“I instructed your men to take her, so that you would be tempted by her sweetness, her innocence.”
“She is your daughter.”
But Hirokumi shook his head. “I have no use for her. If I had had a son, then my line could have carried on the name of Hirokumi through my holdings in Japan as well as here in the States. The girl is expendable.”
Boo! Hirokumi sucks.
Rollins narrowed his eyes. “I discovered your little spy inside your daughter, Hirokumi. Perhaps too late, as I do not possess the magic to see housed spirits. But my seer would have known of the soul-damned Traveler inside your daughter. Is that why Mitsuri disappeared? So that you could spy on me even as I took the child into my home?”
“It was how I knew of the Wraith you kidnapped. It was how I knew your moves, and what touched the Wraith’s heart, before you did.”
Played. We’d all been played. And Rollins looked as pissed as me about it.
“What makes you think I won’t kill you now, Koba?” Rollins said. “As a Symbiont, I can take another form.”
“No.” Koba smiled. God I hated that smile. “As Symbiont you are bound by rules—the ones in this contract signed with Theodore Rollins’s blood. Since I hold the contract, only I can free you. Yes, you could run then, and be free. But you could never possess a body again—you can hide in them, but you can’t own them. You would never be able to feel, or taste, or smell again unless you are bound.”
I knew from the expression on Rollins’s face Hirokumi was right. Educations galore!
“I like my life,” Rollins said finally. “I like doing what I’m doing. I may not believe in it—in God and the Devil—the way most folks do. But I give people hope. I don’t kill, Hirokumi. Not like you.”
Koba lowered his head. “I had believed you would say such. There is another way for you to leave this body, Symbiont, if you won’t do it willingly.”
That’s when I realized the eyes watching us weren’t all from the oogy realm. They were living. And they were dressed in black pajamas.
And they were carrying Uzis.
I ducked toward Rollins’s limo first and went through the trunk as the bullets started flying and pinging. I held on to Susan in that limo trunk, as hard as I could. Luckily, the limo was bulletproof, but the noise was deafening.
When the noise stopped I listened for a brief second before I sieved my head out.
The cleared area was riddled with bodies, both in black suits as well as black pajamas. Rollins had had his own men in position as well.
I saw Rollins sprawled on the ground against the passenger, right-side tire. His eyes were open, and he wasn’t moving. Tiny and Beckett lay in heaps beside him. I knew Tiny was dead.
Rollins—there was still life.
To my utter surprise, Koba Hirokumi was still alive. He was struggling to stand up, having taken a hit to his left knee and arm. I assumed he had Kevlar on everywhere else. He’d banked on this happening.
Something wispy materialized around Rollins—almost gossamer. And I knew it was the Symbiont. I’d sort of figured it would be like that Garfield cat thing, remembering the picture Rhonda had shown me.
But it was beautiful. Sparkly.
And Koba had his arm out to it. “I offer you my daughter. If you refuse”—he again smiled—“you will be hunted down and destroyed.” I noticed in his hand he held a folded piece of parchment.
A new contract? Or the old?
Oh no you don’t.
Son of a bitch just had a reverend shot and all his men in pajamas as well—and he was still bargaining for the Symbiont’s long life. Wrong. So wrong.
I wanted to shatter the Symbiont then—I wanted to destroy Koba’s hope of longevity. I wanted to hurt him for hurting everyone else he’d touched.
Especially me.
And Daniel.
I knew if I still possessed the strength and ability Trench-Coat had given me as a Wraith, however ill planned, I could wipe the Symbiont from existence. I could destroy it. I knew this.
But Trench-Coat was gone. Destroyed. And I was nothing but an astral image of myself.
I fell to my knees and watched as the Symbiont moved toward the trunk, to me, and to the waiting girl inside. She would die from this—I’d seen it. The death mask.
“There is another way,” the wind whispered again.
The voice was Dark. Spooky. Sexy.
Familiar.
It was my own.
Something brushed against me, to my right side. I turned my head to my left, and saw the faint, washed-away image of Trench-Coat.
He was facing the oncoming Symbiont same as I, and kneeling. He wore his coat, and his boots, his dark shades, and his smirk. I frowned at him. Oh—I was shocked. Scared to death. And smitten. “You—you can’t be here.”
“I’m not. I’m simply a figment of your imagination, Zoë.” Smooth words, rich as chocolate melting in my mouth. I felt heat rise in the right places at the wrong time. No…I would not get all turned on from a memory.
“More than memory, Zoë.” He turned and faced me. I could even see my own ghostly reflection in his shades. “You destroyed me with a Banshee’s curse, a little something I picked up in my long life and somehow gave to you. But I’m more than Symbiont—I am Archer—and I claim you.”
I looked back at the approaching Symbiont. Man that thing is moving slow. Is this normal? I looked around at Hirokumi, then to Rollins. Actually—no one was moving.
What the—
“The Suzerain comes, Zoë. He doesn’t want you to become a Wraith.”
“To become a—but I can’t. When I killed you, I lost it all.”
“Not entirely. It’s still there, Zoë. Just under your skin, lodged deep inside your twisted soul.” He grinned. Straight white teeth.
“With me.”
“You’re in my soul?” Oh no—we ain’t having none of that. “When you destroyed Rai, you took a damned soul, Zoë. That’s a mark that cannot be erased in the Good Book.”
“But he tricked me.” I glanced around at the scene again.
Things were unnaturally still. Quiet. No traffic noises. Not even a cricket (though it was a bit chilly for bugs this time of year).
“So I simply moved inside of you, my love.” He stood and took a step closer to me. I scrambled to my feet and backed away, careful not to sieve back into the limo behind me.
I put up my hand. “Wait. Whoa—you’re inside of me? In my soul?”
He stopped, but he was still grinning at me. And it was a smug grin.
I really hate smug.
“We’re two of a kind, Zoë. Different. Aberrant. We belong together.”
No, no, no, no…I belonged with Daniel. Or at least some facsimile of a normal, breathing, non-Abysmal-planed thing. “You get out of me right now!”
“Only you can release me, Zoë.”
Uh-oh. I heard strings. There were always strings. “What happens to me if I do release you?”
“You will not!”
Yow!
I spun to my right and was aware of Trench-Coat’s own quick movement.
From the shadows came the image of a young man, walking with determination, toward us. He wore a jacket and hood like a rapper, his face shadowed beneath it. His hands were clasped behind his back as he glided closer.
I watched with mounting, fascinated horror. He wasn’t completely there, having no form from the waist down. And he was made of shadows and soot, as if he were a part of them.
He stopped inches from me and lifted his head to look at me as he pulled a masquerade mask from behind his back and held it up in front of the dark maw of his hood.
The mask of a harlequin. The same doll my mom had bought me when I was eight, thinking it would be something I’d like. White face, black diamonds around its eyes, a single bloodred tear and black lips. I’d buried it in the backyard because it frightened me. And I never talked about it again.
No one knew about that damned doll except my moth
er, and me. I took in a quick breath of astral air and stepped back, closer to the image of Trench-Coat.
The black-painted lips on the molded mask turned up in the corners as the black, eyeless sockets seemed to stare right through me. “They take on the image of what scares you the most,” came Steve’s words from a morning breakfast, so long ago.
Power radiated from this thing in waves of überoogy. Phantasm.
“You cannot touch her.” Trench-Coat was quick on the defense there.
The Phantasm’s mask seemed to nod on its own. I leaned to the right, trying to see what was behind the wretched mask. I saw nothing. The molded black lips moved when it spoke, but not quite in sync with the words. “Not yet—but if you continue confusing her, slave, she will become my enemy.” The mask turned on its wooden dowel. That’s when I noticed the hand clutching it was little more than a shadow, and it still held the other hand behind its back. “And I hers.”
Trench-Coat turned to me. “He is afraid of what you’ll become, Zoë Martinique. Of what I’ll become.” He looked back at the Phantasm. “Something he cannot control on any plane of existence.”
“Do not task me, Archer.” The last name he spit out as if tasting something bad. Well, I did remember hearing about these two fighting before, and the Phantasm here had taken Trenchy’s voice. “You have disappointed me since the day you were created.”
“I’m flattered.”
Oh geez. “Look.” I glanced over at the frozen Symbiont, trying to silence my rising gorge at the nearness of the harlequin’s mask. For years I’d trained myself to ignore clowns and masks—but the harlequin face—it haunted my dreams. “I’m really sorry you two can’t get counseling, but there’s a little girl in this limo who is going to die if your Symbiont takes her body. Now, aren’t you upset that that guy over there”—I pointed at Hirokumi—“has the contract you established with him”—I pointed at Rollins’s still-inert form—“and is going to destroy it as long as he”—I pointed back to Hirokumi—“gets the Symbiont for himself? I mean, you need to destroy the Symbiont so you get your soul, right?”
I couldn’t believe I’d just told a bad guy to take a reverend’s soul. Oh I’m so going to a special kind of hereafter.
And I was surprised when the Phantasm only chuckled. “What is an old, worthless soul to me when I can feed on that of a child through my Symbiont? Let him take her, then let him take the fat man.” Again a laugh. “I can have them all.”
I heard something faint, soft. The voice of a child. It came from the trunk of the limo.
Oh God. Susan was awake and beating on the hood.
The Phantasm had started the world moving again. The Symbiont was closer to the trunk now, and in seconds he’d have Susan Hirokumi.
“Zoë.” Trench-Coat turned to me. “Join with me—be the Wraith—be one with me as we did that night in endless lovemaking.”
Abruptly I relived images, sensations, of soft sheets and warm bodies, sensual caresses and ethereal whispers. My God…it hadn’t been a dream. I’d made love to him.
I’d made love to him!
In those missing hours before the morgue, I’d known Trench-Coat in ways I’d only read in Mom’s thick romance novels. EWWWWWWW.
But I’d enjoyed it.
“Doe-da?” came Susan’s voice.
I felt the wind beside me chitter. “Choose. Save the girl”—the trees moved overhead in the starless night—“or let her die. Be the Wraith and destroy the Symbiont.”
“No…” I shook my head. “I thought I’d destroyed you, but now you tell me you’re inside of me. I don’t want that Symbiont inside of me too!”
“It will not!” Trench-Coat said. “You and I were linked the moment I touched your arm.”
I glanced down at my arm. The imprint of his hand was gone. I hadn’t noticed. Was the color of my hair back to normal as well? “Let me touch you again. Free me, and yourself.”
“No!” The Phantasm stepped forward. I stared at the mask in horror. The eyebrows moved into sharp, angry arches, and the black lips turned downward. “You will not. I command you.”
Oh ho ho? I felt my own anger rise again. It never replaced my fear of this thing standing before me with its mask of harlequin rage. If I gave in to my fears at that moment, I’m sure I would have melted on the ground and screamed in terror of the harlequin mask. I’m sure in hindsight, I should have just let them all go at each other and gone straight to my parish priest and gotten Trenchy exorcised out of me.
But I was pissed. And I wasn’t going to let an innocent child die. On the other hand, if I let him touch me again, then I was in a sense letting Tanaka’s killer free.
Which was the right choice?
In the end, I figured there wasn’t one. But I sure as well wasn’t going to let some mask-wearing blank-faced Phantasm feed off of a little girl.
I made my decision and reached out to Trench-Coat. I looked at the Phantasm’s mask and felt the cold rage as it focused on me through the narrowed eyes of the mask. “Eat me.”
In hindsight—probably it wasn’t the brightest move.
But then Trench-Coat touched me. Ice ran through my veins, followed closely by warmth. I could almost hear Mom’s voice, and Rhonda’s, from wherever they were with my body. Could they tell I’d changed again?
I could. I was stronger. I felt light, my soul woven into the very night air, a part of all things, then somehow not at all.
Celldweller’s “Symbiont” played in my head, and I felt myself spiraling into the air. And he was with me.
Trench-Coat.
TC.
Abruptly the tidal wave of power lessened, and I opened my eyes.
The Phantasm was gone. TC stood to the right, and the Symbiont was beside the car.
Oh no you don’t. I reached out with my hand and grabbed the Symbiont’s core. The sparkling lights abruptly vanished, exposing the hellish cat Rhonda had shown me in the book. And it scratched!
Ow!
Littlesonofabitchyoumother—
Only I yelled at it. With that special kind of yell. The one with no real sound to it. The thing started to mutate and stretch, as if being pulled into a million directions. I flung it off of me like a bad bugger.
It exploded on impact against Rollins’s car.
Ew. Ew. Ew.
That’s when I heard Hirokumi scream.
I turned to see TC take the corporate president’s soul into the whirling red circle of his palm.
No!
But he didn’t stop. He did turn and look at me. “I have to have a prize too,” my own voice said back to me.
And I knew I could no longer speak. Not unless I destroyed him again.
He held up a hand. “Uh-uh-uh. You asked for my touch this time, Miss Martinique. You invited me in. We now have a binding contract.”
Our deal. And I knew I’d made a deal with the Devil. Oh wouldn’t Faust be proud!
“It’s worse than that, Zoë.” He smiled at me as he straightened his coat. I glanced at Hirokumi’s soulless, staring body on the dark ground by his limo. “You’ve made a deal with what the Devil fears.”
And he was gone. Only a whisper on the wind. And a voice in my mind. “I’ll be around, my love.”
Bleck.
I learned at that moment as ethereal tears streamed down my face and I opened the trunk to comfort a frightened little girl. There are worse things than losing.
There was always winning.
EPILOGUE
Two Weeks Later
I listened softly to the beeping of the heart monitor in the ICU unit at Northside Hospital as it played an accompaniment to the CD, The Piano. I’d learned it was Daniel’s favorite sound track, and so I played it as much as I could. It was very nice. Soothing.
They expected Daniel to wake up any day now. His leg was mending. His ribs. His patched spleen and even his fractured left pinkie.
But his head? No one knew yet. He’d taken a hard crack to his skull, which had put him in
a coma. So—I’d spent a lot of time here.
And Mom and Rhonda came at noon each day with biscuits, ham, tea, and jelly. I was hoping he’d smell Mom’s buttery cooking and wake up.
Nothing yet.
And so I sat in the spare chair, listening to the nurses and doctors, sort of guessing which doctor they’d page to the ER next. I wanted to think of anything except what I’d done. What I’d become. Of what I’d done to my soul.
I thought of the aftermath instead.
The doctors attributed my muteness to the brain damage. Of course, when was it I received this “brain damage”? Maddox said it was my time without oxygen in the morgue. Those seizures, remember?
And, I had been officially declared a Type II diabetic, which of course Mom said was ridiculous. But, to make her happy, I tested my blood after every meal. I reeeeeeeally hated doing that. Luckily I got one of those little blue things that will test a really small amount of blood.
Go me.
Luckily, Reverend Rollins survived his ordeal. Though the damage done by the bullets in his chest severely limited his appearances around the world, he still delivered the message of God, in a much more subdued fashion.
I still wondered days afterward why TC took Koba’s soul and not Rollins’s. Rollins’s fulfilled the contract. But maybe the old Symbiont had his own sense of justice.
Weird.
Koba Hirokumi’s death was listed as unsolved. Cooper pretty much glossed over the finding of Susan Hirokumi in Rollins’s trunk, and since the girl didn’t remember anything and was now with her mother in Japan, everyone kept quiet.
Tanaka’s murder? Cold-case file for all I know. Captain Cooper, on his frequent visits, really didn’t want to talk to me. He blamed me for Daniel’s condition.
And he was right.
I’d tried that first night with Daniel in the hospital, after the incident across from Perimeter Circle, to revive him, to mend him in some way—but instead I’d felt my new state of being doing what it’d done to Rhonda. I started to feed on his mending soul. The heart monitors had detected a drop in blood pressure, agitation.
And so I’d stayed out of the ICU when OOB. In fact, I hadn’t strayed from my body since then. I was too afraid of what I’d do.
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