“This isn’t paper,” I said softly.
“What is it?” Killian reached over and touched the “paper.” “Shit, is that skin?”
“Yeah, it is.” I turned the folded skin over a couple of times. “Not sure what kind, though.”
“What do you mean?” Dinah asked.
“Human and most abnormal skin, mammals really, have evenly spaced pores, smallish but there, even if you shave all the hair off. This has no pores, almost,” I ran my fingers over it trying to get a sense of it, “like whatever this is from, it would never sweat.”
“Does it matter?” Killian checked over the panels of the plane.
“No, I guess not,” I said, though in the back of my head I wondered if indeed it might matter. What if whatever this was from wanted its skin back?
I opened the “paper.” It had been folded in half twice, giving four squares that easily fit inside the journal.
The words were done in . . . not Latin, as I’d assumed. Demons and Latin just seemed to me to go together like milk and cookies. “I don’t know what language this is.” I brushed my fingers over the words, symbols really. “I think maybe Arabic?”
Killian leaned over for another look. “I don’t think it’s Arabic, but close. Same region would be my guess. We need someone who can decipher this for us.”
He was right. Again. “Then we need a professor of history maybe or languages, or better yet, a linguist.” I folded the paper and stuck it into the hiding place of the journal. We couldn’t read it yet, and I didn’t want to lose what was likely the key to figuring out all this shit.
I tapped my fingers on the journal. “I think we need to get the skin paper looked at again, and fast. Whoever translated it into the coded papers either screwed up or deliberately left shit out.”
“That would mean finding someone who can actually translate it,” Killian said. “Lucky for you, I have someone who might be able to help us. He’s a professor of history, and an abnormal to boot.” He pulled his phone out. “Doesn’t hurt that he owes me a favor or two.” He gave me a wink but I didn’t react. Couldn’t. I’d closed off that side of me and I couldn’t differentiate between shutting down my love for Bear and the growing feelings for Killian. So, they all got jammed away so I felt nothing and could keep moving.
He got up and moved farther into the plane to make the call, his voice a soft murmur.
I stared at the paper, thinking when I wanted nothing more than to be moving, to have my ass in high gear and making shit happen.
“I’m sorry,” Dinah said.
“Don’t be. You were both right.” I circled the pen around the page and the words I’d placed on it, not allowing myself back into my emotions.
She sighed. “Okay. Let’s get this fucking bullet so we can get the kid and be done with all this.”
Killian touched me on the shoulder as he passed by me and headed back out the plane. “The professor can see us right away.”
I stood. “Where is he?”
“Not far from Savannah.”
“Convenient.” I wasn’t sure I liked the ease of the professor being here right when we needed him. Life rarely handed you things you needed that easily without consequences.
I followed Killian, and Abe followed me back to the Humvee. I opened the back door for Abe and he hopped in, good as new. Killian looked back at the dog, frowned but said nothing. For which I was glad. I was tired and frustrated and pissed off. I didn’t need any more questions thrown at me.
Killian drove and I forced my eyes shut, forced my brain to power down. It was a trick Zee had taught me in the very beginning. To push all the emotions away, to shut them off like a light switch and let your mind float in a space of nothing. I could hear his words in my head, a mantra I found myself repeating over and over. I needed it now more than ever before.
Death is nothing. Fear is nothing. The past is nothing. I am nothing. I am death.
With those words rolling through my head, I dozed, jerking awake when the armored vehicle’s engine turned off.
“You can sleep longer if you want, we’re early for the meeting,” Killian said.
“No.” I was groggy, my head heavy with not enough sleep. I wobbled on the first few steps I took out of the Humvee and then I saw where we were. Savannah State University, if the sign on the large pillared white building was correct. I let Abe out and he glued himself to my side without being asked.
“He still teaches,” Killian said, taking the lead. I took note that he had no weapons on him that I could see. My cross-body holster was visible and held two large knives—as were my low-slung hip holsters. Dinah was in the left-hand side for easy access and my now-backup gun was in the right. I looked at Killian. “I’m not giving up my weapons.”
“Didn’t expect you to.” He kept his eyes forward.
Dinah grunted. “At least he knows you’re pissed at him.”
My jaw ticked. I wasn’t really pissed at him, but I wasn’t going to get into it. He was right, we needed that fucking bullet and we needed it fast, as in yesterday. Time was wasting.
He strode ahead of me, up the steps and through the large double doors into the university. There were very few students around and I did a slow circle. “Where are all the kids?”
“It’s Sunday,” Killian said. “No classes.”
The heel of my combat boots clicked softly on the floor of the expansive place as I followed Killian through several large rooms to a smaller doorway on our left. He turned the handle and let himself in, and once more I followed. Abe’s panting came faster and faster. Something about this place was triggering him.
The hallway was narrow and old, the walls made of plaster with just the bare minimum light overhead. I couldn’t blame Abe for his growing anxiety. I didn’t like the tight space either, despite the high ceiling.
“He has a flair for taking his students into the past,” Killian said.
“You were one of those students?” I reached out and touched the wall, feeling the age in the building under my fingertips.
“Yes,” he said. “I was his favorite student, of course.”
I snorted. “Right. Favorite to see leave, I’d wager.”
Killian laughed. “Perhaps.”
The hallways sloped downward and then up again as if we were in some sort of carnival ride. Rather strange seeing as this was a place of learning to have it feel like a place of amusement and fear.
The hallway suddenly opened into a theatre of a room with bench seating sweeping up around us. Like an amphitheater of old, the benches looked to be made of stone and were rough on the edges. We walked out between them to the center of the room where a large wooden desk sat like a throne, and behind it an old man. Abe let out a low growl and I dropped a hand to his back, feeling the hair along his spine stand. Bad signs all around.
Bald except for a few wisps of hair sticking out, the professor had sharp eyes and I felt them on me like the pinpricks of a thousand tiny needles. Testing me.
“Killian, to what do I owe this pleasure?” His Southern accent was soft, cultured. But there was a hard chunk of iron in the old man. I knew it as surely as if I could see it in his spine.
I kept moving forward, drawn to him like a moth to the flame. “We have something for you to translate.”
He nodded his mostly hairless head, and his eyes never left mine. “Well, well, if it isn’t the Phoenix. I wondered when you would find your way to me.”
8
The professor stood slowly behind his large desk and I tensed, my left hand dropping to Dinah’s stock. He didn’t seem to notice, but I was suddenly aware of where we were and what a shit place it would be if the professor turned out to be anything more than Killian’s ex-teacher.
A large semi-underground amphitheater with only one door in and out that ran through a tight-ass tunnel was not the place to be in a gun battle.
“I suppose you think it odd that I know your name,” the professor said as he came around his desk, se
emingly oblivious to my tension or the low growling that rumbled out of Abe. “I shouldn’t be surprised to find you with Killian, here.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, not moving my hand from Dinah.
His eyes, now that he was closer to me, I saw were dark blue. Like the sky right before the sun goes down completely. Twilight eyes.
The professor smiled at me and held out his hand. “Because he is a magnet for trouble.”
I didn’t hold out my hand. “Forgive me, but I don’t shake.”
“Fair enough. Your life has been far from favorable.” He bobbed his head as he turned away from me. “What can I do for you? Killian said you have a paper you need help translating? Or is that a cover for something else again?”
Killian laughed. “No, just a translation, Professor.”
He went back to his desk and I followed him slowly. I pulled the journal out and peeled the cover back, to reveal the pore-less skin paper. I unfolded it and laid it out on the desk as the professor sat.
He reached out and touched the paper, then let out a long, low hiss. “Skin from the back of a demon.” His eyes shot up to mine. “What is this?”
“The deal between a mortal and the devil,” I said. “We need to know what it says as the translation we have is incomplete.” Not the whole truth, but it would do.
The professor sighed and gingerly touched the edges of the skin. “This is written in Acadian.”
“That’s a dead language,” Killian said. The professor nodded but didn’t take his eyes from the symbols.
“It is. Which makes me wonder why it would then be put in code. The number of people able to translate this properly is very small. But it looks familiar to me, let me see . . .” The professor pulled out a piece of actual paper and a tall feather quill which he dipped into an ink well. He began to scratch annotations quickly.
There was no sound except the scratching of that tip on the paper . . . that and a sudden tapping of boots on the hallway that led to us. I spun and went to one knee, Dinah raised. “Do you hear that?”
“That is Martin. Ignore him,” the professor said. The footsteps continued and the space in the hallway fuzzed as if I were looking through dirty glasses. Which I most certainly was not.
“Martin.”
The heavy sarcasm was not lost on the professor and he let out a sigh.
“Martin is a ghost. He keeps me company when the students are not around.”
I didn’t lower Dinah. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
Killian laughed. “Oh, Lass, they are.”
The strange footsteps picked up pace and then a cold blast of air rushed through me, cold enough that I had to clamp my teeth shut to keep them from chattering. I spun to see nothing behind me. No fuzzing of anything. No ghostly figure. Just Killian watching me, and the professor working on the translation. He was fast, I had to give him that.
The professor kept scratching with his pen and paper, muttering under his breath. “Fascinating” was the word I heard most.
I didn’t want to disrupt him with any more questions about Martin. I stood and made my way across the room away from the professor and Killian to the far side and a stack of books. Dinah grumbled something when I put her back into her holster.
“I don’t like this place either,” I said softly.
“That’s not what I said,” she chirped louder. “I said this place gives me the fucking creeps.”
I snorted. This from a gun who held the soul of my dead sister.
“There,” the professor announced. “It’s done.”
Both my eyebrows shot up as I turned back to face him. “You sure you got it right?” That seemed awfully fast for translation of a dead language.
“Well, of course I did. This is the second time I’ve translated this particular piece. Though it was a copy before, it is the same wording on a large chunk of it. And this is different. These two marks here. A double set of stars which mean death and rebirth. Interesting, those.”
I strode to his desk, put both hands on it and leaned over it to stare hard at him. “What do you mean this is the second time?”
He smiled up at me, those twilight eyes sparkling with humor. “Let me be clear. I was only asked to translate the bit about how to kill the signer of the document. So that part I didn’t fuss with as much as it was quicker, but I did put it down for you.”
He pushed the sheet of paper he’d written on across to me. “This is the first part, the deal itself. Go ahead, read it out loud, it won’t hurt us.”
I put a single finger on the paper and tugged it toward me. Abe gave a low whine in the back of his throat and that cold wind wrapped around me again.
“Fuck off, Martin,” I snapped.
A laugh rolled around us and then the cold was gone. The professor nodded at me. “He likes beautiful women with foul mouths. He’ll follow you, I think.”
Great, just what I needed, a fucking ghost stalker. I took a breath and started to read the paper out loud.
“Herein lies the blood contract between Luca Stephan Romano and Bazixal, demon of the eighth realm of Hell.” A chill went through me that had nothing to do with Martin, the frisky ghost. “Fuck.”
“My thoughts, too, Lass,” Killian said. “Keep going.”
I swallowed hard and pressed on. “From this day forward, Luca Stephan Romano will have the world opened to his needs. Power and influence will flow to him like a river to the sea. His body will remain untouched, as though it does not age, no disease will touch him, no weapon kill him.
“For this gift,” I almost gagged on that last word, “Luca Stephan Romano will give up the following. His soul, and the souls of two of his children in the proper manner, handing them over to Bazixal on the midnight hour of the crescent moon in the summer of fifteen years past the date of the signing of this paper. Soulless, Luca Stephan Romano will live for as long as the sun moves through the sky.”
My throat tightened as I did the math. “That’s this year.”
“Shit. And the crescent moon, that’s . . . days away.” Killian breathed the words. “His deadline is coming, and two of his five children are dead.”
“Tommy is going right to him.” I looked up then. “That’s one. And he still has Daniel.”
“Except he thinks Daniel has value. He’ll use him only if he has to,” Killian countered. “He needs you. It’s why he never wanted Mancini to kill you.”
My eyes popped wide. “What?”
“Mancini wanted you dead after you escaped the first time.” Killian shook his head. “We all thought Romano cared for you, that was why he asked Mancini to go easy. But it wasn’t that at all.”
“Fuck,” I whispered. “He doesn’t care about his own soul. And if he has Tommy and chooses not to use Daniel and I’m not there . . . Bear. He’ll use Bear as a replacement for me.”
My mind could barely digest what I was coming to understand about Romano, about the deal and what it meant for me and my son.
The professor leaned back. “May I suggest you continue reading?”
I blinked and looked down at the paper. The remaining words did nothing to dispel the horror crawling through me. I swallowed once and then kept reading.
“If the price is not paid by the appointed hour, then the price will be taken at Bazixal’s discretion. The loss of the power and prestige for Luca Stephan Romano will be the least of his costs on that night.” At the bottom of the paper were two stars, just as the professor had said. I ran my finger over them.
I shook my head. “What could Bazixal take? Romano doesn’t give two shits about any of his children, or women.”
“Unless he’s afraid of Hell,” Killian said. “You said you were there when the deal was signed.”
“Yes.” I bit the one word out, doing all I could not to think of that day for so long.
“Tell us what happened. Maybe there is a clue in there,” Killian prodded.
Abe pressed against me hard and I reached down for him, grabbing hold of
his scruff to help ground me.
“Fuck, I have done everything I can to avoid remembering that day.”
“Time to turn the tables on Romano,” Dinah said. “You got this, Nixi. You’re stronger than all of us.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out slowly, centering myself as I let that one memory come to the front of my mind. Much as I didn’t want to see it, the scene came clear fast, as fast as if it had happened only moments before and not years. I let the images flow though me and out my mouth as I saw them again, as if for the first time.
I followed my father toward the large mansion house on the edge of the New Orleans swamp. The rot and smell of thick mud coated my mouth. But I kept a straight face. This was one of the first times he’d let me come along with him as a bodyguard. That was a step up from straight killer and enforcer thug in my mind.
The door to the mansion was open and he strode through like he owned the place. I kept up easily, sweeping the shadows with my eyes, looking for an ambush. All I got was the cold that crept around me, like an air conditioner that would kick on to combat the heat of the swamp. Only there were no humming electrical lines or equipment. The house was dark except for a few candles lit here and there, flickering with the wind we created as we went by.
“Keep up,” Father barked at me. I didn’t dare roll my eyes, though I wanted to. He thought I wasn’t paying attention, but if he wasn’t going to let me lead I couldn’t do more than trail him. Idiot.
He approached a second set of double doors and he pushed them open. The room behind the doors was lit up with candles and a large fireplace that roared with flames, the crackle so loud, I was shocked we’d not heard it through the closed doors as we’d approached.
Father went to the head of the table and the bottle of wine. He poured himself a glass and loosened his tie, then sat in the big chair, again as if the house was his.
I moved around the room carefully, sweat pouring off me from the combined heat of the summer night and the fireplace that was attempting to spit out the flames as if it had been lit with gasoline.
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