by Chloe Neill
There were eight of them—men in pants and shirts of stained homespun fabric, standing in the middle of a street beneath the sweeping branches of live oaks that were decades older than they were.
“Cleanse the Zone! Cleanse the Zone! Cleanse the Zone!”
Most of them were chanting; all of them watched avariciously the person who writhed at their feet.
It was a boy, I thought, based on the glimpses I got as the men moved around him. Small and slender, with pale skin and ratty clothes. They kicked him viciously, laughed at his obvious pain as he contorted.
“You are filth!” screamed a man of thirty-five or forty. “Garbage! Should have stayed where you came from!”
The boy screamed, the sound a barely human, high-pitched shriek that ripped through the air like lightning. It wasn’t the sound of a normal human.
“Shit,” I murmured, all the air rushing from my lungs. He wasn’t a child—not anymore. He was a wraith, his essence winnowed down by magic to his single, overriding obsession: find more magic. It was the curse of the Sensitive; we had magic because we absorbed it. And if we weren’t careful, we’d become nothing more than vessels for that need.
“Liam.”
He just nodded, watching them with an intense but otherwise blank expression. He must have thought of Gracie while staring at this boy, who couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. This child had lost his life to magic in a very different way, but he’d lost his life all the same.
Liam pulled the keys from his pocket, slipped them to me. “Get the truck. Pull it up to the corner, headlights on bright.”
“It will blind them,” I said, understanding.
“For a moment, anyway. Cowards that they probably are, I’m guessing one or two will make a run for it, and the rest will stay because they’re already pumped for a fight.”
“This may be the same group that Malachi engaged. They may also be pissed.”
“They aren’t the only ones. I don’t want to shoot them—maybe they’re redeemable assholes—but I will if I have to. Otherwise we need to get them down and waiting for Containment. There are zip ties in the truck.”
“Did some stocking after Camp Couturie, did you?”
“It seemed wise. Bring those with.”
I nodded. “If you can get them away from the wraith, and he senses me, he’ll move toward me.”
In truth, he’d try to attack me. He’d sense the magic I’d already absorbed, and he’d want it. He was small, but he’d be strong and probably as vicious as the humans who’d attacked him, if not by choice.
“You can handle him? We only have to hold them off before Containment gets here.”
“Containment?”
Liam pointed to the blinking green light on a pole halfway down the block. “They’ve been signaled. Poor little bastard wandered into a neighborhood with a working monitor.”
“Are there cameras this far from the Cabildo?”
“Not usually. Monitors are cheaper, and they don’t have the staff to watch feed from every block in New Orleans.” He looked back at me. “Containment won’t be here fast; they don’t have enough people for it. But they will be here eventually.”
So don’t do anything to get yourself arrested, he meant.
“I can handle myself,” I assured him. “You’ve got the tranq kit?” That was the easiest way to keep a wraith from injuring himself or anyone else.
“Also in the glove box.”
The wraith screamed again.
“Go,” Liam said, and I ran back toward the truck, climbed inside, and got it moving. I made a U-turn in the street, came slowly back around to the corner, and when the gun fired, I roared around it and flipped on the lights, silhouetting Liam’s strong body.
“You a friend or foe?” asked the man who’d stepped in front of the others. He was tall and lean, with a shaved, pale head.
Two of the others were pinning down the wraith. A couple looked scared. Wise decision on their parts.
“Neither,” Liam said. “I’m a bounty hunter, and he belongs to me.”
The Reveillon member stepped forward, hands on his hips. “I don’t give a shit who you think you are. We are Reveillon. We are cleansing this city from garbage like him. And since you profit from the system, from garbage like you, too.”
“Do you know any bounty hunters? Do you know the kind of shit we put up with? The kind of shit we’re equipped to handle?” Liam’s tone had gone hard and glacier-cold. Bounty hunters had reputations for being badasses, and he was no exception.
“I’ve got people and guns,” the guy said, “and if you’re smart, you’ll get the hell out of our way.”
Two of his friends stepped forward, showed the guns stuffed into their waistbands.
Liam lifted the .44 and cocked it as I stepped out of the truck.
“Oh, you brought your girlfriend,” the man in front said. “Big fucking deal.”
“Capons,” Liam spat, his gaze narrowing on the man who’d challenged him. “You want to go? Let’s go. I’ve had one hell of a shitty week, and a workout might make me feel better.”
“Fine, asshole,” the man said, stepping forward. “Let’s go.”
Liam had seen enough death, destruction, fear, and hurt from Reveillon. He was ready for a fight, and I wasn’t going to take that away from him. So I took the gun he held out to me, kept it trained on the other guys.
Liam and the guy with the big mouth lunged at each other, piled into a grappling mess that hit the ground, started to roll.
While they battled, one of their crew slunk off into the darkness. The two men with guns moved toward me, leering smiles on their faces.
“You a traitor, too, bitch?” asked one of them.
“The only traitors in this town are Reveillon,” I said, holding up the .44. “I’m the one with the very large gun.”
“What?” said the other, elbowing his buddy. “You going to shoot us?”
I smiled mirthlessly. “Unless you put the guns on the ground by the count of three, yeah, I am. One.”
“Bullshit,” said the first guy. “You ain’t gonna shoot nothing.”
“Two.”
They cursed, drew their weapons. One of them held his gun sideways like a moronic movie villain. Were all the assholes in New Orleans watching the same bad shows?
“And three,” I said pleasantly, and fired a shot between them. The one on the right scrambled to get away but tripped on the pockmarked asphalt.
The one on the left, all bravado, took another step forward, gun now shaking in his outstretched hand.
“Morons,” I said, and aimed at his feet, preparing to fire again.
I’d just taken a step forward, gun trained on him, when the wraith bounded out the darkness, screaming with the wrath of an angry god.
His hair was short and pale, his fingers tipped in nails sharp as diamonds. He fell on top of the man with the gun, and they hit the ground together. The man screamed and kicked, pushed back against the wraith’s rubbery skin but couldn’t dislodge him. The wraith clawed at his clothes, his skin, as if they held back the magic he needed.
“Help me!” the man screamed.
I moved but was still ten feet away when the wraith dug those nails into the man’s stomach, filling the air with the scent of blood.
“Jesus,” said the other man with a gun, the one who’d scrambled away from my first shot. He aimed his gun at the wraith, started firing. He’d grazed the wraith, twice, missed on every other shot. But the wraith hadn’t even noticed. He was busy on the ground, searching for the magic he could feel in the air.
My magic. And my problem to handle.
“Hey!” I screamed. The wraith’s gaze snapped to me, the eyes staring blankly, hungrily. He lumbered to his feet and darted awkwardly toward me, limbs angular and pinched.
&nbs
p; “That’s right,” I said, walking backward toward the truck, keeping the light in his eyes, hoping it might slow him down.
He lunged, fingers catching my forearm and scraping painfully down. I kicked, made contact with his shin. He hit the ground but scrambled up again, grabbed at me again. His eyes were dark and empty, his hair as white as snow, his arms skeletally thin.
When my heart ached with pity, I had to remind myself he wasn’t a child. He wasn’t an innocent. He wasn’t a Sensitive. Not anymore.
Ignoring the mental warnings, I tucked the gun into the back of my waistband and grabbed his left wrist, pushed his arm down to pull him off balance. His arm was thin enough that I could nearly make a fist around it. He screamed furiously, clawing at my hand to free himself from my grasp, then lurched forward, leading with pointed, bared teeth.
“Shit!” I said, letting go and jumping back to avoid his snapping jaw. He came at me, mouth nearly foaming in his hunger for magic I probably needed to cast off. I wasn’t sure even Malachi could have given me such a solid incentive.
I moved backward to stay out of his grasp, hit the truck’s front grill, realized my opportunity. I feigned right and, when he jumped forward, dodged left. He hit the grill, screamed from the contact with hot metal.
I plunged the tranq into his shoulder.
He screamed, spasmed one last time, and went limp. I caught him as he fell, lowered him carefully to the ground, cradling his head so it wouldn’t crack against the asphalt. He was a wraith, but he was what I could become, and he’d become that monster much too soon.
The wraith out of commission, I stood up again, looked at the scene.
Liam had twenty pounds of hard muscle on the man, and probably a lot more legit fighting experience, but they were still going at each other. Liam, a satisfied grin on his face, was leading the man into making stupid little jabs, which would only wear him out.
Liam was toying with him. Not that I couldn’t sympathize.
Behind him, there was one dead Reveillon member on the ground, two whose gazes were transfixed on the man the wraith had disemboweled.
I pulled out the gun, walked toward them. “I’d suggest you hit the asphalt, faces down.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” one of them said, but his teeth chattered with fear.
Liam stepped beside me, breath heaving. “You moron. Now you’ve insulted her.” Liam walked forward, kicked him square in the balls. The man went down to his knees with a groan, eyes rolling back.
“Thanks, I guess, for protecting my honor?”
“Anytime.”
Keeping the gun on the second guy, who wisely lifted his hands into the air, I pulled zip ties from my pocket as Liam turned the guy onto his stomach, pulled his hands behind him.
He took one, fastened the man’s wrists together, then stood and wiped sweat from his brow. “You’d make a pretty solid bounty hunter.”
I flipped the gun around, offered it to Liam grip-first, and looked down at the warp and weft of scratches along my arms. “Thanks. But I have a job.”
—
The cavalry arrived, two fresh-faced Containment agents who looked barely older than the wraith on the ground. Containment was down to the newbies. Everyone else was in Devil’s Isle, searching the streets for Reveillon, or already fighting them.
“They’re all Reveillon members,” Liam said. “They were attacking the wraith.”
Their gazes tracked from humans to wraith. “And the Para. Did you kill it?” one of the agents asked.
“It’s ‘him,’” I corrected. “Not ‘it.’ And he’s a wraith, not a Para. They’re different.” At least to me. “And no, we didn’t kill him. We tranqed him.”
“Licensed tranqs,” Liam said. “We’ll take him to the clinic. Can you handle these three?”
“Sure,” the other agent said.
“In addition to the one who didn’t make it, four more ran away.” Liam pointed. “They headed that way on foot. They’re cowards, so you might still be able to grab them.”
“Sure,” one of them said, and pulled a comm unit from his belt.
“In that case,” Liam said, “we’ll be going.” He didn’t wait for them to argue but walked to the wraith and picked him up. He looked even more frail being held by Liam, his arms drawn up like a bird’s wings.
“There’s a blanket behind the seat,” Liam said, gesturing to the truck. I grabbed it, spread it onto the bed. The wraith probably wouldn’t care, but that Liam had thought to do it tugged at my heart.
He placed the boy carefully on the blanket, then used tie-downs to create a kind of cage that would keep him from rolling through the truck. It wasn’t a pretty solution, but he wouldn’t be able to attack us en route, or escape to attack anyone else. However pitiable he was, that had to be the priority.
“I didn’t know it could happen to a child,” I said as Liam backed the truck onto the main street again, headed toward Devil’s Isle. I sat halfway turned in the seat, watching him dutifully.
“He’s the youngest I’ve seen. By far.”
“He could have learned balance, to control it. He shouldn’t have gotten that far.” I looked at Liam. “Is it ironic that we’re taking him into Devil’s Isle? Or just cruel?”
Liam kept his eyes on the street. “There’s no other place to take him, Claire. No one else equipped to handle him.”
The breaking of this small boy was only one of the million tragedies, big and small, that the world had seen since the Veil opened. But this hurt as much as any of them.
—
The Devil’s Isle guards were silent when Liam carried the boy through the gate. The houses we passed were equally quiet.
“Lizzie!” Liam called out when I opened the clinic door for him.
She walked into the room a moment later. Her pink scrubs were wrinkled, her face sweaty, locks of hair in damp curls around it. She peeled off dirty gloves, tossed them into a waste can. “It’s been a long night already. And it looks like it’s about to get completely demoralizing.”
She walked to us, checked the boy’s pupils with a penlight, then sighed. “How old is he? Eleven?”
“About that,” I said as Liam handed the boy over to the orderly who followed Lizzie into the room.
“That’s a kick in the teeth.” She looked back at us. “Any sign of his parents?”
“No,” Liam said, and described where we’d found him, and how. “It’s possible they were nearby, but it doesn’t look like he’s been in a stable home for a while.”
“No,” Lizzie agreed. “He looks feral. We’ll match against missing persons, just in case,” she said. “If his parents are alive. It’s possible he’s an orphan, has been living on the streets for a while.” She looked up at me. “Want me to tell you if we find them?”
I nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”
Lizzie nodded. “Thanks for taking care of him. I hear you did pretty well on the home visits.”
I smiled. “For a novice, maybe.”
Lizzie smiled. “That’s pretty much what Vendi said, which is high praise. Now get out of here so I can do my job.”
—
The store was locked and quiet when we returned, everyone asleep. Gavin was curled into a chair in the front room. Burke and Tadji had hung a sheet across the hallway to the back room, and I assumed they were sleeping. I didn’t want to check.
I went upstairs and changed into a tank and shorts, brushed the day’s knots from my hair. I heard Liam step into the doorway. “You need sheets or pillows or anything?”
“No,” he said, and when I glanced, I saw that he looked at me like a man with a long-denied thirst.
My heart pounded in silent answer.
“You look like a fairy queen,” he said. “Radiant and otherworldly.”
I smiled. “I’m exhausted and pissed off.”
>
“You did good tonight. You handled yourself. You handled the wraith.” He smiled. “You handled Lizzie.”
“I tried.”
Liam shouldn’t have walked toward me. He shouldn’t have cupped my face, stared down at me with adoration even I could recognize, and he probably didn’t want to feel.
“It would be so easy for you to run,” he said. “To walk away from all this and spare yourself the emotions, the fear, the danger. But you don’t. And you don’t stand by. You jump in with both feet.” He smiled, his eyes glimmering like jewels. “You are so brave.”
“Reckless,” I said with a smile.
“Reckless,” he agreed.
“Doubt is part of life,” I said. “And so is hope. Life is about taking chances. You just have to hope that the chance is worth the risk.”
I dug fingers into his shirt, rested my forehead on his chest. I should have done the hard thing—the smart thing—and walked away, left us both in peace. But it was too late for that now.
“I don’t care about tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I just care about right now, about me, about you.” It was only half a lie, and it was half a lie I could live with. And when he looked at me, I knew he knew it.
I put a hand on his face, knew where we were heading. “Tonight, you’ll make me feel whole. You’ll keep me safe.”
His groan was deep, elemental, utterly masculine.
“I want to be home,” I said. “And I’m home when I’m with you.”
With those words, I sealed our deal.
—
He swept me up and into his arms, carried me to the bed. I let myself be carried. I let myself rest against the warm solidness of his body, surrounded and safe, and for the first time in years, content. Maybe this would be the end of us, maybe it wouldn’t. But for tonight, neither of us would be alone.
He placed me on the bed as if I were a delicate antique, began to pull off his T-shirt, but I shook my head.
“Let me do it.” I wanted to unwrap him, reveal him, one bit of cotton and denim at a time.
Smiling with obvious satisfaction, he put his hands down. “Go ahead.”