Dying Is My Business (28 page)

“Believe me, I’d love to see him get what’s coming to him, but we need him,” she insisted. “Someone named Underwood is after the box. Trent’s the only one who can tell us who he is and what kind of threat he poses.”

Philip seemed unconvinced, continuing to press me against the wall with his face inching closer to my neck. I glanced down and saw my boots were dangling several inches above the floor. Philip wasn’t just holding me against the wall, he was holding me
up,
and effortlessly. His strength was staggering.

“Philip, that’s enough,” Isaac said.

Bethany had been unsuccessful, but apparently two words from Isaac were all it took to make Philip back down. He lowered me to the floor, relaxing the pressure on my chest, but he kept a tight grip on my shirt. I coughed and gasped air into my lungs. Philip’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a grin. His canines were long and pointed, sharp enough to pierce flesh. “I guess it’s your lucky day,” he said, “but you so much as breathe wrong, I’ll tear out your throat.”

Given those sharp teeth, I had no doubt Philip could do just that if he had a mind to. I looked into his mirrored shades, wishing I could see his eyes to get a better read on him. I realized with a jolt that I could see my whole torso in the reflection, but I couldn’t see Philip’s arm holding my shirt. The front of my shirt was bunched and twisted, but there was no hand gripping it, just the knot of fabric.

“You don’t have a reflection,” I said. Apparently, I’d developed a knack for stating the obvious.

Philip grinned, showing his fangs again. “When you look this good all the time, you don’t need one. Now just stay put, or I’ll show you what kind of damage a vampire can really do.”

I figured it wouldn’t be smart to put that to the test. Across the shop, I watched Bethany approach Isaac.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “You know it’s against protocol. It’s your own rule.”

“You can blame Gabrielle,” he said. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was hard enough getting her to stay at Citadel last night when she knew Thornton was in trouble, but she threatened to go to him as soon as the sun came up, with or without me. Since I couldn’t talk her out of it, I thought it would be safer if I came with her. As for Philip, well, you know what he’s like. He won’t let me out of his sight. So, the gang’s all here.”

The woman with the dreadlocks and leather jacket knelt beside Thornton. She cradled him gently in her arms, and suddenly I put two and two together. Gabrielle Duchamp was the one Thornton kept talking about. The love of his life.

Thornton had changed back to human form, but he looked worse than ever. He was wasting away, his emaciated body nearly lost in the folds of his tattered clothes. The lights on the amulet pulsed so dimly I could barely see them.

Gabrielle kissed Thornton’s face and mouth. “I’m here, baby. I’ve got you.”

His discolored, necrotic hand reached up to stroke her hair and touch her face. He winced in frustration and pulled his hand away. “I—I can’t feel you.”

“How is he?” Isaac asked, putting a hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder.

She scooped Thornton up in her arms, lifting him off the floor as though he weighed nothing at all. “There isn’t much time,” she said. “We have to get him back to Citadel.”

“Bring Thornton to the car. We’ll follow,” Isaac said. Gabrielle carried Thornton out of the shop. Isaac turned back to Bethany. “I only wish we’d found you sooner. We thought you were still at the safe house. When we got there, we found Ingrid.…” He paused a moment, then continued, “After that, I remembered that you’d used the Breath of Itzamna on Thornton. The amulet gives off a distinct arcane signature that I was able to track down.”

“I’m so sorry about Ingrid,” Bethany said. “She was an amazing woman. She died protecting us.”

“And protecting this.” Isaac crouched over the box and brushed his fingers along the lid. “The Van Lente Box. I’ve heard stories all my life, but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes. It’s like seeing history itself.”

I blinked. The Van Lente Box? The damn thing had a
name
?

Isaac picked the box up by its handle. Bethany didn’t stop him. She hadn’t let me hold the box, hadn’t trusted me enough even before I pulled a gun on her, but she let Isaac take it without protest. I wondered if there was something between them, if they were more than employer and employee. The thought put a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy in my chest.

“The sooner we get it into the vault the better,” Isaac said. He carried the box toward the doorway, and pointed at me. “Bring him.”

Philip yanked me away from the wall and pulled me forcefully toward the door.

Bethany collected Tomo and Big Joe’s guns from the floor and tucked them into her pants. “What about these two?”

“Leave them here. By the time they wake up, we’ll be long gone. But him,” Isaac nodded at me, “him I want.”

Philip kept a bone-crushing grip on my arm, guiding me out onto the sidewalk. A gleaming black juggernaut of an Escalade was parked at the curb, its windows tinted dark as ink. The rear hatch was open, and Gabrielle was laying Thornton gently on the carpeted floor of the cargo area, making sure he was as comfortable as possible.

I listened as Bethany brought Isaac up to speed on everything that happened at the safe house. Isaac confirmed that he and the others had found the shadowborn’s bodies there. They were still alive, he said, even with their heads separated from their bodies, just immobilized. He’d burned them to ashes with something he called a flaming dervish—a spell, I guessed—then scattered the ashes to the wind just to be sure.

“What I don’t understand is what the shadowborn were doing there in the first place,” he said. “They shouldn’t have been able to find the safe house. The ward was still active when we got there.”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Bethany replied. “The shadowborn were looking for the box, which means whoever sent them not only knew we had it, they knew exactly where to find us. I don’t like it, Isaac. It’s like they know our every move.”

That’s because they do, I thought. Ingrid had said we’d been betrayed, and the only ones who knew we were at the safe house were here now—Isaac, Gabrielle, and Philip. One of them had to be the traitor. One of them had sent the shadowborn to kill Bethany, Thornton, and Ingrid, and to steal the box.

But it still didn’t explain Bennett. His presence had been a personal touch. Very, very personal.

Isaac put the box in the rear cargo area with Thornton and Gabrielle, then came back around to where I was being held. Philip released me, but I’d seen how fast the vampire could move. I knew better than to try to make a break for it.

“Trent, look at me,” Isaac said.

I did, noticing for the first time that Isaac’s eyes were blue like Bethany’s, though not as bright as hers. There was a wariness that darkened them. They were the guarded eyes of a man who’d seen more terror and wonder in his years than most people did in a lifetime. Maybe two lifetimes.

“I can’t risk you knowing where we’re taking you,” Isaac said, “so I’m going to have to put you to sleep.”

I smirked. “Good luck with that. Ask Bethany, she already tried. I don’t sleep.”

Isaac’s eyes seemed to fill my field of vision, though he hadn’t moved any closer. Everything else receded, fading into a dim, murky twilight.

“I’m a mage, Trent,” Isaac said. “Do you know what that means?”

“You’re smarter than the average bear?” I said, but my words were slurred. There was nothing before me now but Isaac’s eyes. The street, the others, everything else was gone.

“It means this time you’ll sleep.”

I blinked. My eyelids felt heavy, my limbs weak and relaxed. “It won’t … work…”

I fell limply back against the car. I slid off and felt someone catch me before I hit the sidewalk. Then I was gone.

Twenty-three

An unfamiliar weightlessness buoyed me. I was numb, my senses completely cut off from the outside world, but it wasn’t the same kind of numbness I knew, the kind that came with cold or shock. This was something altogether different, something I’d never experienced before, as if I were no longer inside my own body. Was this sleep?

If it was, I was surprised that my mind was still active. The darkness that had enveloped me as soon as I closed my eyes was gone, and I found myself standing before a brick wall. I recognized it immediately, even before I saw the brick with the eye-like symbol carved into it. The Ehrlendarr rune for magic. It was the wall from my earliest memory, and yet, something wasn’t quite right. The sparkles of light that had played across the bricks, the curling wisp of smoke, they were absent. Somehow I understood it was too soon, that whatever had caused them hadn’t occurred yet.

This wasn’t my earliest memory, I realized. Impossibly, unbelievably, this was just
before
it.

I sensed a presence behind me, someone I couldn’t see. A male voice spoke, rich and smooth as oil.

“What if I told you everything you thought you knew was a lie? What if I could show you? All you have to do is—”

“Wake up,” Isaac said.

My eyes snapped open. I was groggy, the fleeting images in my head evaporating like so much steam. Had I been dreaming? Actually, genuinely dreaming? I’d never dreamed before, not anytime I could remember, and the fact that my first dream was slipping away so quickly filled me with panic. I struggled desperately to hold onto it, even a remnant of it, a single image, but it was already gone. It left me feeling like someone had died. But if I was capable of sleeping, capable of dreaming, it meant I was closer to normal than I’d thought. That was monumental.

As my grogginess wore off, I found myself seated in a luxuriant, antique chair. Isaac stood in front of me, his arms crossed.

“I told you you’d sleep,” he said. He looked smug. I wanted to wipe the smirk off his face with my fists.

I tried to get up but quickly discovered I couldn’t. My wrists were tied together behind the tall back of the chair. I struggled against the binding, but the more I pulled, the tighter it held. Whatever it was, I could tell right away it wasn’t handcuffs. There was no bite from the hard edges, no cold metal against my skin. It didn’t feel like rope either, or cable, or plastic wrist ties. Instead, it felt warm, buzzing with a slight vibration.

“Where am I?” I demanded.

“Welcome to Citadel,” Isaac said, spreading his arms. “Welcome to my home.”

So
this
was Citadel, their base of operations. Just the room we were in was big enough to live up to its namesake. Octagonal in shape and paneled with dark, finished wood, it spanned nearly three thousand square feet of floor space. Beneath the wrought-iron chandeliers that hung from the twenty-foot ceiling, glass display cases held crystal obelisks that throbbed with light, glittering multicolored geodes, and primitive carvings of creatures with human bodies and animal heads. Mahogany bookshelves were crammed to bursting with dusty old tomes bound in cloth and leather. The walls were adorned with framed oil paintings that looked centuries old; ancient shields and sigils of wood, clay, and metal; and multiple sets of masks, each wearing a more ghoulish expression than the last, fashioned from copper, bronze, and gold.

A marble sculpture stood in each of the eight corners of the room, statues of bizarre creatures atop stone pedestals. The largest was a rearing centaur, almost life-sized, his marble hand pulled back and clutching an iron spear as though he were about to hurl it at an unseen enemy. Beside it, a carpeted staircase led up to another floor, where I had no doubt there were more rooms just as big and cluttered as this one.

I’d never seen Underwood’s home, only the fallout shelter where he conducted business, but I always imagined it looked very much like this, with every nook, corner, and shelf crammed with his own private collection of stolen goods. Isaac Keene was like Underwood in that way. He was a man who surrounded himself with strange, curious, and probably very valuable objects. It must have taken him years to put this collection together.

At the far end of the room, two tall, stained-glass windows arched, cathedral-like, to the ceiling. Between them, Isaac had set up some kind of workstation with six video monitors attached to the wall, their screens currently dark. Directly beneath them was a long, sturdy walnut table. Computer equipment, reams of loose paper, and numerous books had been cleared off it and stacked in piles on the floor to make room for the single item that now sat in the middle of the table. The box.

I whistled. “This is some hefty New York real estate. What’d you do, cast a spell on the co-op board?”

Isaac didn’t so much as chuckle. “I’ve got a lot of questions for you, Trent. We’ll get a chance to chat soon, very soon, but until then, I need you to sit tight.” He turned and walked out through an open, polished cherry wood door across the room. Through it I could see a short hallway that led outside.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?” I called after him, struggling against my bonds. They held tight. I cursed under my breath. I thought about breaking the chair to get my hands free, but from the feel of it I knew the wood was too strong for that. I twisted around as far as I could and caught a glimpse of something bright glowing around my wrists. I sighed and slumped in the chair. Just my luck—Isaac had used magic to restrain me. I couldn’t slip, unknot, or break my way out of it if I tried.

How had I let it come to this? Time was, I could have gotten the box off two people like Bethany and Thornton in thirty seconds flat. Instead, I’d held back and botched it. Why? Was I growing soft, or just growing soft for them? For
her
?

Isaac and Gabrielle entered from outside, supporting Thornton between them. They gently moved him toward an old-style, porcelain clawfoot tub that had been filled with water and set up in the middle of the room. Bethany and Philip came in behind them, staying close in case Thornton stumbled or fell. Gabrielle took the long coat off of Thornton’s shoulders and let it fall to the floor. The remains of the Anubis Hand in the pocket hit the carpet with a muffled thud. Thornton could barely walk. He was so emaciated that he looked like he’d died weeks ago, not just last night. His eyelids drooped, half-closed. If any lights still pulsed on the amulet in his chest, I couldn’t see them.