Donald’s gaze fell, but his eyes remained wide, his brows knit. Disgust and a little bit of horror had taken over his face, and Veruca worried for a moment that she might have made a mistake. He’d worked with other fae spawn, and even with some fairies for a while before she’d recruited him to work at her Seattle property as the head of security. Familiarity with part of what the inhuman side of the world was capable of didn’t equal comfort, however.
“Wow,” he said finally, looking up to meet her eyes as his expression relaxed. “What do you see when you read a soul?”
“It depends on the soul, on the complexity. Humans and fae have proper names, identifiers that let me see what and who they are. Less complex creatures like insects have only life. The in-betweens have their own world. It’s why I don’t eat animals. They may not know each other by Jim or Jane, but they have their own names and identities. Some have both, if they’ve been around people long enough.”
“You met many chickens named Lucy?”
Veruca chuckled. “A few. If they were loved enough. Love is powerful. It leaves its impression. You know the Guzmans?”
“I think so. Older couple, here every few months?”
“Yeah. They’ve been together long enough that their names aren’t just what their parents gave them anymore, not just Raquel and Arturo. They’re Viejo y Vieja, as well.”
Donald laughed, his face showing he wasn’t sure he believed her. “Isn’t that just ‘old man’ and ‘old lady’?”
“Yes! It’s what they call each other, pet names. Those have become part of their identity because they were given with love.”
“Wow.” Donald chuckled, sighed, and then started laughing again, harder this time. “I wonder if you’d see my kid brother and think his name was Stupid. It’s what I called him most of his life. Out of love of course.”
Veruca laughed as well, enjoying the mental image of a young Donald in the throes of sibling rivalry.
“It’s very possible, though it may have faded if it’s a nickname no one uses anymore. Names aren’t entirely constant, depending on the circumstances.”
“I still call him Stupid pretty regularly. Mama doesn’t approve, but she calls me by any one of my brothers’ or sisters’ names so she ain’t to be trusted.”
They went quiet for a minute, thinking about family ties bringing Veruca back to the problem at hand. Finally she sighed, leaning forward to look at her nearly bare sheet of paper again.
“We still don’t know why the necromancer wanted Amanda.”
“Food should be here in a few minutes,” Donald said softly, the easy mood from just seconds before fading as the weight of the situation hit them both again. “We’ll probably think better after we’ve eaten. “
“Let’s hope so.”
Chapter Twelve
“Why is it dark?” Finn demanded as he and Alex passed through the heavy door, leaving behind the hot doorman and his apparent disinterest in Finn’s stunning panstlessness. “It was, like, ten in the morning twenty minutes ago!”
“We were in there at least forty-five minutes, but time doesn’t move the same in Fairy. Hold on, I’ve gotta check my messages. Your girlfriend’s probably—”
“In where? In Fairy? Did you say in Fairy? I’m freezing!” Finn said, barely able to control the pitch of his voice as he went on. His body was in more pain than he could remember it ever being before, all the adrenaline having faded from his bloodstream. The headache he’d thought of as bad before was creeping toward monumental. He was pretty sure he might just start vomiting from the pain any moment. He worried that if he stopped complaining all that would come through his lips would be the snacks he’d had that morning.
“I’ve got no pants on, my head is killing me, and you said Fairy? We were in Fairy? What does that even—”
“Shush, pretty boy.” Alex pressed her hand over his still moving lips, turning her head away as if it would help her hear the words coming through her phone. “Veruca’s not happy we disappeared, but I sent her a text when we left the hotel. I don’t know what else she expects me to do. And it’s your own fault for not wearing pants. I’ve got a change of clothes in the car. You can put on something of mine.”
“I might throw up,” Finn said, feeling his body hunch around itself. He needed to get to Constance before long, but talking to Veruca felt at least slightly more important than getting any possible brain trauma addressed, so he followed Alex as she started back toward the car.
“Don’t be a bigot,” Alex said. “Wearing women’s clothes isn’t that bad.”
“What?” Finn asked, grunting as she hooked her arm into his and pulled him along faster.
“Never mind. I’ve got sweatpants in any case.”
“What?” Finn demanded again, wishing his head would stop pounding. He could practically see the blood pulsing through his eyeballs.
Instead of answering him, Alex just opened the passenger door and shoved him toward it.
****
“The prodigal boyfriend returns,” Alex said as Veruca opened the hotel room door and found Finn propped up against the wall outside. He was damp, bruised, and bandaged, looking like he’d caught the plague and then been forced to go a round with Sugar Ray Robinson.
“Oh, my god!” Veruca cried, waving her hand back at Donald as she shot forward to catch Finn before he could slide down the wall onto his face. “Call Constance, tell her to get here immediately.”
“What—Oh, Jesus.” Getting to Finn as Veruca propped him up, Donald swept him off his feet like he weighed nothing and carried him toward the couch. “What the hell did you to do to him?”
“He took his pants off himself. Then he wouldn’t accept the pair I offered him,” Alex said, shutting the door but staying close to it. “He went in the ring with a lamia. Put on a good show, but he did get his ass handed to him. If he was Daffy Duck, his beak would be on backward.”
Veruca threw a glare her way, already pressing her phone to her ear and hoping Constance was free and able to get to the hotel immediately. The phone rang until the voice mail kicked in, and Veruca left a terse request for help. If her healer friend couldn’t get to Finn soon, she was going to have to give in and take him to a hospital, which she worried could be dangerous.
It wouldn’t do having Finn in a place with a supply of corpses while an unscrupulous necromancer was trying to get him. It hit her what Alex had said as she hung up, and Veruca spun around, leaving Donald to check Finn.
“Did you just say lamia? You got attacked by a lamia?”
“I didn’t, I’m fine.” She gestured lavishly to her own unmarred body. “He did us all a favor, though, and got the name of our necromancer. We weren’t getting anywhere watching video footage aside beer-guts and Coke-bottle glasses, so I figured I’d speed things up some.”
Veruca shook her head, lost for an explanation. Alex dug into the back pocket of her tight jeans and tossed what she pulled out toward Veruca. It landed on the coffee table, but Veruca grabbed it and turned it over once in her hand. It appeared to be nothing more than a poker chip with a symbol she didn’t recognize on one side.
“We’re lucky knowledge was up for grabs. It isn’t usually and sometimes you’re just screwed.”
“What the hell is this?”
“The name—well, the voucher for the name. Once I had the voucher, I had to go through the rigamarole of actually explaining to the marquess what I wanted, phrasing it in a way that she couldn’t wiggle out of it, and verifying that her version of the truth was the same as mine. I may have done more than Finn in the end, but that’s what you pay me for.”
Before Veruca could demand more explanation, Donald stepped into view, closing in on Alex as if he might open up the door and toss her out like week-old garbage.
“You made Finn fight in the Coliseum? Are you completely crazy?”
“I wouldn’t say completely, but—”
Finn piped up suddenly, mumbling nonsense at the same time that Donal
d moved forward another step. Alex shifted her body weight, weaved, and handily managed to pin a man nearly twice her size facedown on the expensive carpet.
“Watch it,” Alex said, her knee pressed against the back of Donald’s head, the muscles in her forearms tense from keeping his hand up behind him in a hold that Veruca recognized but had yet to master without breaking someone’s wrist. “It’s like Shakespeare said.”
Donald mumbled what he could into the carpet, the door opened behind Alex, and everyone turned to stare at a posse of bloody bellmen making their way into the room as if they owned the place. Though Veruca couldn’t understand what Donald asked as Alex let up slightly on her grip, she figured it was something along the lines of, “What the fuck?”
She didn’t get the chance to echo the sentiment, as the third bellman from the back of the group lifted a gun and shot Veruca right in the shoulder.
****
Finn had no idea what was going on except that he’d made it to the hotel. He couldn’t remember arriving, barely remembered Veruca carrying him to the couch. She’d seemed a lot taller and stronger and darker in the moment, but he could probably blame head trauma—and now he was seeing quadruple of the nice bellhop who’d let himself into the room.
Finn blinked and the scene around him changed drastically. One moment there were five bellhops, the next there seemed to be ten. Another blink left several of the bellhops on the ground, and still the next brought one right up next to Finn’s face. It was the nice bellhop again, a kid named Jimmy, and Finn liked him. He worked the late shift a lot and usually slipped Finn a few extra packets of crackers when he ordered soup. Jimmy looked as bad as Finn, come to think of it. Usually he was a well-kept dude, with a beard in the bushy style that had taken over the Pacific Northwest, and hair slicked back in a noticeable contrast to the wildness of his facial hair. He liked death metal and smoking weed and had offered Finn no less than three tasty edibles that Veruca had pretended not to notice he’d ingested.
Jimmy had a nice ass too, Finn thought when he opened his bleary eyes again. Why he was hanging over Jimmy’s shoulder staring down at said buttocks while being carried past a bleeding Veruca, a stumbling Donald, and a captive Alex, he couldn’t say. He didn’t think people should expect him to figure anything out on his own, not now. Not with his head the size of a hot air balloon and feeling as heavy and dense as a Costco pack of bowling balls.
How was he expected to be responsible after he’d been dropped on his head by a giant snake with tits and no eyeballs? He was barely responsible on a good day.
Finn giggled, the sound coming out more grunts and sighs than actual laughs and somewhere at the tail end of his amusement he realized something was very, very wrong.
“Ah, shite.”
****
For the second time in a matter of months, Veruca had been shot, which she found to be extremely frustrating.
The bullet hadn’t knocked her over on its own, but the pain had certainly landed her on her ass. Chaos rioted around her, the room she so often thought of as home having been filled with bodies and fighting and more gunshots that she could just barely manage to hope missed Finn and Donald.
Alex seemed to be doing well enough, firing a gun of her own and leaving blood and brain matter spattered around expensive furniture and soothing wall-coverings.
Veruca knew she was bleeding badly, could barely see past the pain, even as she tried to look up to make sure Finn was okay. Constance was probably on her way, hopefully booking it as fast as she could, excited to get her hands on Finn’s shapely ass, if not just to heal him. She was one of the most talented healers Veruca had ever met, and an amazing woman independent of her gifts. If she could just get to Finn before long, any damage done would be fixed and then Veruca could get her own wound looked at.
Realizing she’d lost time hunching around the burning wetness bleeding out of her shoulder, Veruca moaned and forced her eyes open, shifting her half-dead body slightly sideways so she could get a glimpse at Finn on the couch.
Only he wasn’t on the couch. He wasn’t anywhere that her overloaded brain could find. The room was clearing out as well, the bellhops she somehow hadn’t sensed disappearing—even as Alex triumphed over the one pinning her down by pressing a gun under its head and blowing the top of its skull up onto the ceiling. Donald couldn’t be found, but before Veruca could force herself to get to her feet and help, or at least contact the rest of the security team for help, the pain sucked at her, pulling her under as if she were drowning.
****
What a nice car, Finn thought as he came to again. He was bouncing around in the back of a plush limousine, a seat belt strap digging into his shoulder as a familiar voice muttered orders at someone he couldn’t see. It was dark, and other than the thin strip of navy light that ran round the roof of the limo, there were only shadows in his vision.
He was hurt, and the way the limo was being driven wasn’t helping. Squishy, velour seats were still hell on bruised bones if velocity and other science-y things were causing him to be flopped about with every reckless turn.
“Veruca,” Finn mumbled before sucking his own tongue and licking his dry lips. His mouth felt swollen and arid, and trying to moisten it only made his jaw hurt. Croaking again, Finn held a hand out toward the voice still mumbling orders toward the driver. “Slow down, will you? Everything hurts. Kiss it better, won’t you, my love?”
“Of course, Finny. We’ll be home soon. I’ll take good care of you.”
That didn’t sound like Veruca, Finn thought, still trying to get his parched mouth to moisten his stiff tongue. When a cold hand slipped into his and started to squeeze, Finn felt his heart skip a beat.
****
“Come on. Wake up.”
Veruca opened her eyes but it took her a few seconds to realize exactly what she was seeing above her. Internally, her senses were coming to, telling her Constance was there, the golden thread of her soul curled inside Veruca’s chest as if it belonged there. As Veruca’s brain started to work a little harder, she felt a sliver of Donald’s soul slide in, make a quick pass around her heart, and flee back into his chest to join the patchwork that was the rest of his soul.
“She’s awake!” Donald announced.
“What’s happened?” Veruca asked, taking stock of her body.
“She lives,” Constance said, brushing Veruca’s hair back gently, more out of affection than actual worry for Veruca’s appearance. As she did, the thread of her soul loosened, called back into her own chest. Without meaning to, Veruca grabbed for it, sending her own power after the shiny snip of life, wanting to hold onto it, to weave it into her own soul and keep it forever. Taking a shaky breath, she forced herself to let go, to be content on her own.
“What’s going on?” Veruca reiterated, tucking her elbows under her to prop herself up. Alex closed in, hunching down next to Veruca to look her over with a small smile on her face.
“Zombies showed up, your room is fucked, and Finn’s missing. You look pretty good, though. Nice work, doc.” Patting Constance on the shoulder, Alex stood up, tucked her hands up onto her hips and gave the room a quick look. “I’m going to assume you’ll want my contract extended.”
Despite knowing she was healed, that Connie hadn’t missed a beat, Veruca felt herself going cold. It wasn’t blood loss, but if she didn’t work fast it might grow to hurt just as much as being sliced open and bled dry.
“Did you say Finn is missing?”
“Which is why I figure you still want my help.”
Something inside Veruca was clawing at her organs, threatening to rip her apart at the core in order to get out and go straight for Alex’s face. When Donald reached down to press a hand to her wrist, his skin felt cool compared to her rage. She gripped his empathy before it could slide inside her, yanking at it hard enough that it called to the rest of his soul and threatened to unravel it from around his heart.
“Finn is missing?”
“Yea�
��” Donald coughed, wincing as Veruca pulled at his life force, confusion edging around the pain in his expression. “God. What’s happening?”
Realizing she was in very real danger of pulling Donald’s soul from his body and weaving it through her own like she’d done to so many contracted souls in the past, Veruca gasped, shaking herself off and jumping to her feet. Her mind was fuzzy, still expecting she should feel the pain of a bullet tearing through her, fear and anger over losing Finn only making her stupid. She needed some control, coherence. She needed to think rather than react.
Throwing off Donald’s power, she crossed the room, refusing to register that she had to step around corpses in order to make it.
“Jesus. What’s happened? Why—how—Jesus.” Shaking her head, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to just focus on discipline.
Growing up with her powers had been tough. The world was packed with souls. Even being alone wasn’t without its intrusions. Insects, rodents, low-flying birds, every one of them could poke into her consciousness, buzzing with vitality, with information. As she’d grown, after Belial had pulled her out of Venezuela and brought her family to the states to start anew with only the best of everything, her powers had grown with her. Instead of feeling a low, fuzzy contentment from examining the lives of those around her, Veruca had started to feel more.
Names, powers, races—everything inherent within a soul spoke to her, called to her as if she was supposed to reach in and pull it from the core of another being and make it part of herself.
Belial had taught her what she was, explaining the power a Reaper had and how it worked. Every soul was power, life, knowledge. Every soul was tied to the living creature in which it resided, and those who chose to could give permission for that power to be taken. Different actions equaled permission in some form or another, but there had to be intent. There had been no intent from Donald, despite his empathy having permission inherent in it. His soul was wild on its own, spreading like crumbs into those around him and feeding their emotions back to him. But permission to hold one small bit of his soul inside her while she was in proximity wasn’t permission to rip out the whole thing.
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