My breathing slowed and I stared, feeling numb. Solomon’s bare feet had been slashed to ribbons, the entire alphabet seemingly carved into the sole of his left foot and an equal number of angelic and demonic runes carved into the sole of his other foot. His fingernails had been torn off or pierced with iron nails, hammered into tall wicker baskets that propped his arms up like armrests for his death throne.
I stared into his eyes at the white feather quills buried into his pupils, unable to even blink as I stopped breathing entirely. Last Breath let out a mournful, choking yowl behind me, but it sounded distant and distorted and stretched out, as if I was hearing it under water.
Despite staring into my ancestor’s tortured eyes, my peripheral vision was perfectly clear, almost as if I was staring at one of those optical illusion puzzles where a magic ship appears if you stare at the center and unfocus your eyes. Except the optical illusion was perfectly clear rather than vaguely noticeable.
I knelt down in the pool of blood, feeling a tear roll down my cheek.
Solomon’s feet had been pressed against the door, and gravity finally combined with the pool of semi congealed blood to send his body slowly sliding out into the hallway, knocking over the two wicker baskets.
Massive black cobras as thick as pythons suddenly slithered out of the baskets and into the blood, lifting their heads until they were taller than me kneeling. They hissed, revealing gleaming black hoods with a red circle on either side that reminded me of Grimm’s feathers. Their fangs were at least as long as my pinky, and they glistened with milky, yellow poison that made the air taste like burned hair. Despite the fact that I was still staring into Solomon’s ruined eyes, my peripheral vision saw all.
I did not move.
I did not react.
I did not care.
The world was burning before my eyes, and all I wanted to do was get a little warmer before my heart turned to ice.
My last remaining relative was dead, his body mutilated and then made into a trap. For me.
My instincts screamed at me, telling me that direct eye contact with the cobras would be certain death, so I locked my eyes on my ancestor’s tortured, ruined face, only assessing the cobras in my peripheral vision.
The cobras were obviously not any kind of natural creature but rather some genetic hell-spawn mutation. They were too big and their eyes glowed like burning rubies. They began swaying back and forth, hissing at me.
I slowly, ever so slowly, began to frown as I tried to see through Solomon’s mutilation and imagine the kindly old man he had once been. I found myself wishing I’d spent a few more minutes sipping mint juleps or iced tea with him on the terraced balcony. Let him read me a story or tell me more about my mother as a young girl.
I realized that if I ever had a little girl, she would not get to sit on his lap or fall asleep in his arms.
I realized that our big dinner feast tomorrow to celebrate family and unity was going to have one empty chair at the head of the table. The host had not survived long enough to receive the toast he’d so adamantly earned.
Another tear rolled down my cheek and I felt my pulse slow further than it ever had before. I waited, calmly, feeling dead inside. I didn’t call upon my wizard’s magic or my Horseman’s coin. My instincts screamed at me that doing so would guarantee my death. These cobras were designed to kill the most powerful of beings. Any attempt to use my powers would get me killed. Last Breath must have had the same instincts because he had not moved a muscle, made a sound, or attempted to help me in any way whatsoever. So, I waited.
After a few painstakingly long seconds, the cobras lunged for my face at the exact same instant, competing for the kill.
56
Without breaking eye contact with my notorious grandfather, my hands lashed out to blindly catch each cobra by the neck. My instincts shouted at me to call up my angelic gauntlets before I dared look into their ruby eyes.
Now!
I obeyed without question, calling up my gauntlets. I heard the crackling sound of rapidly forming ice that stretched out for an eternal heartbeat. Only then was it safe to look at their eyes directly. I finally blinked and turned away from the murdered king—my greatest great ancestor.
The cobras screamed and hissed, snapping their fangs at me as their bodies wrapped around my forearms in an attempt to squeeze me hard enough that I might release them. The frigid cold from my gauntlets coated their necks, and I watched as the hoarfrost slowly trailed down their bodies. I did not let the frost climb up over their heads.
That would be too dignified.
Thankfully, my wings hadn’t reflexively ripped out of my back because they might have torn Last Breath in half. I stared into those hateful crimson eyes and relished the frantic shift from rage to terror to agony. I watched as their bodies grew sluggish and cold, frozen and burned, from my gauntlets. Finally, they went stiff and rigid, and their eyes flickered to a dull, sooty rubies rather than living fire. I calmly set them back inside one of the baskets and replaced the lid.
Last Breath grabbed my shoulder. “How the hell did you move so fast—Oof!”
As if snapping out of a daydream, I realized that I was now facing him with one palm outstretched. My instincts from training with Ryuu had taken control of my body, causing me to dip and roll my shoulder before spinning and striking the threat with my open palm in the upper thigh. Last Breath had flown into the wall, shattering the stone so hard that his body was halfway wedged into the wall. He groaned, pulled himself out, and grasped his thigh with a furry paw, glaring at me warily.
I did not apologize.
I turned back to Solomon, assessing the scene, and committing it to memory. A demon had done this. A strong one. And they had wanted to send a very personal message to the man who had spent millennia imprisoning other demons. They had desecrated his corpse, torturing him with knowledge. But what were all the books doing here?
I sucked in a breath to see a familiar title under his forearm. I gently moved his arm, ignoring the hiss from Last Breath behind me, to reveal a large black book with crimson, Old English font on the front—like those old, illuminated texts written by monks copying a bible for some forgotten king.
Sev’n M’ost Sinist’r.
The cover, binding, and the gold foil edged paper was dripping with thick, oily blood. I grabbed the book and clutched it to my chest before rising to my feet. I slowly turned to Last Breath and cocked my head suspiciously, staring at him with absolutely zero empathy.
“Did you do this?” I asked. My voice sounded raw and parched to my ears.
His eyes widened in horror. “NO! Of course not!”
I could sense his heartbeat raging inside his chest, but I knew it wasn’t from fear. It was a deep, aching pain.
I stepped closer, my eyes hollow and my voice flat. I felt the bond between us, confirming my thoughts that he could not ever betray me, but I didn’t know if there was a way for an arch-class angel or demon to fraudulently mimic my blood bond. They’d found a way around every other precaution—even the sanctity of Solomon’s Temple. “Then who, the fuck, were you eating croissants with on the balcony?” I whispered. “He’s been dead for hours.”
“Ohmygod…” he wheezed, only just now considering the fact that we’d seen Solomon less than half-an-hour ago. He’d been so emotionally affected by seeing his friend’s mutilated body that he wasn’t thinking clearly. Last Breath was a notorious hunter, tracker, and killer. If anyone could catch this demon, it would be him.
“You were played by one of the Seven. He even helped you research books about himself, all the while knowing what he’d done. How fucking nihilistic can he be?” I muttered under my breath. Last Breath looked like I’d ripped his heart out with my bare hand. I remembered how his senses had been useless and I cursed. “That’s why he had breakfast with you. He must have done something to neutralize your senses. You said he was sleeping in yesterday when I visited you. When did you see him after that?”
L
ast Breath thought about it, looking like he wanted to vomit. “Last night,” he rasped. “He made me dinner and then we visited the libraries for your books.”
I nodded, grimly. “Snap out of it, Last Breath. Solomon needs your head in the game. I need your head in the game. The only thing we can do for him now is to avenge him. This asshole is obviously clever, so we need to play this smart. If we run out there guns a’blazing, he’ll just disappear on us. He is sick and twisted, but he’s not a fighter.”
Last Breath took my words to heart and his eyes began to glow brighter. “If he was a fighter, he would have taken me out first, so that he could spend more time torturing Solomon.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Precisely. He wants you to feel this pain. Wants the both of us to taste failure. He wanted to destroy what we love most—Solomon and his books,” I said, pointing at the king and his throne of mockery and wisdom, “us with our misfit family.”
“He…helped me make the dinner invitations,” he snarled, curling his lips back in barely restrained rage.
I grimaced, running through the list of Sins in an attempt to guess which one we were dealing with. Greed? Wrath? Gluttony since he helped plan a dinner? I shook my head, not believing they were responsible. Wrath and Greed would likely be fighters. We were dealing with a spider who coveted what we had: books, dinners, family.
Envy. It had to be Envy. I briefly thought of Claire and her suspicious actions days ago, but banished the thought as paranoia.
“How do we get close to him? He will know the moment he sees us,” he whispered. “He might even know, now. What if those cobras were his eyes?”
I pursed my lips. “Nothing we can do about that. All we can do is head down there, get a read on the situation, and resort to extreme violence if necessary.”
“My senses are useless,” Last Breath said in a neutral tone. Not pitying himself but stating a fact.
I shrugged. “You’ve hunted stronger monsters than yourself before. You fight with your brain. You misdirect and get upwind, lay bait and traps and lure him into the optimal killing field.” I frowned at a new thought. “When is the last time you were in this form rather than your human form?”
He cocked his head, thinking. “Yesterday afternoon.”
I glanced at Solomon’s body with a sickly assessment. He hadn’t seen Solomon again until that evening. “The timing seems close enough. He waited until you were in human form to do his work. Hell, he could have even used a demonic persuasion tactic to make you subconsciously not want to shift into your hunting form.”
“Okay,” he said, seeming to regain some confidence. “You obviously have sharper senses than me right now, because you found this all on your own, and then there’re your gauntlets,” he said, eyeing my hands. I hadn’t realized that I had released them or that I was still clutching the bloody book. “I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as you did with the cobras, and I’ve never seen anyone faster than me. What are they?”
I shrugged, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, because I had no answers for him. “If we survive this, I’ll tell you what I know. We’ve been gone long enough, and I don’t want him getting suspicious. I need to wash this blood off, and I need to take this book,” I said. “Solomon looked like he was hiding it for a reason. Either that or the Sin wanted this book hidden away where you couldn’t sniff it out.” I frowned. “Speaking of books, do you think some of them really are restricted, or do you think that’s just what the Sin wanted us to believe? When did he tell you about these specific books being restricted?”
Last Breath grimaced, his ears tucking back. “Last night,” he breathed.
I nodded woodenly. “The one in the library wasn’t miscatalogued,” I said, glancing down at the bloody book in my hand. “It’s right here.” I frowned, suddenly remembering that I’d dropped off Aphrodite and Phix at the temple last night. I told Last Breath about them, and then asked if he’d seen or heard anything from them.
He shook his head. “I had no idea they were here,” he said, sounding alarmed.
Shit. “Now I really need to get my hands on this Sin—to either protect them from harm or to find out what he’s done with them.”
Richard nodded, determinedly. He glanced at Solomon, took a deep breath, and then approached his old friend. He leaned close, careful not to get his paws in the blood or disturb the potential evidence at the crime scene and murmured a prayer over his oldest friend. I didn’t hear the words, but even watching the way his shoulders shook and his voice caught was enough to make my eyes burn. He couldn’t even touch his friend for fear of marking himself with blood and possibly alerting the imposter Solomon once we confronted him.
He then calmly reached into the closet and pulled out a rather small satchel the size of a tiny messenger bag. The front was emblazoned with an Old English S branded into the trunk of an ancient tree. Last Breath snatched the bloody book from my hand and slipped it into the satchel. He swung it back and forth and I blinked to see that it behaved as if empty rather than swinging with the weight of the book within. He smiled sadly. “For a man who loved to read, he never liked lugging around the weight of a decade’s worth of books on his travels.” He held it out to me. “He would have wanted you to have it. No one can sense anything within.”
I smiled at the bag, realizing it was very similar to the properties of the satchel Darling and Dear had made for Nate Temple at my request. “Did Darling and Dear make this?” I asked.
Last Breath neither confirmed nor denied. “Who?” he asked in a tone that meant he was purposely avoiding my question and had no intention of answering, ever.
“Put the cobras in there, too. If they really are the Sin’s eyes, it might confuse him or throw him off track. And I want a damned souvenir for my troubles.”
Last Breath eyed the wicker basket, grimacing. “They’re dead, right? Because I really hate snakes.”
I rolled my eyes. “If they’re not dead, they’re cryogenically frozen for at least a few hours. Take the satchel with you and go collect a few of the books you discussed with Solomon so we can corroborate our story. Do it as fast as you can.”
“Where are you going?” he asked with a protective frown.
I smiled. “I’m going to go to my mother’s lab and wash up. I’ll come up with a story that will buy us some time. I won’t hide the fact that we split up. I need to grab a few things.”
He grinned and turned back to the closet. He came back with a similar bag. “This one is mine. Same properties,” he said, handing me a black bag with a similar design. “I would like you to have it, Callie. For helping me avenge my friend,” he whispered in a hoarse rasp overflowing with despair. He glanced at Solomon and my heart broke to see a tear roll down his furry cheek.
I blinked away my own tears. “We’re going to get him, Last Breath. I swear it.”
He nodded, shaking his mane as if to get his head in the game. His lip curled back to reveal long ivory fangs, and a coughing snarl bubbled up from his throat as he narrowed his glowing blue eyes. “Purrrfect,” he growled.
I forced a laugh, even though it was terrible timing for a joke. “I’ll flaunt the fact that we split up, telling him that my mother had a secret stash of books on the Divines, since that topic seems to concern him so much. I’ll taunt him with the comment, providing him with some bait that is so enticing that he might not even notice you enter from behind, or won’t care when you do. That’s when you strike.”
His eyes glittered hungrily. “I regret that this is our first hunt together, Callie Penrose Solomon. Queen Solomon, now,” he added, glaring at his old friend.
I curled my lips, baring my silver fangs. “Then let’s make our first hunt together legendary, Last Breath. Let us be the reason to raise our glasses in toast at our feast tomorrow night. Not just in memory of Solomon, but in celebration of avenging the wisest man in the world.”
He shuddered and a tear rolled down his other cheek, leaving a trail through the wet fur as he nodd
ed miserably.
I couldn’t help it. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his thick white mane. I felt his shoulders stiffen and then relax, melting over me like hot wax as he squeezed me, purring like a locomotive. “I’m sorry about Solomon,” I whispered. “We will spend the whole feast listening to you tell stories about Solomon. The good and the bad. The embarrassing and heroic. We will honor him tomorrow, Last Breath. But we will avenge him today!” I hissed.
Last Breath growled passionately, a sound of both dreams and nightmares, smiles and cries. “I…will try to make everyone laugh tomorrow,” he croaked. “I will…try very hard,” he rasped, squeezing me tight enough to hurt.
I squeezed him back just as hard, weeping into his fur as I tried to soak up his pain and lessen his burden. “We can talk about the vine thing,” I whispered. “How the big nosy idiot tried to snoop in a young woman’s room and almost turned into a tree.” Last Breath coughed, nodding stiffly. “Or how he always tanned in the nude,” I added. “Crazy old bastard.”
Last Breath chuckled miserably. “Thank you, Callie,” he whispered, squeezing me tightly. Then he let out a faint laugh. “You are doing a great job of knocking the world back on its heels. I think…you would have even given your mother a run for her money, and before I met her, my fur was golden. Why else do you think Solomon and I have white hair? I aged a thousand years for every one of hers,” he teased.
I laughed, wiping my snot and tears off in his mane. I stepped back and winced at the bloody smears I’d stained his fur with. “Damn it. I didn’t mean to—”
He shook his fur and the blood evaporated, leaving his gleaming coat pristinely white. He smirked at the surprised look on my face. “I murdered battalions of men at a time, Callie. It was my job. I know how to clean up for a photo op, and a cat hates being dirty,” he said.
Trinity: Feathers and Fire Book 9 Page 33