Authors: Rachel Vincent
My phone buzzed in my pocket so I handed the bottle to Tod and
dug my cell out so I could answer it. “Hello?”
Luca’s number was on the screen, but I couldn’t understand
whatever he whispered into my ear, so I had to shush the rest of the room so I
could hear him. “Sorry. I’m in the office, so this’ll have to be quick. Is Tod
with you?”
“Yeah. Why?”
His voice dropped even lower, and I glared at Sabine, who was
still talking to Nash. “There’s someone at your house. Someone
like you,
and it’s not Aunt Madeline. If it’s not Tod,
either, my guess is Thane… .”
“Shit. Okay, thanks.”
“How’s Sophie?” he asked, before I could hang up.
“Shaken. But she’s dealing.”
“What’s up?” Tod asked as I pocketed my phone.
“Luca says there’s a walking corpse at my house. His guess is
Thane.”
I stood already heading for the door before I remembered that I
hadn’t driven, and that walking would be a ridiculous waste of time. I held my
hand out and Tod took it. “Ready?”
Nash stood. “I’m coming, too.”
“No way.” Sabine scowled. “You are not leaving me here with
Ballerina Barbie.”
“Call her dad,” I said. “But if she’s drunk when he gets here,
you
can explain how that happened.” I glanced at
Nash, holding up the half-empty bottle. “Any more where this came from?”
He shook his head. “You still have my whiskey.” Because he’d
left it at my house the night he showed up on my porch, and my dad had
confiscated it.
“Good. Let’s go.” I took Nash’s hand and glanced at Tod. “See
you on the other side.” Then I blinked us both into my living room, which I
could only do over short distances. Fortunately, Nash only lived a few blocks
from my house.
Tod appeared in my living room as I let go of Nash’s hand and
set the tequila on the coffee table.
“Good thinking,” Thane said, and I whirled around to find him
standing in my kitchen, holding an open bag of my dad’s favorite tortilla chips.
“I was getting thirsty.” His empty white eyes made it impossible to tell what he
was looking at, and my skin crawled as I stared at him.
Nash and Tod started across the living room toward him, and
their combined rage made the hairs on my arms stand up. In that moment, watching
them face a mutual enemy, I caught a glimpse of just how powerful a force they
could be together—if I could keep Nash busy fighting someone other than his
brother.
But Thane held up one hand. “I’ll be gone before you get
halfway here, and then you’ll never know what I came to tell you.”
“Did Avari send you?” Tod stopped and hauled his brother back
by one arm when Nash didn’t stop on his own. Nash jerked free of his grip, but
stayed put.
“Where’s the other one? That feisty little
mara?
” Thane said. “Is she going to jump out of a closet somewhere
and yell ‘boo’?”
“Are you going to deliver whatever threat Avari sent you with,
or are we going to have to start guessing?” Tod said. “I gotta warn you, I’m
insanely good at charades.”
“There’s no message. I’m jumping ship. But I need your
help.”
“Why the hell would we help you?” Nash demanded as I edged
around them for a better view.
“Because I know what Avari’s doing, and how he’s doing it.”
“And, what?” I said. “You’ve reached the limit on how many
secret evil schemes you can keep a lid on? We’re supposed to trust you because
you conveniently show up with answers when we need them most?”
Thane set the chip bag on the counter behind him and shrugged.
“You’re going to trust me because I’m all you have. Unless you want Avari to
keep picking off your friends and family one by one until he gets what he
wants.”
“Start talking,” Nash growled, but Thane shook his head
slowly.
“I’m not saying a word until you swear you’ll help me.”
“Help you with what?” I asked, arms crossed over my chest. I
wasn’t convinced he wasn’t just playing another of Avari’s games. But I believed
that he hated the hellion as much as we did, and that gave us a common goal.
Potentially.
“He has my soul. I want you to swear you’ll get it back for
me.”
“Why would you trust us to do that?” Nash said.
“I wouldn’t trust the two of you to hit the pot when you piss.
I trust
her.
” He pointed at me, and they both turned
to follow his blank-eyed gaze. “If she gives me her word, she won’t break
it.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Because you’re trustworthy and you have a hero complex. That’s
why Avari wants you—you’re everything he’s not, and he doesn’t understand that.
You protect people with lies, and he manipulates people with the truth. You keep
saving those who’ve hurt you—” his empty eyes rolled in Nash’s direction briefly
“—and he hurts people who’ve done him no harm. Avari wants to dissect you,
physically, mentally, emotionally.” Thane shrugged. “I just want to offer you a
fair exchange of services. My information for your help getting my soul
back.”
“He’s lying, Kay,” Nash said, fists clenched at his sides.
“Hellions can’t lie, but we all know reapers can.”
“Careful, pot,” Tod said. “Someone might notice your
resemblance to the kettle.”
Tod only shrugged when I tried to scold him with a frown. “He
started it. As for
this
clown—” he glanced at Thane,
then back at me “—I’m with you, whatever you decide.”
I didn’t want to rescue Thane—or his soul—from Avari. There was
a large part of me that thought he deserved to be tortured for all of eternity
for all the poor souls he’d condemned to that very fate. And for killing my
mother when it wasn’t her time. But Thane was our best shot—maybe our only
shot—at stopping Avari from going through everyone I knew or loved to get to
me.
“Okay,” I said at last, and Nash groaned. “I’ll help get your
soul away from Avari. But there are conditions. The first is that you have to
help yourself, too. I’m not doing it on my own.”
Thane nodded eagerly. Maybe a little too eagerly.
“Second, you tell us everything you know first. Right now.”
He shook his head and leaned against the end of the short
kitchen peninsula. “That’s not how this works. You give a little, I give a
little.”
“I can’t give you a little of your soul, and I’m not going
after it until I know exactly what’ll be waiting for me. So start talking now,
or we’ll take our chances without you.”
Thane’s brows rose. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the
grave.”
I shrugged, afraid to admit that I wasn’t sure I’d woken up yet
at all—most of the past month felt like a nightmare. “What’s it gonna be?”
“Fine. But I have a couple of conditions of my own.”
“Hell, no. You don’t get to make up the rules,” Nash said.
Thane ignored him. “First of all, keep your assorted collection
of authority figures out of it. Levi will kill me the minute he sees me, and I
don’t trust Madeline. There’s something in her eyes…”
“I believe that’s integrity and dedication to her job.”
“Yeah. It’s disturbing.”
“What about my dad?”
“I don’t know how much help he’ll be in the Netherworld, but
sure, bring him along.” Thane shrugged. “If he gets hurt, that’s all on
you.”
I had no plans to take my dad to the Netherworld, but he and my
uncle could be helpful on this side of the world barrier. If I could keep them
from tattling to Levi and Madeline.
“Second—and you’re gonna want to pay attention here,” Thane
said. “If you go back on your word and I’m stuck with that hellion bastard, I
will
help him torture and kill everyone you’ve
ever even said hello to.”
“That’s a big threat,” Tod said. “Someone’s compensating for
inadequacies.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“No.” I sank onto the arm of my father’s recliner. “We have an
agreement and a bunch of pointless threats. If you’re going to talk, start now.
I have no idea how long it’ll be before Madeline checks in.”
“So, should I just make myself at home, like company?” Thane
started toward the living room, but Nash stepped into his path.
“No, you should stay right where you are, or my estranged
brother and I will settle our differences by seeing who can break more of your
bones.”
Tod glanced at him, brows raised. “You want to settle our
differences?”
Nash frowned. “No, I want to break every bone in his body, and
I didn’t think you’d let me do it alone.”
Tod nodded. “Good call.”
Thane glanced at me, brows arched over empty white eyes. “Are
they always like this?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes they’re less subtle. Let’s get this
thing moving.”
Thane nodded. “What do you want to know?”
“Who killed Scott?” Nash demanded. That wasn’t where I would
have started, but I couldn’t blame him for jumping in, and honestly, I was glad
to see him participating in something other than his own self-destruction.
“That was me, but I was under orders,” Thane said, leaning
against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest. Like he was
comfortable. “Avari needed a form that would traumatize her, and psycho-boy fit
the bill.”
“How’d he know we’d go see Scott?” I asked.
“He didn’t. He was going to bring the party to you, but Scott
died with no shoes on, so Avari went looking for some in his room. Then you two
showed up and saved him the trouble of hunting you down.”
“So it
was
a possession, then? Is
that why he needed the shoes?” I asked.
“No. Hellions can’t possess the dead. Avari figured out how to
cross over. But that comes with both requirements and limitations.”
“Requirements?” Tod said.
“Souls,” Thane said. “A pair of them, specifically. One is to
get him through the fog, like a ticket for a train ride. The other provides his
physical form on the human plane. But here’s the catch. That first one—the one
that lets him cross over—has to be a resurrected soul.”
15
“A RESURRECTED
SOUL?
Restored? Like mine?” My chills were so strong I was starting
to feel more like a corpse in refrigerated storage than a warm-blooded member of
the undead.
“Yes, or a reaper’s soul. Or anyone else whose soul has been
restored. It has something to do with that process. I tried to find out more
from the reanimation department, but those are the most closed-lipped sons of
bitches you’ll ever meet. They just kept repeating the same line about
proprietary processes and—”
“So that’s why he sent you after me and Mareth?” Tod’s voice
was deep, almost shaking with rage.
Thane nodded. “He’s using my restored soul as we speak, but
eventually he’ll use it up—I get weaker every day he has it—and he’ll have to
replace it. But right now, he’s just collecting them. Trying to corner the
market before anyone else realizes there’s a profit to be made. He’s an
enterprising hellion who knows big business when he sees it.”
By “enterprising,” of course he meant greedy.
“He’s selling restored souls?” Like a train-station ticket
booth in the Netherworld.
“Only a couple so far. I bet you can guess who the first one
went to… .”
“No, I—” But then suddenly I did. “Belphegore. That’s how he
got Heidi’s soul. And Meredith’s. He traded a resurrected soul for them.”
“For those two, and for several more. He can charge whatever he
wants. That’s the beauty of a monopoly.”
“Where’s Mareth?” Tod demanded.
“I don’t know,” Thane said, and Nash huffed.
“This isn’t a good time to start lying, reaper.”
“There’s never a bad time to start lying, but I’m telling the
truth. I turned her over to Avari, but I didn’t stick around to see what he did
with her. He could have her in cold storage, with the rest of the collection,
but if I had to guess, I’d say he sold her. At a huge profit.”
“Who would he sell her to?” I asked, trying not to think about
the fact that Tod could have easily been taken instead of Mareth. As could
I.
Thane shrugged again. “Could be anyone. There are hundreds of
other hellions in the Netherworld, and every one of them would pay anything for
a single day spent on this plane. Avari has what they need to cross over. The
prize goes to the highest bidder. And the demand
far
exceeds the supply.”
“And every time Madeline sent an extractor after Avari, she was
just giving him another ticket to sell,” I said, unable to purge horror from my
voice.
“He found that irony especially satisfying.”
“So, why hasn’t he taken me?” I asked, and Thane frowned like
he didn’t understand the question. “I’m not a fighter. If he could take the
other extractors so easily, why hasn’t he done the same with me?”
“He will. You’re part of the long game,” Thane said. “Until
then, he’s playing with you. I think he wants to see just how deep your noble
streak runs. He wants to see if you’ll really turn yourself in to save everyone
else you love. While you resist, he feeds from your guilt and angst over the
deaths you could have prevented. Once you give in, he’ll be able to feed from
you directly.” Thane shrugged. “He can’t lose.”
“Bullshit,” Nash spat. “He’s not going to stop killing just
because Kaylee turns herself in. I don’t care what he says. He’ll never stop
killing.”
“True. Avari has never been in a better position to slaughter
at will. But he can’t go back on his word. If she turns herself in, he’ll stop
choosing his victims from the Kaylee Cavanaugh friends-and-family plan.”
Stunned and a little nauseated, I sank into my father’s chair
and shoved hair back from my face. “What’s the long game? What is he doing,
Thane?”
The reaper shrugged. “That, I don’t know. But he’s obsessed
with it. Everything he’s doing plays into it. And you have a central role.”
“Okay, let’s go back to the basics.” Because if I thought any
more about the people I could have saved—and the people I would have been
damning in their place—I was going to lose what was left of my mind. “He’s using
your resurrected soul to cross through the fog into our world. What about this
second soul? The one that gives him a physical form. How does that work?”
“I don’t know all the details. He figured that part out
himself, by accident, so—”
“Whoa, what does that mean?” Tod demanded. “Who figured out the
first part?”
Thane shrugged. “Not to give myself too much credit, but… I
did. Decades ago.”
“And you told Avari that he could use your soul to cross over?”
I frowned, watching him through narrowed eyes. “Why would you do that? Why would
you give him a reason to need your soul?”
“Your boyfriend didn’t give me much of a choice!” Thane
shouted, pushing away from the countertop to gesture angrily at Tod. “One sucker
punch from a rookie, and I’m staring at the business end of a hellion!”
“Yeah, he’s all about the sucker punches,” Nash mumbled.
“As long as Avari needs my soul, he’ll keep me alive. More or
less. Anyway, it shouldn’t have mattered.” The rogue reaper shrugged. “What I
showed him let him cross over, but gave him no physical form. Like a visitor’s
pass, where you can’t touch anything. He figured the rest of it out on his own,
when he was playing around with another soul.”
“Okay, so back to the part where Avari shows up in the guise of
the dearly departed. What
do
you know about that?”
My head was already spinning from everything he’d told us, but we had to get it
all down now—there was no telling when Avari would call him back or Madeline
would show up.
“I know that it’s a one-way trip. He needs a human soul and
something that belonged to the deceased. He crosses over with both of those in
his possession and takes the form that soul had when it died. Down to the
clothes it was wearing.”
“The bracelet…” I said, and Tod nodded. “How did Avari get
Heidi Anderson’s bracelet?”
“How the hell do you think? He sent me after it. But you’re
missing the point. Once he crosses back into the Netherworld, that
nonresurrected soul is useless. Gone. Poof.” He made an exploding gesture with
both hands. “It can’t be worn again.”
“Disposable packaging,” Tod said. “It works for bottled water,
why not for hellions?”
“I don’t understand.” And I wasn’t sure I really wanted to.
“How does wearing a human soul give him a physical body?”
“I truly don’t know how it works. But his physical restrictions
seem to be the same as mine, maybe because he’s using my soul as his passport.
Selective corporeality and audibility. Transportation. But no hellion
superpowers.”
“So he’s vulnerable when he’s here?”
Thane shrugged again. “As vulnerable as I am. But as you may
have noticed, killing him doesn’t really kill him. When his physical body dies,
he just gets sucked back into the Netherworld, along with my soul.”
“So, is there any chance we can get your soul back without
having to cross over?” I asked.
“I don’t know. And I don’t really care. How you fulfill your
end of the deal is up to you.”
“You said you’d help,” I reminded him.
Thane nodded. “But I’ve told you everything I know, so I don’t
know how much more help I can be.”
“You can find out why my amphora doesn’t capture your soul from
him when I take the others,” I said, picturing the two human souls that last
sank into the hilt of my dagger. “And find out how to fix that.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
I shrugged and enjoyed throwing his own words back at him. “How
you fulfill your end of the deal is up to you.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Nash said, before Thane could
blink out in anger. “Avari’s going to keep showing up disguised as dead people,
and while he’s here, he’s going to kill even more of them? Just for fun?”
Thane nodded. “At the moment, human souls are easy for him to
come by, so he doesn’t mind losing them every time she stabs him, because her
trauma is worth more than the lost soul.”
I shoved more hair back from my face and rubbed my forehead.
Can dead people get headaches? “And since he’s sold a resurrected soul to
Belphegore, we can expect her to show up any day, but we have no idea when, or
what she’ll look like. Right?”
Another nod. “Though you may never see her. I can’t imagine
she’s as obsessed with your shiny little soul as Avari is.” He glanced at Tod
then—as near as I could tell, considering his eyes were featureless white orbs.
“Just think. None of this would have happened if Avari and I had never met.”
Tod looked sick. “This is my fault. Avari would never have
figured all this out if I hadn’t thrown Thane at him,” he mumbled beneath his
breath.
The only comfort I had to offer him was my hand intertwined
with his.
“That’s right, lover boy.” Thane obviously enjoyed Tod’s
self-torment. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“So, how do we stop him?” I said, fighting the overwhelming,
numbing lure of despair.
“Stop him?” Thane shrugged. “I have no idea how to stop him,
and I don’t really care.”
“But we had a deal!” I stood, furious. “I snatch your soul from
the grip of a demon and you tell us how to stop him.”
“Uh-oh. Someone wasn’t paying attention. I only promised to
tell you what I know, and I’ve done that. What you do with the knowledge is up
to you. And if you even think about defaulting on your end of the bargain, keep
in mind that your little ‘circle the wagons’ routine can’t last forever. I spent
days following you around in advance of your death, and just because there were
times you didn’t see me doesn’t mean I wasn’t there. I know everyone you know. I
know where all your friends and family live. If you don’t produce my soul in
very short order, you won’t have to worry about Avari killing everyone you love.
I’ll save him the trouble.”
* * *
“You can’t tell Madeline!” I cried, chasing my father
down the hall as he went for his cell phone. He’d left work the minute I’d
called him, as soon as Thane left.
“Oh, yes, I can. I can’t believe you’re even thinking about
keeping this from her.”
“I didn’t have to tell you, either, you know.” I grabbed his
arm, and he finally turned to face me, forehead deeply furrowed, irises
stubbornly still so I couldn’t see how scared he really was. But I knew. He was
almost as scared as I was.
“Kaylee, I’m glad you told me, but I can’t reward your good
decision with a poor one of my own. Madeline knows much better than either of us
how to deal with rogue reapers and runaway hellions,” he insisted, already on
the move again, and I shouted after him.
“If that were true, she wouldn’t have lost all three of her
other extractors!”
My father stopped cold in the hall, then turned to face me.
“I’m not Madeline’s biggest fan, but even I know that wasn’t her fault. She did
the best she could with the information she had, and you’ll only be making her
job more difficult and dangerous by withholding more information from her.”
“There’s nothing she could do with this information, even if we
gave it to her!” I insisted. “She doesn’t have any other extractors to put at
risk—I’m the only one left. The ones Avari took are trapped in the Netherworld
in cold storage—whatever that means—and I have no idea what state they’re in.
Thane still has a body, but that could be because he’s useful. For all I know,
Avari’s already disposed of the extractors’ bodies, so their souls can’t escape.
And that’s assuming he hasn’t already sold them.”
“Sold them?”
“Yeah. To other hellions. Thane says there are hundreds of
them, and once they know what Avari’s up to, they’re all gonna want in on the
fun, and no matter how bad you’re thinking that’s gonna be, I promise it’ll be
worse. Mass-slaughter of the human race. Bodies dead and defiled. Souls enslaved
and tortured. The end of existence, as we know it.”
My father stared at me without speaking for close to half a
minute, and I could practically see the rapid succession of thoughts and fears
as they raced across his expression. Then he scrubbed his face with both hands
and met my gaze again. “Is there any chance at all that this is some massive
misunderstanding, or the product of an overactive teenage imagination?”
“Nope,” Tod said, and I turned to find him in the hall. “Nash
and I heard the whole thing.”
“Okay, then, what are the chances that Thane made it all up and
Avari’s feeding off of our panic?”
“That’s not impossible,” I admitted. “But everything Thane said
lines up with what we already knew. Missing reapers and extractors. Avari
haunting the human plane in the guise of the dead.”
“Mr. Cavanaugh, I think all hell really is breaking loose,” Tod
said.
“And if I tell Madeline…?”
“She’ll tell Levi, who may or may not hunt Thane down and kill
him by removing the Demon’s Breath keeping his body functioning in the absence
of his soul.” And then we’d have lost our source of inside information and any
chance of more help from the only person in either world who had free access to
Avari and his evil scheme.
“Look, no one wants to kill Thane worse than I want to kill
Thane,” my dad said. “But Levi—much like me—will understand that there are
bigger problems at hand. He won’t act rashly at the expense of so much human
life.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Thane knows Levi would never let me
return his soul, so if he finds out we involved Levi or Madeline, he’ll consider
our deal broken and he’ll go after everyone we care about on his own, without
waiting for Avari to give the orders. Emma. Sophie. Harmony. Who knows how many
other souls he’ll be able to reap before someone catches him?”
My father sighed so heavily I wondered if he had any air left
in his lungs at all. “We’re all
already
in danger,
and so long as you, Tod, or Luca are around, Thane can’t sneak up on anyone.”
Because he couldn’t hide from the three of us. “Levi and Madeline need to know,
Kaylee. You have to be willing to compromise here.”