Stone Goddess (Isabella Hush Series Book 3)

by Thea Atkinson

  I held my breath. There was no coming back from what I'd done. Would Scottie's man exact revenge, or did he even care? He wouldn't involve the police, I knew that, but what exactly does a crime organization do when its leader is murdered?

  Murdered.

  Oh God. I couldn't just stand there waiting for him to see me.

  I had to run.

  Thankfully, he panned right, away from me.

  I took that moment to slip away, down the stairwell and when I eased the door closed behind me, I ran like the devil was on my tail all the way down to the lobby.

  If I expected normalcy down there, then I was a fool.

  The lobby was deathly quiet. I skimmed the area with a nervous gaze. The clerk who checked us in stood like a statue, his fingers steepled on the check-in desk while he stared ahead at nothing. The bellhop, the concierge, the doorman, all stood at attention but facing into the lobby as though they didn't care if anyone came in through the front doors.

  The front doors.

  Four men stood in front of each of them, their backs creating an impenetrable barrier between the lobby in the street.

  Something was wrong, but whatever it was, it had to have happened between the time Lance strode through it and the time I ran down the stairwell.

  I could hear myself swallowing repeatedly.

  The door clicked closed behind me and all eyes gathered to where I stood, frozen like a deer being jacked in a 4 x 4's headlights.

  "Don't move, Isabella," I heard someone say. Doyle's voice. I was sure of it. But what was he doing here? How had he found me?

  I didn't dare move, but I didn't like the idea of the door behind me so close. If Lance came through it he'd find me standing just inches away.

  I gathered my courage—at least, the tatters that I could manage—and swung my gaze in the direction of Doyle's voice.

  There. In the lounge part of the lobby where the builders had erected a small coffee bar with plush leather seats and sofas. The shirt Maddox had given him had been washed but not ironed. The cuffs were rolled up nearly to his elbows, showing off thick forearms with a dusting of salt and pepper hair. He stood surrounded by a cluster of greys.

  Opposite him, Absalom spread his arms across the back of a buttoned down leather sofa. His legs were crossed one knee over the other. He waggled one foot in the air. A steaming mug of coffee sat on the table beside him.

  "Come," Absalom said. "Join us."

  "I think I'd rather get my coffee from Starbucks," I said.

  He chuckled without a trace of humor. "It will be a pity to lose such razor sharp wit."

  He flicked a finger in my direction and both the concierge and the bellhop advanced on me.

  I decided I'd rather go on my own steam then be wrestled between those revolting clutches. I might have simply run if it was just me, but there was Doyle.

  "Can I at least sit down," I said to Absalom when I drew close enough to smell the tea tree oil he put in his hair and the coffee beans that sat in large glass cannisters. "I've had a rather rough day."

  I met Doyle's eyes and I was perplexed to see that he didn't look the least bit sheepish or afraid.

  Rather, there was a proud set to his shoulders.

  It should have offered me comfort, but it didn't. I felt resigned, instead. Maybe he did too. Going down with dignity, I guessed.

  Absalom shifted on the couch, nestling in for comfort, I supposed, or just to show me he was so casually confident about his control of the situation that he didn't need to get up.

  I considered telling him I'd just killed a man.

  "You've been difficult to find," he said. "But luckily, where the stone is, the master follows." He rounded his neck to skim a look over to Doyle.

  Doyle's blue eyes pinned to mine. Something flickered in their depths as he lifted his shoulders in half a shrug. A coy sigh eased out from his lips.

  "It's like a phantom limb," he said. "I knew it was in the ninth world again. Damn thing is worse than a rash."

  He nodded down to his forearm, where a similar mark to Maddox's had raised into a painful looking weal. I could almost see it pulsing with his heartbeat, and it looked like a worm undulating over his skin, seeking blindly something to sustain its life.

  I nodded silently. So he'd tracked the stone, probably knowing Absalom would too. Had he known he'd find me and end up giving Absalom everything he needed to complete the ritual, or was he just led by the stone, the way a salmon is to its spawning grounds.

  I knew the end was inevitable. I'd drained the last of my adrenaline running from Lance. I could feel a pinch in my flanks where my kidneys twitched and a burning had begun to radiate down to my hips.

  I supposed it was always going to come down to something like this. Escaping Scottie, escaping Lucifer. Who did I think I was anyway? People like me didn't just walk away from brutes like that. They didn't make new lives. And if they did, their deeds caught up with them eventually.

  But was I going to just give up after all that, through? I'd worked hard to live.

  I felt my fingers twitch against my leg, and they struck the stone within my pocket. I had one last gambit.

  "I'll break the damn thing," I said. "Shatter it into a thousand pieces."

  Absalom leaned forward, propping his elbows against his knees. "Doesn't matter," he said. Stone or sand, all you will do is make a hell of a mess."

  "Sure," I said. "But Lilith will be in as many pieces."

  Doyle made a snorting sound, drawing my attention. He shrugged as he caught my eye. "Can you see your soul?" he said. "Can you pinpoint where it is?"

  Absalom rose from the sofa, leaning over to pick up his coffee cup. He drained it and then flung it aside, where it struck the coffee bar and split in half.

  "Time is up," he said. "We already completed the prelude to the ritual. All I need now is you."

  Before I could protest, he drew in a long and shuddering breath. I felt my lungs burn. They bellowed out so far that the straining of the tissues made my throat hurt.

  I blinked at Doyle, willing him with my eyes to do something.

  I was suspended there, unable to exhale, feeling as though I'd become buoyant on the currents of air.

  With a shock, I realized my feet had left the floor. I was slowly arching backwards, my solar plexus straining toward Absalom.

  I lost my contact with Doyle, and that terrified me.

  A low frequency hum began to move through the greys, like a series of tuning forks finding a perfect and synchronized a note. I was arched so far backwards that my spine had begun to crack. I couldn't hold my head aloft and it hung there, tying my neck muscles into a dozen knots as I fought gravity.

  From beside me I heard Doyle choking and then as though he were struggling to keep his vocal chords from vibrating, sounds came from his throat that might have been language but that was foreign and filled with enough consonants that it would be impossible for a linguist to pronounce. The words sounded more like pained utterances of expressed agony.

  The stone grew hot in my pocket. It raised in temperature until I felt as though the rag surrounding it had burned away to nothing and that it had set fire to my jeans.

  The skin on my thigh felt numb, as though it had been dunked into ice water.

  And then the incredible pain of freezing erupted around my leg.

  I wanted to scream. Hung there, with my face pointed toward the doors, and my throat closed off, I couldn't make more than gurgling sounds.

  Tears dripped from my eyes onto the floor.

  My shoulders ached from the suspension.

  And then something changed in the greys' tone. Something seemed missing, it was less of a swell.

  Doyle had stopped chanting.

  From upside down, I could make out a pair of legs rush across the room toward us. A second pair sprinted along not two feet behind. For one second, I glimpsed a studded iron mace swinging on its chain. The stomach-churning sound of bone against iron clawed through the air.<
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  Something cut through my core.

  I dropped in one second of terrifying freefall.

  Pain bit into my shoulder as I thudded to the floor. I let go a howl of pain.

  I couldn't move. I'd broken my neck. Broken my back. Maybe I was already dead.

  And yet I was pulling in hitching breaths, trying to recondition my lungs to breathe again and pull in the oxygen my muscles needed. Prickles of oxygen scattered through my tissues like puzzle pieces thrown in anger.

  My vision cleared, but I felt foggy. Like I was searching for an image of myself through a haze of fog. Where was the mirror? I needed a reflecting pool, a steel pan, a spoon for heaven's sake, I just needed beyond everything to see myself.

  A grey fell in front of me. I jumped in reaction and pain lanced down my shoulder and into my back. I bit down on the outcry, terrified he would reach out for me while I couldn't defend myself.

  But his face stared just into mine, the blackness of his eyes wavering into a beautiful green.

  His mouth was agape and worms wriggled from beneath his tongue. I gagged and struggled to push myself onto my hands and knees. My palms slipped on something fluid. Blood. His blood. It was only then that I realized his skull had been crushed from behind.

  I felt myself swaying from the threat of passing out. I thought I heard my name. It grounded me. Telling me to get up.

  Dumbfounded, I skimmed my gaze around me.

  Fayed, covered in blood head to toe, was tearing into the throat of a grey. There was no scream, proof that the man he'd been no longer resided in the zombie body. Maddox was surrounded by four of them. I watched him swing his mace with one hand while simultaneously reaching out with the other.

  Maddox's fingers closed down over the grey's face, his fingers jamming into the eye sockets. With seemingly little effort, he lifted the grey high over his head where it writhed in agony and then dropped like a wet teabag onto the floor.

  Two more launched themselves at him, and Maddox spun, thrusting a leg out in a roundhouse kick that took the legs out from beneath them. The mace came down mercilessly. Chests heaved; blood splattered upward, coating Maddox.

  A scuttling sound beside me, far too near for my comfort, drew my attention. I cringed in reflex and sucked in a breath as the pain in my shoulder reminded me who was boss.

  Absalom had engaged Doyle in the fight. And at first I was incensed at the unfairness of a man so much younger attacking an old man. Then I realized it was Absalom who was at the disadvantage.

  Doyle obviously had centuries of fighting skill and training.

  Without his greys, Absalom was pitiful at hand to hand combat. Doyle was playing with him the way a cat does a mouse.

  I wondered if he had been playing Absalom all this time, pretending to be powerless, waiting for Maddox.

  Doyle's shirt had torn from his shoulders to his waist, and for the first time, I really took note of how muscled his back was. Bands of sinew moved and writhed as he fought.

  Absalom reached out his hands sideways instead of thrusting magic toward Doyle, and threads of silver light leaked out his fingertips the way a spider sends out gossamer. The tendrils of light locked on the pools of tar that surrounded each fallen grey.

  Everything in the weapon discharged into the viscous fluid, and left Absalom bereft of manufactured energy.

  All he had left was the magic of his nature.

  It made no sense why he would discharge his weapon's energy until he tore the thing from his hand and grit his teeth, sucking in a breath that expanded his chest.

  "He's going to change," I shrieked, but it only came out as the sound of a rusted hinge protesting sudden use.

  Too late, Maddox, Fayed, Doyle realized the shift of energy.

  Hair, teeth, and claws erupted from Absalom's body.

  The chupacabra had taken over.

  CHAPTER 28

  Fayed was the first to react. He threw himself at the chupacabra's neck with a guttural roar. It raised its head, bracing itself for attack and I almost saw it smile.

  Its mouth snapped open. Foul looking spittle dripped from its fangs.

  Fayed met it just as it closed its mouth down over his midsection. A roar of pain lit through the room. The chupacabra thrashed its head back and forth. Fayed sagged, a doll in the clutches of that great maw.

  I cried out, but I doubt anyone heard. Doyle and Fayed had already taken the chance the distraction offered and launched themselves toward the beast.

  I felt powerless as I lay there. But I had to do something. Had to intervene somehow.

  The stone. I still had it. I could make all this stop.

  With no stone, none of this would matter.

  I rolled onto my uninjured shoulder, biting down on the shock as pain lanced through me. My fingers crawled toward my pocket, making a sure, but slug-like trail toward the stone.

  Inches. All I needed was a few inches. Skin to stone instead of fabric to stone and this, all of this, would be done. I just needed to aim my throw accurately, make sure it shed its wrappings as I hurled it toward Absalom.

  The chupacabra chuckled beneath its breath, deep in its chest. Or maybe it was a growl. I couldn't tell. All I knew was the thing rose up on hind legs and dropped Fayed to the floor as it whirled on Maddox.

  Doyle advanced on it from the other side. I could clearly see the muscles in his back tensing as he flexed his fists.

  Maddox was drawing its attention so Doyle could attack.

  Fayed twitched on the floor. He wasn't dead. Thank God, he wasn't dead.

  And then a sharp, hot shot of electricity sizzled into my thigh.

  Doyle rounded on me, his jaw dropped open, his eyes wide as moons.

  "She's connecting," he said.

  I spasmed, crying out as the needlepoint of pain grew into a dime. I started digging in earnest then, trying to grab for the stone to extract it from my pocket before it could hurt me anymore. To fling it away and at anything so long as it was gone.

  "Isabella," Maddox shouted and I lifted my gaze to his. He wore a strange expression: one of joy and fear co-mingled.

  My leg felt like ice. I was growing numb.

  And I knew what that meant. I was bonding to the stone.

  I didn't think about immortality. I didn't think about Lilith or the chupacabra. I didn't even think about Lucifer and the consequences of touching the stone.

  I did not want to be bound to anything real or magical.

  "No," I said. "Hell no."

  As though the stone understood, it tore through my jeans, burning the material on exit. The smell of scorched cloth struck my nose. I fell back in relief, and watched it sail past my head to lodge into Doyle's outstretched palm.

  It smacked into the skin with a wet thwack.

  I expected to see him evaporate into thin air, hopping his freight car to Lucifer's domain, but he made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

  Then he glowed.

  It was enough to capture both Maddox and the chupacabra's attention. For one instant, both sets of eyes lingered on the ethereal looking light that wrapped Doyle in a red glow. He could have been standing in front of the fire, the light from the flames, licking around him.

  That moment was all it took for the energy to shift in the room.

  Doyle almost looked younger in those seconds before the glow burrowed into his tissues.

  Maddox cried out, letting go the chupacabra and gripping his rib cage as though he were being branded from within by a hot iron.

  Both men lifted their heads, almost involuntarily to the ceiling, their bodies rigid.

  It was a second, and no more, certainly not enough for the chupacabra to launch at either of them, but when it was over, I realized it didn't matter anyway.

  Absalom was already shifting back into human shape and running for the door.

  I expected Maddox to run after him, but instead when the stone's energy freed him from whatever it was it had anchored into his core, he dropped his m
ace and ran at me.

  I heard his knees popping as he crouched in front of me. His face was full of concern, and while he moved with great deliberation, as though he were hurt, he reached out to lay the back of his fingers against my forehead.

  "Are you hurt?" he said.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  He leaned in toward me, cupping my face with both hands, splaying his fingers over the back of my neck. His thumbs stroked my cheekbones.

  "Did he hurt you?"

  He. Meaning Absalom.

  "No," I said.

  "Then I can't heal that pain," he said and there was a note of sadness in his voice. "But I know where to –"

  I shook my head. "No. No more magic. I think I need a break. I'll heal on my own, thankyou."

  He gave me a look like he wanted to argue, but instead, he laid his forehead against mine. I felt his breath against my cheek. His eyes closed in relief.

  I looked up to see Doyle looming over the two of us.

  "Is she well?" He looked concerned.

  Maddox barely looked up at him, instead choosing to search my face.

  "Nothing that won't heal, I don't think?" he said.

  I shifted my body so that I was able to roll over onto my back.

  "Just fell the wrong way, is all," I said. "I might have cracked a rib."

  "You could have had immortality," Doyle stated. There was admiration in his voice.

  I groaned through a spasm of pain as I adjusted myself on the floor.

  "At what cost?" I said. "I finally just managed to get rid of one demon from my life. I certainly don't need another."

  Doyle and Maddox exchanged looks.

  "What?" I said.

  Maddox slipped his arms beneath me, scooping me up and holding me against his chest. He stood as though I were no more heavy than a basket of clothes.

  "It's nothing," he said. "Don't worry about it."

  He carried me over to the sofa and sat me down gently on it. Just that moment made me realize things weren't so bad after all. I winced, but I would live.

  I surveyed the room, taking in the aftermath of the fight. I'd not expected the two of them to be able to hold up against the dozen or so bodies that littered the room. It was testament to the strength and cunning, but it was also a reminder of how dangerous things could be in this new world I'd come to know.