by Molly Ringle
“Don’t wish that,” Betty said. “Without the element of surprise on your side, he can too easily win. Just go to plan B. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Krystal cleared her throat. “Yeah, with him out of the way, that should be pretty easy, in fact.”
“We’ll bring the van around front.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Zoe stalked behind Tabitha and Freya through a dodgy neighborhood in downtown Seattle, scowling at how Freya was laughing and trying to decorate Tab’s hair with a piece of tinsel she’d pulled from a cafe table earlier this afternoon. Probably the playfulness was only meant to lift Tab out of her worries, but it was working rather too well. Tab giggled right back and swatted at Freya. And annoyed the living hell out of Zoe.
“Ugh!” Zoe stopped on the sidewalk and used a smack of magic to send a plastic soda bottle clattering into the street.
Her companions stopped too, turning in surprise to stare at her.
“What is this with you two?” Zoe demanded, more bluntly than she’d meant to. “Freya, are you even gay? Or bi? Or what?”
An embarrassed glance shot between Freya and Tab, then Tab sulked and looked down, while Freya put on a placating smile. “We’re all allies, dear,” she said. “Just trying to keep each other happy.”
“You’re messing with her head. Same as you always did. Can’t you see that?”
“No, she isn’t,” Tab insisted. “It’s my fault. I’m still working things out. I mean, look, Dionysos had years to get over her and figure out his life, but I’ve only been doing this for, what, a month?”
“As have I,” Zoe returned.
“You have a purpose!” Tab said. “You have magic. It’s there for you. You know what to do. I don’t know—I don’t know what to do or what to be. What am I supposed to learn from all the ancient shit? I’m good at parties? None of you seem to appreciate that very much nowadays.”
Freya moved between them, holding up a hand on each side as if separating combatants. “All right. It’s complicated. Lots of memories, lots of lives—and to answer your question, I do try to be open to anyone, but in this life, this body, I generally am straight.”
Generally. Didn’t that leave things nice and open. Zoe tore the warm hat off her head and swooped her fingers through her hair. “We’re supposed to be on guard here, and every time, you two are—oh, forget it. Why don’t we split up, and I’ll stalk pointlessly round one part of the city while you two do what you bloody like in another—”
Her mobile rang, interrupting her tirade.
She yanked it out to glower at it, finding “David” as the caller. Adrian. “Yeah?” she answered.
“Come now.” He sounded like he was panting. She heard sirens behind him. “All hell’s broke loose. Sophie’s house, they hit it, it’s burning, her parents are dead. She’s all right, physically, but—come now, all of you.”
The wind knocked itself out of Zoe’s chest. “Dear Goddess. What about Liam?”
“He wasn’t in the house, I’m not sure where he is. I’m combing the area looking for the bastards and I swear this time I will kill them.”
“Ade, be careful. Wait for us, all right? Keep Sophie safe.”
“If this is my way of keeping her safe,” he said, his voice breaking, “then what good am I to her at all?”
“Be careful,” Zoe begged again. “Be safe. We need you. We’ll be right there. I’ll get Niko. I love you, Ade.”
“Cheers.” He sniffled, and hung up.
Her two companions gazed stricken at her. Zoe stared back at them, thinking of Terry and Isabel, that nice couple who’d welcomed her in—Terry, the soul of her beloved grandparent Demeter, who had sacrificed herself for Hekate…
No, Zoe’s irritation with these two women didn’t matter, not at all.
She caught her breath on an inhaled sob. “We have to go,” she squeaked. “Now.”
Sophie staggered to the driveway, trailed by her neighbor Phil. She had to find Liam, stop him from seeing the bodies. She didn’t know yet what had become of Rosie and Pumpkin, but they had probably died too. She had to be the one to tell Liam, not some neighbor or paramedic.
Police and paramedics did stop her on the way, asking urgent questions, looking her over for injuries. She answered automatically, shook her head, refused medical treatment, said she didn’t need any, repeated she had to go find her brother right away. They reluctantly let her pass, after urging her to come back and talk to them as soon as she found him.
Phil stayed behind to tell one of the officers what he had seen. Sophie kept stumbling forward.
At the highway, in the throng of vehicles and concerned onlookers, a skinny young woman with red hair in a ponytail stepped forward. A yellow badge on her dark blue uniform proclaimed her Oregon State Police. She stopped Sophie and held her by the arm. “Sophie, we need your help right away. It’s critical, if we’re going to stop these people.”
Sophie shook her head, repeating her mantra through numb lips. “I need to find my brother.”
“This is about your brother.” The young woman tugged her forward. “This is the only way to save him.”
Fresh, sickening fear pooled into Sophie’s stomach. “Why? What happened?”
The red-haired woman glanced at the fiery chaos, and pulled Sophie farther. “Let’s go where we can talk. Sit in here.”
She led her inside a white van that sat ahead of a police car and an ambulance.
Sophie’s sense of danger, already overloaded, didn’t register until a few seconds late. She followed the woman into the van and sat on the worn sideways-facing bench seat. The door slid shut and locked, shutting out the street and the glow of the fire. Strange paneling surrounded her, wood of some kind. It blocked all the windows and the view of the front seat.
Oregon State Police. This was Washington. And this could not be official police business at all.
In the faint gleam of the dome light, Sophie looked at the wood-paneled wall in dread.
“Oak,” the red-haired woman said. She now aimed a handgun at Sophie. “You know about oak, don’t you?”
Sophie tried to swallow against her raw, dry throat. Yes, she knew. She shut her eyes. “Kill me, then,” she whispered. “Just do it fast.” She’d be with her parents. This would be over. The serenity of the dead sounded far better than the agony of the present.
“I’d like to, traitor.” Scorn twisted the woman’s words. “But unfortunately you’re much more useful as a hostage.”
A jolt of electricity seared through Sophie. All her muscles seized up, tingling in torture. Gasping and convulsing, she slammed to the van’s floor. Probably a stun gun like her own, she thought. Just before losing consciousness, she felt the van begin moving.
Adrian stopped in the middle of combing through the dark field. With Sophie present in his mind throughout his homicidal search, it came as a startling silence when her presence disappeared like a radio being switched off. He was aware of a couple of oak trees around, but in glancing toward them, he reckoned she shouldn’t be on the opposite side of them. She ought to be near the house, safe with the neighbors.
The sudden realization of what Thanatos must have done slammed into him, strangling him with new fear and fury. He sprinted for the driveway, Kiri at his heels. He burst into the glare of the fire and the numerous vehicle lights, not caring if someone identified him and shot a new rocket at him. He grabbed arms and turned people, looking into one startled face after another until he found the neighbor he had left Sophie with. The man was talking to a police officer, but stopped mid-sentence, eyes going wide, when Adrian seized his shoulder.
“Where is she?” Adrian shouted. “Where’d she go?”
The man, already shaken and pale, looked terrified. “She—she was here a minute ago. She went to find her brother. She was talking to a police woman right over there.”
Adrian glanced where the man pointed, in the direction of the street. No Sophie, no sense of her. He ran over and l
ooked up and down the highway in desperation. Several emergency vehicles had pulled over, along with cars belonging to people from town. Other cars and trucks passed on the road, slowing as the drivers gaped at the fire. Total chaos, and he didn’t even know what the attackers looked like this time.
He ran along the line of vehicles. He peered into each one, shouted her name, and asked people if they knew where she was. No one did. He stooped over beside the road, hands on his thighs, head hanging down as despair swept over him. Without being able to track her, he couldn’t help her. He was at their mercy.
He thought suddenly of Liam and lifted his head. But he could still sense Liam—he was near. He looked over to see the tall, thin, black-haired boy, face contorted in a wail, held back at the driveway by a neighbor and a cop. Heart sinking even further, Adrian tottered to him and shouldered between people to thud his hand onto Liam’s back.
Liam turned to stare in near-incomprehension at him, breathing jaggedly through his mouth, his young eyebrows twisted up in agony.
“I’ll find your sister,” Adrian told him, his voice cracked and unsteady.
Liam gave a sort of nod, an upward twitch of his head, then returned to staring in distress at the smoking ruins of his house.
Adrian couldn’t start weeping now. That would do no one any good. He merely staggered down the sidewalk and waited.
It didn’t take long. His mobile rang soon, showing Sophie’s number. Not that it would be her.
He answered with a subdued, “Hello.”
“You’ll come to where Sophie is if you want her to live.” Hearing Quentin’s voice twisted his stomach until he felt like retching. “You see now we’re quite serious,” she added.
He pulled in a breath. “Where?”
“You can sense her when we take her away from the oak, I presume?”
His head drooped in defeat. “Yes. I can’t sense her now.”
“Then when you can, come find her. It should be in twenty minutes or so. You come alone. You don’t fight. If we see anyone else at all—your dog, your friends, the police, some unlucky person who happens to be hiking at night onto the property—we kill her.”
And if I come as you ask, you kill me. He was shaking too much to say it, and in any case it didn’t need to be said. It was understood. “Is she all right?” he managed to ask.
“She’s unconscious.”
Adrian winced, imagining the bastards bashing her on the head with a heavy flashlight. Tears stung his eyes.
“Just come, Adrian.” Quentin sounded almost soothing. “This can all be over.”
“But it won’t really be, will it. You’ll always keep looking for us.” He knew how wretched he sounded, but hardly cared anymore.
“For those like you, yes. But for you, it can finally be over.”
Shows how little you know about reincarnation. But the thought was bleak and didn’t console him in the slightest. “Don’t hurt her anymore,” he said. “I’ll come.”
“Good.” Quentin hung up.
He paced, looking around half-hopelessly, half-murderously for any other attackers, but none approached. The firefighters blasted their hoses, reducing the house to embers and smoldering black ruins. Some neighbor and a friend about Liam’s age crouched on the ground, holding Liam while he huddled sobbing. One of the dogs was found, Rosie, miraculously alive though injured with burns. They brought her to Liam and he lunged to seize her and cradle her against him. Adrian’s vision blurred with tears again, and he turned away.
He sensed his friends arriving: Zoe, Freya, and Tabitha. Niko approached too, though farther off. The three women switched over into the living realm, and ran to him from the field.
Zoe threw her arms around him. He barely responded, and in a second she drew back and looked at him in alarm. “Where is she?” she asked.
He shook his head to indicate he didn’t know.
“This was a diversion?” Zoe turned to stare in horror at the collapsed, smoking house. “This?”
“It was an attempt, I think.” Forming words felt foreign to his tongue. “Since it failed to get me, they’re using their backup plan. Is my guess.”
“They have her?” Zoe’s eyes widened in rage. “They took her?”
Adrian nodded, miserable. “See to Liam. Please.”
“We have to do something about Sophie!”
“Yes,” Adrian said faintly. “I will.”
Tab had come up behind Zoe, and turned her pale face to Adrian after taking in the destruction of the Darrow family house. “Sophie’s gone?”
“I’ll get her back. I promised Liam I would. Help him, please, all of you.”
Tab rushed to Liam and knelt to throw her arms around him. Freya went with her, and soon collected Rosie off his lap, and held and petted her while a paramedic treated the dog’s burns and injured limbs.
Zoe stayed put in front of Adrian, eyes narrowing at him. “What are you planning to do, Ade?”
He swallowed against his sand-dry tongue, and guided Kiri forward by the scruff of her neck until she stood closer to Zoe. “Keep Kiri with you, please. Don’t follow me. None of you.”
“What. Are you planning. To do.”
“Soon I’ll have to go,” he explained in misery. “It’s the only way they won’t kill her.”
“Are you saying they’ll kill you instead? And that you’re going to let them?” Zoe looked dangerous: cold and furious, gray eyes nearly giving off sparks.
“Don’t follow me,” he repeated, an edge in his voice this time.
“Fuck that, Ade! You think I’m going to let you do this?”
“Don’t follow me!” he shouted. “None of you. Do you understand? Do not! Just let it be this way. Look what they’ve done.” He swept his arm toward the house. “Look what I’ve done to her, to all her family, by getting close to her. Keep fighting them if you want. I’m sorry you were dragged into it, I really am. But them hurting her, it needs to stop. She’s better off without me.”
Zoe’s hands curled into fists, and a tangible gust of power from her knocked him back a step. “Stop that right now! Have you learned nothing from history? You do not give yourself to them! It doesn’t work!”
“There’s no other way. If I fight, they kill her. If they see anyone but me, they kill her. Is that what you want?”
Zoe rose higher with an inhaled breath. Her gaze sliced through the crowd. “There has to be a way. We’ll think a moment, we’ll come up with something—”
But at that second they both jumped, because their sense of Sophie returned. She was farther now to the east, out among those dark mountains. Zoe stepped that direction, but Adrian stopped her.
“Only I go,” he said.
“This is incredibly stupid. You know I could pull something off if we got a look at things—”
“But if we messed up at all,” he said, “they’d kill her. You know this time they’d do it. They’d enjoy doing it, to hurt me.”
Their gazes locked. Misery and frustration glimmered in Zoe’s eyes.
“You can’t let them,” she echoed, but the words were weak.
Adrian glanced at the mourning Liam, at Tab and Freya speaking softly to him and to each other. “Tell them I’m sorry. Niko too. I know I’ll see everyone…in the Underworld. But…” Giving up on words, he knelt and hugged Kiri tight, stroking her thick, soft fur. She whimpered, gazing at him with her large brown eyes. After kissing the sleek spot on top of her head, he rose and hugged Zoe.
Zoe clutched him with enough strength to crack bones. “This is not goodbye,” she hissed. “I will figure something out. You aren’t giving yourself to them. Do you understand? I’m letting you go so you can scope out the situation and tell us how to help you. But you aren’t surrendering. Got that?”
Adrian didn’t believe a word of it. But to keep her from following, he nodded as if agreeing. He kissed her on the cheek, turned, and plunged into the spirit world.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Someone
picked Sophie up. Her clothes felt sweaty and damp, and everything in her body tingled and stung. Opening her eyes sent stabs of pain into her skull. From the arms of whoever carried her—it wasn’t Adrian or anyone she knew; she guessed that much—she saw the leaping flames of a fire. Not the fire that had killed her parents and razed her house. A smaller one, in an outdoor fire pit, though still large for a bonfire. Beyond the fire was nothing but blackness. Her vision wouldn’t focus, and it hurt to keep her eyes open, so she shut them and listened, though the dizzy pounding in her head gave the voices a dreamlike aspect.
“He’ll come soon.” The voice rattled Sophie’s nerves, her body reacting even before her mind caught up and recognized the voice as Quentin’s. “Let’s keep it simple. Quick and done.”
“A grenade would’ve been fun,” another female voice grumped. Probably the red-haired woman.
“You got to fire your rocket,” Quentin said. “Don’t sulk. You going to be ready for this?” The question seemed directed at someone else.
“Yes,” said the person holding Sophie—a man with a tentative voice.
“She’s still out?” Quentin asked.
“I think so,” the man said.
“With any luck she’ll be waking up just in time to see her boyfriend burn,” the younger woman said.
Sophie twitched and writhed, panic making it impossible to keep still.
“Whoa.” The man clutched her to keep her from falling.
“Hold her,” the young woman barked. “I got her.”
A few quick steps approached, then another horrible jolt of electricity rocketed through Sophie. She would have screamed, but her vocal cords felt paralyzed. The pain closed around her head and she blacked out again.
Zoe paced the sidewalk like a caged lion, her senses grasping wildly for any hint of what the Fates wanted her to do. But her own agitation warped her judgment, and she doubted every idea that came to her.
When Niko arrived a few minutes after Adrian left, Zoe threw herself at him and clutched his arms. “Adrian’s gone to them! But we can’t follow or they’ll kill her! What do I do? How do I fix it?”