See No

by Lizzy Ford

  Shanti tripped as she stepped from the walkway around the side of the house to the sidewalk. Sirens shrieked in the distance, along with the sounds of a large vehicle peeling out. Neighbors were in the street, their numbers large enough to blur her surroundings. She didn’t do well in crowds; too many signatures left her senses confused, unable to tell individual people apart.

  Eddy smashed his fist into someone’s face. Overwhelmed by her surroundings, Shanti focused on him. His energy always read slightly differently than anyone else’s. It was cooler, more controlled.

  Two shots rang out, followed by the shocked cries of the nearest neighbors.

  “That one won’t stay down long,” Eddy stated and replaced the weapon in the waistband of his jeans.

  A car sidled up to the curb.

  “You all need a ride?” Nathan asked casually.

  Eddy opened the door to the backseat. Shanti slid in numbly, uncertain how to process her night.

  “Where’s Kaylee?” Nathan asked.

  “Gone,” Shanti replied. “3G has her.”

  Eddy’s door slammed closed. “Nice ride.”

  “I thought you could protect Kaylee!” was the retort.

  Before Eddy could speak, Shanti leaned forward. “She’s dying, Nathan. Eddy has something to tell you about that.”

  “Silence or tongue?” Eddy replied.

  “He needs to know!” she snapped. “If you want help getting her back, you need to give Nathan what he needs to know to find her before it’s too late.”

  “Too late?” Nathan echoed. “3G has her! It’s already too late.”

  The car pulled away from the curb and crawled down the road.

  After a pause, Eddy spoke. “About bringing Kaylee back. That’s not entirely what happened. She’s not permanently back.”

  “She’s a zombie,” Shanti said and leaned back against the seat.

  Nathan was silent, still, his energy dangerous.

  You two figure this shit out, she thought. Soreness from the blows she’d absorbed crept into her muscles. One calf was cramped and the knuckles on one hand swollen. They weren’t broken, but she’d never hit anyone with full force. Before coming north, she’d only ever hit punching bags or sparred with her guides. Prepared to fight, she was nonetheless surprised by how terrifying it was to hit someone on purpose, with all her strength, when in the projects. This night had been worse, because she was scared.

  Had she killed anyone?

  If so, it had been an accident. She’d been operating out of fear. Her insides felt as if they were trembling from effort and emotion, and she couldn’t help trying to relive every blow she made to ensure she hadn’t killed.

  Then again, these were guides, capable of healing.

  Except when someone like Eddy blows them up. Stressed from her first real battle, Shanti focused on settling the unstable energy inside of her.

  After a clipped discussion, Nathan and Eddy had subsided into terse silence. Nathan’s aura radiated his tightly controlled fury and fear. Eddy was … Eddy. Unreadable.

  “What do we do? How do we find Kaylee?” Shanti ventured.

  “We use the stones,” Nathan replied. He handed her a pouch containing the stone she’d lost in the forest.

  Shanti dumped it into her hand. It was cold enough to burn. She dropped it with a hiss then used the pouch to pick it up. Touching its surface tentatively, she waited for her senses to engage.

  “There’s nothing,” she said, troubled. “That’s never happened since they awoke.”

  Nathan was quiet.

  “How can that happen?” Shanti asked and tried again.

  “Moonstones block evil,” Nathan murmured. “Maybe they can be used to trap evil, too.”

  “She’s not evil,” Shanti said, bristling at the idea the former archangel could be anything like Shadowman.

  “Her life force currently is,” Eddy replied. “Hell is why she’s alive.”

  “It’s not right. We have to find her, Nathan,” Shanti said. She replaced the stone in the pouch but didn’t return it to him.

  “You okay, hon?” he asked.

  “More or less. I’m going to need some serious counseling after all this.” She paused. “Nathan, is it possible to request a new soul mate?”

  “If it were, Kaylee would’ve ended up with someone else by now,” he replied dryly. “Why do you …” He started to laugh and then stopped. “Eddy? Really? What the hell did you do to piss off Pedro?”

  “It must’ve been pretty terrible,” she said with a sigh.

  “You know I can hear you guys, right?” Eddy replied.

  Nathan laughed, a loud, rolling belly laugh.

  Shanti didn’t blame him. She’d laugh, too, if someone told her they were matched with Eddy. It didn’t seem possible the honor of a soul mate would fall to a man without a conscience.

  “I thought I was fucked!” Nathan admitted when he had calmed. “If there’s any good to come of it, I guess you’ll always be safe.”

  “Unless he wants to cut off body parts.”

  “I’m right here!” Eddy said.

  “He said he’d only chop off the parts he liked,” Shanti added, enjoying what small torture she could cause the assassin.

  “But what if you need all your parts to open a portal?” Nathan reasoned. “You’d have to be whole.”

  “Too late for that,” she said. “I’m kind of blind.”

  “Wait,” Eddy said, an odd note in his voice. “Say that again.”

  “I’m blind?” she asked. “You knew that, right?”

  Nathan’s aura lit up. “Not that,” he said. “You’d have to be whole.”

  “That’s the key,” Eddy said, excited. “That’s what we were missing.”

  “Someone explain,” she said in irritation. “I am whole. Being blind doesn’t make me less of a person.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Nathan said. “I mean, the gatekeepers are a unit. You all have to be present to open a portal. To open the gateway, there is an image only you can see, a sound only Amira can hear, words only the third gatekeeper can speak.”

  Shanti relaxed, understanding his point. She had never considered she could open a gateway because she could see something no one else could. But what did that mean?

  Nathan’s energy was troubled. Shanti doubted he wanted Eddy to know the secret; she definitely didn’t.

  None of it would matter, though, if Kaylee died before they could reach her.

  But is that a bad thing? Shanti hated this thought, more so when she began to think Kaylee’s death could stop the first horseman from emerging. Then again, if 3G succeeded in opening a gate, only Kaylee could close it. She was the safety net, if all Hell broke loose.

  “Is there an alternate way to force a portal open?” she asked, fearful of the answer and what it might mean for Kaylee.

  For a moment, no one responded.

  “You’d think there would be,” Eddy responded. “Seems shortsighted to have only one mechanism to open the portals. But it wouldn’t bring the four archdemons out of Hell. Only three, because Kaylee is the key to one of them. No one wants that.”

  “Except maybe 3G,” Nathan said.

  Shanti didn’t want to think about what happened when the two men in the front seat parted ways.

  “What’s your terrible idea?” she asked Eddy reluctantly.

  “I’m glad you asked. If we can’t find her, then we have to increase my reach.”

  “Reach,” Nathan repeated. “You need Hell for that.”

  “Bingo. I have a friend who can help out.”

  “You mean a demon.”

  “You can’t take Shanti into the Satanist den or to a demon,” Nathan replied.

  “I plan on having said demon come to us.”

  Shanti listened, fascinated by the conversation. Nathan’s aura was all over the place. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking about at the moment, but it had to have been a lot. His twisted history with his soul mate, perhaps
?

  “You want her to stay alive?” Eddy prodded at Nathan’s silence.

  “Of course I do. I just don’t want her to suffer more than she already has and will because of what you’ve already signed her up for.”

  “No help is going to be free,” Eddy replied. “Unless angelkind will step down off their lofty pedestal to do something for once.”

  “Let me make a stop first.”

  “Just don’t take too long, or there won’t be anything left of her to save.”

  Nathan took off fast enough to press Shanti against the back of her seat. The first time he careened around a corner, she pulled on her seatbelt. They picked up speed when they reached what she assumed was the highway.

  Shanti nibbled on her lower lip, concerned for Kaylee.

  They drove through ten songs on the radio before the car stopped abruptly.

  “This is a no parking zone, and DC fines are no joke,” Eddy complained.

  “Shut up and wait here,” Nathan replied as he got out of the car.

  Shanti smiled and then giggled. Nathan and Kaylee had more in common than either of them knew. They were both terrible drivers.

  “How we doing?” Eddy asked.

  “After being attacked by 3G and nearly blown up?” she returned. “Not bad.”

  “Great perspective.”

  She snorted.

  “You took boxing and martial arts. Ever learned to fight with weapons?”

  “My guide stick,” she answered.

  “You’d probably be a natural at the bo. What about knives?”

  “No.”

  “Wanna learn?” he asked.

  Shanti opened her mouth to respond, closed it and then shook her head. “You’ve threatened me how many times now? Besides, I thought we agreed to break up. Why do you want to spend more time around me?”

  He was quiet.

  She waited, morbidly curious and hating herself for being genuinely interested in his response.

  Eddy laughed. “You’re holding your breath. You want to hang out, don’t you?”

  “What? No,” she snapped.

  “You can’t even see me, and you’re totally into me.”

  “You put me in the basement surrounded by corpses! You murdered children! How can you possibly think I’m into you?” she shouted.

  “I was teasing, by the way,” he replied, unruffled by her outburst. “The children died quickly. The parents … well, the children died quickly. I had to send you a message.”

  “You could’ve just asked me not to run off!”

  “Does that work?”

  “Have you ever tried not being a creepy psychopath?”

  “It’s been working fine for me.” He was amused by the conversation.

  Shanti made a sound of frustration. Drawing a deep breath to keep from hitting him, she centered herself. “I know you lied to me, Eddy. You may not want a soul mate, but you don’t want anything to happen to me, either.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Next time, don’t kill an entire family and force me to spend the night with them to prove your points. Just ask. Considering the alternative, I’ll definitely hear you out.”

  “You wanna go out sometime?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re right. Much easier,” he mused. “But it didn’t work. We’re going out, or I’m chopping off something.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve gotta throw me a line. What’s the right way to ask you?”

  “Right now, there isn’t a right way!” she retorted. “Try not being a dick for a day or two, and we’ll see how I feel then.”

  “Assuming we survive the next two days, and I don’t murder any more families, will you go out with me?”

  Shanti sighed.

  “Are old people fair game?”

  “No.”

  “How about –”

  “You can murder 3G members, bad people, and anyone else who gets in the way,” she clarified. “No one innocent and definitely no children.”

  “I’m not comfortable with all these rules,” he replied.

  “Then we aren’t ever going out.”

  “I’ll give it a shot. I might surprise us both and go two days without killing irrelevant people.”

  Why am I agreeing to this insanity? Shanti demanded of herself. It had to be the result of being soul mates, because she’d never date anyone like him otherwise.

  Nathan’s energy reappeared nearby.

  Thunder smashed into the sky above them with force that made Shanti’s heart jump.

  Eddy flung his door open and got out. The earthy scent of coming rain drifted into the car. The two men stood in silence for a moment.

  Energy unlike anything Shanti had ever sensed danced around the car. She climbed out, struggling to make sense of it. Storms always brought in new energy, but this was different. Too erratic and strong to be a normal thunderstorm. It clung to everything, including her.

  She lifted her hands from her sides, following the energy with her senses.

  “I’ve been advised not to pursue your course of action,” Nathan told Eddy. “But that tells me we won’t need to do anything after all.”

  “No, we won’t,” Eddy said.

  “What is it?” Shanti asked. “What tells you this?”

  The stone in her palm burst into boiling and frostbite. She dropped it and wrung her hand. Her palm burned from both sensations. Extreme temperatures and fluctuating energies more powerful than any she had encountered rolled off the small stone.

  Shanti backtracked quickly, her senses overwhelmed by the intensity. It was worse than the explosions Eddy had set off. She gripped her head.

  She stumbled. Eddy caught her and wrapped an arm around her waist. His other hand went to her forehead as he once again took the edge off. It was all he could do this time; the stone throbbed power that left her disoriented. She strained against Eddy, who stepped back.

  “What the fuck is happening?” Nathan breathed, retreating beside the two of them.

  “Well, shit,” Eddy murmured. “Never mind my plan. Looks like Heaven and Hell are fighting over who saves Kaylee directly.”

  “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Shanti whispered.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “That’s what Pedro meant,” Nathan said, frustration in his voice. “He said Kaylee had the power to save herself. She either invoked divine intervention or …”

  “Neither Heaven nor Hell is taking a chance they lose,” Eddy said. “She had you and me last time, Nathan.”

  “She’s got no one now.”

  “I take it back. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Shanti said. Unable to escape the energies beating her brain, she removed Eddy’s hand from her waist and rested it on her head.

  His steadying influence increased, and she calmed. Whatever was happening around Kaylee, it couldn’t be good.

  “We need to go, Nathan,” Eddy said and nudged her back towards the car.

  Nathan moved wordlessly back to the driver’s seat. Shanti slid into the backseat, scared for Kaylee.

  “Call your friend,” Eddy said. “I’ll call mine.”

  For the first time since she’d encountered Eddy, Shanti heard no trace of amusement in his voice.

  “We’re taking Shanti somewhere safe first,” Nathan said.

  “I can protect myself,” Shanti told him quickly.

  “I know you can. You’ll be protecting the other key holder. She’s not like you.”

  Shanti settled into silence, preferring this task to being taken care of. “We have to find the third one.”

  “One thing at a time,” Nathan replied.

  Shanti relaxed, her own plan beginning to form. As long as the other gatekeeper, Amira, could drive, they could leave for Arizona and find the third long before Nathan and Eddy knew they were gone. All she had to do was slip the paper out of Nathan’s pocket, and she’d have the location. Content with her plan, Shanti couldn’t help pra
ying Nathan and Eddy could help Kaylee.

  TWENTY-THREE

  KAYLEE COULD SEE nothing through the black hood over her head. She had been asleep when they grabbed her, terrifying her awake. It felt as if they blinded, bound and threw her out the bedroom window to the people waiting below. She was then slung into the back of a van. Her left side was bruised from the metal floor of the vehicle. She had brushed against the legs of several people during one rough turn.

  No one bothered to steady her, and the driver sped and turned with abruptness that left her dizzy, nauseated.

  The journey smoothed out at what she assumed was the highway. At that point, she was able to focus on finding a comfortable position in spite of her awkward situation. She expected the vehicle to stop shortly after 3G kidnapped her, somewhere in the metro area, but it continued long enough for the drone of the road beneath the metal floor to lull her into a doze.

  This time, when she dropped into slumber, she didn’t feel the heavy sleep that reminded her of death. It felt more like a natural sleep, less like she left her body.

  Lightning. It flashed in a dream filled with clouds. There was nothing else – only lightning and clouds and the faint scent of roses.

  When the van stopped, she awoke instantly. What the fuck does lightning have to do with anything?

  The rear doors opened, and new fear lit her blood on fire. She was hauled to the edge of the van by her feet before being slung over someone’s shoulder. The people around her remained silent. Cold air pierced her clothing, and the feet of those around her crunched over gravel. Thunder rumbled in the distance, though no rain pelted her back.

  The man carrying her entered a building, and warmth replaced the night chill.

  She was set down in a chair and the hood pulled off.

  Kaylee squinted around her, waiting for her eyes to adjust after the hours with a hood over her head. She was in the vacant living room of a house with no furniture. Floor lamps lit up the area, and an abandoned end table had been moved out next to the wall. Glowing faintly, several hundred pounds of polished and unpolished moonstones had been poured around the perimeter of the room.

  Two armed men in black stood at the doorway leading to the rest of the house. The hallway outside the room was lit up. She couldn’t see farther than the entrance, though she heard voices talking somewhere beyond, in the hallway.