Stone Goddess (Isabella Hush Series Book 3)

by Thea Atkinson

  "We're nearly there," he said. "The abyss holds time in an elastic band of energy, but it won't last long. We need to continue on."

  Fear rose in my throat. I shook my head.

  "Not yet."

  "You have to be, Isabella. We can't leave him there. I can't help him if I'm here."

  "Help him?" I said. "We're supposed to rob him." I inched away when he reached for my hand. "How in the hell am I going to do that now?" I could see it all veering off course and straight out into the rhubarb where the tangles of weeds and leaves would swallow up opportunity forever.

  "You're wrong," he said. "Errol was wrong." He raked his hand through his hair and I noted it trembled. Not a comforting thing to witness under the circumstance.

  "Wrong about what?" I said. "That man has something Absalom wants—something we need so we can get that stone back—and now he won't let either of us close enough to lift it."

  I clenched my fists at my side. I was weary. The chains were heavy and beginning to cut into my skin. I dug at the collar as I stared at him.

  "I'm taking this damn thing off," I said. "It's over." I bent over retrieve the key from my elven boot and I had it clutched in my fist when he grasped my wrists.

  He snagged my gaze with his. "You don't understand, Isabella," he said. "Either Errol set us up or he was wrong because my father doesn't have what we need. He is what we need."

  I thought about the way Maddox's father had glowed, not just in one spot as he got close to the fire gate, but the way he glowed all over.

  "You mean—"

  "Yes. He's the target."

  "Your father," I said, prodding.

  His jaw clenched. "Yes."

  "You looked surprised to see him," I said.

  He spun on his heel and peered into the mists. Shoulders that were tense went rigid, as though he felt anxious.

  "He's supposed to be dead."

  Dead. An immortal man who looked to be in his seventies. I eyed Maddox carefully. If his father could age and he was immortal, just how old was this council of the stone, anyway?

  "Why?" I said. "What makes him so important to Absalom?"

  "He's the stone master," Maddox said, avoiding my eye. He peeled off his shirt, since it was flapping open anyway and mopped his face with it. I only noticed then, that he was sweating heavily while I felt perfectly comfortable.

  "The stone master who is bonded to the stone?"

  "Yes," he said. "I'm not sure what he has in mind, but if he wants Doyle, it no doubt has something to do with the stone."

  He tossed the shirt into a nearby fog bank. It disappeared into the mists. My eye caught on the angry looking weal that made up his mark. He looked like he was exerting, lifting a heavy weight and yet he was simply standing there.

  "We're all bonded to the stone in some way," he said. "All of the acolytes and monks. We are initiated into the order by taking the same trip you did. But the Stone Master has a unique power. One that becomes all the more threatening now that the stone is back in the ninth world—your world."

  He laid his palm on my shoulder and it felt moist and hot. It shook, just a little, as it rested there.

  "Now we need to go. I can feel the time elastic tightening. It's getting unbearable and I have no idea who is waiting for him on the other side of the portal. We're wasting time here."

  I had a host of questions, but he was right. If Absalom had arranged for the artifact to be thrown through the portal, he would have someone there to retrieve it when it came through.

  "But why push him through, then?" I said, edging away from the way the mists were coiling into a funnel in front of me. "Why not just grab for him and run like the devil out of the spectacle?"

  "Because it's my portal. I created it. If it goes to the bazaar, I have some control. Now please, Isabella. We have to go."

  I sucked in a bracing breath. In for a penny in for a pound. I'd made my decision long ago. And I needed to follow through, no matter how terrifying it was.

  I let him take my hand and his felt smooth and warm and mine.

  His fingers tightened around mine and his other arm moved to snuggle at the waist at the small of my back.

  I'd forgotten to take off the collar and I felt it grow heavier as I clutched at it.

  "Take a deep breath," he said.

  I did.

  The next thing I knew he was pushing me through the funnel. But this time there was no pain. He was wrapped around me like a cloak, protecting me or taking whatever pain the portal was delivering.

  CHAPTER 19

  We stepped through with the ease of stepping across a threshold. My first impression of the area was that we were in a shop of some kind. The room was in semi-darkness except for the flickering glow of a streetlamp streaming in through the window. I could just make out yellowing skulls lining the wall ahead of me, leering at me with open jaws. Jars of black powders and bottles of viscous fluid companioned them. It looked like an old-fashioned apothecary shop. Nothing special. Nothing terribly frightening. Maybe the portal had sent us somewhere else. Maybe the whole thing wasn't a set up at all.

  I swung my gaze about the room, scanning for Maddox's father, and only meeting shadows and, where the light touched, bookshelves and herb counters.

  And yet in one of those shadowy corners, I could swear I saw movement. Not a lot, just a bit of writhing greyness where the dark wasn't so deep. My eye caught on something that looked like the edge of a sheet and a bare toe flirting with the light.

  In the next instant, dozens of jolts of electricity sizzled down into my skin. They burrowed into my tissues like worms. My hair felt like it was rising, standing against my scalp. The hair on my arms and legs strained outward, prickling my flesh. A gentle hum reverberated deep into the core of my chest.

  I spasmed. My back arched painfully.

  Just like I had been throttled by Scottie's thug's Taser, I was being juiced again. The collar heated up like a griddle and made me cry out. I dug at the thing, trying to pull it away from my skin, but the heat burned my fingers.

  I fell against something—a counter, maybe. Something crashed to the floor on the other side. I squirmed there like a bug against a pin, writhing around my pain.

  "The incubus was right," said a familiar voice, but it wasn't Maddox's.

  Absalom's I realized. I'd barely heard him speak in Errol's shop, but I knew the timber of that arrogant voice non the less.

  "She's been sanctified," he said with certainty. "She'll be perfect. Take her."

  The pulse of energy evaporated and the heat left the metal, leaving me panting and hanging over my knees.

  I thought I'd be sick.

  I peered up through my hair to scan the room as a cluster of men advanced on me from the shadows.

  Apparently the moment of respite was for their benefit, not mine.

  My gaze clawed over the room, seeking escape, seeking Maddox, Absalom, some sort of hint that I'd stepped through to the right end of the portal and wasn't lost in a realm without them.

  I couldn't see Maddox at all.

  I couldn't see the portal I'd just stepped through.

  But I did see the target I'd been hired to steal. Doyle: Maddox's father. He stood in what looked like a kiddie pool except the water wasn't any liquid I'd ever seen. It was molten and moving and it swirled with steam that reminded me of Errol's green neon sign.

  The old gent looked stuck in that mire and was trying to lift his feet over the lip of the container to free himself. Each time he lifted his foot, the steam rose and circled him, twirling about his body like the wand of magic from Cinderella's godmother as she transformed a shabby tunic into a gorgeous gown.

  Instead of doing a beautiful thing, this magic seemed to strip him of his reason. He looked befuddled and blinked down as though he'd lost the ability to process simple thoughts.

  I tried to move and found I was caught up in a sticky substance too, one that contained my movements the way a spider might a fly.

 
Whatever held us was the same thing. We weren't meant to move freely.

  By all rights, I should have panicked, but I watched the men approach with clinical detachment, noting how they moved quickly but cautiously, their eyes scanning me with trepidation.

  Something was wrong with me that they were afraid of. Something they didn't want to touch.

  My eyes flitted to my fingers and I splayed them out in front of my face. Some sort of webbing coated them, and it sizzled with a blue-grey light. I barely felt it.

  Absalom stood a short distance off, his hands were still lingering in the air as though he had thrown two balls at me with a basketball kind of free throw.

  It took several seconds to realize that he wore that same strange sort of sleeveless glove that wrapped around the base of his fingers. Small round pads nestled into the base of each, forming a sort of flower on his palm. I might not know the Kindred world well, but I knew a weapon when I saw it. And that weapon had been aimed at me.

  I traced the blueish glow from those pads to the air around me, and realized that what he had thrown had been energy, and that it was wrapped around me like a spider web. A similar bit of magic had pooled into the container that held Absalom.

  Whatever magic he held, I knew it wasn't his own but was manufactured and its source was there in those finger pads.

  I could feel a faint sort of sizzling in its pulse of energy. I could hear it buzzing in my ears.

  Absalom had planned this alright. Right down to the last detail. He'd taken the time to create or buy a weapon that could hold the Stone Master because he'd known he needed him. Maddox was right. This had everything to do with the Lilith Stone. That much was clear.

  But what it had to do with me beyond getting the Stone Master through the portal, I didn't understand.

  I might have admired his planning but for the way he stepped toward me with a predatory gait. And that was the moment I realized that somehow, all of this had everything to do with me as well.

  "She's the perfect conduit," he said, rubbing his chin. "Errol was right."

  "Errol is a dead man," I said through gritted teeth.

  Absalom canted his head to the side. "Errol is not a man," he said.

  "No shit, Sherlock," I said.

  Another jolt went through me as Absalom flicked his finger in my direction. This time I did cry out. The shock went all the way down to my toes.

  I was vaguely aware that the men who had tried to swarm me cringed away from me, afraid of the webbing the way an animal is of being cornered.

  It was in that moment that Maddox stepped through the portal. He took one look in Absalom's direction and followed it to me. Once Absalom realized Maddox had stepped through, he pulled the webbing of electricity that surrounded me and threw it toward Maddox.

  I watched it fly like a net about to wrap around a feral beast.

  I was free of the magic, but not safe from the goons. I dodged left, seeking a harbour as I wrestled with possibilities. Could I do something to help? Was there a weapon nearby?

  Absalom's thrust landed on empty air as Maddox leapt from his spot and bulled his way across the room.

  I had no idea a man of his size could be so quick on his feet. I'd seen him fight before, but not charge and feint as Absalom retracted his energy and flicked it out again over and over, like a whip being cracked and withdrawn.

  The men who had swarmed me shifted the way geese do in the air toward Maddox who upended several shelves and ripped a freestanding beam from the wall and swung it toward Absalom. The alchemist countered with a blast of light that splintered the wooden beam.

  It missed Maddox by mere inches.

  Freed from Absalom's attack, I was able to duck for cover beneath the table. The chains scraped along the floor and I had to gather them up. My breath was coming in gasps. My hands shook. Whatever was going on, it was a game that was in deadly earnest. I wasn't just a hired thief, I was part of the heist the way Maddox's father was. My eyes skirted the area, searching for him, scoping out the distance between us, thinking maybe I could find a way to reach him.

  I couldn't see him from my vantage point.

  He could be dead for all I knew.

  I scoured the floor around me for a weapon that I could wield while in chains because Errol had made sure to supply real ones, not large and hefty, but true steel links with a lock on the collar.

  Now I finally understood exactly why.

  My eye locked on the snaking curve of the links and I realized one thing.

  I had a key. If it was still in my boot, then I was as good as out of there. But could I just leave Maddox there alone to duke it out with a host of nasties in a bid to save his dad. Besides: just where in the name of Jesus did I think I would I run to?

  I had no idea if I was in the ninth world, Errol's spectacle, or the Shadow Bazaar.

  But I was at least going to get the Hell out of these chains. I stuck my finger in the left boot, fishing around for the key. I'd not felt it in a while, embedding into my sole and I was afraid it was gone.

  A clatter of bowls and jars cut through the air and a sucking sound pulled out from the air in a way that made me think of taffy stretched out from a spoon.

  I dared lean out from behind the table, too far for my comfort but terrified someone was coming for me.

  Doyle had somehow managed to step over the container and free himself. He was coated in energy, but it shed from him in sheets that didn't seem to slow him down as he entered the fray.

  It crackled and evaporated into steamy puffs that fogged him in special effect fashion.

  Pretty damned impressive, I had to admit.

  He ducked adroitly and with as much agility as a man half his age as one of the goons charged him. The attacker sailed over his back. In a swift motion, the old gent spun on his heel and grappled for the man's hand, twisting it in a painful motion that made bones snap noisily.

  "Wicked," I said despite myself.

  I fished around my boot in earnest, then, because I was sure we'd be getting the upper hand any time now and I wanted to be ready.

  I needed to be ready.

  Maddox snapped his foot out at his opponent and knocked him to his knees. One powerful blow against the man's shoulders and he slumped to the floor. Maddox stepped over him, aiming for Absalom.

  Absalom tried and failed to lob another ball of web at Maddox. The webbing went limp in his hand and he called out for cover.

  Three of his goons shielded him.

  I thought we might be winning.

  So did Absalom, apparently.

  While Maddox and his father cut their way through the men standing in direct line, shielding the shields with an almost deadened and dogged gaze, Absalom fiddled with the weapon that encircled his hand.

  Whatever he did to it showed in the bolt of crackling energy that he sent sailing off into the shadowed corner of the room. It sizzled past Maddox to strike into the darkness.

  A scream shredded the air.

  I realized that in the shadows of the shop, cowering in one of the corners, were the half dozen virgins who had leapt through the portal before us, expecting a frenzy of pleasure.

  Absalom sent through another jolt of electricity in their direction. One of them fell. Her body spilled into the light, enrobed in a white tunic that had scorched directly in center mass.

  She spasmed for at least thirty seconds before she went perfectly still.

  I would have thought the act would freeze time, but it didn't. Maddox fought on, bringing down one more goon as he advanced on Absalom.

  I had to give Maddox credit; he looked terrifying, and Absalom's hand trembled as he took aim again at the shadows. I knew Maddox wouldn't care about those women. They were human after all, and I knew Absalom would kill them all before Maddox got to him.

  I also knew he was doing it for a reason.

  He wanted me to see it.

  He knew I couldn't let another human being die. At least he was banking on it.

&
nbsp; His arm lifted again, resting against one of his goons shoulders. The whimpering in the corner grew. A mass of greyish clothes moved as one, out of clear shot and behind cover of several of the men

  "Greys," Absalom said. "Move aside."

  Maddox leered at him.

  "Greys or not, humans or not, I'm coming for you."

  Absalom released another jolt from the weapon. The shadows shrieked.

  "Stop it," I heard myself yell. "Stop. Maddox, he's going to just kill them all."

  Wherever Maddox was, it wasn't in his right mind. Every feature in his face was curled into red blotches of rage. I wasn't sure he could even hear. Bodies of what Absalom called greys littered the space around him, and there was no way he was going to stop. Only two greys remained guarding Absalom.

  Absalom leaned sideways, aiming past his support to get a clear shot at the shadows.

  Maddox charged.

  His father snagged him by the arm.

  Something passed between them in the time it took for a heart to pulse.

  I thought maybe Maddox would relent, but he swung his gaze to me where I was by then feeling into my other boot for the key. I found it, clenching it tight in my fist.

  His expression hardened and I suspected that humans or not, he was not leaving this place while Absalom breathed.

  They were all too busy to notice me slipping the key into the lock on my collar, twisting it till the click snapped free. I pulled the chain slowly back toward me, link by link.

  Absalom was right there, not five feet away.

  I pushed myself to my feet, the chain spilling down my front. I inched forward on crouched legs, crabbing toward the alchemist.

  Absalom's eyes were for Maddox only.

  "There's two prizes," he said. "The master, and the conduit," he said loud enough that the women in the corner shrieked. "Which one of those would you choose to save. Not the useless humans, and yet the conduit seems to think they have value."

  He raked his gaze over Maddox's form with a smirking eye.

  "Isabella," Maddox said without taking his gaze from me. "You need to run. Now."