Sin & Spirit (Demigods of San Francisco Book 4)

by K. F. Breene

  Chest tight, heart pounding, Kieran hurried to the front door and yelled her name. She was already running at him, her face ashen and eyes wide.

  “What is it?” she asked, the corners of her lips pulled down. She stopped just inside the door, her focus on Kieran acute. “Why do you feel like that? What’s happened?”

  “Sir.” Boman ran through the door behind her. He’d clearly run all the way around the house so he wouldn’t have to cut across Jack’s form to get to the front. “They’ve taken one or both of the kids. They went over the wall—they must not have known about the illusion covering the break in the bricks. There’s a lot of blood, and it looked like it was from drag marks. One or both is wounded but not dead.”

  Alexis’s face drained of color. “Daisy. Daisy is gone—” Her voice cracked. Her head snapped up right before she sprinted up the stairs. She must’ve felt Mordecai. And if she felt him, maybe he hadn’t gone the way of Jack.

  21

  Alexis

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. A hole was eating through my heart and terrible, white-hot agony ripped down my middle. Daisy was gone. Taken. Wounded and probably terrified.

  I choked back a sob.

  But Mordecai wasn’t. I could feel his soul throbbing erratically. I’d never felt that before. I didn’t know what it meant.

  I slid to a stop outside of the open closet door and stared down at droplets of congealed blood. My eyes burned with unshed tears. Taking a deep breath, I braced myself for what I would find inside.

  Thane sat on the floor in a puddle of blood, leaning over a lifeless form, his hands shaking as they hovered in the air. Next to my foot lay a sort of mallet coated in red.

  I could barely feel my feet as I took another step into the room. Helplessness overcame me. Sobs bubbled up through me.

  Thane looked up, and beyond him all I saw was red where a face should be.

  “Lexi, I…” Tears dripped down his face. “I…” Thane shook his head, looking back down.

  I stood frozen for a moment, too numb to move closer to my kid or kneel beside him. Boman hurried in after me, bending over Mordie’s legs like Thane was bending over his face. Still, I didn’t move.

  The numbness spread. To feel would be to crawl in a hole and die with Mordecai. It would be to give up, and Daisy was still out there. She still needed me. I couldn’t shut down. So if I needed to stop feeling, so be it.

  A strong hand covered my shoulder. “I don’t see his spirit.”

  I blinked stupidly.

  “Do you feel his soul?” Kieran continued urgently.

  Fog clung to my thoughts. I tried to find reason in what Kieran was saying.

  “There’s no pulse,” Thane said, a tear dripping off his jaw.

  But there was a soul, still erratically throbbing. A soul hunkered down in a limp body, clinging on to dear life.

  Choking back another sob, I dug my nails into my palms. The pain cut through the haze of my thoughts. I sifted through my memories and pulled up what I needed.

  You are the yin and the yang of the living world—you can save a life as easily as you can destroy it.

  I pushed Boman to the side and then recoiled when I saw the crushed side of my kid’s unnaturally pale face. My stomach swam, but I held on to my gorge. If there was a chance I could do something, it was a fleeting one. If there was time, it was almost up.

  “Souls can live as long as the body can house them,” I murmured to myself, trying to work through all I knew.

  With my magic I seeped into Mordecai’s chest. All but one of the prongs holding his spirit into its casing had broken. The final one was basically threadbare, holding on by the grace of God.

  “All healers do is magically fix bodies,” I said softly. “They fix the bodies, and it is up to the ailing person if they can cling on until their spirit settles again. But Mordecai is his own healer; he just needs to be furry. When in shifter form, they heal at lightning speeds.”

  You can save a life as easily as you can destroy it.

  “I just need to keep his spirit docked until his body can recover.” I knelt at his side. “He’s strong. He’s been battling all his life. He has experience holding on until I can save him. He’s waiting for me to save him.”

  “But there’s no pulse,” Thane whispered.

  I stopped from lashing out. “Then give him a pulse, you useless sack of monkey balls!” Kinda.

  Kieran stepped over and pushed Thane out of the way, determination lining his face. He clasped his fingers and went to work, performing CPR.

  With my magic, I held Mordie’s soul in place while I fixed the prongs, knowing the real challenge would be keeping his soul in place through the shift. The soul casing changed with the rest of the shifter’s body, and for one weightless moment the soul was just hanging out, willy-nilly, with no docking. If it went fast enough, all was well. But Mordecai’s casing was badly damaged, and I wasn’t even sure if I could get him to shift, let alone quickly…

  Desperation clawed at me, reminding me of the improbability of all this working. The first person I’d killed with my power had been a shifter—I’d ripped his soul out, and although I’d put it back, he’d died upon shifting. The prongs hadn’t held up.

  But I had to try.

  “Is there a way to force him to change?” I asked, one of the prongs crumbling in my magical grasp. “Is there a way to force a change?”

  “Yes.” Boman searched through his pockets with amazingly steady hands. He was clearly good in a bind. “Yes! Because of Jack, I always carry one when we go to battle.” He pulled out a little vial as well as a Q-tip. The Q-tip went back in his pocket. He searched another side. Then two more pockets. “I don’t have a syringe. How can I not have a syringe?”

  I thought back to moving into this house. “We have one. It should be in Mordecai’s bathroom.”

  “Give it.” Kieran reached forward and snatched the vial. He leaned the tip against the ground and used his other hand to smash off the top. Half spilled out, and Boman and I both sucked in a breath. Kieran poured some from the jagged top into the horrible wound at the side of Mordecai’s head. “I don’t think dose matters at this point. Alexis, get ready.”

  But I was already working on him, gingerly repairing each prong as it broke over and over again, the body trying to eject the soul. Kieran kept pumping the heart, not giving up.

  Tears ran freely down my face. Boman and Thane waited with us, ready to take over for Kieran if need be, I had no doubt.

  “Come on, buddy,” Thane said softly. “You can withstand pain better than anyone I have ever met in my life. If you can do that, you can withstand death, too. Come on. Fight it. Heal.”

  “Steroids.” Boman hopped up. “Steroids! That’ll give him a boost. I have some back at my house. All he needs is a boost and the shifter will kick in.”

  “Adrenaline is what he needs,” Kieran said, holding out his hand. “Give me your knife. My blood can act as adrenaline.”

  “He can’t be an alpha one day if he is bound to you,” Thane said.

  “He won’t be bound to me. This is a gift, freely given, to save a life I have put in jeopardy. Give me your knife.”

  I stared, mute, knowing this was unheard of. Kieran had freely given his blood to each member of his Six, amping up their power and abilities, but they were bound to him. He’d given it to me, too, but he’d also marked me. We shared a soul link. He had been thinking about forever. But Mordecai wasn’t his kid. He wasn’t his responsibility. And if Mordecai lived—when he came around, I corrected myself—he’d one day go off and lead his own life. Lead his own people. Hell, if Kieran went crazy, Mordecai might even use the gifts he’d received from a Demigod against said Demigod. That was how a Demigod would think, anyway. That was how my biological father would have thought. Or Kieran’s father.

  But I would not dare voice any of that. Kieran’s blood might be the only thing that could save my ward.

  Kieran pricked his fin
ger with the knife as his power ramped up around us. Waves sounded like they were crashing right outside the closet. The tides pulled in the distance. He lowered his finger to Mordecai’s lips.

  I focused on the prongs, another crumbling. The Line throbbed in the room, trying to suck Mordie’s soul toward it.

  Heart in my throat, sweat and tears running tracks along my cheeks, I struggled to keep his soul in his body, to get him to hang on, as Kieran’s magic reached a fever pitch. It throbbed around us, as though we were in the middle of a squall way out at sea.

  Mordecai’s soul continued to pulse, each one sending a wave through the spirit around me. It strengthened.

  And then the shifter emerged.

  The density of his soul casing changed, followed by the shape of Mordecai’s body.

  Somehow, I kept his soul from ripping loose.

  Kieran kept pumping his heart, trying to change position with the morphing form. When Mordecai’s face turned into a bloody wolf head, Kieran closed Mordecai’s snout with his hands and breathed into his nose. Still he kept up the CPR, not slowing.

  Thane and Boman leaned forward, their eyes on Mordecai, looking hopeful.

  Sobs convulsed my body and I closed my eyes, working on those prongs. Slowly, ever so slowly, they stopped ripping away. They stopped breaking and needing to be reattached. Mordecai’s body stitched itself back together.

  Eventually, when minutes felt like they’d stretched into years, Kieran straightened up, his back clearly stiff. Thane let out a ragged breath.

  “He’ll live,” Boman said, and I bent over as sobs of relief racked my body. I welcomed Kieran’s arms around me, holding me tightly. I welcomed Thane’s hand on my back, and Boman’s on my head, all of them wanting to share in my relief.

  “That kid is his own miracle,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “No,” Kieran said. “You are his miracle. You are our miracle.” He fell silent for a while, resting his hand on Mordecai’s fuzzy ribcage, clearly making sure his heart kept beating. When Mordecai’s soul burned brightly once again, and his side rose and fell naturally, Kieran said, “There’s something I need to ask of you, Alexis. Jack needs your help.”

  22

  Alexis

  Jack stood in a little alcove in the hall, looking around as though he didn’t understand what he was looking at. The colors of reality had changed on him, I knew, shifting to the odd ultraviolet light of the spirit realm. The feeling of reality had changed on him too. And his body, full of holes and short on blood, lay on the bed upstairs where the guys had moved it. I wasn’t sure if he knew he was dead.

  My heart broke all over again. I’d helped Mordecai fight his way back to life, but I couldn’t help Jack. Not by the time I’d finished with Mordecai.

  “You couldn’t have done anything for him even if you’d gotten to him first,” the cat said from beside me, his tone respectfully somber.

  “Can you read minds, too?” I asked as the others drifted away, giving me space. They trusted me to help their brother in arms. Only Kieran had stayed, both because he could see Jack and, knowing him, because he felt responsible for Jack’s death. He watched with glassy eyes, sorrow written plainly on his face and dripping through our links.

  “Don’t need to. You show all your feelings on your face. You’re probably the world’s worst poker player.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had the money to play.”

  “Well, trust me, you’d lose.”

  I eyed the Line, feeling it sending out a welcoming vibe, trying to coax Jack to cross over, to get his bearings in the beyond. So far, he was resisting, but his gaze was on it. I didn’t think he’d noticed us yet.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do here,” I whispered. It felt good to have someone else I could talk to about this kind of thing, even if it was a possessed cat. “I could easily give him a nudge to send him over, but I’m not sure he wants to go. If he stays around here, though, it’s going to take him a while to figure everything out, and Kieran probably won’t take it well. It can be heartbreaking to watch if you’re familiar with the person.”

  “You know, there hasn’t been a female Spirit Walker in…” The cat rubbed against my leg. I shook him off. A real animal was one thing, but this spirit-animal hybrid weirded me out. “Rude,” he said. He licked his leg. “A long time. Genetics got it right with you. Your empathy sets you apart. It’ll be the thing that makes you fly true, I have no doubt. Assuming you don’t end up in the wrong hands. And with your Demigod at your side, you won’t. That guy… He’s a budding powerhouse. I think genetics got it right with him, too. The Fates are at work here. Buckle up. This’ll be a good show.”

  “None of that matters in this situation.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job.”

  “I mean…you’re the one that’s supposed to be training me to do my job,” I whined.

  I hesitated for a moment, then slowly walked over to stand beside Jack, facing the same direction he was. I stood silently, seeing if he would notice me. When he didn’t, I said softly, “Hey, Jack.”

  To my surprise, he didn’t startle. “Hey, Lexi.”

  I leaned forward to look at his face, wondering how the hell he could look so confused and sound so rational. “You’ve had better days, huh?”

  “I’m dead, right? I bled out before I could heal?”

  Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them away. “Yeah, buddy. Did you see your body?”

  “See it? I stood up out of it. I didn’t realize I’d left it behind until I tried to grab the back door handle. I couldn’t. I stood there for…” He paused. Time was already slippery for him. That part of the living world seemed to fall away almost immediately for a spirit. “I stood there, confused, while she got away.”

  My heart sped up. “She got away? Who did? Was Daisy still alive?”

  Jack held up a hand and turned it over, checking the back.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I said, my hands shaking with the need to ask him about Daisy. But you couldn’t force the newly dead to hurry. The mind usually erased many of the details of a traumatic death, which he’d definitely had. Confusion muddied what was left. I didn’t want to make anything worse. I wanted to preserve what had survived. It was our only hope for Daisy. “Soon all this won’t feel so…different.”

  “She’d been roughed up. Her face… Lexi, I think I did that. I think I did that to Daisy. Blood was…on my hands. I hurt in a lot of places—I only vaguely remember now—but I had blood on my knuckles. On the backs of my hands. And her face was… She was right next to me when I came to. Like I’d dropped her weak little body before I took a knee.” His voice quavered. “She tried to get up. She was broken, but she tried to get up…” He blinked a bunch, trying to recall memories that had been erased by trauma like ink on a whiteboard.

  Kieran stepped up, faster than thought, now right in front of Jack’s face. “Tell me what you know.”

  Jack blinked at Kieran, but the confusion cleared instantly. The focus of the living crept into his gaze. He was latching on to Kieran as a known quantity. The Line dimmed around us. “Sir, I can’t be sure exactly what happened. I have a big black hole in my memory. I remember waking up in your house, getting ready, and running to the door to answer your summons. Then…” His jaw set. “I…woke up, sir. It felt like it, anyway. Next thing I knew, I was…in pain, I think. Not terrible. I could get over it. I remember thinking I could heal through it. But then I saw…” He couldn’t keep that quiver of emotion from his voice. The trials of the living clung to his spirit. “Her arm was messed up. Her face. She was in so much pain. And I think—I don’t remember doing it, or even how I got to that spot—but I think I did it, sir. And I froze. I froze solid, watching her struggle to sit up. I was scared to help. I was scared to hurt her… I got myself killed and Daisy taken. I—”

  A shock of spirit slashed through Jack, and he startled, his eyes going wide. Kieran was using my magi
c to shock some sense into him, to keep him from unraveling.

  “What’s done is done,” Kieran said, leaving no room for emotion. “You can still help us. If you stay in this world, you can help us find her, starting by giving us details about this woman.”

  Jack’s nose crinkled. “Do I have to put on one of those rotten corpses?” His expression cleared, as though he’d just realized his insubordination. “Sorry, sir. A lot’s happened in the space of…” He shook his head. “How long has it been since…”

  “Ages and no time at all,” I said, fatigue making my mind fuzzy. “Come on, let’s go write down all the details you remember.”

  Kieran

  Kieran stared down at Jack’s still form while Lexi took Jack’s statement downstairs. His brother in arms lay with his hands at his sides, his face pale and his neck ruined. He might’ve come back from his first wounds, but no way would he have survived getting his throat slit without a magical healer to quickly stitch him back up.

  Kieran blew out a breath and directed his gaze out the window.

  No, not Jack’s still form. Jack’s body. The body that Jack had stepped out of.

  Lexi had looked at it before they’d brought it up. She’d said all the prongs had crumbled away. The cat holding the deceased Spirit Walker had apparently told her Jack’s body was too far gone to hold a spirit now.

  The situation was a mind-fuck. Kieran wrestled with the knowledge that Jack was physically dead—and yet he’d just spoken with him.

  How the hell could you cope losing someone…without actually losing them?

  A tear worked down Kieran’s cheek, and he let it. He was glad he hadn’t possessed this ability before his mother had moved across the veil. He didn’t know how he could’ve handled that. How Lexi handled any of this. Even now, exhausted, terrified for Daisy, probably eager to sit by Mordecai’s side, she was working through Jack’s account of events with a level head and a sympathetic ear. She was putting her own issues aside to help a removed spirit cope with the transition. Yes, she was getting valuable information, but it had to be hard for her. And she made it seem easy.