Just like the last time I’d consumed too many souls for my body to hold, I was glowing and floating, light coursing over my flesh like a Lite Bright on steroids. A voice in my head begged me to act, begged me to use my power against the horde of vampires swarming us like bees. The voice sounded awfully like Sarina, but it was distorted, like an AM radio on the fritz.
Whether it was my friend or not didn’t matter. It mattered that the plea was accurate. With or without a soul, did I not have power over the dead?
I was about to find out.
The burn of power coursed through my veins. The searing ache of too many souls, too much energy under my skin, raced like a molten flash fire just begging to be set free. My only option—unless I wanted to burn myself up—was to let this power loose. But unlike when I just gave it away to the witches near death, I molded it into a weapon.
It bloomed from my fingertips, the blindingly bright light falling from my hands like bolts of untethered energy. The first barb shot from my hands like a missile, hitting an advancing cluster of vampires like a flash fire. The five vampires turned to ash on the spot, their bodies still in motion as they disintegrated.
The smile that flitted across my lips was not a nice one. I probably shouldn’t feel good about people losing their lives, but I fucking well did. Letting my power loose, I whipped another barb of power at a cluster of reanimated corpses tangling with too many vamps to count. The zombies—for lack of a better word—were the only protection Bishop had while he was working his magic. The worry that I’d hurt his magic—or him—flitted around in the back of my mind as I cast my power out, but I shouldn’t have worried. Seeming to have a mind of its own, the burning barbs of light caressed the zombies but full-on flambéed the vamps, turning them to ash in a single instant.
A wailing ghost ran full out toward a throng of vampires, the power in her rage enough to send them flying. As soon as they hit the ground, Bishop’s freshly unbusy zombies attacked, stabbing through chests with their sharp bones or ripping off heads with their rotten hands.
But there were more vamps flowing through the break in the ward—far more than the hundred we’d been expecting—and I had no idea how we were supposed to hold them all off. Or what they were really after.
The second wave had come at last, and we were well and truly fucked.
Well, until it seemed like everything stilled at once. Some vampires in mid-swing, some mid-bite, some midair, the attacking vamps just stopped moving as if they were frozen in carbonite. Which made it really easy to find Smith Fucking Easton as he scrabbled toward the break in the ward.
He wasn’t twirling that stupid blade now, now was he? But he didn’t make it very far. The break in the ward was occupied by a tall brunette witch, with a smile of vengeance on her face.
Shiloh St. James. The buzz of her soul was loud in the frozen silence, along with the call of her coven surrounding us all.
“Late to the party, I see. What? You stop for fucking breakfast on your way here?” I asked her, more than a little grateful at her assistance, but holy fuck was she coming in at the tail end of this shit.
Shiloh spared me a glance long enough to stick her tongue out at me before her gaze relocked on Easton, the malice in it spelling out his end.
My feet hit the ground in a run. She couldn’t kill him yet. I needed answers, and Easton was the only person who could give them to me. Shiloh raised her hand, the electricity of a spell blooming over her fingertips as a grin of pure death stretched her lips wide.
“Wait,” I shouted, praying I reached her before she sealed his fate.
But Shiloh didn’t stop. It was as if she either didn’t hear me or refused to listen. Reaching across the scant space between them, she touched her electrified fingers to Easton’s forehead.
He staggered back as he clutched his blade tighter in his hand. Without so much as a gurgle, he fought with himself as he raised the blade to his own neck. Without much thought on my part, I tackled the man, holding out a faint hope that I got to him in time. The pair of us rolled in the dirt, the blade knocked out of Easton’s hand. He fought me, trying to reach for the knife—either to kill himself or me—but I was stronger.
Hands aglow, I latched onto his wrists, and the smell of smoldering flesh pervaded the air almost instantly. Easton howled in pain, but still fought me, his body squirming for the blade I could see out of the corner of my eye.
“Who sent you?” I growled, the question the only one I wanted answered. I could have asked him why, or what else they had planned, but that wouldn’t tell me the threat.
Easton stopped struggling and looked me dead in the face. Cocking his head in the dirt, he smiled. “X sends his best.”
With a bolt of brilliant purple magic, he called the blade forth, the metal connecting with his hand in less than a blink. The glint of the knife was all I got to see before I was tackled from the side and thrown off Easton in a tangle of limbs.
At first, I couldn’t tell who’d done the tackling. A fleeting glimpse of Bishop’s face was all I got before the pair of us were up again, shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight.
But the fight was all but over.
By the time I got to my feet, Smith Easton was on his, meeting my gaze with a smile as he dragged the blade against his own throat. Before I could stop him, Easton began to crumble to ash, his face abrading away almost instantly as his body turned to dust. As soon as the last embers of Easton’s body hit the ground, the vampires stuck in Shiloh’s spell followed suit.
Mounds of ash blanketed the ground, and though I should have felt relief, I only felt a sense of dread. Yes, this battle was over, but the war was still waging. With Easton’s soul gone, I had nothing to gain. No knowledge to glean.
It was tough to fight a war against an enemy you knew nothing about.
25
I wanted to rage, but everyone around me was cheering as if it was Victory Day. Bishop wrapped me up in a hug, and though I hugged him back, it all felt so hollow. None of this felt like a win to me.
It just felt like another defeat. Another unanswered question. Another dead lead.
Whoever my brother was, he sure as hell knew how to cover his tracks.
As soon as Bishop let me go, Shiloh pulled me into a hug. I couldn’t help but be pissed at the Knoxville coven leader for her part in all this. If she wouldn’t have worked that spell, if she would have just waited a second or two longer, I could have had the information I needed right now.
“We need to talk,” Shiloh murmured in my ear, the gravity in her voice making me take notice.
“Soon,” I replied, nodding as she released me from her embrace. We would be having a conversation one way or the other, and it damn well would be about what happened here today.
It took about half a second for me to start looking for J, and it took even less than that time to actually find him. Wrapped up in Jimmy’s arms, my partner and my favorite elf were in a serious lip-lock that was so hot I felt scandalized from all the way over here.
“About damn time,” I yelled, only to get flipped off by my partner as he just kept right on kissing the Viking dreamboat.
Dubois vampires began to emerge from the cathedral, most of them bloody messes, but the majority of them intact. Ingrid shouldered through the lot of them, her face a wreck of healing gashes, broken bones, and bald patches. Her left arm hung at her side in an awkward angle, while her right was busy holding an unconscious queen onto her shoulder. Ingrid dropped the queen at my feet before hauling back and slapping her right in the face.
The queen sucked in a huge breath, her eyes popping wide as her face bloomed red for a solitary moment before fading to her usual porcelain tone.
“What the hell was that for?” Mags griped, rubbing at her cheek.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ingrid growled before snagging her left arm and yanking it back into place. “Maybe it’s for not leaving the nest when I told you to. Maybe it’s for not using the exit strategy I built ages ag
o to get to high ground. Maybe it’s because you fucking bit off my pinky, you wench.” Ingrid held up her child-size hand to show the regrowing digit. “Now you owe Darby and her whole fucking crew a boon—each—for saving your ass.”
“What about me?” Shiloh asked. “Do I get a boon, too?”
Ingrid growled something under her breath. “No. I called you ages ago, and you just fucking got here. No boon for you.”
“But—”
“I. Said. No.” The tiny enforcer turned to Bishop. “Put those bodies back where they came from, or so help me, I will not be responsible for what I do next.”
Bishop quickly took a step back. Given how disgruntled Ingrid was, he smartly didn’t give her any lip. “On it.”
Black and purple magic swirled in the air once again, the clacking bodies going to their rightful homes before their coffins repaired themselves and digging back under the ground. Hell, even the flower beds and headstones righted as if we’d never even been here.
Ingrid nodded at his good work, her sharp gaze inspecting the cemetery, likely looking for a reason to antagonize him. Coming up empty, she bid her thanks before taking her leave. “I need food and a bed. The young ones got the all-clear and should be back anytime now. They’re in charge of getting all the rest of this shit fixed. You know where the exit is once you’re ready to leave.”
Ingrid and Magdalena bid us goodbye, the two of them hobbling together like a pair of old war buddies off to go get a drink.
“Lass?” Hildy called, and I peeled my gaze from my odd vampire friends to look at him. Appearing a little worse for wear, Hildy was sweating bullets as he kept hold of a group of particularly nasty poltergeists who were actively trying to bite his face off. “A little help here?”
“Please tell me those aren’t what I think they are,” Bishop whispered in my ear, seeing the phantoms for what they were. Regular ghosts weren’t visible to just anyone. Poltergeist, though? Yeah, everyone got that frightening privilege.
“Oh, they are,” Sarina quipped behind us, making the pair of us jump.
Bishop snagged the tiny oracle and yanked her into a hug. “Where the hell have you been? One second you’re taking headshots, and the next you just disappeared.”
“Vision,” Sarina said as she shrugged, like that told us anything. “Had to hide for a little bit so I didn’t get chomped on. Let’s just say, we should clear out the stragglers and make sure this area is secure.”
Bishop grumbled out his displeasure but followed her advice, ushering the milling vampires back inside the cathedral.
With his back turned, Sarina faced me.
“Call your father,” Sarina urged, sending a wave of pure panic through me.
I yanked my phone from my back pocket, amazed I hadn’t made it explode with my Lite Bright routine. She put a hand over my still-glowing fingers.
“Not Killian, the other one. Anymore souls in you, and we’re going to have a problem. Hildy won’t be able to help with these. They’re too old and too vile. They don’t want to leave.”
The spirits held in Hildy’s thrall were dark enough that I didn’t have to consume them to know what they were made of. I couldn’t imagine letting the slimy, oily things touch me, couldn’t fathom how I could possibly stand it and not vomit.
“Good call.” Closing my eyes, I sent out a mental plea for help. Granted, clean up on aisle one, wasn’t exactly asking nicely, but I’d rather not explode in a slew of Darby bits if I could help it.
The flutter of wings had me cracking a single eyelid, peeking through my lashes to see if my call had worked. Azrael’s raven was perched on a nearby tombstone, his head cocked to the side to inspect me.
“Hiya, Pops,” I quipped. “Any chance you want to reap those souls over there. I’d do it, but I’d rather not explode.” I showed the bird my still-glowing hands. “Kinda having an issue here.”
The raven cawed at me before taking flight again. In the same death-defying maneuver he’d performed before our last conversation, he dove for the ground, reforming into the shape of a man.
It didn’t matter that I’d already seen it once, it still made me wince, hoping he didn’t hurt himself. Yes, that made no sense. He was the personification of Death. What was he going to do? Keel over?
Azrael reformed at the last second into the besuited man that spoke to me in the cemetery in Haunted Peak. His chuckle was low and happy, as if he wanted to laugh outright but didn’t want to irritate me.
“Exactly,” he said, answering my thought as he was prone to do. “You have enough power in your hands to blow a hole in the world—not that you have the desire to be that stupid. You rang?”
My gaze snagged on my hands for a single second before flitting to the angry ghosts I had no desire to absorb. This whole situation reminded me of all the times I’d had my dad kill spiders in my room or check for snakes in my tent when we’d been camping—the nasty, vile tasks that befell fathers only on a cosmic level.
Azrael smiled, likely reading the analogy in my brain.
“Umm… help?” I asked stupidly, gesturing to the problem I had no idea how to fix.
“Ah… Hildy creating poltergeists again, is he?” Azrael observed, staring at the angry specters in Hildy’s thrall. Hildy wouldn’t be able to hold them too much longer. “You’d think he would have learned his lesson on that front, considering that’s how he lost his life.” Azrael shook his head. “I guess I’ll let it go since it was for a good cause. Do remind him that he only has so many chances, though, will you?”
Mouth agape, I slowly turned from my father to Hildy. Can’t remember how he died, my ass. No wonder he made shit up all the time, telling tall tales of his tragic demise. He got his ass killed by the very thing he was supposed to command. Wasn’t that a kick in the junk?
Azrael let out another dark chuckle. “Don’t tell him I told you. Hildy’s mighty sensitive about that incident.”
I mimed zipping my lips. No way was I going to drop that bomb on Hildy—not now, anyway. If that’s how he’d gone out, it did make a fuck of a lot of sense why he’d gone so batshit in the aftermath of Greyson attacking me.
“Now you get it,” Azrael murmured, nodding. “As prickly and stubborn and downright secretive as he is, Hildenbrand O’Shea would move heaven and earth for you. Try to keep him close, will you? It would help me sleep at night.”
“You sleep at night?”
“Well…” Azrael trailed off, waggling his hand at me. “Not exactly, but the figure of speech is apropos.”
Without another word, Azrael’s hands began to glow as he locked his gaze on the specters. One by one, each specter was dragged by their feet to my father’s waiting hands. As soon as a ghost was in reach, Azrael latched onto them, burning them up from their toes to their scalp.
It reminded me of the last time I’d seen a ghost die right before my eyes.
Tabitha.
The first ghost was nothing more than black motes in the air as he moved on to the next. The same as the first, Azrael showed me exactly who death mages made their deals with. Death mages asked for Azrael’s help in returning souls. Had to be. Azrael returned my father to me. Azrael helped me.
Tears gathered in my eyes, my heart full of gratitude at what he had done for me.
“You gave him back to me, didn’t you?” I whispered. “Bishop did the spell, but you—you made it happen. You took Tabitha away. It was you.”
Azrael dusted his hands off, a sly smile on his face. I brought a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for “shh.”
“Let me know when you want lessons on how to deal with that,” he said, gesturing at my hands, effectively changing the subject. “It’s not like you can walk down the street glowing, Darby. Evidently, it’s frowned upon.”
Well, I had three guesses where my attitude came from and the first two didn’t count.
“Cliff’s Notes?”
Azrael’s smile was small, but proud. “What does Hildy tell you? See it in yo
ur mind. Where do you want the power to go? In the air? In the earth? Does someone need help? Are there spells to be broken? Think about it. You have given it away before, yes?”
He was right. I had given it away. Closing my eyes, I searched for people in need. Most of the vamps were healed already, but there were a few that could use a boost. Bishop and J and Jimmy all had a few cuts and scrapes that could use some healing. Sarina had a migraine coming on that would knock her on her ass soon. It wouldn’t kill her, but she needed some help. Without question, I gave her relief.
Bit by bit, I gave my power to others, chipping away at it until it could be contained. By the time I opened my eyes, Azrael was gone, a lone feather clinging to my Chucks the only proof he had been here at all.
Well, that and the missing poltergeists.
Bishop threaded an arm around my shoulders. “Meeting with your father again?” he asked, toeing the feather with his boot.
I reached down and snagged it. I couldn’t say why I wanted to save it, exactly. Just that I needed to keep proof of him for some reason.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I guess I did.”
“And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last nine months,” I finished with a flourish, ready for this part of J’s interrogation to be over so I could go get ready. Unlike my kitchen, J’s didn’t have enough food or booze for a talk like this.
J insisted on this explanation before we went back to work next week, and I’d been stalling like a champ. Who wanted to tell a woe-is-me story to their best friend? Definitely not this girl. But J needed answers, and though I didn’t have all of them, I did explain the ones I had.
“Mariana Whatever-her-name-is-now needs to be launched from a canon into the desert where she can die a miserable, slow death.”
“Now you’re getting it. Can I be done now? Don’t you have a date to go on?”
Reminding J of his upcoming date with Jimmy was just the right thing to make him quit talking about me. A smile I hadn’t seen in some time spread over J’s face, and he’d morphed into a giddy schoolboy, complete with dimples and a solid blush.
Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Page 16