Grim Rites (11 page)

“Get out,” I said as my cellphone started to buzz.

“There are things I need to do,” she protested, but I could still see the lie.

“Get the hell out before I change my mind and kill you myself,” I said from between gritted teeth.

“Don’t make promises you cannot keep, Amber.”

Anger flared in my core, bubbling in my veins as it sent my blood pressure through the roof. I could see myself slamming her into the wall, ripping her throat out with my bare hands. The image was enough to shock me and I jolted, ripping my hand away from her.

“There’s something different about you,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she studied me.

The demon mark on my shoulder itched and I fought the urge to brush my fingers against it. I didn’t need to look at it to know what it was doing; it was becoming a part of me and I could feel the symbols shifting on it, the words disappearing and reappearing….

“Get out,” I said again, but this time even my voice was different.

Lily studied me for a second more before whatever she saw in my eyes had her change her mind. She pulled away, moving around me as she hurried to the door. Pausing, she stared back at me, and I could still see the curiosity in her eyes. She had no idea what it was that made me different, and for the first time in a long time, I actually began to feel as though I might actually have the upper hand.

Lily ran, leaving me to stand alone in the centre of my bedroom with Steve’s dead body still spread across the bed. Grabbing the sheet that lay tangled at the end of the bed, I dragged it up over him before my stomach flipped once more, sending me dashing for the bathroom.

J
ogging
down the street towards the strange apartment block, I stared down at Victoria’s message in an attempt to verify the address.

Grabbing a shower while Steve’s dead body lay in the bedroom had been a weird but necessary evil and one I hoped I wouldn’t have to repeat anytime soon, but I’d needed it; spending any more time than I had to wearing clothes soaked in blood hadn’t been funny the first hundred times it had happened, and it sure as hell wasn’t getting any funnier.

The message Victoria had sent only contained an address, one I didn’t recognise. There was no name attached either, just to make it even more confusing. Pausing next to the apartment block, I spotted Victoria’s SUV parked across the street and crossed over to where it stood empty.

Clearly, she hadn’t thought it worth her while to wait for me. What we were even doing here was beyond me. Dialling her number once more, I pressed it to my ear and listened to it ring.

“What took you so long to get here?” her voice against my ear made me jump and I nearly dropped the cellphone as I spun around to face her.

“I’m not even sure what I’m doing here,” I said, glaring at her as I slid the phone back into my back pocket.

“I thought you would have wanted to investigate the witch hunter’s apartment,” she said.

“An apartment? How long has he been here?” I asked, nervousness making my stomach churn uneasily.

How much had he known?

“According to the lease, he rented it three weeks ago and planned to stay for at least six months….”

Nodding, I stared up at the apartment block. He’d been here for three weeks—what had happened in that time to draw him here?

“Well, let’s go then,” I said impatiently. The longer we hung around outside, the more time I wasted. Getting back to my own apartment was imperative—I couldn’t allow Sonia to change her mind and back out of the promise she’d made. It didn’t help that I didn’t trust Lily not to do something stupid.

Victoria nodded and started towards the building. Either she hadn’t noticed the impatience in my voice or she simply didn’t care enough to ask me what was wrong; either way, I didn’t mind. Especially if it got this over and done with fast.

We took the stairs as Victoria muttered something about enclosed spaces being evil. I couldn’t say I blamed her; the thought of ever getting caught out in a space as cramped as an elevator didn’t exactly fill me with joy either, and, well, we had no idea about what we were about to walk into.

Reaching the tenth floor, Victoria paused and cocked her head to one side before gesturing for me to follow her silently down the hall. We moved simultaneously, each step as silent as the grave, and part of me wondered if perhaps Victoria had glamoured our movements. I didn’t really know the extent of her abilities, at least not beyond her obvious strength and short temper.

Pausing next to one of the generically marked apartments, Victoria tried the door handle but it wouldn’t budge. Flexing her hand, the door popped open, the lock coming away in her grip with an almost inaudible pop.

Dropping it to the floor, she crept inside, staying low to the ground as I brought up the rear with my athame drawn. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good as it was going to get, considering Jon had confiscated my Elite issue gun.

Light spilled across the hall floor, emanating from what I assumed was the living room beyond, and we crept towards it. Clearly someone was home, and it wasn’t the guy who was supposed to be living here. Well, not unless he had the ability to come back….

Victoria paused and her low intake of breath brought me up sharp. She dropped her arms, lowering her gun until it was back at her side once more, and strode forward, all pretence of creeping around gone.

“What are you doing here?” she said as I rounded the corner and came face to face with the man she was referring to.

Jason greeted us both with the barest hint of a smile, but he didn’t lift his gaze from the sheaf of papers he held in his hands.

“I’m staying here,” he said.

“It’s not your name on the lease,” Victoria said, her anger causing the hairs on my arms to stand to attention as her power crept outwards like an ever-encroaching flood.

“I wasn’t aware it had to be. The Vatican rented the place originally for DuVal and he hasn’t checked in lately,” Jason said, finally lifting his gaze. The second his eyes fell on me, he shifted uncomfortably, his expression hardening.

“What are you doing here? You don’t even work for the Elite,” he said.

“Victoria asked me to come, so here I am.” I spread my arms wide and grinned at him, keeping the same level of ice in my gaze as he had in his.

“Did you contact the witch and tell her to meet you yet?” he asked, the weight of his gaze uncomfortable against my skin.

Nic wasn’t like this; he didn’t make my skin crawl and he certainly didn’t make me feel uneasy. Had this always been Jason or was it just the weight of his responsibility that made him such an enormous douche?

“Not yet,” I lied. No way was I telling him what the real plan was. The less he knew about Sonia’s involvement, the better.

“We need to look around,” Victoria said, cutting across the conversation.

Jason’s expression turned thunderous and I bit my lip hard in an attempt to keep my laughter to myself. It was nice to see him so uncomfortable for a change; giving him a taste of his own medicine was ridiculously satisfying.

“Look around for what?” he asked suspiciously.

“We need to know what DuVal was here investigating,” she said. “The Elite can’t exactly have witch hunters running around in our territory, investigating preternatural beings without our consent. It’s just not how things are done.”

“For a second I thought you were going to admit you knew DuVal was dead, but I guess we’re going with more lies,” Jason said, his tone suggesting he was bored. “Be my guest, look around, but from what I can tell he was looking into some church….”

My stomach flipped and I took a step forward before I even realised what I was doing. It seemed a little coincidental that this DuVal character would be investigating a church in King City at the same time I’d get a frightened phone message from Mia.

“What church?” I asked, trying to keep the interest out of my voice as I moved towards the piles of pictures and scraps of papers scattered around the large dining table in the middle of the room.

As I came level with Jason, he grabbed my arm, his power prickling along my skin. Clearly, he wasn’t done testing me yet, but the demon mark flared to life beneath my clothes. The feel of it burning beneath my skin had me gritting my teeth, but I refused to let Jason see that his actions were having any effect on me.

“If you try anything…” he warned.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll execute me,” I said, forcing as much irritation into my voice to cover my pain as I possibly could. Jerking out of his grip, I rolled my shoulders and slipped my athame back into my weapons belt as I grabbed the first picture sitting on the edge of the table.

The second my hand closed around it, I realised my mistake. Images crashed through my head, the smell of sulphur burning the back of my nose as my eyes started to water from the heat.

I had just enough time to see St Anne’s church before the photograph I was holding burst into flames.

“Shit,” I swore, dropping the picture as the flame consumed it within seconds.

“Get away from them,” Jason ordered as a spark from the photo I’d been holding caught the edge of the nearest paper.

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. He pushed me out of the way and started to pray in Latin. Or at least I thought it was Latin—strange languages weren’t exactly my area of expertise.

The fire died, grey plumes rising from the rest of the untouched paperwork as Jason turned on me once more.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I was going to have a look at the pictures,” I said. “Look, what is your deal with me? I’m not the enemy here.” It was a lie, but only because he was a prejudiced, pompous asshole. I had no intention of creating armies or murdering innocent victims so I could practice my black arts. Of course, as far as he was concerned, my kind may as well have been cavorting with the Devil Himself.

“You’ve got a demon mark. DuVal wasn’t an idiot, he was hunting demons, and he cursed the evidence so no one could trap him using it.”

My eyes widened as I stared down at the table covered in scribbled notes and pictures he’d taken in the area surrounding the church.

“You can do things like that?”

“Of course. We need some way of keeping our stuff out of the monsters’ hands.”

The way he said the word “monster” had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. This was the man I was going to hand Lily over to. There was no forgiveness in him and I couldn’t help but question his ethics…. He had the gall to call my kind monsters when he and the other witch hunters were willing to kill first and ask questions later.

“You keep calling them monsters because they have power you don’t understand,” Victoria interjected, “but you seem to forget that you have a power yourself.”

“My power doesn’t come from somewhere evil. It’s not corrupted by the constant desire for more the way theirs is. Mine is a divine power and I am merely its conduit.”

“That’s horse shit,” Victoria blurted out, her hands calling into fists as she faced off against Jason. “I can remember a time when the witch hunters didn’t believe their own hype, when their interest lay in protecting those who were weaker than they. With you, all I see is a man desperate to prove he has the biggest balls in the room.”

Her tirade surprised me, and clearly I wasn’t the only one it surprised. Jason stared at her as though she’d just sprouted a second head, righteous indignation practically dripping from his pores.

“The power you draw on doesn’t come from a god, not in the way you believe it does, anyway. It comes from the world around you, just like a witch’s power does…” Victoria continued.

“You’re wrong,” Jason said. His voice had dropped and I half expected to watch his eyes roll back in their head as they had back in the Elite office.

“Unless there’s an angel on Earth to draw your power from, you’re pulling it from nature just like the rest of us,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

I’d never seen her so argumentative. I knew she had a short temper, but this was getting ridiculous—at this rate they’d start facing off to each other like prize fighters any second.

“How do you know there isn’t one?” Jason asked, all trace of confrontation gone from his voice.

“I’d feel it. There’s not much on this earth that you can hide from the Fae—we see all, know all, feel all. Our connection to the earth and its inhabitants is the strongest you’ll come across, and an angel on earth would feel like a meteor strike.”

Jason nodded and turned away from her and back to the table; his shoulders had dropped and the tension that had tightened every muscle in his body just moments before was now gone. How was that even possible? And what had Victoria said that had made him so relaxed? It just didn’t make any sense, but then, even by my standards, what part of the last twenty-four hours made any sense?

“He was investigating St Anne’s Church over on Trinity,” Jason said, scooping up one of the singed pictures and studying the outside of it.

“Why?” I asked, my curiosity overwhelming me.

“Demonic activity. He suspected one of the priests there had been possessed. It’s highly unusual, but I suppose if the Shadow Sorcerers are back, possessed priests aren’t exactly a huge leap of the imagination.”

“Crap,” I said, the word slipping out as I turned to leave.

“You know something, don’t you?” Jason said, grabbing my arm once more.

“No, I left my oven on,” I said with the sweetest smile I could muster.

“If any of your little friends are caught up in this place when I go in, they better stay out of my way,” he said, the warning in his voice implicit.

Without answering him, I stalked away to the door and paused before I hit the hall.

“What did he think the priest was doing?” I asked.

“I guess what any lower level scum demon usually does,” Jason said, his face devoid of all emotion. “Raise Hell.”

Groaning, I stepped out into the hall and slammed my fist into the wall. How had I not seen that the priest was possessed? And if he was, then why hadn’t he known what I was? For a demon, recognising a witch shouldn’t have been a problem, and yet I’d watched both priests look at me as though I was no more interesting than any other human who wandered in off the street.

“What was that about?” Victoria asked as she followed me out into the hall.

“I’ve been to the church,” I said, gesturing for her to follow me down the hall and away from the apartment. “That friend I was helping out, well, she left a message on my voicemail begging me to help her and some babbling about the church.”

“And when you went to see her?” Victoria asked, pulling open the door to the stairs.

“There was a dead body of some woman in her house and she was down at the church. She wanted nothing to do with me, told me to leave her alone and never come back … but the priest didn’t feel like he was possessed. There was something weird about him, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”

“That mark is clouding your judgement,” she said, flicking a finger in the direction of my shoulder.

“That’s not possible,” I said, ducking away from her touch.

“I’ve seen it happen before. Those who are marked by a demon find it difficult to recognise friend from foe,” she said.

“Great.” I huffed out my cheeks as we jogged down the seemingly never-ending flights of stairs.

“It works both ways; you cannot see the evil hiding in plain sight, but they cannot see what you truly are either. How do you think you hid your true self from the Saga Venatione?”

I’d wondered how I’d managed it, but I’d been so busy with everything else going on around me, I hadn’t thought to sit down and really contemplate why he’d overlooked my Shadow Sorcerer side, especially considering how sure he’d been that I was a witch.