by Cari Z
“Why will we find him useful?” Rio asked bluntly.
Steven grinned and held out his hands. On the palm of the right one was a tattoo of a gun, a Derringer, actually. “Watch closely, mates.” He folded his hand into position to hold the gun, and the next second the gun on his palm was in his hand. He switched it to his left and they saw that the tattoo was gone. “You can see I’ve got my uses.”
Shit, that was cool. It wasn’t an ability that Devon had ever seen before, although Rio looked like a light bulb had just lit up in his head. “Awesome. Do all of your tattoos do that?”
“All the practical ones.” The gun disappeared and Steven unwrapped the rope from around his arm. It coiled beautifully in his hand and looked soft and supple. “I’ve got plenty of useful little things drawn into my skin.”
“And why should we trust you?” Rio asked.
“Hey, I’m just here workin’ off a debt, mate.” The rope disappeared and Steven shook his hands out, as though they were a little cramped. “Purely professional, I promise. Helping you will let me work that debt off all the faster.”
Lynlis smiled brightly. “Steven, I’m touched by your loyalty.”
“Loyal to your daddy, pet.” Steven’s smile for her wasn’t warm, just functional. “He says jump, I say how high. He says I work for you for a year, I say you got me.”
“Sure, sugar.” Lynlis looked back at Devon. “So what do you say? Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” Devon said, and it wasn’t something he felt good about, but he’d rather take the hit than put it on Rio or disappoint the Mayhews.
“Lovely. Let’s shake on it.”
“No.” Rio sounded calm, but Devon felt his fingers tighten around his own, as though he wanted to physically pull him away. “You do the finding first. Then you work your spell on him.”
“Fine. I’ll give you boys the benefit of a doubt. Trust is important in any professional relationship. But I’m gonna need the focus in order to find him.” Rio set the small plastic box down on the table. Lynlis picked it up, shook it curiously, then opened it. Inside was a dry, mottled little chunk of flesh, slightly curved. It almost looked like…
“Damn, did you shoot off part of his ear?” Devon exclaimed. Now the scar he’d seen on Porter Grey made sense. He was just surprised Rio had missed the rest of his head.
“Half an inch from success,” Rio said with a frown. “He escaped and ran off to Taiwan after that, and this piece wasn’t big enough to track him down from so far away. And once he'd settled in, gotten some protections up, it wouldn’t have worked regardless. We have to hit him while he’s vulnerable, while he’s running like he is now.”
“It should be plenty sufficient for me,” Lynlis said. She scooted her chair back and stood up, and Devon almost didn’t catch the next faint thud. Damn it, what was that? It sounded so close. She walked over to the altar and leaned over the figure, murmuring softly as she did. She dropped the chunk of skin and cartilage into a small brass bowl, then added the dried herbs that were scattered around the surface of the table the altar rested on.
She dumped a small pile of silver shavings into the bowl, then dropped in a match. The bowl sparked brightly for a moment, sending up a cloud of dirty gray smoke, and the smell was foul. Whatever those herbs were, they weren’t pretty. Devon wrinkled his nose and drew back. The look on Steven’s face was similarly repulsed, but Rio might as well have been in a perfume factory for how much it seemed to bother him. He still held on to Devon’s hand. The contact felt too good to bring attention to it.
Once the bowl had cooled a little, Lynlis dumped it out on the polished wooden surface of the altar. The piece of ear was a charred little black lump, still smoking. Devon watched as she reached beneath the pile of lace and pulled out—
Oh, hell no, was that a hand? It was a hand, brown and leathery and cracked, the skin covered with blurred black sigils. The hand wasn’t moving on its own, but it was clearly still connected to an arm, which was connected to a shoulder, which…
It was a person, like he’d thought at the beginning, but Devon hadn’t gone nearly deep enough into freaksville for reality. As Lynlis swished the overgrown fingernails through the ashes, still murmuring, Devon heard the wheezing rasp of an answering murmur. And another thud, which, he realized now, was a heartbeat.
“She’s alive?” he asked, aghast. He didn’t expect Lynlis to answer him, but she surprised him.
“Course,” she said. “Genevieve is the diviner, not me. She’s always had the gift of future sight. I’m just makin’ it easier for her to access it. No distraction.” Lynlis pressed an affectionate kiss to the lace-covered lump that was her former guardian’s head. “No outside desires. Nothin’ more important than the truth. It’s meditative, like with those Japanese monks who mummified themselves. They gave her the idea, actually.”
“It’s cruel.”
Lynlis eyed him squarely. “She gave herself to me to use as I wanted. She didn’t mind. Genevieve’s got more power now than ever before in her life, and that’s more important to her than superficial vitality, so I’ll thank you not to judge. Now.” She motioned them over. “Come look at this.”
They stood and moved next to her, even Steven, hovering as far back as they could while still able to see the altar. The gray ashes had spread and clumped, and the shape they’d taken was like something out of a science fiction novel, long and thin with a saucer on top.
“The Space Needle,” Devon said, surprised. “In Seattle. Really?”
“That’s what the lady says.” Lynlis tucked Genevieve’s hand away and straightened up. “She ain’t wrong about these kinds of things. Your man’s within viewing distance of the Space Needle.”
“That could be dozens of hotels,” Rio objected. “Or a private residence. Be more specific.”
“Piece of flesh that old, you’re lucky to get this much out of her,” Lynlis insisted, frowning. “Divination’s tricky, you’re not gonna get rank, file and serial number out of a vision. I’m bettin’ you boys work with people who can have eyes on the ground and in the surveillance systems there lickety split. Get them to narrow it down for you. Now.” She moved back over to the card table and held out her hand. “My payment, if you please.”
“Now?” Devon looked at her hand, the one that was just a minute ago clutching the withered claw of her guardian, and shuddered slightly.
“What, you want a song and a dance?” She rolled her eyes. “The deal doesn’t work that way. It won’t take long, Sinner. Then you and your Saint can be on your way, off to battle evil.”
Well. A deal was a deal, and it was only for three days, right? And touch, honestly, he could live without that. Devon reached out, but Rio stopped him before he got too far.
“You had better be right,” he said softly, looking straight into Lynlis’s eyes. They locked onto each other and neither one moved, like a staring contest between two cobras. There was darkness in her eyes, but it was less frightening than the pale sheen that washed over Rio’s like a sheet of white fire. It was gone almost before Devon could tell it was there, and just glimpsing it left him feeling weak. Lynlis looked intrigued, though, too curious to fear being burnt.
“I’m right,” she murmured. “An’ I’m right about you too, aren’t I, sugar? You’re somethin’ special for sure.”
“You’ll never know.”
“I might, someday.” She turned her gaze on Devon. “But not today. Come here, Sinner.” He came, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and tilted her face up toward his. “Today I get you,” she whispered, and her breath smelled like old, dry honey. Then she kissed him. For just a moment, Devon was aware of the press of her lips, shiny with gloss, against his own. Then that sense of pressure was gone. So was the feeling of her arms at his neck, her body leaning against his, and even the sturdiness of the floor against the soles of his feet. He felt…nothing.
Devon gasped and stepped back, or tried to, but he didn’t know when his feet touch
ed the ground—there was no communication between any of his limbs and his brain. He could see the floor, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from falling over backward. He didn’t hit the ground though, and after a moment Devon realized that it was because Rio had caught him. He couldn’t even feel the embrace.
He looked up at Rio, and the man obviously didn’t like what he saw in Devon’s face, because he immediately picked him up. “We’re leaving.”
“Mmmm.” Lynlis shut her eyes and shuddered with pleasure for a moment, trailing her hand down the valley between her breasts. “Amazin’. Oh my god, you’re just amazin’, sugar.” Her hand trailed lower, her mouth open in a moan, and it was clear she was moments from coming.
Rio ignored her and snapped his fingers at Steven, who was glancing from person to person as if he couldn’t choose who to settle on. “Get the door.” Steven hustled to the door and opened it, then followed them out. They all heard Lynlis’s voice rise with the force of her cresting pleasure, and Steven shut the outer door to the back room before her first climax.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered, then frowned when Rio glared at him. Devon barely saw any of it; he was too preoccupied with not freaking out at the sensation of floating, because that was all he was getting right now. Seeing and hearing and smelling and, hell, tasting the beads of sweat where his head was cradled against Rio’s shoulder helped to keep him grounded, but the dissociation was still so intense. No sense of touch, when touch was so cardinal in importance to a cambion…Devon might have made a mistake in choosing to give that one up.
“I am sorry,” Steven reiterated more forcefully. “It’s not my choice keepin’ me here, y’know? And I didn’t make that deal, so stop taking it out on me and let me give you my number, right? I’ll be in Seattle in two days. Call me and I’ll come help.”
“We’ll be longer getting there,” Rio said tersely. “And I still don’t trust you.”
Steven sighed. “Look, I pay my debts, even when they’re to someone like her. Don’t mean I’m going to screw you over. I’ve got six months left with Lynlis before I’m a free agent again, and the last thing I want is to drive away a good contact. I can help you get the bastard you’re looking for, and maybe someday you can help me.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and gingerly reached for Rio’s bare forearm. “Just my number,” he assured him. Steven jotted it down quickly, then pulled back and put the pen away. He looked at Devon and smiled tightly. “You can keep it together, mate. I’ll see you soon.”
Rio didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked out of the shop. Devon could hear the bell jingle as they exited, he could smell the dry heat and see the garish sky, and it was all practically overwhelming with the absence of his body’s own sense of awareness. Everything was too big, too bright, too much.
People stared at them as Rio carried him down the street toward their motel. “You can put me down,” Devon said, but there was no force to it. Honestly, he didn’t even know if he could walk right now.
“Not yet,” Rio said, and his voice was so kind. “Just relax, okay? We’ll go talk to Maria and figure out our next move, but all you have to do right now is relax. Do that for me, all right?”
Relax? How the fuck was that supposed to happen? Devon’s body was blind and flailing without the input from so many nerves, but there was nothing to do about it. So he ignored the sinking feeling in his heart, turned his ear against Rio’s chest, and concentrated on the reliably frequent beat of Rio’s heart to keep him from losing his mind.
Chapter Eleven
Maria wasn’t happy that Devon was out of commission, and she was even less happy once she learned why he was out of commission. “You handed one of your senses over to a witch?” she asked incredulously. “Was this really the best plan you two could come up with? Really?” Her expression was almost comically dramatic, the scar next to her mouth accentuating the depth of her scowl.
“You want us to find Porter Grey or not?” Rio asked. His hand was on Devon’s head, but Devon couldn’t feel it. He could see his hair move out of the corner of his eye as Rio’s fingers ran through it, but he felt like he was wearing a snow suit, or had been numbed before a surgery. He couldn’t feel anything. He could hear his and Rio’s heartbeats, oddly synchronous with each other, and he could hear Maggie’s breath from where she was curled up next to him on the mattress, but he couldn’t feel the thud of Rio’s heart pound beneath his cheek.
Devon knew he was swallowing, breathing, blinking, all the basic and necessary things that the body didn’t have to think about to do, but because he couldn’t tell that he was doing them anymore, naturally Devon thought about doing them constantly. He tried squeezing his eyes shut hard, so hard he saw spots, but he still couldn’t feel it. Numb. Dead. Like a ghost in his own body.
“Calm down,” Rio whispered against his temple. He could probably feel Devon tensing. Well good, at least one of them could. Devon tried to calm down like Rio said, but it was hard when he had none of the physical cues he relied on to know what was going on in his own body.
“Three days is a long time for the two of you to be out of commission. Porter Grey could be out of the country already, for all we know.”
“He’s not out of the country,” Rio said. “He’s in Seattle, according to Lynlis Syfer. In a hotel that has a view of the Space Needle. You should get on figuring out which one that is; it’ll take you at least a day.”
“And what do you two geniuses plan to do until then, stay holed up in Vegas and wait it out?”
“No.” Devon was voice was a little hoarse, but it was firm. There was no way he was spending any more time than he had to in motherfucking Las Vegas. “I want to go home.” It was the only place he thought he might be able to get an ounce of peace until his sense of touch returned to him, and there was something about feeling as vulnerable as he did that made him want his fathers. Rio would never hurt him, in fact, he would do everything in his power to protect him, and Devon knew that, but…he really wanted his dads.
“You want to go to Florence?” Maria sounded skeptical.
“It’s on the way,” Rio said, so immediately supportive that Devon wanted to kiss him, except he really didn’t because he didn’t want the memory of any of the kisses they shared to be marred by his utter lack of sensation. “We could go to Florence and wait for more intel, then make a plan. And speaking of intel, I need you to look into someone for me. First name Steven, British national, he probably did time with Beau Syfer fairly recently.” He rattled off Steven’s phone number without even looking at his arm, where Steven had scrawled it with a purple pen not fifteen minutes earlier. “He’s got an odd ability. His tattoos are removable, and apparently functional as the objects they represent once removed. Look for references to strange crimes, and I’m interested in finding out what he was in for to begin with.”
“What’s the deal with this guy?” Maria asked, but she was already typing something into her computer. Devon focused on the sound of the keyboard under her fingertips, sharp and clacking.
“He’s offered his help once we get to Seattle. I’m inclined to accept it, depending on what Grey’s situation is once we get up there.”
“Could be useful, I suppose, if he has a tattoo for every occasion—wait, here we go. Steven Sorensen, age twenty-seven, originally from London. Convicted of murder, but the charges were bumped down to manslaughter six months after he was put away. He served just two years. Beau Syfer was in the same cell block.”
Rio frowned. “What were the circumstances of the murder?”
“One man, Khalil Marchonde, killed May seventeenth, two thousand ten, by a gunshot to the head. Three people were initially charged: Steven Sorensen, James Ross and Mikayla Dixon. The boys are both Brits, she’s Jamaican. Only Ross had a record before the arrest, for aggravated assault and battery three years earlier. He’s got a juvenile record too, but it’s sealed; it’ll take me a while to get into it.”
“Why was Steven the only one convi
cted?”
“He confessed, apparently. He said it was self-defense. The jury disagreed. No current addresses or phone numbers are available for Ross or Dixon.” She tapped the keyboard again. “Cute kid, if you like ‘em punky.”
“Send all the information you’ve got on him along to me, please.”
“Sure, Rio. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve verified Grey’s location. Are you two leaving for Florence now?”
“As soon as we hang up,” Rio affirmed.
“It’s a fourteen-hour drive, you won’t get there until four in the morning at this rate.”
“We’ll check in with you in twelve,” Rio told her. “Are we done for now?”
“We’re done.” Maria didn’t sound happy about it, but then, she was never really happy when things don’t go according to her plan. “Keep me up to date. Are you going to call the Mayhews and let them know you’ll be seeing Chloe soon, or do you want me to?”
Oh right, Chloe. Devon sometimes forgot that she was Ron and Elli’s daughter, she’d been with his dads for so long.
“You can tell them.” Rio shut off the tablet and put it away, then gently pushed Devon off of his chest. The forcible separation left a gaping hole in what remained of Devon’s tattered perception, and he reached out with a whine that he knew was pathetic, but couldn’t quite restrain. Rio picked Maggie up and set her in Devon’s arms. He couldn’t feel her, but he could see her eager tail wagging and hear the tiny noises her paws made against his clothes. It helped a little.
Rio packed up fast, not nearly as careful with Devon’s new suits as he should have been. Devon didn’t have the will to call him out on it, though. He just watched and held Maggie, and he didn’t realize what he was doing to himself until the smell of blood filled his nose. He glanced down and saw Maggie licking at his chin, and then Rio looked over and swore. “Jesus Christ. Did you bite right through your lip?”