Chaos Bites

by Lori Handeland

“Charmed dagger to the left eye and fast.”

  “You also have to consider what’s best for the world in the long run, not what’s best for any one person right this minute.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “You wanna raise Sawyer.”

  I didn’t bother to lie. Not to Ruthie. “So?”

  “No one comes back the same, Lizbeth.”

  “You sent me to Sani to learn how to raise ghosts.”

  “I sent you to Sani because I was told to send you to Sani.”

  That made me pause. Though Ruthie often behaved as if she were the lead singer in our rock-and-roll end times band, she wasn’t. She took her orders from the biggest voice of all—the one that had serenaded Moses on Mount Sinai. Or at least that’s what she told me.

  And if she wasn’t telling the truth about that . . . well, I was in bigger trouble than I’d ever get out of.

  “There’s a reason—” she began.

  “For everything,” I finished, having heard it before.

  I didn’t much care for being ordered around without an explanation, but I was used to it. No matter how much I disliked operating half blind, the truth remained—I had to have faith. In more ways than one.

  “Sani knew where the book was,” Ruthie said.

  “Why didn’t you know? Why didn’t anyone know what Mait was up to before he was up to it?”

  “The spell of protection cloaked everything.”

  “Then how did Sani know where to find the thing?”

  “Sani isn’t one of us. He’s one of them.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Still . . . “Why would he tell me—” I paused as my brain answered the question before Ruthie could. “Payment.”

  The twists and turns of fate, or God’s will, or prophecy were far too complicated for a mere dumb-ass like me.

  “Perhaps,” Ruthie said.

  “Don’t we need Sawyer?” I asked.

  “Is it need or is it want, child?”

  “He’s . . .” My voice trailed off. I’d been going to say necessary, but instead I said, “Powerful.”

  “So are you.”

  “Two’s better than one,” I repeated.

  “Is it?”

  When she started answering my questions with questions, I always got a headache.

  “You’re telling me I shouldn’t get him back?”

  “Yes,” Ruthie said. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  Since Ruthie’s motto had always been—Do whatever you have to do to win—I was shocked nearly speechless.

  “But—” I began.

  “Jimmy was right to burn the book,” she interrupted. “The temptation is too great.”

  “I’m not a four-year-old with a box of chocolates, Ruthie. I can control myself.”

  “Hmm,” she said, and I saw red.

  I pushed back from the table, and this time my chair did fall over. The thwack of the wood against the tile made me flinch, but I left it where it lay.

  “You think I’ll be tempted to force Mait to raise Sawyer before I stick a dagger in his pretty green eye?”

  Ruthie lifted a brow, which was all it took for me to pick up the chair.

  “Sit,” she ordered again, but I couldn’t. Instead I paced to the window. The kids were now playing basketball on a full cement court, complete with a painted three-point arc, free-throw line, and boundaries.

  “Mait knows better than to give us back one of our most powerful players,” Ruthie said quietly. “You won’t be able to force him to do anything.”

  “Wanna bet?” I murmured.

  “Payment must be made, Lizbeth. Always. You can’t reverse death without consequences. And sometimes those consequences are for the raiser and not the raisee.”

  I spun around. “You think I’m afraid?”

  “No.” Her dark solemn eyes caught and held mine. “I am. You’re the leader of the light. The choices you make aren’t your own. You have to be sure the sacrifice is worth the reward. Weigh the effect of what you do on the future. And if you don’t know what that effect will be . . .” She let out a long, sad breath. “Best not to do anything at all.”

  She was right, and I knew it.

  My eyes burned. I lowered my head, staring at the worn kitchen tile as I blinked several times hard and fast. Deciding to let Sawyer lie was like killing him all over again.

  Ruthie remained silent while I got hold of myself. It never took me very long. I’d been getting hold of myself all my life.

  “You know where I can get a charmed dagger?”

  Ruthie searched my face. She must have been satisfied with what she saw there because she smiled softly. “You’re a sorcerer, charm one yourself.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Learn.” She snapped her fingers, and I woke up in my room.

  The storm had passed, leaving the air smelling cool, fresh, and clean. At least until the sun rose and heated the streets and the overgrowth until they again smelled a little like garbage.

  I glanced at the clock. Middle of the night. I couldn’t exactly call the local charmed dagger shop, even if I knew the number. It was times like these that I really missed Xander Whitelaw. The professor had been able to find out just about anything.

  I stared at the ceiling and suddenly remembered something—really someone—so I scrambled out of bed, tore through my backpack, and found the slip of paper with a cell number.

  Bram answered on the first ring, and he sounded wide-awake. “ ’Lo?”

  “This is Liz.”

  “Liz who?”

  “From the cemetery.” When he didn’t say anything, I continued, “You meet a lot of women named Liz near cemeteries?”

  “You never told me your last name.”

  I wasn’t sharing the name Phoenix when Bram had dreamed of a great, multicolored bird. That would be a good way to gain a very lethal stalker. I had enough things trying to kill me already.

  “Neither did you,” I pointed out.

  “You’re right,” he agreed, but he didn’t tell me his name. “What can I do for you?”

  “Know how to charm a dagger?”

  “You’ve run into a sorcerer who needs killing.”

  He did know his Nephilim. “Can you help me?”

  “What type of sorcerer?”

  “Sosye.”

  “Haitian. Okay. Get a piece of paper. Draw a square. Within the square write what you want to happen. Then use the sharp instrument—”

  “Any sharp instrument?” I asked. “Doesn’t it have to be a dagger?”

  “Anything sharp enough to kill should work. Use it to slice the paper into small pieces as you repeat, ‘I want to be successful in all my undertakings.’ ”

  “Then?”

  “Kill the thing.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You think there should be goat’s blood and moonlit holy water?”

  Since there usually was . . .

  “Seems too simple.”

  “Not if you don’t know what to do, and most charmers won’t tell you. Cuts down on their income.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The usual way.”

  My usual way would be to touch someone and pick his or her mind. If that didn’t work, I’d beat it out of them. Which was probably Bram’s MO, too.

  “One more thing,” Bram said. “Witches, sorcerers, wizards—anything magic—sometimes they don’t die just right.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “What if you stick the sosye and he doesn’t die?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “what if?”

  “It’s a witch,” Bram said. “Burn it.”

  I did what he’d said. Paper. Square. Mait dead written in the middle. I used my silver knife to slice it into teenie-tiny pieces as I said the words out loud: “I want to be successful in all my undertakings.”

  When I lifted the knife after the last slice, a rain-scented wind swirled in and scattered the pieces
everywhere like confetti. For an instant the blade glowed red, but the flare died so fast I couldn’t be sure it had actually happened.

  Three AM. I needed to move. For all I knew, Mait might already be on his way to the cemetery.

  I hid the charmed knife in my un-cool fanny pack. I should really replace that with . . . what? A Coach weapon carrier? A Louis Vuitton dagger sheath. Yeah, that would be so me.

  I walked down Bourbon toward St. Louis Number One. If I was lucky I’d see Mait in one of the strip clubs; then I could follow him somewhere dark and isolated where I would do what needed to be done.

  Of course that scenario was much, much too easy. So easy that I was only half searching for him as I strolled past each open doorway. When I actually saw him I’d taken several steps down the sidewalk before I realized it.

  He was getting a lap dance, all right, and preoccupied enough not to notice me when I ducked in for a closer look then ducked quickly back out. I moved across the street, ordered a virgin margarita in a to-go cup, then pretended to peer in the shop windows while I waited. I’d only taken one sip when my phone rang.

  I glanced at the caller ID. Luther. My heart did a tiny panic dance as I flipped it open. “Hey, kid—”

  “Come quick, Liz.” His voice was choked, either with tears or because someone was choking him. I didn’t like either choice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Faith,” he began, then gasped, either with pain or a sob.

  “Luther!” The fear his last word had brought nearly made it impossible for me to speak at all. “Is—is someone there with you?”

  “Yes.” My hand clenched on the phone, and the plastic crackled. I forced myself to loosen my hold. “Summer,” he finished. “Summer’s here.”

  “No one else? No one . . . bad?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Oh, God. I didn’t realize until someone cursed at me that I’d dropped the margarita all over the sidewalk.

  “Where’s Faith?” I shouted, ignoring the stares I got, even on Bourbon Street.

  “They took her.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “Jimmy,” I managed.

  “He went after her.”

  Ah, hell. The dream. I guess it had been a vision.

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see—”

  “Dammit!” I’d confined my demon beneath the moon, so Ruthie had come back to me, leaving Luther alone. It hadn’t even occurred to me to let the kid know. I was as much to blame for this as anyone.

  I inched into a small space between the bar and a T-shirt shop where I could still watch the front door of the strip club, but I was out of the way. “What the hell happened, Luther?”

  The phone thumped and crackled. “Don’t yell at him!”

  Summer.

  “I wasn’t yelling.” Although now that I had her on the line, I might. “What happened?” I repeated.

  “Not a clue.”

  “You’re a fairy!”

  Now I did shout and earned a few nasty looks and one snarl from a passerby. That had sounded pretty bad.

  “You live in an enchanted castle,” I continued more quietly.

  “Cottage,” she corrected.

  “What-fucking-ever. No one was supposed to be able to get in.”

  “Surprise,” she said. “They did.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “You know, the more you threaten that, the less it scares me?”

  “Not a threat this time, Tinker Bell. A promise.”

  “Spare me your wannabe John Wayne dialogue. We need to find the baby and Jimmy.”

  “You think?”

  “Fuck you,” she said, but there was no heat in her words. She was scared. I could smell it from here, and she hadn’t even seen what I had.

  “Tell me exactly what went on,” I ordered. I figured she’d give me more ‘tude, but she didn’t. Which only proved just how scared she was.

  “Jimmy got a call. He left. I went to check on Faith; she was gone.”

  “Jimmy could have taken her.”

  “And not told us? Why?”

  Why did Sanducci do anything?

  “No sign of a break-in?” I asked. “No hint of a spell?”

  “Nothing,” Summer answered.

  “Strange.”

  “I expect a little more than ‘strange’ from the damned leader of the light.”

  “Damned is right,” I muttered, as an idea began to form.

  “I’ll do anything to get him—I mean them—back,” Summer said.

  Mait strolled out of the strip club toward St. Louis Number One. “So will I,” I whispered, and followed.

  Ruthie had said payment must be made, and I knew that was true. She’d also said that the dead couldn’t be raised without consequences.

  I didn’t care. Two of the four people left on this earth whom I cared about were in trouble, and I could save them. All I had to do was embrace the darkness. Again.

  I’d done it before, wound up a vampire. I wondered what doing it this time would make me.

  Never sleep with a Nephilim.

  “Shut up,” I told Sawyer, though I knew he wasn’t really there. The only way he’d ever be there was if I did whatever I had to do to get him back.

  Summer had accused me of being unable to love enough. Would I choose a fate worse than death, the worst thing I could imagine, pledge eternity in the flames just to save someone I loved? I hadn’t known the answer then, but now I did.

  If I did this I could save them all. Theoretically.

  I swallowed. I could do it. I’d just close my eyes and think of—

  “England,” I whispered as Mait turned onto Toulouse Street.

  I’d been willing to give Sawyer up, had believed I was doing the right thing. However, I wasn’t willing to let his daughter go, or Jimmy, either. That was too much to ask. If I had to sacrifice my body, my mind, my life—so be it.

  Having made the decision, I was suddenly calm. Which gave me a near hyper-focus. Everything around me receded—the music, the lights, the people—except for Mait, who seemed to be shrouded in a silvery gray sheen that set him apart from everyone else.

  I needed to draw him away somewhere quiet and secluded where I could first seduce him, then kill him.

  Yeah, I was one of the good guys.

  After toying with several versions of what to do next—buy a disguise, accost him in a dark alley, lie—I realized the truth. All I had to do was let him catch me. He was a Nephilim. Nature would take its course.

  I didn’t try to be quiet, didn’t really try to hide, and a few blocks from St. Louis Number One I no longer saw Mait ahead of me. As I passed a thin alleyway, a dark hand reached out and yanked me in.

  “What do you think you are doin’?” Mait’s emerald eyes shone despite the lack of light between the buildings.

  “Following you.”

  “And why would that be? You and your friend already took all that I had.”

  Not all, I thought.

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I said. “He was a double-crossing snake.” Since he was, my words rang true.

  Mait tilted his head, and the shadow of the moon cast over his face. He was really quite beautiful. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  Mait’s lips curved. My answering smile froze when he slammed me against the nearest wall hard enough to rattle my teeth and a few more of my brains.

  “Perhaps you were lookin’ for dis?” He held Jimmy’s charmed dagger against my throat. No wonder we hadn’t been able to find it. “You meant to kill me.”

  I met his eyes and didn’t answer. Why lie?

  His teeth flashed. He lifted the flat of the blade and slid it first down my cheek then along the curve of my neck. “Afraid?” he whispered.

  Not of the knife.

  “You made a promise.” The weapon continued its path, over my right breast, down my ribs, my hips, then across my stomach and back up the other side. “One you did not
keep. But we will remedy dat.”

  He stepped in close, his body brushing mine. His remedy poked me in the stomach. I tried to jerk away, and ended up smacking my tailbone against the bricks.

  I hissed in a pained breath, and Mait laughed. “Do you think you might cry? I like it when dey cry.” He leaned over and licked my cheekbone. His breath smelled like Bourbon Street, or maybe that was just bourbon—and rot. “I will have you.”

  Since that was what I’d planned all along, I should have been happier about it. However, I was starting to catch a vibe. Mait liked to force women. He liked to hurt them, to make them cry. I could use that.

  “No,” I said, my voice breaking right on cue. “Let me go.”

  I fought, but my struggles only rubbed us together harder and faster, which was how he began to breathe, and so did I.

  His free hand captured my wrists, drawing them above my head, pressing them against the wall, which only settled our bodies into more perfect alignment. He lowered his head, nuzzling my neck, breathing in as if to memorize my scent forever, then took a fold of my skin into his mouth and worried it between tongue and teeth until pain and pleasure meshed.

  “You will like it,” he whispered. “Dis I promise.”

  I wiggled again, as if trying to slip away. In truth, I was becoming aroused. I didn’t want to, but I needed to. To steal his magic required more than the act, it required fulfillment. To absorb the power, I needed to open myself, accept him, and—

  Hell, basically, I needed to come.

  My breath caught as he slit my shirt down the front. Moist, muggy air swirled against exposed skin. Placing the tip of the knife at the center of my chest, he flicked his wrist and cut my bra in half so that my breasts spilled free.

  Mait muttered something in another language, his gaze captured by the copper-tipped globes. The weapon clattered to the ground; my arms tumbled to my sides as he filled both hands with soft, round flesh.

  He was rough. He no doubt needed to be. He was one of those who had to hurt, perhaps be hurt, but he couldn’t hurt me.

  He teased me—gentle to sharp, tongue to teeth. Grabbing my hand, he pressed it to his erection. I jumped. When had he released his pants so that they pooled at his ankles?

  Locking our fingers together, he curled his palm around mine so that I held the head between my thumb and forefinger, then he slid back and forth, back and forth. From the depth of his moans, he was close to coming.