without getting swallowed by it. “That doesn’t really sound like Sariah.”
“She…is not the same Sariah, I would counsel you, Miss Wilde.”
I looked at him sharply as the door to my room flew open and Nikki Dawes strode in, carrying a tray of coffee. My jaw dropped at the sight of her, but I didn’t have enough energy to respond more vocally.
“Dollface! I know, I know. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? There were so many options, but I decided in the end that Armaeus could take only so much awesome at one time. So you get Florence Nightingale and not the French maid. You’re welcome, love buns.”
She said this last to Armaeus, but the description was apt. Nikki was dressed in a coyly conservative, high-necked white nurse’s uniform, with sheer white stockings over white platform go-go boots. A jaunty red cape hung over her shoulders to her waist, and a white nurse’s cap tilted smartly to one side of her dark 1930s-era bouffant. She even wore white gloves.
“First things first, because I know you’re going to ask, but if Armaeus hasn’t already told you, Sariah has improved. She was doing this thing where she’d flash in and out of consciousness, and sometimes in and out of existence, occasionally coming back a bit bloodied all over again—”
“What?” I demanded, but Nikki flapped her hands.
“Dr. Sells was right there, and said it wasn’t surprising. The magic you all threw at Sariah was some heady stuff, you know. It was a lot for a body to take, especially given the amount of healing she required.”
I winced, recalling the image of the broken, battered Sariah, barely visible through the smoke and flames. “Yeah,” I muttered.
“Anyway, now she’s back, apparently for good, and she’s sleeping like a baby,” Nikki said. “I think that’s honestly for the best. She’ll just get herself in more trouble if she starts up again. As it is, poor Detective Delish is beside himself with guilt. Not his fault, I kept telling him. That boy was practically blasted to bits, but he feels responsible for Sariah on the best days, and a little like an idiot right now. Add that I think he was developing actual feelings for her, permanent, meaningful feelings, so he’s a few coeds shy of a pillow fight right now.”
I blinked at her, trying to follow the avalanche of words. “What?”
“Never mind, dollface. What you need to focus on is that he’s fine and Sariah’s going to be fine, and you’re going to get your shot in front of the Council, just as soon as you can stand without listing to the side.”
I shoved myself higher on the pillows as she brought the coffee close. “I’m also fine,” I informed her.
“That you are.” She set the tray of coffee on the side table and gave me a mug, heavily laced with cream and something with quite a bit more kick.
My brows shot up. “Exactly where did you get your nursing degree?”
She grinned, pulling up a seat. “Sugar pie, for what I’ve got to tell you, you’re going to need some ballast.” She shot a look over to Armaeus. “You’ve confirmed it all?”
He nodded. “I have. Tell her. The information will not get any more palatable if we choose to wait.”
Nikki snorted. “That is certainly true.”
I narrowed my eyes, tracking their verbal volley only a couple of seconds behind. Still, those seconds were beginning to feel more crucial. “What?” I asked. “What have I missed?”
“So you were right. Our girl had a plan,” Nikki launched in without further preamble. “A dumb plan, but a plan. When she got put back together again after her Humpty Dumpty stand, I got a hand on her. I picked up a few things.”
I stared at her over the rim of my coffee mug. “Like what?”
I didn’t need her to explain how she’d learned what she’d learned, of course. Nikki’s particular Connected abilities had come into focus more sharply of late, but she’d always had some level of the skill of reading people’s memories. Not so much their mind or their thoughts, but what they’d seen, what they’d experienced. Even though it was inevitably filtered by their own biases—their fear, anger, hatred, and a whole host of other emotions—it was still an invaluable skill when she’d served as a cop. Now, it came in even more handy, as all too often, Connecteds were a little cagier than most people. If they wanted to keep their secrets, they generally could. Not with Nikki around, though. All she needed to do was touch the skin of her target, and their memories would come flooding through. Particularly those memories that were top of mind. Given what Sariah had just endured, her most relevant memories were definitely going to be top of mind.
“All right, so what are we talking about here?” I asked. “She tried to tell me something after we got back, but I couldn’t make much sense of it.” I couldn’t remember much of it either, frankly. That entire conversation had been swept up in the haze of the Eternal Swim to Shore.
“Sariah had a theory,” Nikki said. “She decided that you were being watched all the time, but not by the most important people. In her opinion, the Shadow Court was assigning minions to do the job. The reason being that if anybody got caught, they would be so far down the food chain that it would never get traced back to the Court itself. Fortunately, you have enough enemies that this wasn’t a completely unreasonable approach. Her attire last night was quite deliberate. So was her date.”
I winced despite myself. I did remember this part, now that Nikki made a point of it. “So Sariah’s not interested in Brody?” This wasn’t a critical issue, but it still made me a little sad.
“Let’s just say her feelings regarding Detective Love Donut are complicated. But she used him, no doubt about it. She figured they picked up a tail right outside the Flamingo, and she made sure that they took their time getting over to Lake Mead. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before they approached her.”
“But what was the point? What was she going to do once she drew them out?” I’d asked Sariah the same question, I was pretty sure, but she’d devolved into talking about how she’d known I was going to save her. Which, while gratifying, wasn’t super helpful.
Nikki blew out a long breath. “This is where things go a little sideways. Sariah also put the word out that she was amassing forces against the Shadow Court. Building an army, basically. People who were in that army were supposedly going to meet her at the casino.”
By this time, I’d gone completely still. “Please tell me you’re joking. Sariah isn’t exactly the fearless commander type.”
Nikki raised a finger. “She’s not. She doesn’t have to be. You do.”
“I was nowhere near the casino last night. I couldn’t have met those people if I wanted to. And who exactly are those people?”
Nikki waved off the last question. “You’re missing the point. There were no people coming to meet you. Not yet, anyway. It was just Sariah and Brody. But she figured that this planned meeting would draw the attention of some of the higher-level minions of the Shadow Court. Since she had c
onveniently been sandwiched in among some high-level Connecteds courtesy of my fabulous shindig, she picked up some of their abilities temporarily, which she planned to use to full effect.”
Beside Nikki, the Magician shifted.
“The Devil’s ability to gain the truth, your ability to read memories, my ability to transport.”
“Yeah,” Nikki said. “She was pretty sure she’d be able to whisk her and Brody out of harm’s way if anything went down. She was watching all exits, feeling pretty good about things, when the flight of a thousand dino bats happened. That was definitely not on her radar. Full-on demon attack, whisking her straight to Hell. She was so disoriented and damaged by the entry, she didn’t get your healing mojo working in time, and they hit her with everything they had. It was clear, to her mind anyway, that they thought she was you. They went at her with teeth and claws, cutting her up, separating body parts, setting everything on fire, smashing and dragging away any bones they could reach. She finally got her healing process to work, but by then, it was a war of attrition. She could only hang on, knowing you would come and save her ass.”
“She actually thought that?”
Nikki looked at me, her smile rueful.
“Yeah, she did. In her heart of hearts, she knew you would come.” She slid a glance to Armaeus. “And she knew you would know if something really yanked her chain, Love Pooch. That she and Sara were that connected, like it or not.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, rubbing my hand over my face. How had she known? I’d witnessed Armaeus’s reaction when Sariah had been attacked, and I’d never seen him react so strongly—to anything. But how had Sariah been so certain? And more to the point, what about the aftermath of the demon attack? “So, who bombed the hotel? That wasn’t the bat-bird things, right?”
“It was not,” Armaeus put in. “Surveillance cameras show a delivery late in the evening to the kitchens, approximately twenty minutes before the attack of the hellspawn.”
