“I don’t sense anything,” TC said. He stood in front of the double doors, but he wasn’t making any moves to go in.
He might not have—but I was registering something. And it had the oogy meter of doom pushing into the red. It was that old smell again—something ancient.
In fact—it felt a lot like—“Lex?”
TC turned to me. “Who?”
“She’s the—” But then I thought better of saying anything. Lex had gone through centuries hiding her identity. And since TC had a less-than-stellar opinion of First Borns—Revenants—in general, I decided it wasn’t my place to out her either. It was also apparent I could sense her and TC couldn’t, giving more credit to his story of how the First Borns burying themselves in humans made them difficult to find. “No, it’s nothing.”
“You got something?” He looked back at the door. Why wasn’t he going in? I’d never known TC to hesitate.
“No,” I lied. I wondered if Lex was inside. I assumed that if she was, then, being a Revenant, she could take care of herself around TC, right? I don’t know why I was suddenly nervous about the two of them meeting—maybe it was TC’s original reaction to the thought of Revenants around.
I moved past him to the door. But as I put my hand out in front of me, intending to move through the interior door—a small cry reverberated within my mind. I hurried into the lobby and listened again. The sense that something was here increased as did the sound of someone’s cry.
TC moved beside me, watching. “What do you hear?”
“There’s someone crying for help . . .” I moved slowly through the corridors, listening for the voice, aware that the presence I’d been feeling was getting stronger and stronger. In my head I saw it as a pulsing, moving black mist. It was stationary—staying put. And I was pretty sure it sensed me.
But it wasn’t afraid. Not like me.
Again a voice cried out in my head. A woman’s voice.
I moved into the morgue, past the tables of bodies. The lights were off, but I didn’t notice. Lex’s private room was before me, and I paused only for a second, TC at my side, before I charged in—moving through the door—and stood at the foot of the table where Mialani lay. I was pretty sure I looked scary with my whole Wraithy goodness up and open, but I felt like a male peacock trying to frighten away any adversary in my yard.
The voice crying for help was stronger than before—loud. And full of terror.
I realized within seconds that the voice was Mialani’s.
A man stood beside her—nonthreatening—simply bending over her with his hand on her forehead. And he’d been talking to her, softly, reassuringly. So this is where that old smell was coming from. That sense of old. It was the same sense I got from Lex—the essence of old ghosts and age.
He was medium height—and well built from what I could see. He dressed nice, in an expensive suit. I could smell a soft cologne as he moved though he didn’t look at me. Didn’t even turn. His hair was dark—cut short in back and on the sides. I could see a well-trimmed sideburn against a strong profile.
A familiar profile.
Wait—I’d met this guy before.
Abruptly, he turned his face and looked at me, grinning. “Good evening, Zoë. I told Mialani if she called out to you, you would come. We need your help.”
TC appeared between us, actually hissing like some B-movie vampire. “You! How dare you show your face!”
Oh, get over yourself. I stepped up and moved him out of the way as my wings vanished, and I slowly became myself. Just me. Zoë. I continued moving closer until we were face-to-face.
Yeah. I knew him.
He was an old acquaintance of Rhonda’s—someone I’d met back in August of last year. He’d come to Atlanta asking for Rhonda’s help in finding someone.
I grinned at him. “Jason?”
He smiled back, white glorious straight teeth and a dimple on each cheek. “Hey, Zoë. It’s nice to see you again.”
Everything I’d felt since arriving at the morgue coalesced around him—and I realized Lex wasn’t here. I wasn’t sensing her.
I was sensing . . . “Jason . . . you’re a . . .”
He moved away from Mialani and tilted his head to the side. “A First Born. Revenant.” And then he smiled. “A vampire.”
9
TC rushed at Jason then, his fists out. I really don’t know what the asshole intended on doing to Jason at that moment—basically because TC never carried through with the action. Abruptly, Jason wasn’t there anymore, and TC moved past me and through the wall.
Jason reappeared to my right, standing close. “I hadn’t known you’d be bringing the Archer with you. I see a lot has changed since the last time we met.” He eyed me. “Including you.”
He was referring to our first meeting. Back in August, Rhonda had introduced me to Jason Lawrence and Nick Shay—old friends she called them. Jason’s looks were classic—with an almost European accent to them. Tall, broad-shouldered, chiseled features with short, curly hair. His eyes were brown, much like my own color, and he’d been dressed just as immaculately.
Whereas Jason appeared to be in his early thirties, his friend Nick had the appearance of a twenty-year-old but the air and mannerisms of someone much older. Nick had had more of a swimmer’s build, with long blond hair kept back in a ponytail. Electric green eyes and almost iridescent skin.
The two of them had disappeared with Rhonda, just when I got my job from Maharba to check out a house on old Web Ginn House Road.
I hadn’t seen him since, and because I’d not been Wraith at the time, I hadn’t known about . . . this little twist.
We stared at each other. Me more drawn to the darkness that seemed to surround him, just as it had Lex. But where Lex’s presence felt ominous and foreboding, Jason had a different air. Not quite as . . . old.
“You’ve gone through some changes,” Jason said. He glanced at where TC had vanished. “But I didn’t expect to see you with him. Does Rhonda know?”
I cleared my throat, very much aware he and I were the same height. “Know as in would she report it to the Society?”
His eyes flickered—the only evidence I had that I’d hit a nerve. Booyah. “You know about that?”
“I found out the hard way, Jason.” With a glance back at Mialani, I nodded. “You do that?”
“Me?” He looked back as well. “Drain Mialani? No. But you know I didn’t. The spell is used to destroy us.”
“Revenants.”
“First Born.” He sighed. “Revenant is such a nasty word. But it’s what the Phantasm calls us when we go underground, so to speak. As do his servants.” Jason crossed his arms over his chest, and I noticed his suit—Was that Hugo Boss? No tie, though. He was playing it casual. “And vampire? Well”—he shrugged—“it’s stereotypical. I know in our own history we sort of perpetuated that myth on our own.”
And then I got it in one of my rare moments of brilliance. “Hide in plain sight.”
He grinned. I’d always liked his grin.
“And Nick? Is he a vampire too?”
“Nick is a ghoul.”
I blinked. I knew that.
I looked at Mialani. “Like she was?”
“Yes.”
And then another thought popped up in this really freaky brain of mine. “So . . . do your kind always choose same-sex companions? I mean . . . are you and Lex gay?”
Jason’s laughter carried around the room. Well, I’m glad he had a sense of humor about it. “Oh, Zoë—I have certainly missed your naive honesty.”
My what?
“I could go into detail about the complexities of knowing me for a long period of time, or about the histories of Mialani or Nick. But for the moment—Mialani’s soul is in danger.”
Huh?
Soul?
What?
“Uhm . . . ghouls have souls?”
“Lex told you how we create ghouls, didn’t she? About how the First Borns—or Symbionts, as I’ve learne
d the term—inside of us change our bodies, and our blood becomes in a sense a sort of fountain of youth?”
I pursed my lips, remembering the squishy inconsistent stuff I’d touched when I’d put my hand inside of Mialani’s corpse. “I’m not sure I’d call it a fountain of youth—’cause you’re not really keeping them young. My understanding of it is that drinking your blood kills them.”
He nodded. “Yes. It does. It’s toxic to the human body, but the essence of the Abysmal plane that lives inside of our blood—inside of our bodies—clings to the human soul, anchoring itself as well as the soul in place. And because it lives to preserve, it preserves their bodies as well.”
“So . . .” Wow. My head was spinning. I really needed Rhonda to be there and explain this to me in English. “What you’re saying is like with Mialani.” I moved past Jason to stand by the corpse. “When Lex gave her blood, it finished off what those others had started. It killed her. But the blood itself grabbed hold of her soul and kept it there—and continued to regenerate her body.”
He nodded, his arms still on his chest. “In a sense. But the blood can only accomplish so much before it needs to be replenished.”
“Hanh?” I turned a face to him. “Replenished? You mean that drinking-your-blood thing.”
“Zoë.” Jason lowered his arms and took a few steps toward me. “A ghoul if properly created can live as long as the vampire who created it. A ghoul has to feed regularly from the vampire that created it in order to maintain its aesthetic.” He shrugged. “And its sanity.”
I held up my hand. “That’s where that whole killing spree thing can come in, right?” I said, remembering Lex’s remarks from earlier.
“Yes.” Jason nodded. “It’s a very complicated process—but we can go into it later. Right now, you need to release Mialani’s soul.”
“Her soul?” I looked back at her face. “Is—is she what I’m hearing?”
Before he could answer me, another voice interrupted him, shattering the relative calm in the morgue as TC came barreling out of the wall he’d disappeared through. I’d kinda wondered where he’d gone.
The Symbiont became solid enough to tackle Jason, the two of them flying past me to crash into the back wall and the cabinets and instruments set up there. I shifted into Wraith as I moved to them, but stopped as a deep, cultured voice spoke to me—inside my head.
Please, Zoë. Release Mialani. If you don’t, her soul will remain trapped in that body even as it’s embalmed, then entombed. This can’t be her fate.
I looked around the room, almost in a crouch as I looked from the two on the floor trying to kill each other to the body. “Who—”
My name is Mephistopheles. I am Jason’s—Symbiont. Yes, yes, let’s use that term since it’s familiar to you. And I know you have the power to release her. I beg of you . . . I can hear her suffering.
Jason’s Symbiont sounded like Ian McKellen? What was up with that? And since when did Symbionts care about anything or anybody but themselves?
“Zoë!” Jason called out from where he and TC were on their feet staring at each other. TC’s back was to me, his hands out. He was actually raising his hand where I knew the red light would come. “Listen to Mephistopheles! Release her!”
“Don’t do it!” TC said without looking back at me. “You release that soul, and you’ll be releasing the tainted blood that kept it alive!”
Why did that sound like bullshit?
Because it is, came Mephistopheles’ voice. Release her, Wraith. It is what you do.
Again I heard the cry—the echo of a woman’s frightened voice. I turned to the corpse then and, without thinking, shoved my hand into her.
The burning returned—though not like before. Nothing like before. No.
THIS WAS FREAK’N WORSE!
And it wasn’t just contained at my arm. This pain started spreading upward—into my shoulder, then my chest.
You feel pain because it is the Irin in you—that which is Ethereal cannot bear the contact of the Abysmal.
Okay—I liked the sound of Mephistopheles’ voice—butnotrightnow! “What—what do I do!”
“Stop!” TC screamed, both out loud and inside my head.
Destroy the link between the two—sever the bond.
Okay, I thought, sever the bond. I assumed that was the bond between the Revenant blood and the soul, meaning what was binding her to the body. And if I do that—what happens?
Did it really matter? No—I just wanted to get my fucking hand out of that burning, nasty goo!
I hissed as I reached around inside the body—half-corporeal, half-noncorporeal. A soul—most of the time they resided in the middle, at the solar plexus. But—I wasn’t finding it. And the longer I stayed with my hand in that goo, the faster the pain spread up my arm. I needed to find the soul right away.
Think—think—I told myself.
Blood was the glue.
So—blood was associated with the heart.
Ew.
Can it be hiding there?
With a yell, I moved my hand from the corpse’s middle over to the chest and felt something solid—like finding a chunk of rock in toxic pudding. With tears streaming down my eyes, I grabbed hold of the rock—
My fingers buckled into it as I yanked it up through the butchered skin until I was holding it in my hand—Mialani’s heart.
It was little more than a wad of congealed goo with a solid center. And as I held it I could see her there . . . faintly. An amorphous creature surrounding the burned and bloody thing in my hand. Without any idea what I was doing, I crushed it.
There was a scream—my scream—as my own heart contracted in my chest. It felt as if my rib cage had been turned into a bear trap and was crushing my heart and lungs inside of it. The heart evaporated in my hand until there was nothing left, and I was bent over on the floor—no longer Wraith—but just plain old Zoë.
“Stupid . . . so stupid,” TC was saying. “You don’t fucking get it, do you?”
I wasn’t getting anything at the moment—I was trying too hard to pull air into my crushed lungs. I was gasping for breath as I tried to stand and failed. My knees and legs were rubber, and I was aware of a foul smell.
“Just do it, TC.” Jason’s voice was angry, and very powerful. “You don’t have a choice.”
And then he was beside me, inside me. TC. The Symbiont was a part of me. I could feel his frustration as well as his fear as the pressure on my chest eased. I wasn’t breathing on my own—but with him. And he was filling me with warmth.
I—I couldn’t ever remember TC overshadowing—me.
“I’m not,” he said in my ear, and I realized he was no longer in me but kneeling beside me, and anger radiated off him in waves. “Don’t be so fucking stupid again.”
And he was gone.
I lay back on the cold, dirty tiled floor, staring up at the bright lights above me. That smell—what was that smell? Jason was suddenly hovering over me, his left eye bruised below his cheek. He grabbed my arm and helped me sit up and away quickly as something spattered beside where I’d been.
He pulled me in his arms—hands like ice against my again-human skin. His chest was hard like a wooden board and cold beneath his thin shirt. I wasn’t uncomfortable against him—but was more enjoying a feeling of safety as I stared at the muddy black goo dripping from the table.
We both stood, with Jason still holding on to me as I turned and gasped. Mialani’s body was no longer on that table. Instead, there was a melting pile of viscous, black—well—it looked like something you’d scoop up from the bottom of the Chattahoochie River.
Nasty!
Ew!
“What—”
“Without the soul,” Jason was saying as he led me away from it, “there’s nothing to prevent time from reclaiming what it rightfully possesses.”
And then it hit me—that was Mialani. Or what happens to a body after being denied the process of decay for a hundred or so years. I put my hands over
my face and coughed. Jason moved behind me and steered me out of the room, past the tables of bodies, and out through the lobby door into the night.
The cold air was like a pleasant slap in the face—and I’d much rather smell the pine-scented air of Georgia than the odor of putrid flesh. I coughed a few times as we moved to the curb, and a huge black Cadillac pulled up next to us. Jason moved to my right and opened the door, gesturing for me to get in.
“Where—”
“Back to Nona’s,” he said with a smile, and he put a hand on my arm.
We need to talk, came Mephistopheles’ voice again in my mind. And I can’t think of a better way to get there but in style.
I grinned despite my stomach doing flip-flops. I did not feel good. And I’d never been inside a limousine in my life. Crawling in, I fell into the soft leather seats as Jason piled in behind me. As I looked for the seat belt, I noticed a red mark on my host’s shirt. My eyes grew wide as the black glass between the front and back opened, and another familiar face peeked through.
“Nick!” I heard myself say.
He grinned at me and winked before taking a look at Jason. Two seconds, and the smile faded. “Jason?”
“I’m good.” Jason waved at him. “Just get us over to Nona’s. And call ahead—” He winced as he moved enough for me to get my seat belt fastened. “I’m gonna need a little of Kitten’s magic.”
Nick nodded and turned around, pulling the limo forward and out of the morgue parking lot.
Once we were clear, I turned a sideways look at Jason. He looked a little paler than usual—and Jason normally had a complexion similar to my own. He leaned his head back, pressing his hand to his chest.
“What did TC do?” I heard myself ask. I couldn’t remember what had actually happened once that bastard had charged back in. My attention had been snagged by Mephistopheles’ voice and Mialani’s screams.
“He stabbed me through the heart,” Jason said in a soft voice.
!!!
No worries. I am healing him this very moment. Though . . . having Kitten’s help will be a bonus.
There were a billion questions running through my head at that moment; why did TC attack like that? Why was he so against me setting Mialani free? Why did the Phantasm want the Revenants dead? What was this first war? There was a Phantasm before this one? How long had Jason been a vampire? Was he one back in August when he visited Rhonda?
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