Secret Worlds (292 page)

“Until he takes you from me.” She bent her head. “Like he did with my mother.”

“I thought he wasn’t around for your mother,” I said.

“He’s the whole reason she went crazy,” she murmured. “She kept waiting for him to come back, and he never did. Then, when I was three, she tried to kill both of us.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. “I never knew. I’m so sorry.”

“Save it. I don’t need the pity.” She shook her head. “All he ever does is bring misery to my life.”

“He’s trying to change, right?” I ventured in a tiny voice.

She scoffed. “He may say that, but here we are at our friend’s funeral. He may not have killed her, but his world did.”

“No one likes the keres, not even the gods. They are a plague,” I murmured. “I’ll find this thing. I’ll stop it.”

“Like you did in the parking lot?” Her angry gaze cut toward me. “Is this the only way it can end? Am I going to have to attend your funeral, too?”

“No.” I stood up straighter despite the queasiness of my stomach. Death was something that came along with my life. It was better than the alternative, but she didn’t have to know that. “I had the wrong information, but now that I know, I will beat it.”

She laughed bitterly and turned away from me and the funeral. “Yeah, well, your track record speaks differently. Sorry, but you seem too distracted.”

I opened my mouth and closed it, pressing my lips together. My aunt had warned me from when she first arrived. I’d ignored my duty and let the daimones have free run around me. I’d been fooled by a god. Now two people I knew had died, all because I wanted a normal life.

I bowed my head. “I know I haven’t done the best job before now, but my aunt and I will be able to take care of this.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to happen. You and your aunt don’t seem to be on the best of terms.” She shook her head and glanced back at me with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Leave me out of this one. I don’t think I have it in me to watch you die.”

“So, you’re just going to run? From me—from your dad?”

“Don’t call him that. We’re nothing alike.” She headed though the of row squat buildings and up the hill, deeper into the graveyard.

I dug my nails into the tree until they broke and pushed the sobs back down into my chest as she drove away. Her words ripped into me deeper than any ker’s jagged nails. My aunt had said some of the same things the other night and even before that.

I sighed and stared at the blood dripping from my fingers and the tiny crescent shaped cuts. We hadn’t spoken since the night in the parking lot. I loathed the thought of making the first apology, but she would wait me out for the next few days, and I needed her to get through this.

I shook my head and laughed. What was I thinking? Aunt Jo wouldn’t let others suffer from daimones because she was angry with me. I took a deep breath and headed back to the mourners. After the funeral, I would call her, make up, and get this hunt back on track. No one else would die because of my selfishness.

Hermes stood at the entrance to the mausoleum alley with his hand in his pockets and a concerned frown on his face. “Where’s Serenity?”

I cleared my throat. “I think she wants to be alone.”

His frown deepened. “This isn’t the best time for either of you to be alone. Go with your friends. I’ll find her.”

My chest heaved from the pressure building up inside. “I seem to be running out of friends.”

“Even more of a reason not to leave Serenity alone.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, or me.”

His gaze drifted past me as if he could see her over the hill. “She’s still upset about the two of us.”

“Among other things, but what did you expect? Her dad and her roommate.” I gave a soft, bitter laugh. “She tried so hard to warn me.”

He took a step toward me and touched my shoulder. “Cassi, those things don’t matter in our world.”

“And that’s why you fail to understand Serenity, or me for that matter,” I said. “We don’t want that world. It makes us enemies for a war that’s lasted for eons.”

He chuckled softly. “That last part is truer than you know, but the beginning doesn’t have to be. We can change things.”

I stared into his eyes as if they would solve this puzzle for me. “Why do you even care? And for me, of all people.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s because you are a pandoran and I like playing with fire.”

“Oh, great. So you just have a thing for forbidden fruit.” I shook my head. “It’s like we’re playing out some cheesy teen romance.”

“I can think of a few things we’ve done that don’t belong in a teen romance.” He caressed my cheek with his thumb. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

I took a step back and let out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know. I need to think about things for once.”

I stepped around him and hurried to the cars parked along the street, hugging myself. Halfway down, my arm flared up with an intense burning that overshadowed the ever-present tingle that came around Hermes.

I gasped and pulled my wrist to my chest as I doubled over. A haze tinted the sky gray that clogged up my lungs, causing my breath to come out in small gasps. The stench of rot and death surrounded me, which was ironic, considering I stood in a cemetery.

I pressed in the tendons of my wrist and fell to my knees as the heat increased so badly that it filled my brain. Hermes’s muted shouts echoed in my ears before fading into the gray.

I woke to a steady beeping and the sun shining in my eyes. I groaned and rolled on my side, away from the window, and the crinkling of paper filled my ear. What in Hades?

My eyes snapped open, and I sat up on the paper-covered examination table. Across from me, jars of tongue depressors and cotton balls sat next to a sink on a dark green counter. I must have fainted and been taken to a clinic. I traced my fingers on the edges of my tattoo. Its rainbow pattern glimmered in the setting sun.

The burning had faded to nothing during my time unconscious. I’d never felt that intensity of a burn, even back in Georgia, training like an obedient girl. Aunt Jo had mentioned once that daimones were the easiest to detect in spirit form, without a body to possess.

A chill ran through me as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water on me. The ker possessed the dead, but couldn’t or wouldn’t stop the rotting. It must have decided to target Sheridan.

I hopped off the bed, grabbed my shoes that lay on a chair, and glanced at the clock on the wall. Only an hour had passed since the funeral. Was I too late to stop it? I had to try. A nurse in the hall glanced up from her clipboard and smiled at me when I stepped out into the hall.

“Good to see you’re awake,” she said. “Go ahead and return to the room. I’ll get a doctor to come see you.”

I raised my hands and shook my head. “Actually, I feel fine, but I’m in a hurry. I’m just going to check myself out.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she pressed the clipboard to her chest. “You should really have a doctor look at you. Do you faint often?”

I ground my teeth together and took a deep breath. “It’s no big deal. Just stress, but I have an emergency, and I really need to go.”

She stared at me for a long moment and sighed. “Fine. Follow me.”

She led me to a cashier who eyed me just as suspiciously as she processed my credit card while I dialed the number of the closest taxi service. I paced outside the building until the cab pulled up fifteen minutes later. I stared out the window and tapped my foot against the carpeted mat in the back seat. I had gotten the slowest cabbie in the entire Metroplex.

How long did it take for a ker to possess a body? It wouldn’t hang around the cemetery afterwards, but it might have left some sort of lead to go off of. Or I could wander around and wait for it to find me.

When we stopped in front of the gates, I handed the driver a couple of twenties and sprinted toward Sheridan’s grave, my heart hammering away. I stopped in front of it with a pant, resting my hands on my knees. The dirt lay upturned around the grave, like something had come out. The smell of fresh-tilled earth filled the air. It’d already claimed her.

I stood up straight and rubbed my wrist as a slight searing rippled through my tattoo. Yes, it was still here! I hurried down the sidewalk with my wrist held out like some sort of homing beacon. Left. Now to the right. The burning intensified as I came to a part of the path that led up the hill. The setting sun blazed behind me, turning the sky into a pumpkin shade. I clenched my fist and marched up the hill, ready to face whatever the ker had to throw at me, even if it was a gravestone.

The steady, high-pitched squeaking reached me before I crested the hill, and something in the pit of my stomach tightened. I sucked in a sharp breath as the burning on my wrist intensified. I got the bitch.

At the bottom of the hill, a man and a woman stood near a tall gravestone of a weeping angel Their heads, one blonde and one gray haired, were bent, looking at something on the ground. As I crept closer, using the taller headstones as cover, their conversation drifted to me.

“You can just use this one as a new vessel,” said the gravelly voice of the janitor I’d heard arguing with Hermes. “Leave the other one to me like I wanted in the first place.”

“But this one is old and broken.” Sheridan’s voice rasped. “I wanted the young one.”

“Well, you ruined things for me. So, that’s not happening.”

The ker made a snorting sound. “Don’t blame me. You still haven’t gotten rid of the god.”

“He’s an annoyance. Nothing more,” the man said. “Just avoid him and we shouldn’t have a problem.”

“That’s hard since he’s hanging around the pandoran. You’re going to have to deal with him.”

“I’ll think of something.”

The old man squatted, and my view was obscured by the angel. I crept to an adjacent grave that provided a clear view of their focus. My heart leapt in my throat, and I was mentally transported back to that night with my mother. The world lost its color, and the warm air couldn’t stop the artic chills that spread over me.

A wheelchair lay on its side with its top wheel turning with a squeak. My aunt’s body lay sprawled in the grass as blood spread from her midsection, redder than her hair.

Patterns of white-blue and orange tinted the world around me, and a wave of heat flashed through me, burning the chill away to nothing. The grief that threated to rise up was consumed by the need to burn it all. I stood. The ker turned with Sheridan’s pale, dead eyes going wide with surprise. The janitor looked up at me and grinned as he crouched over my aunt’s corpse.

“Hello, little spider,” he said. “Welcome to my web.”

“I don’t remember there being any spider daimones.” Tiny flames danced around my fingertips. I couldn’t hold back an inferno for long.

He got to his feet with a grunting laugh. “No, but I am a weaver of sorts. Of destines.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The Fates travel in three.”

His grin twisted to a scowl and he hissed. “My sisters are always getting the fame. Those three need each other to drive men to their end. There’s only me to bring doom.”

“Moros.” The wind tore his name from my lips and spread it across the cemetery despite my soft utterance. “Doom and depression.”

He let out a soft sigh. “It feels so good to be remembered, even if it is by a foolish pandoran.”

Fire flared around my fists. “I’ll make sure you’re forgotten.”

The ker scooped up my aunt’s wheelchair with one hand, spun, and hurled it at me. I threw myself to the side into a roll and came up on one knee on the concrete sidewalk. The air thickened, and the dimmer sky became even darker. Moros’s influence slithered in my mind, trying to raise the sorrow buried in the pit of my stomach. Instead, the fire inside rose up and incinerated the connection. He yelled as the sleeve of his corduroy jacket caught aflame.

He dropped to the ground and bashed his arm against the grass repeatedly. I spread my hand in the ker’s direction, and a ball of flame burst from my palm. She dove to the side and the fire hit the grave behind her with a sizzle.

Moros scowled at the ker. “You told me she was weak.”

“She is.” Sheridan’s voice rasped out. “And predictable. It’s just a little fire.”

“Just a little?” Heat rushed through my body. “Fine. Let’s amp it up for you.”

I raised my arms above my head and jerked them down. Fire trailed from my hands in two slender whips if blue flame. I aimed one for the ker’s neck. A sharp crack split the air as she dodged out of the way and the whip scorched the ground where she once stood, leaving a spurt of fire in its wake. I spun and arced the other whip behind me, where Moros had been trying to sneak up on me. It hit him in the side, and he screamed as the blue flames consumed the side of his jacket.

The ker slammed into my side, and we tumbled into the grass. The whips sputtered and died in my hands. Sheridan’s dead face spilt at the sides of her mouth as she grinned, revealing a row of jagged teeth. She held her hands in a claw-like fashion, and the fingernails lengthened.

“I think I promised to read your future from your entrails,” she hissed.

“Moros must suck at his job if you need to ask the Fates.” My gaze flicked past her. “Oh, wait, he’s ash now. Like you’re about to be.”

I shoved my hands into her chest released the inferno inside me. A gout of blue-white flame rushed up her chest and down her stomach. She jerked away from me and stumbled to her feet as the fire consumed her arms and legs. She ran though the graveyard, leaving a trail, until Sheridan’s corpse came to rest on the sidewalk only a few feet from Moros’s remains.

I stumbled to my feet and made it as far as to my aunt’s body before collapsing again. I pulled her into my arms and rocked her back and forth as the tears poured down my cheeks. Nothing held back the tidal flood, and it kept me rooted in the spot, even with the blaze spreading around me and the sirens wailing in the distance.

The cold breeze from the air conditioner blew against the back of my neck as I sat with my hands cuffed to the table. The chair across from me remained empty. I glanced at the mirrored window and stared at the table, fighting down the lump in my throat. A dull ache refused to budge from my chest.