I growled. I’d been trying to kill them both.
“It’s not over,” she said.
I frowned. “Why not?”
“You have to track him. He can’t stay alive.”
“Why?”
“Because horrible things happen when people speak my name—even know it—and live. You must protect me. And that includes protecting my name.”
I rolled to a sitting position, putting my head in my hands at the blinding headache. It was already going away, thank goodness. “Then why’d you tell me?”
“To protect you. You, too, would’ve needed to die, had you learned my name from someone other than me.”
For a brief moment, I thought it would have been nice to have a way out of the situation I was in, even if through death. But I didn’t allow myself to think like that for very long. I actually wanted to be with Lizzie for the rest of my life.
Raven continued. “Only those I tell my name to can know it.”
I didn’t respond for a moment. “You knew it would happen, didn’t you?”
“I’m Raven. I see all.”
“I can’t track without my—”
“They’re fine. Your tattoos are all fine.”
“No, they were—” I stopped talking when I saw my wrist. She was right. Every single tattoo was completely full. “How . . .?”
“You accessed a lot of magic. It charged them.”
I glanced at her. “How do you know about them?”
“I am Raven,” she repeated. She said it as if it should explain everything. And perhaps it did. Unfortunately, I really had no idea who Raven was.
She didn’t give me a chance to ask any questions. “We need to hurry. Find him. Kill him before he can speak my name.”
“How did he know it?”
“The person who created me told him.”
That sounded like a story for another day. I got up, wincing at how sore I was. What had happened, anyway? Why had my powers knocked me out? “How long was I unconscious?”
“About ten minutes.”
I pressed on my morning tattoo, asking it to help me find the demon. Blue smoke appeared, snaking away and leaving the parking lot before heading down the street.
“Did he go by car or on foot?”
“Car.”
Okay, I wasn’t going to try following on foot, then. I turned to the rental car and was surprised to see that it hadn’t been damaged in the brief battle that had taken place. There were three or four huge sections of cement near the Arete’s dead body, tons of bricks scattered around us, and broken glass everywhere. Apart from the store missing a lot of brick and a couple of windows broken, nothing else had been touched.
“Why hasn’t anyone called the police?”
Raven pointed, and I looked. A body was near the front doors. He must have been coming to see what the ruckus was about and gotten knocked out or killed.
“He’s alive.”
I nodded, not so surprised that she knew where my thoughts had gone.
We hopped in the rental car and headed down the highway, following the blue smoke. I drove as quickly as I dared. Maybe the demon didn’t know the power he held in knowing Raven’s name.
I didn’t even know what power that was. And I knew better than to ask. If she didn’t volunteer it, it was none of my business.
The smoke left the highway, and I followed, parking at a casino next to what was obviously the car the demon had driven, based on the amount of smoke around it.
We followed that smoke into the casino.
Ugh. How was I supposed to get through a casino with a six-year-old in tow? By law, I couldn’t let Raven step off the special carpet that wound through the place. And naturally, the demon hadn’t followed that carpet.
Skirting the slot machines and blackjack tables, Raven and I stuck to the carpet for kids, with me keeping an eye on the smoke as best I could. It was difficult—despite it being only two in the afternoon, the place was packed. But eventually, the blue smoke led us out of the casino and down a hallway, past a gift shop, and into a bar.
I paused near the bouncer, eyeing the joint, finally spotting the demon having a drink at the bar, his back to us.
He probably thought he was safe there. He probably had no idea who I was.
I couldn’t get any closer, not with Raven. I needed a plan.
Tugging on Raven’s hand—which I held, hoping it would look like we were related or something—I stepped into the gift shop. I pretended to browse the items on the nearest shelf while trying to come up with an idea. I discarded most of them, but then, something pretty stupid occurred to me.
Raven smiled up at me, her eyes big. “I love it.”
I glanced at her. Had she read my mind? Interesting. I put that thought away to concentrate on what I was about to do.
Making sure to look like I was grabbing for my wallet, I pulled out three slim throwing knives I kept in a protected pouch there. Good thing I’d dyed my hair.
I closed my eyes, mentally preparing myself. I was about to add yet another murder to my increasingly long list of crimes I’d need to confess when the time came.
And the time would come. I was convinced that in order to make right what I’d done, I’d need to face the consequences—both legal and spiritual.
I didn’t feel so bad about this murder, though. He was definitely a slimeball.
I didn’t need to ask Raven to know if she was aware of her role in all this.
The little girl stepped up to the bouncer and started asking him questions about alcohol and when she’d be allowed to go in “there.” With the large guy distracted, and sending a quick glance backward—no one was really paying attention—I stepped up alongside them and made sure my dominant left hand was out of the bouncer’s peripheral vision. Then I pressed my golden tattoo.
30
The moment the energy began coursing through my veins, I threw the knives as hard and as straight as I could.
One. Two. Three.
Back. Back. Neck.
The demon slumped forward onto the bar. The type of knives I’d thrown had a very slim profile with only an inch of black handle. They blended in with the demon’s dark tee. I knew from experience that he wasn’t dead—he wouldn’t be dead for several minutes. I’d severed his spinal column with that third knife, though, and he’d be very distracted with his inability to breathe while oxygen filled the pleural space outside both punctured lungs.
Job done, I turned to Raven. “Okay, sweetie. We’ve got to get going.”
I picked her up and stepped back into the gift shop. The bouncer resumed his duties, unaware of what had just happened. I felt several eyes on me, though. People had obviously seen what I’d done, but either they were too shocked or they didn’t know exactly what had happened. Most of them wouldn’t have seen the knives, and almost none of them would have seen my target, thanks to the dark and crowded bar.
Still, they’d put two and two together pretty quickly once the screams started.
We stepped through an employee door in the back of the gift shop. Gratitude that we weren’t in Vegas flooded over me. There was no way a door like that would have been left unlocked.
The moment the door shut, Raven started crying, surprising me. I stared at her, concerned, wondering if I’d somehow injured her. She gave me a quick wink, though, and I realized she was pretending.
Trusting she knew what she was doing, I hurried down the hall, calming and comforting her.
An employee saw us and held up her hands. “You’re not allowed back here.”
“I know. Do you have a Band-Aid? My daughter has cut herself pretty badly.”
“Yes. I think.” She frowned. “Let me go check my manager’s office. I’ll be back.”
She hurried off, and Raven and I rushed out the back door and into the blinding sunlight. I charged around the corner of the casino and dashed to the car.
We were pulling out of the parking lot when I heard sirens in the distance.
When the cop cars rushed past, I moved to the side of the street with everyone else, then continued west, heading toward Houston.
We’d been going down the highway for only a minute when Raven relaxed. “He’s dead.”
Good.
Knowing we weren’t completely in the clear, though, I turned on the police radio app I kept installed on my phone and listened. When my description was rattled off, I pulled off my hoodie, rolled down the front passenger window, and reached across the car to toss it into a ditch on the side of the road.
As soon as I could, I’d be washing the black rinse out of my hair. And then they’d never find me.
Neither Raven nor I had need to speak almost the rest of the way to Houston. We were an hour out when Raven finally brought up something she’d probably been thinking about for the last several hours.
“Don’t you need to sleep?”
So she couldn’t read minds—she would have known about that specific tattoo if she’d read mine. “No.”
“The tattoos?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror, not answering. How had she figured it out that quickly?
When it became apparent I wasn’t going to answer, she asked, “What has he done to get you to work for him?”
She was obviously talking about the Shadow Prophet. “It’s not what he’s done to me . . .”
“He promised me my youth. Forever.”
I laughed when I realized what she was saying. And then I sobered up as I recognized the implications.
“Youth forever . . . as a six-year-old.”
She scowled. “Eight.”
Okay, she was short.
In retrospect, it didn’t surprise me to learn she really wasn’t a child, but an adult in a child’s body. Now that I knew it, I could tell it was true by the inflections in her voice and the phrases she used. If I’d been around kids more, I would have figured it out immediately on my own. My line of work and kids didn’t exactly go hand in hand, though.
“I bet you weren’t expecting what you got,” I said.
“Not at all. Still, there are benefits. No one ever overestimates me.” She glowered. “It’s not possible.”
“How old are you?”
“A few hundred years. You forget after a while. He stumbled across me a long, long time ago.” She met my gaze in the mirror. “I shouldn’t say any more. It’s dangerous for both of us.”
Fair enough. I didn’t need to add to the danger I was already in on a regular basis. Especially not knowing what kind of danger she was talking about.
As it turned out, the address was for a park and not the location where she needed to be delivered. She gave me instructions a bit at a time, and previous information slipped from my mind as I got something new. We pulled up at another dilapidated house—what was with the Shadow Prophet? He obviously didn’t have high standards where living arrangements were concerned.
Knowing I’d probably forget how to get to the house as soon as I left, I casually pressed the morning tattoo and had it memorize the print of her soul. It was the best I could do. Should I ever need to track her in the future, I hoped I’d be able to do so. She seemed the sort of person I might eventually want to talk to.
I’d gotten into the habit of doing that a long time ago. Much like keeping people in my debt, I never knew when I’d need someone’s help in the future, and being able to find them had come in handy multiple times.
Besides, this woman was intriguing. Like Heather, she seemed to know a lot more about the Shadow Prophet than I did. Maybe more so than Heather, since she’d known him for so long.
31
I dropped the car off at the rental agency in American Fork, then waited for an Uber driver to pick me up. While waiting, my protection tattoos alerted me to a presence entering the area around Lizzie’s house.
Knowing I shouldn’t wait to see if she was safe until after the Shadow Prophet had been taken care of, as soon as I got to my apartment, I jumped in my car and rushed over there.
I knocked on her door, but no one answered. I could no longer sense the presence, and I had no idea what was going on. I let myself in, but there wasn’t sign of a struggle.
Not sure what else to do, I stopped by the Russells’ house. Mrs. Russell answered with a smile.
“Abel!”
“Have you seen Lizzie recently?”
“She had to run to the store. Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure. I sensed a supernatural entering the area, but I haven’t caught hint of him or her since. So I don’t know what to think.”
She patted my arm. “We’ll keep an eye open. Why don’t you take a walk around and see if you can find something? We should exchange numbers, just in case.”
I agreed that was a good idea and saved Mr. Russell’s cell phone number in my phone, then sent him a text so he’d have mine. Mrs. Russell didn’t have one of her own—“Those contraptions know too much.”
Still feeling antsy, I stepped out of their house, shoved my hands in my pants pockets, and went back to my car. I didn’t want to leave it in front of Lizzie’s just in case she returned and everything was okay. She probably already thought I was a stalker from watching her house—no need to have her think that even more.
I drove around the block and parked the car near the orange-brick church. Then I got out and started walking.
With the help of my crimson tattoo, I found where the protections had been violated. I started there.
Working with this tattoo was mostly a mental thing, but I still could feel it physically. I could sense the interruption in protection in both ways. I pictured it to be like one strand out of thousands in a spider web that had been broken—sticky, loose, sort of waving in the wind.
I stood there for several moments with my eyes closed, breathing deeply. Once I had a strong hold on the print that had interrupted my protections, I pressed the morning tattoo so I could start tracking.
Blue smoke appeared in front of me. I chewed the side of my tongue when the smoke parted, going both right and left on the street. That hadn’t happened before. More than one entity had entered the protections. Which to follow? I couldn’t tell which was the more dangerous.
Taking a gamble, I decided to follow the one to the right.
The sun was about to set, but it was still bright enough out for me to want to be careful. I tucked my hands back into my pockets and kept my head down, only letting my eyes rove. I hoped I looked casual enough.
The smoke didn’t follow a straight course—it veered left and right in a jagged line, crisscrossing the sidewalk. My stomach clenched when I realized the implications, but I tucked my thoughts aside, hoping I wasn’t right.
The last time I’d seen a single print do that had been on the other planet, not long after I’d been kidnapped and Olivia had given me the morning tattoo. The print belonged to what Lizzie and Nicole had referred to as an Agarch, but which I’d called an Elder Thing. It was tubular, tall, had antennae sprouting from its head, and root-like appendages it used to walk on.
The older the Elder Things got, the more their gait stopped following a straight line.
If an Elder Thing was here, it hadn’t come for Lizzie.
Nausea roiled up in my stomach, burning the back of my throat, but still, I continued. I couldn’t forever ignore my past—I’d have to face it eventually.
The blue smoke thickened the closer I got to my target until the Elder Thing came into view. It had stepped into the middle of a bunch of trees in someone’s very overgrown yard. A regular person wouldn’t even bat an eye. He looked sort of like a palm tree, but I knew exactly what he was. This particular Elder Thing wasn’t one I’d met before. I’d come to recognize the differences between them over the years I’d been enslaved there.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring. I knew he was aware of my presence. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t set up protections around my apartment building. Yes, I’d put them around my unit, but not the complex.
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I should have done that. He’d probably gone there first. And now I’d put Lizzie in danger by leading him here.
The Elder Thing stepped forward and began speaking. “Abel . . . you’ve grown considerably.”
I stiffened when I recognized the voice. It belonged to my previous owner. “No thanks to you.”
How had I not known it was him as soon as I started tracking him? As soon as I saw him, for crying out loud? Now that I knew who it was, it was obvious.
“Yes, well, we only did our best to bring about something you and I both wanted desperately.”
My Restart. The reason he’d treated me so poorly. He’d hoped I’d Restart and become an epic, powerful weapon in his hands. I laughed inwardly. That had backfired on him.
“Regardless of past bitter experiences, I missed you after you . . . left.”
Sure he did.
“And I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Right. He wanted to see if the rumors he’d heard were true. There was no way news of a Silver Restarting wouldn’t spread quickly, crossing dimensions and planets, eventually reaching anyone who cared to know. I’d considered this possibility, but had dismissed it. In the unlikely event that my Restart did happen, I hadn’t planned on surviving it.
I’d hoped I would, but I hadn’t planned on it. And if Lizzie hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have.
“I see the news I heard was correct—you have Restarted.”
He took a step toward me, his root appendages pulling him closer, and I stepped backward. No way was I letting him close. I wouldn’t easily forget what happened when I did.
“You fear me? I come with love, Abel. I come to bring you home. I’ve missed your protections.”
Ah. There. The truth. And the reason I hadn’t recognized him earlier—he’d been attacked a great deal. His body was scarred and deformed now. Despite the obvious pain he’d felt, I wouldn’t ever feel pity for him. He’d murdered and tortured to get his way.
He stepped closer to me, and again, I moved away, keeping at least ten feet between me and his antennae. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but the minute those things touched me, I entered a sort of trance where I obeyed him implicitly. Regardless of how strong or old I’d gotten, I’d never been able to free myself of that trance. It was best not to give him the opportunity.
Shadow Prophet (Midnight Chronicles Book 1) Page 13