jinn 03 - vestige (15 page)

His tongue ran over his teeth as he stared at me. Then, with a little nod of acknowledgement that made my smile even wider, the bastard kissed me. He bent right down and pressed his soft lips against mine as one of his warm hands cupped the back of my head, holding me in place. At first nothing happened. The shock of the bold move was too much, but a moment later my lips were kissing him back. His fingers at the nape of my neck relaxed and made small, gentle kneading movements that made my head want to lull back. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer, wanting more. His tongue touched the seam of my lips and I nearly crawled over the bar, but Sy pulled back. His silver eyes darkened and gleamed at me with triumph.

“Just haven’t seen you in a while,” he said with a low, rusty voice that did nothing to cool the heat pouring through my extremities. Even though he didn’t speak loudly, the bar was completely silent. Everyone waited to see what I would do.

My chest rose and fell rapidly, my lips still tingling from his kiss. “In that case, how about one more for the road?” I beckoned him forward with a pointed fingernail.

He smiled and leaned in toward me, eyes half closing. “If you really brought me here to kiss me, your life expectancy just went way down,” I said to him, pressing my fingernails into his neck.

He planted a soft kiss to my lips again, then repeated the gesture along my jaw all the way to my ear. “Like I said, I have a job for you.” He pulled back ever so slightly taking my earlobe between his lips. “This is just me beating you at your own game. Come to the back.” He kissed me one more time, then straightened and offered me a hand.

I looked at it for a moment. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Maggie.

As I stood to follow him, the room erupted with scoffs and laughter. Between the catcalls, people shouted things like, “Be gentle with her, Sy,” “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” and “Make that pussy purr.” I was livid by the time we stood in his apartment. As the door clicked shut behind us, I whirled to face him.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to be respected as a female bounty hunter? How dare you—”

“This,” he interrupted. “Was not my fault. You chose to make a scene and I had to cover.

“Since when do you assign me cases?”

“Since right now. I need you to do this. It’s time sensitive.” He handed me a slip of paper that I didn’t bother looking at.

“Why me?”

“You have the hand.”

“Yeah, I have two of them, as do ninety percent of the people out there.”

He shook his head. “You have the hand of glory. This job, it’s dangerous and you can’t tell anyone what you’re doing. But we need to catch this wolf before he infects anyone else.”

I finally read at the paper:
The Nanteos Cup. The council. Start with Rhys.

“What does the cup do and who is Rhys?” I asked. “Also what council?”

Sy’s chin lifted, and I could see his wheels turning. Whatever this was, he wasn’t supposed to explain it, but like any good fae, he’d find a way around it. “There was an article in the human news not too long ago about a cup. It was just an old artifact—ancient to them—made out of wood, nothing special really. Well, it was loaned to a woman who was sick in the hospital because of the legend that surrounded it. While she was in possession of the object, it went missing. It’s a shame what people will steal, taking someone’s last hope of getting better.”

I nodded. “Yeah, people are dicks, but magic can’t solve every problem.”

He raised his eyebrows. “True. However, where there is a lot of magic, someone has to be responsible for it and govern it or there’d be chaos—even if the populous is unaware of their influence. The human world’s way of ignoring magic does more harm than good.”

“I don’t know about that. I think having the freedom to take care of yourself however you see fit is worth a little chaos.”

“My friend Rhys wouldn’t agree with you. He’s all about control.”

I looked at the paper again and nodded. I had thousands more questions, but this was the most Sy had ever revealed to me. Something was pushing his hand and I’d figure it out. That was my job.

I folded the paper and slid it into my pocket, then headed back out to the front. “What a waste of time,” I said loudly then held up one finger and let it fall to a hook. The room roared with laughter.

“Thanks, Femi,” Sy said dryly behind me.

I shrugged, then tapped Maggie’s shoulder on my way to the door. We had a mission.

“So what’s the job?” Maggie asked when we were in my car.

“We have to get a magical cup that can heal people away from a secret council that no one knows about.”

She scrunched her nose. “Sounds easy enough.”

I flashed a grin. “My thoughts exactly.”

“So how does one track down a super-secret organization?”

“By compiling what we know with who we know.”

“Aaaannnd once we find them we just ask for the cup?”

I laughed. “Well, we could try that, but I wasn’t planning on giving them a choice.” I leaned over and pulled the hand out of the glove box and dropped it on her lap, expecting her to scream.

Her lip curled back. “No way. Holden already tried to make me eat a dead person and it was disgusting. I am not taking a bite out of a grisly old hand.”

I blinked a couple times. When did I miss that? “That’s the hand of glory. Basically when you light the fingers it freezes everyone around and can unlock any door. That’s how we’ll get the cup. The first step is finding where they are hiding it, though. Which means, we need to find Rhys.”

“Great. How do we do that? I assume it won’t be as easy as googling him.”

“We need to talk to the person who was closest to Baker. Holden.”

The entire building shook around us.

A pacifist guardian, a dying guardian, a child, and a reluctant to help vampire were clearly no match for whatever was out there.

Corbin looked up from his magazine and glowered at me for a moment. “Might want to call for backup, love,” he said as he flipped to the next page.

“Right.” I focused my thoughts.
Holden. Help us. They’re surrounding the building.

Whatever he was doing at Xavier’s, he had blocked his thoughts and feelings from me. But at the word help, I felt the rush of him, anger and confusion quickly overshadowed by concern for my safety. I hated this, having to rely on someone else. The niggling voice of my subconscious suggested I call Death. There was no time like the present to compromise my most basic values and make a deal that could save us all.

Charlie tightened her grip around my waist, burying her face into my hip. Quintus came running from the back.

“There’s no way out,” he said. I could practically see the thoughts swirling through his mind, as the steel walls continued to shake. He could save the two of us, but Charlie and Corbin would be on their own—an option I would never accept.

“Holden’s coming,” I said.

The news didn’t put Quintus at ease. “There are a lot of them, Olivia.”

Corbin’s head lulled back. “That’s the spirit. Give up before we even start.”

“No one is giving up—” I said.

He bolted to his feet as a man I had never seen before walked into the room from the back hallway that led to only more rooms.

I moved Charlie behind me. Corbin moved so fast toward the man that he blurred, but the next instant everything slowed. The banging from the outside was low and slow, Corbin barely moved mid charge, and Holden’s mist that had just begun to form moved in slow motion.

The man looked directly at me and smiled in a small intimate way. His crinkling green eyes reminded me very much of Holden.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” he said.

I blinked several times. “Are they…”

“I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.“ He beckoned me.

My legs moved forward without my consent and Charlie came with me, also not paused like the rest of them. The man either didn’t see her or chose to ignore her as I approached. His shark-like stare took in every line, every dent, and every imperfection on me.

His chin angled down. “So you’re the one.”

“I don’t think I am.” I said. “Who are you?”

“Why we’re practically family.”

I forced myself to step backwards, and took Charlie by the arm. As soon as I touched her, the pressure against my legs eased and whatever control the man had over me faded. “Who are you?” I repeated again with more authority, mimicking one of Holden’s annoyed looks.

His stare finally left my face and drifted to Charlie. “Interesting,” he said under his breath, then stepped to the left and waved his hand. The room exploded into a motion. Corbin missed his target, Holden appeared, Quintus came to my side, and the walls resumed shuddering and shaking.

“Who’s that?” Quintus asked.

“For fuck’s sake,” Holden said at the same time, glaring at the man.

He glanced over at him. “I’m just protecting my interests and meeting Olivia.”

“I don’t know what this is,” Corbin said, stepping up. “But we seem to have bigger problems.” He gestured to the door. “Perhaps you could do something about that first.”

The man stepped back, folding his arms behind his back. “I’ll wait.”

“No one invited you here,” Holden snarled as he stomped toward the door then vanished in a puff of steam and smoke.

There was no way I was letting him go out there alone. I ran toward the door, brushing off Quintus’s hand as he tried to stop me. I wrenched the door open and all the banging stopped. Heavy unnatural silence pressed down on me as I walked into the pouring rain, Quintus close behind. I didn’t see Holden or anything. Everything seemed, dare I say, normal.

I held a hand up to Quintus, motioning for him to stay where he was. I’d glanced back for only a second when something leaped at me from above and crashed down on me. My knees buckled under the weight, though I managed to keep my arm between us as it gnashed its bloody, pointed teeth. Raw meat where its lips should have been hung in rotting tethers over my face. I focused my strength and energy into my hands and jammed both of them into its chest. I still couldn’t tell if the beast was evil or not, but it disintegrated all the same from my touch. I scrambled to my feet, a bit woozy.

“On your right,” Femi yelled.

I spun, not pausing to question when she’d arrived, and caught a new attacker mid-charge. This one didn’t turn to ash as fast as the other one had—and while it struggled, three more beasts had time to spot me. They were everywhere.

Femi kicked one solidly in the chest and charged toward me, but another creature got a hold of her shoulder, tearing her skin and sending blood spraying across the ground. She whirled around and dug her claws into its shoulder. “Hurts, doesn’t it.”

Three more surrounded her as Quintus struggled with his own monsters, and Holden was still nowhere in sight. Maggie appeared from around the corner of the building and pressed her back to mine as the creatures surrounded us.

“What are they?” she asked.

“I have no idea.”

They charged us, using no weapons other than their claw-like fingers and spikey teeth. I grabbed two, only because I had to, and poured as much energy into them as I could, shaking from the effort. Slowly they stiffened and began to flake away. My legs gave out and blackness crept in along my vision. I gasped for air. The monsters trampled over me toward Maggie as she fought in a frenzied attack. More advanced on me, but someone stepped in front of me and moved in a blur of motion. I concentrated on breathing and glanced back at Maggie, who was bloody and had taken to grabbing them and throwing them away from us. Her too bright aura still surrounded her, not diminished a bit by her effort. The creatures were surrounded by darkness.

“Feed on them,” I wheezed.

“What?” she asked, hurling the next one toward the dumpster.

“Pull their energy into you.”

Maggie caught the next one and wrapped her steel-like grip around it. “Now what?”

The creature thrashed in her arms, tearing at the skin on her forearm, but she didn’t budge. I had no idea how to explain. It wasn’t how I fed, but I could see what she needed. She needed to balance the growing light in her with darkness before it consumed her. I pushed myself up to my knees. “Don’t think about it. Just focus on the hunger. Your body will know what to do.”