Three Days To Dead (4 page)

Only goblin females could pass and, even then, it was a rare feat. Goblins had naturally curved spines,
which accounted for their hunched-over appearance. Some females were able to overcome the curve and maintain a straight posture. Contacts covered red eyes, dye took care of the blue-black hair, and files flattened sharp teeth. Males were incapable of passing. They had more severe hunches, oily skin, pointed ears, and rarely grew taller than five feet—even when standing straight up.

On a normal day, I would have slipped into the shadows and tailed Madame Goblin until I discovered why she was wandering around the city in broad daylight, dressed like a hooker. But today was hardly normal, and I had no proof she wasn’t just bad at walking in heels.

She disappeared around the block. On the same corner stood an old-fashioned telephone booth. Dialing Wyatt’s number should have been as natural as breathing, but even if I could remember it, what would he say? When had I last spoken to him? What did we say? He had been a driving force in my life for the last four years. At once fiercely supportive and shatteringly critical, and somehow he always made it work. We worked as a Triad because of him.

Only now his team was dead, and nothing was how it used to be. Now I had no one to turn to, except for Chalice’s roommate, and he was likely to have me committed if I tried to tell him the truth.

At some point, I’d started walking toward the phone. I stopped halfway there. Turning myself in to the Department was giving up. It meant that the Owlkins died—no, not died, they were slaughtered—for nothing.

No
. They died for something: me. A debt worth more than I could possibly repay.

The wind shifted, pushing the acrid stench of burnt wood and tepid water in my direction. I sneezed and bit my tongue. My eyes watered.

Overwhelming loneliness—something I hadn’t felt in a very long time—crashed over me like a wave. I was crushed beneath it, helpless and alone. The world grayed out, at once fuzzy and keenly electric. I held on to consciousness until the dizzy spell passed. Fainting in the street was not on today’s To Do list. Getting answers was.

I grabbed the pay phone’s handset, unaware that I’d entered the booth until I touched the grimy plastic. I lifted it, then dropped it back into the cradle. Was getting those answers worth probable execution? The Department would file me away as Neutralized. Normally they allowed Triads to operate under our own rules, answerable only to our Handlers, who answered to the brass—three key people in the Metro Police. Until someone really, truly screwed up.

The phone rang. I yelped and jumped back, slamming my elbow into the corner of the door. Needles lanced up my right arm, numbing the nerves. Fucking funny bone.

Two rings, sharp and clear.

I spun in a complete circle, halfway in the booth, surveying the surrounding buildings. No one came running to answer the call. The street was quiet, empty.

Three rings. Insistent.

My fingers closed around the mouthpiece.

Four.

I picked it up, silencing the offending noise. Gingerly, I held it to my ear. The line was open, but I heard nothing. Not even heavy breathing. Seconds ticked off, each one stretching out in a lengthy silence.

Frustrated, I swallowed my doubt, and said, “Hello?” Silence. I took a chance, not daring to hope. “Wyatt?”

Click
.

Shit.

I dropped the phone and backpedaled out of the booth. My foot stamped down on something hard. The warmth of an arm wrapped around my waist, while a hand clamped over my mouth. Panic hit like ice water. One of my hands came up, clutching at what my eyes couldn’t see. Years of training told me that screaming was futile, but Chalice’s body refused to cooperate.

I shrieked against my human (I hoped) gag, and tried to bite the palm and failed. I ground the heel of my sneaker down, longing for my heavy combat boots. My captor grunted, but didn’t loosen his ghostly hold.

Broad daylight. He was attacking me in broad daylight.

I hooked my left ankle around his, shifted my weight backward, and pulled. We fell over. I drove my elbow into his ribs just as he hit the sidewalk. The pained grunt it elicited was music to my ears. I landed a second jab. His hold loosened.

“Will you stop? I won’t hurt you.”

I froze, surprise replacing my fight instinct, and marveled at the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. Rolling sideways, I dropped into a crouch and found myself face-to-face with—

Dead air. And the sidewalk. Lots of empty sidewalk.

“Wyatt?” I asked. Had I hallucinated the whole thing as preparation for my loony bin audition?

Warmth brushed my hand. I jerked.

“Evy?” asked Wyatt’s disembodied voice. He could have been right in front of me, as the direction of his voice implied.

Wherever he was, he shouted a sudden warning. “Behind you!”

The air behind me shifted, and I flattened myself to the sidewalk. Something sailed over my head, “oofed!” as it hit a person who wasn’t even there, and skidded on its scaly ass until it slammed against a trash can.

The goblin was young and stupid to be attacking me alone. He scrambled to his feet, standing barely four-foot-five hunched over, which made him tall for a goblin. Ruby eyes glared at me from beneath bushy black eyebrows. He snarled, lips pulling back over jagged teeth.

Bile scorched the back of my throat. The unexpected reaction came without explanation or emotion—just immediate and profound revulsion at the sight of the angry goblin male, a simple leather loincloth the only thing between him and immodesty.

Goblins never attacked in the open, or during the day.

Air swirled behind me. I spun around, anticipating an attack from behind. The assumption proved correct, but the additional pair of goblins who appeared to assist their friend were already sprawled on
the sidewalk. Like they’d run headfirst into an invisible brick wall.

I pivoted again, but turned too late. Two inches of a dagger blade sank into my left shoulder, just above the cleft of my armpit. Pain shrieked through my chest. I spun the other way and clipped the goblin square in his pointy nose with my elbow. His head snapped backward. Fuchsia blood spurted from his nostrils. I continued my pivot and landed a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. He tumbled ass over teakettle into the street.

Chalice’s untrained legs almost tangled together, but I kept myself upright. Inner thigh muscles screeched, protesting the acrobatic move. I grabbed the narrow hilt of the goblin’s blade and yanked. It slid out neatly and with only a minor amount of additional pain. I charged the downed goblin, intent on slitting him from sternum to scrotum.

Wyatt cried out—a pained sound I knew too well. Attacker forgotten, I fixed my attention on the other two goblins, who appeared to be hanging in midair, attached to some invisible object. An object that was bleeding from a dagger, which dangled from nothing about four feet off the ground. The smaller goblin’s head was snapped back by an invisible blow, followed by a second that dislodged him. He hit the pavement and took off running.

The remaining goblin snapped his cone-shaped teeth at the air. The blade of the embedded dagger became suddenly visible, coated in red blood. It turned and buried itself to the hilt in the throat of the trapped goblin, splattering fuchsia blood across what looked
like a pair of human legs. The dead goblin was tossed to the sidewalk.

Blood-soaked shoes took a step toward me. I stepped backward. Red, human blood continued to ooze into thin air, outlining a man’s torso.

It couldn’t be. He was Gifted, sure, but his power was summoning inanimate objects. Since when could Wyatt turn invisible?

The retreating goblin had almost reached the end of the block. I stepped into the quiet street, took aim, and with every bit of concentration I could muster, loosed the knife. It sailed straight, but arched down at the last instant. Instead of hitting the goblin square in the back, it buried itself in the creature’s leg. He stumbled forward, into the road, and was flattened by a speeding pickup truck. Brakes squealed, and the truck fishtailed out of sight.

From a distance, the mess looked like the remains of someone’s dog, all black and pink and grotesquely inhuman. The truck’s engine continued to rumble just out of sight. I waited for the driver to back up or walk over, to see whose pet he’d just mangled. Instead, the engine roared and was gone.

Typical.

“Where’s the third?” Wyatt asked.

Shit. The one who stabbed me had gotten away.

“We need to get off the street,” he said. “Now.”

I wasn’t about to argue. I followed the free-floating bloody torso toward the nearest apartment building, trying to reconcile my eyes with my senses. I smelled the blood, both human and goblin, and something else, so familiar—a spicy aftershave, like musk and cinnamon, unique to Wyatt. The continued invisibility
frightened me, even though I’d never admit it. I wasn’t the only one who had changed.

He led me through a narrow, musty lobby, past a row of mailboxes, toward a door marked with a laundry machine symbol. I followed him into a dank stairwell. Down we went, into a gray and damp world of concrete floors and cement-block walls. A chill wormed down my spine. At the bottom of the stairs, the room opened up. Four washing machines lined one wall, with four dryers opposite. A long, wooden table divided the room. There were no windows and no chairs.

“It is really you?” his disembodied voice asked.

I nodded at the blood. “It’s me, and if it’s really you, I could sure as shit use some answers. Maybe a face to talk to.”

“Right; sorry.”

He spoke words I didn’t recognize. The air around him shimmered and rippled, like heat off the surface of a desert road. A body materialized, faded, and then appeared with perfect clarity. One hand pressed against his wounded side; the other clutched a glowing yellow jewel. He desperately needed to shave the dark stubble that shadowed his chin and cheeks—as black as his short hair and intense, thick-lashed eyes. Blood of two species had soaked the legs of his jeans, staining them purple.

Hurt and surprised and staring at me with open curiosity, Wyatt Truman smiled. It was such a familiar gesture of affection that my reaction to it was entirely unexpected. Something started in my stomach and surged upward, then came back down to settle deep in my abdomen—an instant and instinctive reaction
to the mere sight of him, unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Wyatt had been my boss, my friend, and my confidant. Besides Jesse and Ash, he was the closest thing to family I’d ever known. I crossed the short space that separated us and flung my arms around his shoulders, ignoring the blood as I hugged him. Hard. One arm snaked around my waist. His breath tickled my ear.

“You have no fucking idea how glad I am to see you,” I said. “I thought I was going crazy.”

“I’m sorry, Evy,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.”

“For what?”

He stiffened. I pulled away to arm’s length. He pressed his lips into a thin line, black eyes searching mine for … something. Bright spots of color darkened his cheeks, and the intensity of his stare sent little niggles of doubt worming through my stomach.

“Evy, what do you remember?” he asked.

I didn’t like the sound of that. I backed up, putting another few feet of space between us. “I remember the Triads attacking the Owlkins, slaughtering them because they were hiding me. I called you, because I didn’t know what else to do.” But the memories still ended with me sneaking through a city street toward our meeting place.

“That was a week ago,” he said.

“No kidding. Do you mind filling in the blanks?”

Despair crumpled his face. I bit the inside of my cheek, clenching my fists to resist the overwhelming instinct to hug him again. Something had happened to me, something very bad.

“Wyatt, what happened? How did I die?”

His eyes flickered toward my shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.” Strangely enough, the knife wound didn’t hurt anymore. It sort of itched. “How did I die?”

He limped over to one of the dryers and opened the door. Wrinkled laundry spilled onto the floor. He put the yellow jewel on top of the dryer and began sifting through the clothing. I eyed the precious gem, wondering if that was the source of his invisibility cloak, and how much he’d paid for it.

“Wyatt?”

“Nice necklace.”

I fingered the cross around my neck. “Don’t change the subject.”

He checked the waistband of a pair of jeans and, determining them appropriate, tossed them onto the room’s center table. “I should have been there when you woke,” he said, returning to his search. “But you didn’t come back where we thought you would. Even dead, you’re pretty damned contrary, you know that?”

I smiled at the familiar jab. I always preferred questioning his orders over following them, and it drove him bat shit. Drove my partners bat shit, too, when they were alive. Even if I was wrong, the fun was in the argument.

“Next time leave a better trail of bread crumbs, and I’ll try resurrecting to the appropriate body,” I said.

He threw a cotton shirt on top of the jeans and stood up. Pain bracketed his eyes and pinched his mouth. My stomach tightened. I was such a bitch. Here he was, bleeding to death in front of me, and I kept nagging him for answers.

“Take off your shirt,” I said, closing the distance between us.

Wyatt arched an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me see the wound, jackass.”

I reached for his shirt, but he caught my hand. A tremor danced up my arm, awakened by his touch. I looked up, startled. Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, there and gone in a blink. Warning bells clanged in my head.

“I did it,” he said.

“Did what?”

His shoulders drooped. Agony radiated off him. He dropped my hand, and I mourned the loss of his touch. Only for a moment, though, because he spoke three words that shattered everything.

“I killed you.”

“That’s not funny,” I said, fingers clenching into fists. A shiver wiggled down my spine.