by Sierra Dean
Santiago took the gloves from me with a nod of thanks, than placed them in his upright palms. A crackle of electricity filled the air as he mumbled incomprehensible words under his breath. He closed his eyes and the air filled with a smell like burning rubber. I wrinkled up my nose but was unable to chase it back. My eyes started to water as Santiago’s words came faster and faster.
Soon the room was filled with sparking bursts of light, bright pops and flashes of white emerging from Santiago’s hands. His voice got louder as the bursts came closer together, and all the hairs on my body stood on end the same time as I watched him work.
Everything moved in slow motion, like a series of photographs rather than real time video.
One moment I was watching Santiago chant, and the acrid aroma of magic was so overpowering I could barely breathe. The next moment Santiago was dead quiet and his eyes were wide.
“He’s here,” he said breathlessly.
“Where?”
Santiago’s eyes remained wide and he let out a little moan that sounded far too liquid for my comfort. Then he fell face first onto the floor. In the light from my phone, the knife sticking out of his back looked like a trick of shadows.
I lifted the phone up just in time to see Timothy Deerling lunge at me, his teeth bared and angling for my throat.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I braced myself for his weight to collide with me, but even though I was prepared, as soon as we hit the floor all the air was knocked out of my lungs. I could hear Secret yelling, but the flashlight on my phone had gone dark when Deerling and I landed. There was nothing but darkness and panic.
His teeth grazed my cheek and I let out a surprise yowl as he bit into the flesh. Motherfucker. Did he seriously just try to bite my fucking cheek open?
I managed to get my arm from where it was pinned between us and slammed my fist into his throat. He let out a loud groan and rocked back, giving me enough room to wriggle out from under his large body.
Secret was right next to me, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see she had her gun drawn.
“Check on Santiago,” I told Lucas, who seemed unsure of what to do. How long had it been since he last had to fight? No offense to the former wolf king, but he wasn’t exactly the guy I needed in my corner right now.
Deerling regained his footing faster than I would have liked, and before I knew it he was standing, looking poised to go another round. The gun Secret had leveled at his head didn’t seem to deter him any.
“I’ve been shot before,” he said with a sickening smirk. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be,” she shot back.
“Little girls who think they can do the work of men. Little girls should stay at home in their kitchens.”
“Oh boy,” Lucas said. “You’re super fucked now, bud.”
A groan from the floor sent a wave of relief crashing over me. Santiago was alive.
“What the fuck?” This came from Wilder, who must have heard all the commotion downstairs and come to see what was happening.
Had Deerling been down here the entire time as we looked around? I hadn’t smelled him not the recent kind of smell anyway, which made it all the more surprising that he’d been able to sneak up on us so quickly. But if he’d made his move during Santiago’s spell, I wouldn’t have been able to smell a damn thing. There must have been another entrance to the room, then, because he obviously hadn’t come down the stairs from the main level.
Cool, his creepy murder room had a back door.
Maybe that was how he was able to come and go from the church without being spotted on the tapes after he killed the guard. They’d locked it from upstairs, but he had other ways in and out.
I really hated this guy.
The odds being four against one didn’t faze him in the least. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness now—thanks, werewolf DNA—and I could easily tell he was still grinning ear to ear like a maniac. Secret was the only one of us who had come armed, but she was also the only non-werewolf still standing.
“Get Santiago out of here,” I said to Lucas. The last thing we needed was to put the newly restored werewolf in harm’s way. I wasn’t sure how Secret would respond if he died in front of her a second time, and I had a funny feeling that kind of guilt on my part might lead to a lot more hauntings in the future. Provided we could get Santiago out of this alive, I was hoping to never feel bad about someone dying near me again.
But I sure as hell wasn’t going to feel bad about killing the motherfucker standing in front of me.
Lucas didn’t argue. Instead he lifted Santiago as if the man weighed nothing, and jogged up the stairs two at a time until they were out of the basement. Okay, so being dead really hadn’t damaged his physique at all.
Noted.
That meant Deerling could probably still pack a punch too.
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarled at him.
“I want you dead.”
“Yeah, I get it, but why. I didn’t kill you. Why did you wake up after a year in the grave and think to yourself, gee, I should really kill Genie.”
He paused, his body that once looked ready to spring into action froze, and he seemed to consider my words, like up until that point he’d never thought about the question for himself.
“You need to die.”
“Genie, stop trading quips with the dead guy, let’s just kill him,” Secret said.
Her telling anyone not to trade quips in the heat of a fight was the peak of hilarity, but I decided not to point that out.
“I just want to know.”
Deerling blinked at me, then his lips curled back. I wouldn’t call the gesture a smile so much as it was a predator’s threat.
“If I’d never met you, I would have never died.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but instead I closed my lips again and blinked back a sudden sheen of tears that threatened to fall from my eyes. I wasn’t sad for Deerling. I was shaken by the truth of his words. All the wights following me wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t been in their lives. If I had just stayed in the bayou with La Sorciere they might still be alive.
“Yeah, well, if I’d never met her I would be dead,” Wilder answered. He took the gun from Secret before she registered what he was doing and fired three rounds in rapid succession into Deerling’s head. “So fuck you.”
I stared, gobsmacked, at the pulpy mess that had once been Deerling’s head.
This was the second time I had looked inside his skull after someone else had blown a hole in it, and if I was being honest I hoped it was the last.
Except Deerling was still standing, and still grinning that sick, feral grin at us.
“She’s not dead,” he cackled. It was hard to make out the words with park of his jaw missing. I gagged, seeing his tongue move between the gap in his cheek.
“What the fuuuuuuck?” Secret said.
Wilder looked down at the gun in his hand, then back up to the evidence of the damage clearly visible on Deerling’s face.
“I think we have an answer to the can we kill him a second time question,” I said with a defeated sigh. And now our witch was down for the count, meaning the only person here with the power to put Deerling back in the ground was yours truly.
And I didn’t have the faintest idea of how.
Both La Sorciere and Santiago had implied I was one of the most powerful witches they’d ever encountered, but what good was that power if I didn’t know how to funnel it into something useful?
I’d learned how to harness the magic when I needed it, but that was mostly to control it from going off when I didn’t intend to. Could I wield that kind of power at will?
There was only one way to find out.
I thought back to what I’d seen in my memories at the Rain Hotel, when I’d been able to completely destroy Morgan. I thought about the blood on the carpet upstairs, in the place where Wilder had laid after Deerling had shot him. I thought of the way this room h
ad looked the last time I’d been here, and suddenly I knew.
I knew I could do this.
My skin felt cold all over, but when I looked down, my hand was glowing bright red. The others had apparently noticed this as well, because Secret said, “Genie, no.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I have to.”
I had no idea what Santiago would have done to bind Deerling’s death, or if it would even work. But I knew with an eerie kind of certainty that I could put him down for good.
I took a step towards him and raised my hand. He kept grinning up until the moment he saw the flames dancing along my skin, then his smile faltered and he took a jerky step away from me.
“W-what is that?”
“I brought you back, and I’m sorry for that, Timothy. You should have been able to rest in your death forever, and because of me you couldn’t do that. I’m going to make it right.”
He darted his head to the side as I moved to touch him. “No.”
Deerling was afraid, and I couldn’t blame him. I think I would have been afraid, too, if I wasn’t so utterly calm. I could barely see his face, my mind was just replaying the images of the room, the carpet, the moment I killed Morgan.
“Let me make it right.”
“No.”
He tried to jerk away again but I grabbed his face in my hand and squeezed his chin, my fingers slipping into the wet hole of what had once been his cheek. I didn’t feel anything.
A wail escaped his lips. “Stop. Stop.”
“You tried to take something from me, something I love. And tonight you tried to take someone else from me. You are a blight on the face of this earth, and I think it’s important I tell you something before you go.”
He mewled and no words came out. The smell of charred flesh filled the room. His face was melting under my fingertips.
“I don’t feel guilty. At. All.” Then I smiled and him and said, “Ustulo.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
We emerged back on the main level coated in the ashy remains of Timothy Deerling. Everyone looked shell-shocked, and for me it was only now starting to sink in what I’d done.
I’d obliterated someone.
There was no other word for it.
Timothy Deerling had been standing in front of me, and then with one word, I’d turned him to ashes and bad memories. I’d done it with nothing but my hand and a mind full of ill-intention.
I could kill someone with a word.
That was a jarring thing to know about yourself. I thought about what La Sorciere had told me, that the only way to rid myself of the curse would be to put them down or let them kill me. I guess I’d learned how to put them down.
Lucas saw us emerge, and must have been surprised by the coating of grey ash over all of us. Secret and Wilder were totally silent, but Wilder kept one hand on the small of my back as we climbed the stairs. At least he wasn’t afraid to touch me.
“Where is he?” Lucas asked.
Secret shook out her hair and chunks of grit fell to the carpet. “There. There. A little over there. I think his right hand might be in my ear. I don’t even want to know what part of him will come out when I blow my nose.”
Lucas looked to me for an explanation, not quite processing Secret’s snark, You’d think he would have a snark-translator for her by now.
I mimicked something blowing up.
“You…”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not sure you want a throwback memory to the hotel, but a little like that.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Wilder said. “It was something.”
“I knew you had it in you, brujita,” Santiago said from one of the pews in the front row.
“I’m so thrilled you saw my murderous potential,” I sighed.
“So much raw power. I knew you’d figure it out when you needed to.”
He was laying face down on the bench, and Lucas had wrapped a sweater around the knife wound. The hilt of the weapon was still sticking out of his back, Santiago he seemed lucid.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” I told him.
“Yes,” he agreed. “That would be very nice, thank you.”
“Turns out I didn’t need you here anyway.”
“Looks that way.”
I crouched down beside him and pressed my palm to his cheek. Santiago smiled softly and looked as if he might pass out. “Don’t you go dying on me, you idiot. I’d feel pretty bad about it,” I warned.
“Then you could just bring me back. It’d be fine.”
“Shut your stupid face.”
“Okay.”
I leaned over and pressed a kiss on his forehead. “You stick around, you annoying asshole, are you listening to me?”
“Mmhmm.” He closed his eyes, and I stayed near him long enough to make sure he was still breathing.
“We need to take him to a hospital.”
“I knew you idiots would need an ambulance.”
I stood up and saw Bryce standing at the back of the auditorium near the lobby doors. “Don’t look so surprised to see me, Genie, I told you I’d be back in forty minutes. It’s been forty-five.”
“I got distracted by definitely not killing anyone,” I told him.
Secret let out a little gulp noise, followed by a laugh I couldn’t quite decipher. “You kill the guy on the bench?” Bryce had made his way down the center aisle and was leaning over Santiago. “I thought this one was with you.”
“He is.”
“So who stabbed him?”
“Deerling.”
“And where is Deerling?”
“Dust in the wind,” Secret said, and started laughing again.
“Is she okay?” Bryce asked me.
“No.”
“Well this guy definitely isn’t okay.” He pulled a radio off his belt and said, “Send in the crew.”
A moment later, two uniformed paramedics appeared with stretcher and a big medical bag. They shooed Bryce and I out of the way and set to work on Santiago, who was complaining enough about their pokes and prods I thought he was probably going to be okay. They did a few basic reaction tests with him before loading him onto the stretcher, and I could have cried when he wiggled his toes on command.
At least I hadn’t totally ruined his life by bringing him in on this. I wasn’t going to pat myself on the back, considering what had happened to his, but it seemed like Santiago would walk away from this, and that was about as close to good news right now as I could hope for.
We walked out to the parking lot and Bryce stopped me just before I reached my car, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Am I going to find a body when I go back in there?” he asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t have time to dispose of one.”
“I didn’t have to.”
He gave me a baffled, but serious expression. “I don’t even know how to interpret what you’re saying anymore.”
“I’ll put it this way. If you go in there with a Hoover, you can put what’s left of Deerling in a nice mason jar.”
He seemed to realize then what the dust on my shoulder—and now on his hand—really was, and recoiled with a disgusted expression as he wiped it on his pants.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. But the point is, he’s gone, and he’s not going to hurt anyone anymore, and I think that should be enough to make us both happy.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I took care of it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, not sure I’d ever be rid of this migraine again. “Detective, I think we both know there are some questions you’re going to ask me that you don’t really want the answers to, and I can assure you this is as much of an answer as you want, okay?”
His mouth formed a tight line, but he didn’t say anything else. For the time being, we were okay with each other. But I had a feeling things had shifted between Bryce and I today. He wanted me to be someo
ne he could rely on as long as I followed his rules, and he’d just learned the hard way I wasn’t going to do that every time.
It wasn’t like I was planning to run wild killing anyone who crossed my path, and I hoped he knew that, but when it came to someone like Deerling, I couldn’t just let the guy keep posing a threat.
Sometimes there were cases where the law couldn’t help.
This was one of them.
I just wasn’t sure I could make that clear to a guy like Bryce, no matter how progressive he thought he was. There wasn’t a simple way to balance the real world with his ideal version of the law and the paranormal coexisting. No matter how badly any of us wanted it.
“You swear this is it? No more trouble?” he asked.
I stared at him right in the face and said, “At least not from Timothy Deerling.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Santiago was taken to an emergency room in a nearby city, since Franklinton didn’t have a space that could serve him. I wanted to go with him, to find out for myself how he was doing and what the outlook was, but I knew I couldn’t.
We still had two undead wights to deal with.
We took Santiago’s truck to the hotel parking lot, then checked to make sure he wasn’t at risk of dying. I left my number with the doctors and said we’d be back in the morning.
I wasn’t sure if that was true, but there was a lot of night left, and I had a good idea of where we might find my mother now.
The trip back to New Orleans was quiet and tense, with the four of us crammed into my Dart. I insisted on driving because it would give me an excuse to avoid making small talk while I focused on watching the road for wildlife.
After about an hour, Secret apparently couldn’t take it anymore. “Can we please talk about whatever the hell that was back there?”
“Why don’t you tell me, seeing as it wasn’t like it was the first time you saw it,” I snapped back. I had thought I wasn’t mad at her for keeping my former outburst to herself, but apparently I was more upset than I’d believed.