“Those meaty fists of that piece of trash back there would have erased you if I didn’t pull the trigger,” Fang said. “Redemption for the wicked serves up an empty plate for the righteous dead. Maybe his heart could have turned into a pile of gold while the hangman’s noose slipped over his eyes, but really, what would that matter if pennies are covering yours? Doesn’t the good book say God slays the wicked with the word of his mouth? Is it true his vessels of clay are smashed against the rocks of injustice on a regular basis? Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. All without any input from us lowly jars of clay. But some of us”—she pointed to her own chest—“were created to make sure bad things happen to bad people.”
“Is it always your first inclination to kill?”
“Just the bad ones, remember?” Fang packed away her supplies, stood and offered a hand.
Coyle grabbed Fang’s hand, and the vampire pulled her up. She grunted, tightening her straps together. “I suppose we’re always going to have this issue, aren’t we?”
“What, bleeding and bandaged?”
“Justification for our actions,” Coyle said.
“It can’t be easy being a constable, surrounded by men who don’t appreciate you. Why do you help those who don’t like you?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do and it’s what I do best. Nothing’s going to stop me from achieving my goals.”
“I know what I’m trained for and what I can do. And I do it very well,” Fang said. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t care about people—or you, for that matter. I’m not all bad.” Fang moved her attention to a corner of the room and gave the slightest smile.
Coyle followed Fang’s curious smile and glanced at the empty space in the corner. She was smiling at nothing.
Or was she?
Coyle thought for a moment and was struck again by memories of Treece’s journal. There was a name that appeared on page after page. It was the name she had just heard upon waking: Embeth. Part of her wanted to know more, if just to understand or possibly help Fang. But, Coyle opted to keep quiet about the dead girl. But she did want to touch on their past.
“I suppose we all have things, or people, that have shaped us into who we are today,” Coyle said. “Forged in the fires of passion or malevolence.”
Fang said nothing.
“Our experiences of youth prevent or protect us from discovering the answers we seek,” Coyle said. “The answers we deserve.”
Fang nodded. “And that’s how we take our first step along the path we find ourselves on.”
“And we don’t know how to get back,” Coyle said.
“Maybe some of us choose not to go back,” Fang said.
Coyle nodded, reflecting on Fang’s words. The moving pictures replayed in her mind. The haunting dark eyes staring at the camera. The madness etched into the expressions of a young woman who was experimented and tortured and sent around the world to kill.
“Some of us choose not to go back.”
Coyle had spent hours poring through the journal. All the words and plans Treece had written about were manifested in the woman next to her. Tragedy and accomplishment. Fears and failures. Madness and betrayal.
“I could help you,” Coyle said. “When the time is right.”
“And I could help you find him,” Fang said.
“Who?”
“The one who let you live.”
Coyle raised her hand to her chest, fingers tracing the bumpy path that would remain with her until she died.
“How’s your balance?” Fang asked.
Coyle shifted her feet and flexed her knees and arms and hands.
“Lots of pain.” Coyle glanced at Fang’s bandaged arm. “What happened to you?”
Fang smiled. “I’m dying is all. Been through this a thousand times, only this time it just may happen. Here, take this.” She handed her a small vial of opaque, golden liquid.
“What is it?”
“It makes you good as new for about an hour, but the side effects will put you in bed for a couple of weeks. We used it when we were almost at death’s door and needed to finish a mission.”
“Why don’t you take it?”
“You’re more important, and I’m expendable. Besides, I have aurorium running through me. Most of my strength is gone, and I feel as if I’m existing on vapors. But I can manage the simple things.”
Coyle glanced at Fang before downing the contents. A bizarre combination of heat and ice rushed through her veins, followed by tingling warmth. The swelling of her wounds subsided rapidly, strength returned to her joints and the pain in her aching ribs melted to nothing.
“Better?” Fang asked.
“Packs quite the punch,” Coyle answered, flexing her hands. She took a couple of deep breaths without pain.
“You look miles better, but it’s just for an hour. That means we need to get this finished. Now, Moreci sent Veiul to kill me—”
“How do I know you’re not Veiul?”
“Don’t start— Wait. That’s an excellent point. Maybe you should confront Moreci and let me take care of the remaining passengers and crew. He’s infused with aurorium. I would die within a few feet of him.”
“Or else you’d shoot him on sight.”
“Oh, I would, yes, right. And you don’t want him dead, so that’s out. You’ll have to pretend you’re Veiul and get close to Moreci by yourself. Think you can handle that?”
“The man who already threatened to end my life?”
“Not like you haven’t been in the position before.” Fang smirked.
“I do have the coded message on how to stop him.”
“Then it’s settled. You handle Moreci, and I’ll get the remaining innocents on board the emergency ship. I have every confidence you can accomplish your objective. And, if everything goes right, we can have a tea at the end of this. Here, take my gun.”
Coyle strapped on her utility belt and checked her weapons. “Why don’t we go over what we’re facing?”
“We’re facing a horde of ghouls who want to tear us apart,” Fang said.
“Check.”
“There are just under two hundred passengers to rescue.”
“Check.”
“We have a madman who’s going to use an ancient book to erase a major city.”
“Check.”
“This same madman is infused with aurorium, making me completely useless.”
“Check.”
“We’re stuck a thousand feet in the air.”
“Check.”
“And just about everyone else wants us dead.”
“And check.” Coyle added, “Anything else?”
“That should do it for now.”
Fang opened the door, and they stepped into the cavernous space of the engineering bay, walking side by side. Flames and smoke poured out of the destroyed engines behind and above them. Iron scraped against iron, littering the metal floors with sparks.
Fang inspected her daggers and slammed them into her sheaths. Coyle filled the gun with fresh ammunition and slipped it into a side holster.
They stopped for a moment and looked at each other.
“Ready to save a world that hates us?” Fang asked.
“What else is new?” Coyle answered.
Chapter 34
Starboard ballroom
Dawn’s Edge
May I speak each word as if my last word, and walk each step as my final one. If my life should end today, let this be my best day.
Amen.
Coyle turned the corner. Two guards stood outside Moreci’s door, their weapons at the down-ready position, ready to kill anyone who was a threat. Was she a threat? Absolutely, but they wouldn’t know until too late. Just like Moreci.
The two guards nodded to her. She ignored them and, before stepping through the door, caught the last bits of the conversation inside.
“What’s the word?” Moreci asked.
“All four engines hav
e been ruined or close to it,” another man answered. “Bolt is dead. Veiul just reported Coyle and Fang are dead, and she’s on her way back.”
“Well, that’s not terrible news. When can we get the engines working?”
“As soon as we gather the engineers. Ah, she’s returned,” said a tall, older man.
She caught Moreci’s gaze and smirked.
“Veiul,” Moreci said. “I take it you ended your quarrel with Fang?”
“She died in the most horrible fashion,” Coyle said.
“Oh?”
“Aurorium-tipped daggers.” Coyle darted a glance through the room and spotted what she was looking for.
“How unfortunate,” Moreci said. “And you kept your disguise as Coyle? Marvelous.” He looked at his pocket watch and nodded to the other man. “Cavin, get the men working on the engines.” He turned and looked outside.
Coyle stepped closer to the book. It rested on a shelf in front of the wide, tilted windows. She opened it and casually flipped through the pages. Every one of them was marked with what appeared to be nonsensical writing, but it was authentic fae script in different sizes and colors. She knew the message she was given had to do with the book.
In ageless artifacts dwell.
Repeat the faithful creed,
Mirror cast the spell
Something about a mirror casting a faithful creed. Or was she to use a faithful creed for something? She flipped through the pages, one after another. Moreci didn’t bother her, but she wasn’t in a library. She couldn’t sit here all day until she found what she was looking for.
“Bolt didn’t make it,” she said. “He went quickly.”
“Good enough.”
“At least he carried out the last of the plans. And now we’ll have to wait until our engines are fixed.”
“It’s too bad about her, though. Coyle would have made some excellent company.”
She turned to him and crossed her arms. “How so?”
“Intelligent, gifted in knowledge, a hunger for things unknown. She reminded me of myself.”
“I’m all those things and more.”
“Are you?”
She lowered her chin and glared.
“Show me, then. We’ve time for an interlude up here in the clouds. The people of Chicago will be the first of a long line of alternate creations on our schedule, but they can wait.”
She looked outside. Clusters of homes pocked the landscape. People going about their business, living their lives. People who should be protected against Moreci. She side-glanced him. The devil was so close he made her skin crawl. But she couldn’t be fearful, couldn’t fail all these people. This was it.
Time’s up.
She pulled her pistol out and pointed it at him. His eyes widened in shock as he realized what was happening.
“Coyle!” he spat. Then his eyes narrowed into slits. “This means Fang is alive, then. And the both of you are working in tandem.” He slammed his fist on the shelf next to him. The two guards threw the door open and pointed their weapons at her. “Step away from the book, young lady. You don’t know the power.”
The guards stared, ready, waiting for the order to drop her.
She looked him over. He was a dangerous boy with a bad temper. He had destroyed scores of people on the ship and intended to destroy more. Fang was right. Sometimes the trash needed the incinerator. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
“Fang wants me dead,” he said, and motioned to the guards. They lowered their rifles. His shoulders relaxed. “She can’t kill me, so she sent you. But you can’t kill me, either. You’re not that type of person. I know you all too well, Coyle.”
“No, you don’t,” she said.
“Sherlyn Coyle. You have a nose for evidence and an admirable way of presenting it,” Moreci said. His tone was cheerful, given the circumstances.
Coyle’s shoulders hunched. Butterflies crowded her gut. She wanted to shoot. And yet her finger remained frozen.
“I’ve been studying you ever since you solved Trevin’s murder. And when I first laid my eyes on you, I thought you were pretty in the right light. Not in a radiant, beautiful sort of way, but there was this inner glow, this deeply embedded passion I recognized. It seeped out from your soul and bathed you with an effervescent sheen of respectable substance. Relentless pursuit. Unbending will,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“You got all that from one look at me?” she asked. “Yet you can’t see the delusion of grandeur being played out from your fingertips?”
He cocked his head, squinting. “Ambition is the fruit from the seed of neglect. You understand?”
She grew uncomfortable under his steady, prying gaze.
“I know your father, Coyle. Good man. Earned a decent living. Provided for little Sherlyn and her sisters. Kept food in your little belly and coals in the hearth. Yes, Denny is a good man.” He walked, waving his hand in the air.
“But are you satisfied with what you have? Did father Denny support your interest in becoming a constable or detective? Or in anything, for that matter? No? What a shame. You know, you’re good at guessing games. Let’s see how well I do, shall we?”
She glanced behind her. The door seemed so close, yet it wasn’t.
“You’re the youngest of three daughters.” He counted his fingertips. “Ellory, Maycroft, Sherlyn. He probably wanted a boy somewhere in there, am I right? After all, we know what kind of brute the man is, what with his dog-fighting ring and the barrels of whiskey he has hidden away in...” He counted silently to himself. “Six different ports. And a lovely arm tucked away at his side in each of those disreputable firms he thinks he hid so well under shell companies. Tsk, tsk. No, a man like Denny would definitely hope to have a boy. He needed someone to take over the business when it came time.
“The way I see it—and do tell me if I am wrong—firstborn Ellory’s blonde curls were for Momma. That should have kept her busy until the second, but then Maycroft pushed her big head into the world. She was probably shooed in under Mommy’s dress. Then Denny had a third and final chance for a little boy, someone to call his own. But you came out, and that was that. Tell me, what did his eyes say to you when he looked down at little Sherlyn? You could remember with that sharp mind of yours.”
She blinked, tears threatening to spill down her hot cheeks. Her jaw set on edge. And her face expressed everything she wanted kept hidden.
“Yes. Yes, I know this voice that carries words further and deeper than any song imagined,” he said. “But this is the voice that gave us strength to rise above what we didn’t want to become. This indomitable will wrapped us in armor no steel blade could sunder. And the void of our want became seed in the field of our destiny. That which we never received became an opportunity we were born to create. Like it or not, Sherlyn, we are presently who we are, where we are, and how we are because we can be nothing else. And you are not a murderer.”
Fang’s voice echoed in her mind.
Some of us choose not to go back.
Coyle wiped her eyes. “Our past can’t be the influencer of our present decisions. We can only learn from those terrible experiences and make adjustments for the course of the future.”
“You sound like you almost believe yourself, Sherlyn,” he said. “Reach down further, past the self-aggrandizing wretch you expect everyone to see.” He turned and faced her. His wide eyes stared into her soul. “Grasp hold of authenticity—truth!—with both hands.” He shook his fists.
“Who are you, Sherlyn? There are no expectations up here in the clouds. It’s just you and me and a bunch of hired conscripts who don’t give a rat’s ass what comes out of your mouth. This is your chance to speak your mind. Without judgement, Sherlyn. Without expectations. Is it true there’s strength through adversity? Say it! Shout it! What are you made of, deep inside?”
Her fears were fully realized, not because she was going to die, but because she was exposed. She tried so hard to believe in her motives for justic
e, but really was just grasping at straws all along. All this time she was just buying another step on an unsure journey.
She stared at her feet, her hands. She had no strength—what did he just say? Strength through adversity. Wasn’t that the creed of the Templars?
Repeat the faithful creed.
But it wasn’t written in English, it was written in Latin. She remembered her flirty conversation with Poes—with Fang.
“You know Latin. I like that. Latin’s a nice word, isn’t it?”
The Templar’s creed was written in Latin, what was it? And then it came to her in a flash.
“Virtus per aspera,” she said. The letters glowed on the page, shifting, rearranging into a single phrase.
Moreci blinked. “What did you say?”
Her eyes raced over the newly formed phrase. All of it meant nothing to her. Except—she had seen this before. She squinted. Yes, she had seen this before. The words were mirrored. Her eyes shot up to the tilted windows—to the glowing words reflected in the glass—and read the phrase out loud.
Suffer the wrath of your creation
Word-bearer of lies
Walk in torment and damnation
The room exploded in purple lightning, and all of them were thrown back. She flew across a table and into chairs. Fingers of eerie, glowing light creeped along the walls and floors and ceiling. Rifle fire burst through the air. She covered her head and peeked toward the men.
Cavin and the guards fired wildly at her. Their bullets tore through the furniture and shattered the glass, but all missed her. Tendrils of energy flared through the air and wrapped around her assailants. They writhed in coils of lightning and ruptured into burning ash.
She looked at Moreci. His body shook and twisted, crawling with dark energy. His agonized screams deepened, chilling her blood. The mask covering his face ripped apart, and his mouth widened. Huge, jagged teeth burst forth. His back hunched, his legs widened, his arm twisted and swelled. The light around him grew brighter, more intense. She heard the screams of a man turned into something inhuman. Terrifying. Deadly.
Coyle and Fang: Curse of Shadows (Coyle and Fang Adventure Series Book 1) Page 24