“If you do this, Delaney,” he said, to me, and me alone, “we will both be risking our lives.”
And if we didn’t do this, if we waited and used the book under the full moon, it would be Rossi alone risking his life. The book would be in Lavius’s control, and I was certain there were spells in it, dark magic that could be used to turn that knife on Rossi.
Rossi knew all that. Hell, he’d planned it.
“Is there a spell in the book we can use to kill Lavius faster than he can take the book from us?”
“No.”
And that had been my last idea.
“Okay. We hit him with what we’ve got,” I said. “Two plans. The first is using me as a weapon. Kill me, kill him, then find a way to bring me back. If that doesn’t work, use the book to bring him here, endure whatever hell he’ll unleash on Ordinary long enough to kill him. Then you all find a way to bring me back.”
Everyone was quiet for a second. That promise, that agreement between Rossi and me solidified and settled. We were going to take his brother down. He and I. One of our deaths or both of our deaths given to protect the people we loved. To protect the home we loved.
We weren’t going to do it alone. We were going to trust the people who loved us to dig us out of the hellhole we were about to bungee into.
Rossi understood that. I understood that.
He smiled, and it was the best thing I’d seen all day.
Then the quiet exploded into arguments. Everyone had an opinion, one they wanted me to understand, agree with, and accept.
But I only heard one voice. Oddly, it was Brown’s.
“Uh, Delaney? Delaney?”
“What?”
That’s when I noticed how pale Brown had gone, all the shadows of his face a sickly green, his eyes too wide and almost cat-feral.
“It’s here.”
He was staring up at my house. I turned to look, but it was just my house, up there. Nothing different.
Then pain hit me searing in a ripcord of through my chest and throat, burning too hot at the bite at my neck, exploding in my brain.
Come to me.
It was a whisper. It was a force that shut down every scrambling thought, every scrap of fear that fell useless through my grasping fingers. There was nothing. Nothing but that command.
Come to me.
I lurched, stumbled to keep my balance, blind with the need to follow. I would throw myself against walls, stone, broken glass to get to the one who owned me.
Not the demon. It was not Bathin’s whiskey and smoke in my mind.
It was snakes and oil, filth and hunger, rotted needs ambling through me, plucking, biting, sucking. It was Lavius.
Fight him.
The concept disappeared even as I thought of it. There was no world around me but his words, his needs.
I staggered up the stairs, my breathing too hard, everything hurting, and everything craving. I wanted him. Wanted him to want me. Wanted to throw myself at his feet, would carve a vein open for him and beg him to drink, to touch, to own.
Something in me was screaming.
Someone near me was yelling.
Someone was on the phone, I don’t know why that detail stood out, but it did.
And then there was a hand wrapped around the front of my throat, a palm too cold to be alive.
“You are mine,” Rossi said. The tiniest prick of pain flickered near the bite on my neck, and I struggled, fear finally huge enough to reach me even without a soul, even under Lavius’s compulsion. The pain at my neck slipped away, was gone. I shuddered and sobbed.
Did Rossi just bite me?
“The hell, Rossi.” That was Ryder. That was also the sound of a bullet being chambered. “Let go of her.”
Things were not going well. Not at all. And I had no control over any of it, could barely track it all.
That, that, was enough to make me panic. But all my body could feel was the echo of panic, too far away, as it shook me and sent sweat down my spine.
“I didn’t bite her,” Rossi said. “It’s a mark. With the blade. Her blood on my tongue a promise. Proof of what she is to me. If you want her alive by the end of this, Ryder put your damn gun away and follow my lead.”
I couldn’t see Ryder. Couldn’t make my body move. I was caught there, at the top of my long stone staircase, staring at my front door, Rossi pressed close up against me, cold as marble, unyielding as steel.
And furious.
That, his fury, and his claim on me, protecting me with my blood on his tongue, settled something in me.
Which, I know: weird. But he had always been in my life. A kind, if quirky figure. Loyal to keeping our town safe. Good to the people under his watch, and good to me.
His strength behind me, willing to see this through so that we could save this town, well …that was all I needed.
“Walk,” he said near my ear. “Remember your soul is your own. Ashes can still hold hope and love holds power. Return to us. Don’t get lost.”
It was so close to the fortune cookie advice everyone else seemed to be giving me lately that I wasn’t even surprised anymore. My soul was my own. Well, yes, and no. It was mine, but currently in Bathin’s possession.
My heart. That belonged to Ryder.
I walked. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it because I wanted to, because Rossi ordered me, or because Lavius had called me. My front door opened on the first try.
Brown made a frustrated sound, and I wanted to tell him I had locked it behind me and it still hadn’t kept the bad guy out, but then I was in the room, in the house that had been my home for most of my childhood and almost all of my adulthood.
And I’d never wanted to turn and run away from a set of four walls so much in my life.
Bathin was there, I knew it from the tug in my chest, from the awareness of him that seemed to go along with him holding a part of me. But he wasn’t who I was focused on. Wasn’t who I felt myself dragged toward like a chain on a hitch.
Lavius stood in my home. In my living room, his back to the big picture window that looked out over the driveway, houses, greenery, and ocean below.
His eyes were on us.
On me.
“You have done well.”
That made no sense. I hadn’t done anything. Hadn’t agreed to anything.
And that was when I realized he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to someone else.
Only a couple of people he might be having a conversation with. Rossi, which, yes, scared the hell out of me to think Rossi might be getting Lavius’s approval and therefore might not be on our side.
Or Bathin.
“As we agreed,” Bathin said.
That should not surprise me. But, hell.
Bathin was working with Lavius.
Bathin had betrayed me, tricked me. It made sense, how he so quickly found Ben when no one else could, how he had manipulated Dad into thinking he was the only demon who wanted a soul in Ordinary, how Lavius seemed to have access to demons to possess his vampires.
I wanted to be furious. So angry that even the briefest contact with the air I breathed would incinerate Lavius and his pet demon. But that emotion was beyond me, held at bay.
Bathin strolled over to stand next to Lavius. Not quite close enough to touch him, but near enough there was no mistaking that they were on friendly terms.
“Enjoying the sad little carnival now, Rossi?” Bathin smirked.
“Very much,” Rossi said, his words like stone crushing the air Bathin dared breathe in his presence. “You will crawl for my mercy.”
“Looking forward to it.” Bathin batted his eyes.
“Silence!” Lavius demanded. “Kneel.” He stabbed his finger and Bathin grit his teeth, then, as if a mountain were rolling over him, he buckled to the floor, breathing heavily.
Everyone else hit the floor too, except me, and Rossi, who still had his hand pressed over my throat.
Lavius wasn’t even breaking a sweat, cool and put toge
ther in his sharply tailored suit, his black hair streaked with gray brushed back in a cut that spoke of money and power.
He didn’t look away from me. “Did you bring me the book, frater?”
“No,” Rossi said calmly, though I could hear an echo of old hatred behind the word. “You have stepped onto my land and harmed those who are mine. This is your ending.”
“It is your weakness, this fondness for the animals we slaughter. Do you not know they are nothing but means to gain power? You have claimed this clump of dirt and the insects that crawl upon it. I have claimed all the rest of this world. And now this, too, will be mine.”
He lifted his hand. In it was a gun.
Rossi stilled as only an unliving thing can.
Everything slowed for me. I felt the twitch of Rossi’s hand where the clay dagger was still hidden, a small movement I might have missed if he weren’t still holding me with his palm over my neck.
Since when did vampires use guns to kill each other? I thought only the knife or dark magic, or a beheading or stake through the heart would take out a vampire.
Hadn’t Lavius gotten the memo?
I steeled myself for Rossi to shove me out of the way so he could stab Lavius. Instead, he whispered so that only I could hear him, “Forgive me, Delaney.”
And then he shoved me toward Lavius. Toward his gun.
Chapter 19
I might be fast because of the bite, but I was not faster than a bullet.
It hit me, a bloom of heat and pain, right below my collar bone. The impact felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer at my chest.
Agony.
And then I was falling, the air turned to Jell-O, filled with screaming, yelling, and more gunfire.
I thought then—in that brief moment when I could no longer breathe, but couldn’t bring myself to care about it—that Ryder was in that room. So was Myra, and probably Jean, who was totally stubborn enough to lump her way up the endless stairs to my front door.
I knew Brown was there too, and of course the demon and vampires. But I wished I could disappear, hide myself from my sisters and the man I loved. I wished they didn’t have to see me die.
I also belatedly wished I’d done a little more research on how, exactly, someone was going to bring me back to life. As far as I knew not one of the people in the room had that power.
As far as I knew, a bullet to the heart wasn’t something anyone had the power to bring me back from.
My body was too heavy to move, too heavy to pull air into. I exhaled, and it was a relief, everything foggy and warm and numb and good. I couldn’t open my eyes, didn’t need to. I was surrounded by comfort as if someone had just rushed in and wrapped the softest blanket around me, warm with sunlight, and fresh and clean.
I rested there, finally, happily forever.
“Ah, ah, ah. Not so quick, Delaney.” Bathin’s voice was a shock of cold water.
Everything spun away from me, and then…
…and then I was standing next to where Bathin knelt. No time had passed, the stretch of forever in that sun-warmth comfort leaving no mark on this living world.
The room was slow-motion chaos. Myra ran toward me, firing at Lavius, but the bullets were taking years to cross the short distance of the room, and each fell just short of him, pausing before they clattered at his feet like kites suddenly crashing without the wind left to hold them.
Jean hobbled toward me, no gun in her hand, but the crutch braced in one hand so she could smash it into Bathin’s head.
And Ryder.
Everything in me stilled when I saw him. He was looking at me. Not at my body, which lay in a curled heap, as if I’d fallen asleep in a messy knot, guarding my heart from my nightmares while the deep, red blood beneath me poured out in a growing pool.
He was looking at where I stood, his gaze just a degree to one side of actually meeting mine, his expression locked down and blank, a hardness there, an inhumanity I had never seen before.
Was this the face of the man who trained with the secret government department that hunted paranormal creatures? Was this the face of a man who slid into the position of law enforcement like a fish to the sea? Was this the face of a killer?
Yes.
His eyes ticked so that he was looking right at me. Right through me.
And I knew this was also the face of a man whose heart had stopped beating, and who had nothing left to live for.
“No,” I whispered, my voice not carrying any farther than my own lips. “I’m here,” I said, even as the echo of my words bounced back to choke me.
Ryder didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause. He swung toward the vampires, faster than anyone else in the room was moving. Lifted his gun, aimed it not at Lavius, but at Rossi.
Bathin was moving—hell, I was moving. I threw myself at Ryder, was flying, weightless, across the space between us, falling slowly, slowly, slowly.
Bathin lunged up off his feet, his face flame and stone as the false mask of humanity he wore stripped away, melted from the inside out by the fire that ignited, exploded across his skin with each heavy, smashing step he pounded across my living room floor.
He ducked Jean’s crutch, grabbed Myra and deposited her behind a chair without breaking stride.
Demon. Nothing moved with that kind of power. That avalanche of violence.
Then he lowered his shoulder and barreled right into Lavius.
The ancient vampire saw him coming. He lifted one hand, fingers tucked hard against palm, crooked out like hooks in a net.
Bathin grunted, and even though he was nearly bent at the waist, pushing forward, every granite fire-wrapped muscle straining, he could get no closer to Lavius.
“You are dust beneath me, blight,” Lavius sneered. “Your service will be rewarded when I serve your head to your king.”
I was still falling, caught in a slow motion that allowed me to see the rest of the room in close to normal time. Time enough to see Bathin’s dark, unholy eyes go narrow with hatred. Time enough to hear the bellow of his snarl.
A flicker of pleasure rolled over Lavius’s face. “Did you think I would ever trust you, princeling? You were nothing more than a means to an end. An entire kingdom of darkness is at my pleasure.”
I missed what Bathin said, as I finally found my feet, so close to Ryder, all I would have to do is breathe forward to be pressed against his back. Ryder who squeezed the trigger and fired at Rossi.
“No!” I yelled again, the sound nothing but a whisper.
Rossi moved, fast. So fast. The bullets peppered the wall behind where he had been a fraction of a second before. Ryder’s bullets useless against the vampire.
Lavius knew Rossi was here to kill him. Knew how fast Rossi could move.
Lavius turned, fired that gun, the one that had killed me, just as Rossi closed in on him.
That bullet snapped a hole below Rossi’s left eye. Blood oozed from it, so dark it was black. The smile on Rossi’s face, spine-bright and full of bones, did not falter.
His hand rose and brought down the clay knife in a vicious slash at Lavius’s face.
Lavius stepped back, smooth, easy, as if he had danced to this song a hundred times, a thousand times. He fired the gun again, Rossi dancing forward, closing the distance and taking the bullet in his chest as if it were no more than rain against his skin.
Rossi snarled, one hand flicking out to lock around Lavius’s throat. He squeezed, nails digging beneath skin, foot hooking behind the other vampire’s ankle.
Lavius countered, the gun now empty of bullets—how many had he fired—using the chunk of metal to slam upward on Rossi’s arm trying to break his hold.
But Rossi would not let go. They tumbled to the ground, twisting and slashing, fast, fast, fast, cobras tangled in death throes.
They broke apart too quickly for me to see how, both of them bleeding in more places than just a moment before.
The clay knife was on the floor, kicked away by Lavius who pulled out a blade
of his own. A blade like the one I carried, green and black with dark magic.
My blade! I reached for it, but I was insubstantial. I was nothing.
I was dead.
Even if I could use the blade it wouldn’t kill Lavius, it would only slow him down.
Could that be enough to turn the fight to Rossi’s advantage?
I ran back to my body on the floor, already in better control of my drifting state. Myra and Jean were there, Jean on her phone calling for an ambulance, eyes wide with tears, face shock-white, hand trembling. Myra knelt over me, trying to stem the bleeding on my chest with her jacket, her face grim, mouth moving around a single word over and over again: “please, please, please.”
It was horrifying. I stumbled beneath the wave of guilt and fear and sorrow that crashed over me, threatening to drag me torn and tattered over the rocks of this moment, this pain.
I gulped air. Even though I was nothing but a ghost, I could feel that pain, could feel that bone-hollow sorrow.
I could feel.
It stopped me in my tracks.
Maybe a second went by, maybe a minute as I watched my sisters fighting for a life I wasn’t sure I’d ever regain.
“The knife!” I yelled. “Myra, gods, get the knife. Stab him. Stab Lavius.”
She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t see me.
But Brown was suddenly there, his head cocked to one side as he stared at my body. “What? What knife?”
“You can hear me?” I rushed around so that I was standing next to him.
“Delaney?”
“The knife. Get the knife. It’s in my belt. There. At my hip.”
Brown frowned, and knelt, reaching for the knife while carefully staying outside the bloody pool. Myra didn’t even say anything as he pulled it out of the sheath, didn’t even notice him, her eyes too intent on my face, the snarl of her lips changing her chant to a curse.
Brown didn’t move, just frowned down at the knife, glanced at my body and shifted his grip on the handle.
“No! Not on me. Don’t stab me.”
But it looked like that’s exactly what he was going to do.
“Stab him!”
Brown’s eyes flicked to my face, to Myra, back to me.
Damn it.