by J. R. Ward
And then it happened. Eddie started to win the battle—what he was pulling on began to give way, first in increments, then with a final, exploding separation that landed the angel on his ass. But there was no time for celebration.
As soon as whatever that black shit was got out of Vin, it was free in the air, a vicious-looking shadow that wafted loose—and immediately came gunning for Marie-Terese. Rippling through the air, it pulled itself together, darkened up like it was gathering strength, and faced off at the woman.
Jim shoved Marie-Terese behind him and forced her up against the wall. Working fast with the crystal gun, he popped the plug on its belly and poured what was inside all over her, until it was dripping off her nose and from the ends of her hair.
He wished he had a bucket of the shit.
Wheeling back around, he braced himself as the shadow hurled itself at them. Impact was not a party, the smoky nonentity registering like a thousand bee stings across his skin. Marie-Terese screamed—
No, it wasn't her. The thing screamed and splintered apart, looking like BB pellets that had been scattered across a floor.
Fucker re-formed, but it didn't take another shot. It boiled for the one window that didn't have salt on its sill and the shattering of glass was a shocker, the sound echoing throughout the house.
At that very same moment, the light in the circle sucked out of the room, and its exit was even louder, a sonic boom that made Jim's eardrums pop and the mirror over the dresser crack into pieces. Eddie was thrown back by the burst of energy and he slammed against the wall just as Vin was revealed on the floor, pale, shaky, covered with sweat.
As he curled over onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest, Marie-Terese broke free of Jim's hold and rushed to him.
“Vin?” She brushed the guy's hair back. “Oh, God, he's freezing cold. Give me the duvet.”
Jim yanked the cover free from the bed and put it in her hands; then he went to check on Eddie, who seemed to be out cold. “You okay there, big man? Eddie?”
The guy jerked to attention and looked around as if he were momentarily lost. To his credit, though, even in his out-of-it state, the crystal dagger was locked in his fist, his knuckles white like the thing was going to have to be pried out of his grip with a pair of pliers.
His expression was not one of triumph.
When he tried to get up, Jim grabbed the guy under the armpits and helped hoist him off the floor and onto the bed. “You're not looking like this went okay.”
Eddie took a couple of deep breaths. “He's clean…and nice move with soaking her.”
“Figured it'd be more effective.” Jim shifted that thick braid over the guy's shoulder and couldn't understand why Eddie seemed so disappointed. “I don't get it. What's the problem?”
Eddie focused on the busted window and shook his head. “This was too easy.”
Shiiiiiiiit.
If this had been a walk in the park, Jim wondered what in the hell a real fight looked like.
Chapter 39
Saul pulled into his driveway in a daze and put the cab in park. In the glow from the garage light, he lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror and tilted his head to the side. With his cut finger, he brushed at the bald spot near his ear and remembered being with the woman in the back of the cab. They'd had sex.
It had been the first time since he'd been to prison ten years ago.
He'd liked it…at least until the end. In the afterglow, as he'd gone lax beneath her, a strange, sickening lethargy had seeped into him, and he'd found himself not so much relaxed as trapped.
That was when she'd taken out the scissors. She'd moved so quickly he couldn't have stopped her even if he'd been alert: Snip of his hair, slice of his skin. Then she'd rubbed his blood in with what she'd taken from his head, dismounted from his hips and disappeared her hands under her skirt.
After that, she'd left him where she'd taken him: in the back of the taxi.
She hadn't even bothered to shut the door, and even though the cold had chilled him, it had been some time before he was able to reach over and pull the thing shut. After he zipped himself up, he gave in to the exhaustion, ignoring the squawking dispatcher and the fact that it wasn't all that bright for him to be so vulnerable downtown even in the middle of the day.
The dream while he'd slept had been horrifying, and in the dim light now, he yanked his head around and double-checked that there was no one in the backseat with him. Except of course there wasn't…he'd locked himself in the car the instant he'd gotten back behind the wheel.
God…the nightmare. In it, he'd been fucked by a decaying monster who was and was not the woman who he'd been with…and in the dream, he'd made some sort of agreement with her. Except he couldn't remember what he'd gotten in return for whatever he'd given.
His beloved…it had something to do with his beloved.
It had been dark by the time two young punks woke him up by opening the front doors of the taxi and rifling through his backpack and his jacket.
Of its own volition, his hand had shot forward and grabbed onto the ponytail of the one by the steering wheel. Snagging hard, he became aware that he was a hundred times stronger than he'd been before he'd slept. Stronger, focused. He felt like…a killing machine.
The kid on the other side of the taxi had taken one look into Saul's face, dropped the wallet in his hand, and disappeared at a dead run.
Saul had snapped the neck of the one with the ponytail by dragging him halfway into the backseat and twisting his head around until there was a crack and a dead body.
He'd left the cooling corpse right on the ground next to where the cab had been parked. And looked up into a security camera.
What luck, though. The red light indicating the thing was on had not been blinking. So there was no record of him or the woman or the two boys.
Not luck, he'd heard a voice tell him. Part of the bargain.
And that was when it had come back to him: He had wanted to be free from prying eyes, to be able to do as he chose without worrying about being caught. No more hiding weapons, covering tracks, disguising himself, sneaking around.
And so it was done.
Getting in on the driver's side, he'd felt both a weight and an elation, and that was when he'd realized the engine had been on since the woman had left him. So why wasn't he dead from carbon monoxide? It was cold and the heater had been on the entire time.
Go home, he'd heard in his head.
As his hands had grasped the steering wheel, he'd instantly had his direction set by a powerful draw in the center of his chest: He needed to go home. Hurry.
That was all he'd known and that was precisely what he did. He'd driven from downtown out toward the suburbs, going as fast as he could—whereas after his other killings he'd been as law-abiding as a preacher's wife.
Yet now, though, in spite of this odd power coursing through him, he felt stuck, an engine not in gear: All he could do was stare straight ahead.
On a dim back shelf of his mind, he was concerned that he wasn't worried about what he'd done for a third time in that alley. He should have left the cab off at dispatch and disappeared. Dreams were all well and good but they were fantasy, not reality. And everyone who murdered people could get caught—
Not you. Not anymore.
Go inside.
The thought struck him with the clarity of a bell rung on a clear dawn. Unlocking the doors, he got out and looked around, still having difficulty understanding the transformation he'd gone through. He was different in his own skin, and as good as it was, he felt like a lottery winner whose ticket had yet to be authenticated. What if this was taken away? What if something came up behind him and…
You don't worry about that. Go inside.
As he got out his house keys, he noticed that there was a truck parked in front of the house next door, and a fancy car in the driveway, but he paid them no attention. He had to go inside.
When he was standing in his front hall, he looked
past the empty living room and into the kitchen that was littered with McDonald's bags and pizza boxes and empty Coke bottles. Now what? He was not hungry or thirsty and he was not tired and he couldn't for the life of him understand why he had to be in the house.
He waited.
Nothing came to him, so as he did every time he got home, he went upstairs.
The second he entered the bedroom, the marble statue of his woman energized him and focused him, and he rushed forward, falling to his knees in front of it. Cupping the perfect marble face, he felt his palms warm the cool stone.
And that was when the bargain came back to him, word for word.
The voice of the woman from the cab echoed through his head: For a small price, you can have exactly what you want. I can tell you what you have to do to get her and keep her. And I protect what is mine. I won't let anything happen to you. Forever.
You can have exactly what you want.
Kill her and she's yours.
“Yes,” he said to the statue. “Yes…my love.”
All he had to do was go over to that house of hers and get inside. He had to find a way to get close enough to Marie-Terese to—
The sound of a window shattering brought his head up. As the glass exploded out of the house next door, it was broken with such force that it pelted Saul's place, pinging off the aluminum siding in ra-ti-ta-ta.
In the aftermath, and with contrasting silent grace, the drapery billowed out of the hole that was left behind as if the pressure inside were greater than outdoors— His beloved was revealed to him.
In the illumination of a ceiling light, Marie-Terese's perfect face was drawn in lines of horror and fear as she looked at where the window had been. Her hair and her clothes were wet and there was no color in her cheeks—which made her look even more like the statue.
As he stared in wonder and joy, he didn't worry about being seen by her. As he was in darkness, he was invisible to her, and to the other two men who were with her.
Interesting…one of them was from that hideous club. He'd been in that hallway beating up the pair of college boys Saul had killed back in the alley.
No time to waste. Go…go…
Saul jumped to his feet, jogged out of the bedroom and down the stairs—all the while marveling at the woman from his cab.
She had power. True power.
It was the work of a moment to dip into the taxi and get the gun from under the driver's seat.
* * *
Marie-Terese wrapped the duvet around Vin and pulled him into her arms. His body was an ice cube, nothing but a static object that threw off cold. And as she rubbed him, trying to get heat into his body, he wasn't helping. He was agitated—twitchy and jerking, almost as if he didn't know where he was or couldn't understand what had happened.
“Shh…I'm right here,” she said to him.
Evidently, the sound of her voice was exactly what he needed to hear, and he calmed down.
“Vin, I want you to lie against me.” As she tugged him, he followed her prompting, easing into her lap and holding on to her. “Shh…you're okay. I'm okay…”
As his face tucked into her side, she couldn't believe what she had seen and yet didn't doubt it had been real. She also got a clear sense that she had been aware of only part of what had actually happened.
Fortunately, Eddie had only acted out the stabbing, that see-through knife stopping with the point directly on Vin's breastbone. But the agony had been real for both men while they had both struggled. And then…well, she didn't know what went down next, really: Eddie reared back as if he'd pulled something out of Vin, and then Marie-Terese felt a sharp, ringing panic that was tied to nothing specific — at least at first.
That changed fast. She'd felt an evil spirit focus on her, and at the moment it did, Jim pushed her behind him and then doused her in a solution that smelled like the sea. As she sputtered, the evil seemed to splinter around her, and that was when the window shattered.
Vin rolled over in her arms and looked into her face. “You…truly okay?”
He could barely get the words out from between his chattering teeth. “I'm fine.”
“You're wet.”
She pushed her damp hair back. “I think it saved me.”
Eddie spoke up from over on the bed, his voice gravel. “It did. Jim made a good call with that.”
The man nodded once, more focused on the rough shape his buddy was in rather than on any kind of compliment. “You sure we don't need to get you anything?” he asked Eddie.
“Adrian's the one we need to worry about. She didn't show and he's not here, and that means…” Problems, Marie-Terese thought.
“Problems,” Jim filled in. “So I'm just going to get a refill of the magic sauce.” As he headed for the bath, Vin let out a groan and tried to sit up.
“Here,” she said, putting her arms around his torso and hefting his upper body off the floor. When he managed to hold himself upright, she yanked the duvet free from under his hip and wrapped it back around him.
He ran his hands through his hair, smoothing it down. “Am I done? Am I…free?”
Eddie got to his feet with a lurch. “Not entirely. Not until we get that diamond back.”
“Can I help with that?”
“No, it's better to have one of us take care of it.”
Vin nodded, and after a moment, he started to stand up. Even though he weighed so much more than she did, she helped him as best she could until he was standing on his own, and then she let him go so he could pace around.
When he went to get dressed, she didn't want to appear like a mother hen, so she headed over to look at the window that had been broken. Staring at the damage, questions pinged around her head and scrambled together. The panes had been splintered completely, leaving nothing but stubs behind on the sashes, and she glanced outside. Down on the ground, there were bits and pieces of glass and wood, but nothing bigger than the size of a pen.
“Stay away from there,” Eddie said, coming over and edging her out of the way with his huge body. “It's not sealed, which means—”
Eddie gasped and went for his own throat, like he'd been grabbed through the hole from behind. As he tipped backward, his head and shoulders started to fall through the opening and Marie-Terese lunged for him—only to get dragged along with him.
“The…knife…” Eddie gasped.
Everything went slow-motion as she called out over her shoulder. Thank God, Jim was already on it, racing in from the hall and going for the crystal knife that had been left on the bed. The instant the weapon got palmed, Eddie went to work, wrenching around and stabbing at something that was outside of the window.
Marie-Terese locked onto one of Eddie's legs as Jim bear-hugged the guy around the waist. While they worked together, Vin went for his gun on the dresser and spun around, pointing it at the tangle. She had faith he wasn't going to shoot unless he—
On the far side of the bedroom, through the open door, she caught sight of a man coming up the stairs. He was mounting them in silence and moving with relentless focus. As he turned his head, their eyes met..
Saul…from the prayer group. What was he doing—
The gun in his hand swung up and then around, pointing at her. “Beloved,” he said with reverence. “Mine now and always.”
The automatic weapon went off.
Vin shouted something, just as Jim threw his body in the way of the bullet: With the grace of an athlete, he sprang up into the air, putting his chest in the path of what was intended for her, his arms spread wide, his torso flat to the shooter so that he offered the greatest possible surface area to protect her.
As the sharp, loud sound echoed, Eddie fell through the window, tumbling from the room. And then a second shot rang out.
Chapter 40
Vin threw off his lethargy the moment it became clear there was trouble over at the window. He'd been halfway into his pants when he heard the scrambling, and his first thought was for Marie-Terese—ex
cept she wasn't the one who appeared to be getting strangled. Jim was quick to respond, though, getting Eddie that crystal knife and then hanging on with every ounce of muscle he had. And Marie-Terese was right there to help, doing what she could to keep the man from being pulled out by God only knew what.
Vin's first thought was to go for the gun he'd left with his clothes and he followed up on it fast. Licking the safety off with his thumb, he leveled the muzzle at the mess of bodies at the window. He had no clue what the hell he could shoot at, so he held steady—
And then the expression on Marie-Terese's face abruptly changed from one of determination to shock as she focused on the doorway.
Someone else was in the house.
Vin pivoted on his bare feet and saw the vision he'd been given in his trance play out: A man with thinning blond hair was turning the corner at the head of the stairs and lifting a gun to point it straight into the bedroom. Yes…this was it. The trigger was going to be pulled and the bullet was going to travel through the air in the blink of an eye…and Marie-Terese was going to be struck.
“No!” Vin screamed as the shot went off.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Jim leap in front of her, the man's body blocking the lead that was meant for her by taking it in the chest, the impact carrying him back and knocking her down.
Vin's instinct was to go to her, but that was not the right move. Wheeling around with his gun, he knew that he had to make sure the intruder didn't get a second shot—it was the only thing he could do to improve the chance of people surviving.
Although he had the cold, deadly suspicion that Jim was down for count permanently.
Holding his weapon steady, Vin stepped into the doorway—and directly into the face of a man who was a good three inches shorter than he was.
It was a question of who pulled their trig first, and surprise worked in Vin's favor—the shooter had naively assumed that there were only three people in the room.
Vin didn't hesitate to squeeze out a round, right into the guy's heart, and the impact kicked the man's aim off and tightened his index finger at the same time. Which meant Vin took a slug in the shoulder.