Two guns, two goons, one assassin, and a null. The odds could be worse. Not by much, mind you, but still.
Isaac sat on a swiveling chair, the tube with Chariot’s two scrolls in his lap. “Right on time.”
I barely suppressed my smirk. It had been a gamble that Isaac would bring the scrolls with him, but I figured that he wouldn’t want to wait another second to put the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh together and became immortal. Bonus points for rubbing my nose in it.
The hulking goon who’d accompanied me fell back to block the door. Hans and Avi stayed to my left, out of arm’s reach, while Baldy remained where he was with his gun trained on the women.
There were shouts from outside. Everyone glanced at the windows except me and Isaac.
“Theresa’s faction came,” Hans said. “So predictable.”
“Our people will deal with them and any of my former associates who wish to oppose me,” Isaac said.
Ironically, in taking out the newcomers, my people would be helping him, though the reverse was also true. I forced my shoulders down. Isaac couldn’t know that I, too, had teammates in place.
Isaac motioned impatiently at the metal briefcase. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Hold your horses,” I said. “First, Mom and Nicola come over here and your men stand down so I have a clear path out. Then I’ll unlock the case and slide it over to you.”
Isaac frowned, swiveling the chair from side to side. “I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t trust you either, but I’m magicless, I’ve been frisked, and I’m out-numbered. You killed my father and you’re not getting my mother, so I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
Talia watched me intently, biting her lip.
I chose to interpret it as faith in me.
“Fine.” Isaac lined all his people up across from me, sending Nicola and Talia to stand by my side. It was the world’s deadliest game of Red Rover.
Both guns were trained on the three of us.
Ignoring the sounds of the ongoing battle outside, I carefully set the case on the ground and bent over to press my thumb against the lock, bringing my other hand up to hit the button on the tiny box stashed under my left boob.
I’d intended for the minion to find the mini Taser, and most men didn’t check under the breast. Women were much more thorough, but Isaac was an old-fashioned kind of villain. He wouldn’t employ women to do a man’s job.
My sonic weapon discharged and a high-pitched frequency sound barely within hearing range caused pained cries.
I reached for the rose in my hair to fire it into Avi’s arm and kill the nulling magic, but before I could get to it, a gun went off, deafening in the space.
Talia screamed and collapsed on the floor, clutching her arm.
I gasped, my hands flexing on empty air, because I still had no magic. I jerked my head to the door, but it hadn’t been breached by the outside factions. Talia had been shot by Hans.
“You bastard. I’m coming for you.” I pulled off my sweater, leaving me in a tank top, and wrapped it around my mom’s wound.
Hans smiled cruelly and lowered the gun. He was the only person other than me not recovering from the noise. “With what? Your little trick didn’t work. You think you are the first to try this? You are nothing.”
Talia clutched my hand, silently crying, interspersed with tiny hiccuped whimpers. I squeezed hers back.
Nicola fell to her knees and pushed me out of the way to take over applying pressure.
Leaving his position at Isaac’s side, Hans pressed the barrel to my mom’s head. “Now, let’s try that again.”
Chapter 27
I opened the case, removed the metal tube from the spongey interior, and slid it over. Icy hooks dug into my chest, but I batted the fear away. My powers were suppressed. I wouldn’t be able to sense the angel magic until Avi was neutralized. I had time.
Isaac’s face lit up with reverential awe. He removed the scrolls and pressed them together.
Nothing happened.
For Isaac.
In the world’s most unfair twist, the Sefer’s magic—and my ability to sense it—defied Avi’s nulling.
I fell to my knees, my body clenching in yearning, trying not to belly crawl towards the hot gritty scent of a sandstorm that filled every inch of me. This wasn’t just a craving, the magic owned me.
Isaac whirled on me. “Make it do something!”
“Like what?” I scraped my fingernails against the cold tiles, my mouth salivating since I had neither the amulet nor Rafael to help me. “I’ve never had all the scrolls.”
Isaac shook the Sefer pieces. “Tell me or I’ll kill your mother.”
End this. Come to us.
Yes. Take me.
I was already crawling towards the Sefer and it took a second for Isaac’s threat to register because anything other than the angel magic failed to matter. Even then, I’ll never be sure if I stopped because of the desperate gleam in his eyes or because Nicola grabbed on to my foot and dragged me back.
“The pieces,” I said, unable to explain to her beyond that.
“Stay strong,” Nicola hissed.
“Tell me what to do,” Isaac demanded.
“Please, no.” I wasn’t sure if the plea was for Isaac or the Sefer. I rubbed my hands over my face. My stomach twisted, that angel magic reaching deep inside me to re-arrange my organs and bite into my soul. “All right. You need to put them together in the correct sequence. But I don’t know what that is, I swear.”
Isaac studied me, trembling on the ground, then nodded, believing my bullshit. Adam wasn’t the only con artist in our family. Isaac examined the first scroll intently, seeking some clue to the sequence.
The fight outside fell ominously silent.
Talia reached for me with a bloodied hand. Her eyes were cloudy with pain. “I love you, Ash. I always have and I always will.”
“Can we get on with this?” Avi said. “I had a long flight.”
The callous boredom from the man who’d murdered my father snapped me back into taking a tendril of control back from the Sefer.
I whipped the rose out of my hair and stabbed Hans in the leg with it. He screamed, and I fell on top of Talia, pulling the metal briefcase over my head. That move saved my life as a bullet discharged from Hans’s gun and lodged in it.
Black poisonous lines spiderwebbed across the German’s skin. Gun still in hand, he smacked himself like he was putting out a fire, but the poison spread.
“Holy fuck!” Hulking minion jumped back. “Is that contagious?”
I ripped the dart out of Hans’s leg and winged it at Avi, catching him in the shoulder.
Fainter black lines snaked up his neck, the poison a fraction of what it had been in Hans.
Baldy shot me, but Avi was injured enough to have dropped the nulling and my armor snapped into place. The bullet bounced harmlessly off.
I was unable to help myself from stealing a glance at my mother.
She flinched and looked away. Whether or not she ever came to terms with my magic, I’d stand by her, regardless of her feelings.
Assshhhhhiiiirrraaa. Coooome.
I jerked towards the Sefer. Nicola’s fingers dug into me again, but I tore free.
The door behind me was bashed off its hinges and the Sefer’s hold dimmed, clouded by some kind of staticky interference.
Baldy swung his gun to the doorway, and I fired a couple of sharp red daggers at him. One blinded the armed assailant in his left eye and the other stabbed into his gun hand. Baldy shrieked, and fumbled the weapon, but managed to keep hold of it.
No one had entered… yet.
“Isaac… help…” Hans staggered towards his boss, his gun held loosely, but Isaac gave him the barest dismissive glance before returning his attention to the scrolls.
Red eyes appeared and disappeared as a growl punched us deep in the guts, the most primal part of my brain screaming at me to flee. Huge hairy spiders dropped from th
e ceiling, landing on Isaac’s people.
Baldy freaked out and shot at them, while Hulking tried to stomp them dead. Isaac held the scrolls over his head, jumping sideways to avoid them.
Talia and Nicola cowered and I shuddered, inching away from the wriggling monstrosities, but unable to change course for the Sefer.
“Fuck this,” Baldy said.
The two goons abandoned ship, running for the door, while a wounded and terrified Avi limped behind them, beating spiders off his body.
The ground thudded and I glanced back.
Arkady, a stone warrior, blocked the three fleeing men. If he’d made it here, then Miles had secured the outside perimeter.
The spiders vanished, the illusion gone, and the Sefer’s call grew louder, free of other magic interference. It wrapped around me, stroking me in its embrace, crooning that all would be well if I came and tasted it.
Let me go. I begged for release, but there was no choice. With every inch that I crawled closer to Isaac—who was still trying to make the pieces into a single entity—I hated myself a bit more.
Baldy emptied the rest of his clip into Arkady and I cried out, wishing he’d shot me instead, preventing me from helplessly drawing towards my doom.
“Did you chip me, asshole?” Arkady swung his stone fist and the gun went flying. “That’s gonna leave a bruise.” His second punch cracked the man’s jaw. The goon went down like a ton of bricks, Arkady making quick work of taking out the other minion and Avi.
Priya ran inside and slapped magic nulling cuffs on them all.
“Leave,” I begged her.
She scowled at me and said something I couldn’t catch, the siren song taking up all the room in my brain. All I knew was I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t lose any of them.
The crooning in my head cut out, replaced by a feeling of having disappointed someone that was so profound, tears streamed down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Ash?” Arkady said.
I stared blankly at him. There was something important I had to tell him.
Hans collapsed, the poison spiraling in black circles along his skin.
“Stone,” I gasped, wiping my eyes.
Arkady looked between me and Hans, swore, and grabbed my briefcase. He lifted the sponge lining and withdrew a blue heart-shaped stone pendant that he crushed into powder over top of Hans. The poison began to fade.
Arkady jerked his chin at Avi, holding up his powder-dusted hands. “Do I do him, too?”
The scrolls were almost in reach.
“Not ’til his magic is far from here,” I said, absently.
Priya helped Talia up and led the women to safety, while Arkady placed Hans in cuffs as well and herded all the men out to where Miles waited.
I reached Isaac, pushed myself to my feet, and ripped the scrolls away. There was no sandstorm, no disappointment. Nothing but a gaping hollowness in my chest. A bead of sweat formed on my forehead and trickled down into one eye. I flicked it away and rubbed my hands over the scrolls faster, as if that could spark them back into responding to me.
What was I doing? I stilled.
Isaac grabbed Hans’s discarded gun and pointed it at me. “You can’t do anything to them unless you drop your armor,” he said. “How long will it take to put the Sefer together and destroy the magic? Is it faster than I can shoot you?” He glanced at the door. “Don’t hover, Levi. Join us.”
Levi stood on the threshold, his expression unreadable. “Isaac.”
“Spiders,” Isaac said. “I never did care for them.”
Levi smiled. “I know.”
“Here to save your girlfriend after all?” Isaac said.
“Ash doesn’t need me for much,” Levi said, joining his father and me. “I came for Mom. You shouldn’t have dragged her into this.”
“Sì, your sainted mother,” Isaac sneered. “Don’t you see that she is weak? But you, my son, are powerful. I feared it, but now I understand that I should have embraced it. My boy. A leader. A visionary.”
Levi’s expression softened, a wistfulness making him appear younger.
Assssshhhhhh. Come.
Not now! Desolation filled my lungs like brackish water. I was losing Levi to the validation he had so desperately sought his entire life. I tried to speak up, but my armor was already slipping, the tips on my boots flickering in and out. There was nothing left in my reserves to create any weapons or draw upon my enhanced strength, never mind put together a convincing argument of how Levi should stay strong.
“Give me the scrolls.” Isaac aimed the gun at my head.
My armor would protect me. Shaking, I clutched the scrolls to my chest, blood tears streaming from my eyes. I had to hold on… a little longer…
When our standoff didn’t resolve itself, Isaac turned to Levi. “You want to make a real difference for your people? Stand by my side. Become immortal like me and shape a meaningful future.” He held out his free hand.
Levi rubbed the heel of his palm against his chest.
My heart stuttered four times before he came to his decision.
“Here’s the thing, Dad…” A tarantula appeared in Levi’s hand and he flicked it into his father’s face.
Isaac jumped sideways and I laughed. That scared little boy was gone and I’d never been so proud of Levi.
“Cracking good illusion,” I said.
Levi winked at me, before facing his father with an icy expression. “There’s nothing you could offer me to be like you.”
He twitched his fingers and Rafael appeared, standing right next to Isaac. Levi’s illusion hadn’t just been the spiders—it had been making Rafael appear completely invisible while he positioned himself behind Isaac, in a perfect position to take the man out.
Rafael quickly disarmed my enemy, training the gun on Isaac, and tossed me the amulet, which I dropped around my neck. I knew I’d be searched and I hadn’t wanted it found, so Rafael had kept it.
The cravings dimmed to a tolerable level. Mostly.
I made my armor vanish and hastily unrolled the five scroll pieces.
Even having lost, Isaac leaned forward, eager to see the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh made whole. When still nothing happened, his face fell. “Is it all a lie?”
“No,” I said. “It was a con. A beautiful con.” I dropped one of the pieces on the ground. “The reason none of this worked? Adam gave you a fake scroll. Dad might not have been smarter than everyone, but he was smarter than you.”
Rafael whipped out a metal tube he’d hidden against the small of his back and opening it, tossed the real fifth piece to me.
I pressed the scrolls together and braced myself for a craving beyond anything I’d experienced.
It never came.
The pieces took flight weaving and soaring, reaching out for each other. Those brittle yellow parchments combined into a single solid gold scroll with pearl inlaid handles, its body etched with gems and symbols that were dizzying and beautiful to behold.
A sigh escaped Isaac, and even Levi and Rafael gazed wondrously upon it.
The scroll floated into my arms, light as a feather.
Understanding flashed through me. All the Sefer had wanted was to be whole once more and now that it was, it infused me with a sense of peace. How could I destroy something so magnificent?
Isaac reached for it, and Levi elbowed him in the nose. Blood spurted, Isaac swearing in Italian and cupping a hand to his face.
“Ashira,” Rafael said in a flinty voice. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
He didn’t understand. The Sefer merely wanted to survive and love us. Poverty, hunger, illness, all that could be cured.
The world could be perfect, it whispered.
I could be perfect.
I rubbed the rods in my femur, throbbing in a dull ache. “You went too far,” I told the book. “I earned my scars.”
I sent my magic into the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh and pulled out a smudgy shadow.
; It flowed faster and faster, expanding and changing shape, until a single form remained: the life-sized silhouette of an angel, attached to the gold scroll like a genie to a bottle.
Isaac jumped into it. Without thinking, I did the same.
We came out in the grove with the almond tree. The scroll lay in the dirt at the base of the tree, lifeless and sucked dry. I touched a hand to it.
No magic. It was all inside Isaac.
Isaac spun, laughing manically, a white dazzling light snapping off his skin. He glowed from inside, his blue eyes burning with a cobalt fire.
My head ached trying to grasp the amount of power pouring off him. Most would fall down before him and proclaim him a miracle, but there was darkness behind the dazzle.
The monster had won and it was all my fault.
The pink blossoms on the tree withered and fell off the branches.
He caught one, crushing it in his fist. “Is magic always like this? So alive? I feel my heart. The blood moving through my veins.” He closed his eyes, tiny starbursts exploding off him.
I grabbed his arm, quickly slashing it with a dagger and firing a red ribbon of my power inside. His magic burned to the touch, but Isaac wasn’t an angel. His immortality tasted of clouds, but it was still Nefesh.
There was only one question: did I rip it from him as painfully as possible or show mercy, delicately removing it like I had with Eve?
Isaac tore free. “You lose, Ashira. Just as Adam did.”
He shouldn’t have mentioned my dad. Thank you for making this choice easy.
The grove rumbled. The pomegranate tree cracked and hit the ground, its fruit smashing to stain the earth like blood.
I braced a hand against the almond tree, riding out the aftershocks.
The next rumble brought down the date palms—and opened a portal.
Isaac ran for it. I wouldn’t be fast enough to catch him so I fired a dagger into the back of his knees. He howled, his leg buckling.
Revenge & Rapture: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 4) Page 27