I crossed the road, dodging traffic, before I spoke again. “I didn’t want you to worry. You deserved to find your daughter too, Bea.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice softer than ever. Beatrice had been her name before, when she’d been . . . alive? I wasn’t even sure how to say it. Before her soul had been placed into the gun.
Diego cleared his throat. “So you two really were sisters?”
“Half,” Dinah said. “Same asshole father.”
I strode down the sidewalk, and the people who caught sight of my face under the brim of my cap scooted to put additional distance between us. A cop car rolled past me, the cop on my side gave me a quick eyeball and then looked away.
Twenty minutes passed and I was closing in on the building, making my plans as to just how I was going to do this thing. It all depended on whether or not the fallen was where I thought he would be.
“Diego, get ready with a sedative round,” I said as I took one last corner and the iconic building came fully into view.
I didn’t slow my steps as I went through the large double doors. I dutifully paid for my ticket, said that Ruby was a support dog which, while I got the side eye, they didn’t argue overly much, and went to the elevator where I stood next to a group of tourists also waiting for their ride up into the clouds. Dinah snickered. “Goody two shoes.”
The man closest to me turned and shot me a look and did a double take of Ruby standing quietly next to me. She showed him her teeth, just a quick flash of white not even followed up by a growl.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” His accent was thick, German by the sound of it. I locked my eyes on his, pinning him with a stare that had him swallowing hard and scuttling backward, muttering under his breath.
When the doors to the elevator opened, I stepped in first, turned and faced the tourists. Ruby let out a low rumble. “Room for one.”
The German man bobbed his head and put his hand on one of the women with him, holding her back. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
I tipped my head ever so slightly to him as the doors closed. The music in the elevator was soft and meant to be soothing as the ornate box chugged its way to the top. Ruby lay at my feet and put her head on her paws, for all the world looking like she was going to take a nap.
“You really think you’ll find one of the fallen here?” Diego asked. “I mean, how can you know?”
“Because,” I said, not really wanting to give my secrets away to him.
“Oh, just tell him,” Dinah said. “I want him to stay so I have someone to talk to.”
She didn’t wrap that up with “in case we get stuffed into a box again.” Which was what I’d done with my guns when I’d left the life of an assassin so many years ago.
“That won’t happen again, Dinah. I will never put my guns down,” I said.
She shivered. “Good. Now, tell him how you know the fallen will be here. He’s too dumb to realize that you’ve done this a time or two.”
I checked the elevator; we were about halfway up. “Where would you go if you were the fallen, cast out of heaven for some reason? When you hunt, you have to put yourself into the shoes of your prey. This is where I would go, if it were me,” I said.
The elevator binged and the doors slid open. I stepped out and snapped my fingers so Ruby stuck close. Not that I was terribly worried. She didn’t seem inclined to leave my side. I made my way past the tourist shop full of tchotchkes and T-shirts emblazoned with NY and Empire State Building. I moved to the outer balcony that was caged in to keep people from jumping off.
A blast of hot air slid around me as I left the cool interior of the building. I went to the edge of the balcony and wrapped my fingers around the metal grating as I stared out over the city I knew inside and out. I dropped my hand to the top of Ruby’s head, centering myself.
Here, this had been my hunting grounds for so many years, and there were very few parts of it I hadn’t been in, that I hadn’t killed in.
I stilled my body and waited, breathing in the summer air that was a mixture of heat and smog. My mind wandered and I found myself sliding into the meditation that had allowed me to mentally escape the facility. No longer cutting myself off from my real self, the world beyond the one I could touch opened and I saw Bear. He stared at me, his face a little more healed, but his eyes wary.
“Look for Anita. I sent her,” I said. “Be safe, keep your sister safe.”
His eyes widened and he nodded and then was gone. Why the wide eyes though? Because I knew? Or had something more happened?
My hands began to cramp as I stood there and the time slid by. The day passed and the tourists began to thin as the closing hours approached. I made myself move, stepping away from the view and making my way around the circular balcony as the employees did a pass looking for stray tourists.
It was not difficult to avoid them seeing as they were too busy flirting with one another to notice they were being outpaced by me and Ruby, and they quickly went back inside, grabbing at each other as they went.
Idiots.
“What about the cameras?” Dinah asked, snapping me back to the moment.
I moved to stand right under a camera and settled my back against the stone wall, and the dog again lay at my feet, her one good eye closed, totally relaxed. “Happy?” I asked Dinah.
“Better. I mean, you’re all about going undetected and here you are right in front of the cameras like a diva,” she bitched at me, and I smiled.
“Thanks. I was watching those two getting cozy. Love is a dangerous game, one that too many people lose at. It boggles the mind that anyone plays it anymore,” I said, thinking about Killian. I’d taken a chance on love twice. Once with Bear’s father, and he turned out to be the biggest liar of them all; I’d had to kill him to keep not only myself but our son safe. Killian had . . . he’d shown me what it was to have a real partner, one who stood by you. I touched my head, my memories of the night I’d given birth raw and unsteady. I wanted to believe that he had let me go because he’d thought me dead. And not because he’d made a deal that they’d take me and he’d be free. Even that I could be okay with if it was for my children.
My heart still clenched, though, and I hated the emotion. Emotions would get one killed faster than anything else and I drove them all down deep.
A boom of thunder in the distance turned my head. Storm clouds thick and gray rolled toward us with an unnatural speed, darkening the already dimming light of the evening.
“Here we go,” I said.
I didn’t move so much as a muscle twitch as the rolling clouds settled around the top of the building, slowed and then parted. A figure dropped out of the clouds and landed in a crouch at the corner across from me. I stared, trying to piece together what I was seeing.
She stood, but that wasn’t quite right. Her back was stooped and her body was rail thin. Wings that looked tattered and bruised were tucked in tightly to her body and seemed too small to support her slight weight. Brilliantly white hair was pulled back from her face in a single braid that hung long over one shoulder with a few tendrils escaping their bonds. It was tied off with a series of daisies that had wilted.
Bright blue eyes peered at me. “You found me awfully quick.”
I didn’t move from my place. “Ornias gave me the clue.”
She snorted and shuffled a few feet closer, a walking stick appearing out of nowhere. She gripped it hard and leaned heavily on it. “He was always a right bastard, that one. You know, I stuffed him in that church all those years ago. I found it amusing to throw it in their faces that a demon could survive in one of their sacred buildings.” She pointed to the sky with her stick and there was a distinct twinkle in those blue eyes.
This was not what I’d expected. “The fallen are—”
She waved her stick at me. “I know. They are also right bastards and need to be stopped.”
Dinah wiggled. “Is this for real?”
That was my qu
estion, but again, I stayed where I was. “Yes. They are hunting abnormals to extinction.”
The fallen one looked at me. “Might as well be slaughtering their own children.”
Her words sent a whispered chill through me and I tensed, which brought Ruby to her feet. “What?”
“You think that abnormals are just an aberrant mutation of the human genome? Please. They are a product of the fallen fucking about with humans. I mean that in the most literal of senses.” She smiled, and her grin was one of unrepentance and fuckery. I really didn’t want to like her, yet her smile echoed something in me.
“I need to stop them,” I said. “I need to find a way to stop Gardreel and whatever plan he’s got going on.” I used his name because he was the one I figured might be at the top of the food chain.
She tapped her walking stick on the stone, the way I would sometimes tap my finger while thinking. “Yes, I realize that. You will need a powerful weapon to stop him.”
“She’s got two,” Diego said from my back, and the fallen smiled.
“Yes, special like those two you carry. You didn’t think they came into your possession for no reason, did you? This moment, you standing between the world of the abnormals and the fallen has been predestined since your birth. You are the Phoenix, the one that burns, the one that rises on wings of fire.” Her smile widened and her blue eyes locked on my own. “I should know. I helped name you.”
Sweat broke out along the back of my neck and trickled down my spine as the clouds above us rumbled and rain began to fall. “What do you mean?” I asked even though I was beginning to understand where the pieces slid together.
Her smile widened.
Her blue eyes twinkled. “I was a badass too, so I suppose you come by it honestly.” The pause between her words was long enough that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t hearing things.
“Granddaughter.”
20
The fallen stood across from me, bent and frail at the top of the Empire State Building with only a narrow walking stick to hold her up. And yet I was the one who wobbled and went to my knees. Granddaughter. Was she shitting me?
“You are . . .”
“The grand dame of you, the one whom all your abilities stem from and from whence you find your shitty attitude and ability to kill without truly feeling the deaths.” She laughed after she said that, flashing her teeth again.
“How do you not look like the other fallen? You know, the ones with the leathery wings and extra arms?” Dinah asked. It was a good question. Seeing as my head was struggling to wrap around the current information.
“I am fallen because I fell in love with the man I was hunting instead of killing him as was my job. We had a daughter, and she was an abnormal, a lovely girl who had terrible taste in men. And, of course, she passed her abilities on to you. This is the way of our line. I was . . . a killer always, though it was couched in terms of justice.” She waved her stick at the sky as if flipping it off. “Because of my service, I was allowed to remain here for the typical lifespan of a human, and I am very mortal and dying. That is my punishment. Better than being stuck with those self-righteous bastards.” Another flip of her stick to the sky.
Dinah spluttered, and Diego mumbled something in Spanish that might have been what the actual fuck is happening.
I stayed on my knees a moment longer before pushing back to my feet, using Ruby to steady me. I took note that she hadn’t growled at the fallen one once. “So I have the blood of the fallen in me?”
She nodded. “All abnormals have the blood of the fallen in them, granddaughter. All of them. No doubt it is why Gardreel wants to wipe you all out. Because you are proof of their sins that have helped to confine them to this world.” She shrugged as if it didn’t bother her one bit that she was one of those sinners. “That would be my guess if I were a guessing sort of woman.”
“I need to kill him,” I said.
“That you do.” She smiled and her blue eyes burned with a fire I understood completely. “But only another fallen can kill their own.”
The image of the fallen being turned from monster into beauty before he was sucked down into what could only be Hell rolled through my mind. “Not true.”
She waved a hand at me. “It was the power of a fallen you used on another fallen. They won’t make that mistake again. And you’re welcome for that.” She grinned at me and wiggled her fingers. The back of my skull twitched and it was though she were touching inside my brain. “They didn’t even notice me there in the clouds, undoing the bonds that Eligor put on your mind. Filthy, all that.” She spit to one side as if to make her point. “Filthy. They have no right to bind those that are our children.”
I drew in a slow breath, pushing down all the shock in me. The focus was on the task at hand. “How the hell am I going to convince another fallen to fight Gardreel? That is what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”
“How in the hell indeed?” she murmured and tapped her stick on the stone. “I am unable to tell you outright. That is against some stupid rule that a rather pretentious featherbrain came up with.” Another swing of her walking stick upward as she jabbed it toward the sky. “But what I can tell you is that you have faced the fallen before, only he went by a different name. You know there is nothing so terrible as a convert, either to the light, or to the dark.” Her eyes narrowed and I found myself mimicking her.
I’d fought the fallen before?
My heart clenched as I understood at least part of what she was telling me. “Bazixal.”
The demon I’d sent back to Hell; could that be who she meant?
The air around us crackled with rising electricity and the hair along my arms stood.
My grandmother—Jesus Christ, I couldn’t even think it without my jaw wanting to drop—looked upward. “We are about to get company. I do believe the fallen have realized I am here, talking to you. Forbidden and all that nonsense, though it matters not to me, my life is near its end.” Another wave of her stick and the sky above us opened as though she were parting the clouds.
Drenched in a matter of seconds, I stared at her through the rain, watching her as she turned to face three of the fallen on her own.
Before I could ask, she pointed her stick at the door that led into the Empire State Building. “Off you go, find your team, stop the fallen, and get those babies back.”
I didn’t hesitate, though part of me wanted to see my grandmother kick ass. I picked up speed as I made my way through the upper souvenir shop to the stairs. No way was I taking the elevator and getting trapped in a steel box headed south.
A push of my hip against the bar of the stairwell door and I looked back in time to see two of the fallen being held at bay.
The third, well, he was creeping through the souvenir shop on his hands and feet, hunched like an oversized dog. Ruby let out a low growl, her back tensed, and the fur along her spine stood up. I touched her collar and brought her with me. “We can’t kill him, which means we need to outrun him.”
“What about the sedative?” Diego offered. “Please let me shoot him.”
I pulled my T-shirt off and brought the AK-47 around, pointing him at the fallen one. I barely sighted down the barrel before I squeezed off two rounds, both hitting the monstrosity clean in the upper chest.
He roared and stood, wings spread wide for a half a beat. The sedative darts dangled from his flesh and then he wobbled and crashed sideways into a stack of snow globes that shattered.
I turned and bolted down the stairs, Ruby’s nails clicking on the cement stairs. Eighty-six flights ahead of us. I pushed hard, grabbing the railings as I went even knowing that I was leaving behind fingerprints. It would give the NYPD a thrill if they dusted.
We reached the bottom in under ten minutes but, of course, the main door was locked. I yanked Dinah out and blew a hole in the doorknob. Alarms blasted through the air as I pushed the door with a hip and slid out onto the street.
The city was never really quiet, so I got a
few looks as I walked away from the famous building, a gun on my back and one in my hand, wearing a corset and leather pants. I didn’t care. The first good alley we came to I ducked down, heading off toward the abandoned rail station.
That was as good a place as any to start, a known messaging site for a lot of the underbelly.
Using back alleys and dodging sirens, I made my way down to the subway and hopped a ride that would take us to the Lower East Side.
I could have leaned back in the seat as we chugged along, closed my eyes for a few minutes and snagged some rest, but I couldn’t close my eyes and not see . . . my grandmother.
Dinah squirmed. “I can feel you thinking.”
There was no one close enough to us to hear our discussion. “This is fucking messed up.”
“Yes and no,” Dinah said. “Like, are you surprised that you’re being called on? I’m not.”
Ruby placed her chin on my knee, and I put my hand on the top of her head. My grandmother thought I was the one to stop the fallen, and in part, she wasn’t wrong. There was really no one else strong enough left.
But finding a fallen to kill another fallen . . . the only possibility I kept circling back to was that she had put emphasis on the word hell. She had to mean that I needed a demon to help me. Why though? Why a demon? Circling, circling, I knew I was getting closer to the answer, I just had to find it.
Maybe the tablet would give me the answers I needed. Maybe Rio would have someone like Harden who could hack the tablet and find the answers we needed. That I needed.
“Wonder if Cowboy is okay,” Diego mused.
I blinked. “It never even crossed my mind.”
The subway car began to slow and I stood, bracing my legs as I scanned the car.
“This our stop?” Dinah asked.
“No, it’s not,” I murmured. “We’re stopped in the middle of the tracks.”
A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4) Page 18