jinn 02 - inferno (26 page)

I handed her my bounty hunting license. She didn’t even look at it before she pushed it back. “You can’t be here.”

“And yet, here I am.”

She simply stared at me.

“Look, I just need a little information and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“You do not have the clearance to be here,” she said in a cool measured tone. “You have five seconds to vacate the premises before you are removed.”

Damn it. I took a step away, then another, wracking my brain for any angle I had. “Sy sent me,” I blurted.

“Repeat what you said.”

I turned back to her. She still had a sullen expression, but something was different. Something akin to fear shadowed her eyes. Who was afraid of Sy? “Sy sent me.”

She nodded and motioned me back. “This is highly irregular. Or course it will have to be verified.”

“Go ahead,” I said, certain he would have my back. Sy always had my back. Had Thomas not been with me I would’ve gone to him in the first place. “Care to use my phone?” I laid my cell on the counter with Sy’s number poised to dial.

She picked up her receiver and dialed. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. But I have a woman in front of me, claiming to be here at your request.”

She blinked and cleared her throat. “She is a Sekhmet….mmmmhmmmm….very well….I understand.”

She ended the call and looked at me. “How may I assist you?”

“I bet those words tasted bitter.” I winked. “I just need to know how to close down a porthole to the underworld.” She raised an eyebrow. “Hypothetically, of course.”

“Follow me.” She stood up from her desk and opened the small swinging door to her left. I went through and Thomas followed.

“He’s with me,” I said.

She led us into a records hall that was at least four hundred yards long, stacked twenty feet high with industrial shelves filled with banker boxes. Each box was labeled with a thirteen-digit serial number. If this was what I had to go through, even if I had an army of helpers, it would take too long. She led us down the row and over a couple aisles before she stopped and began searching for a particular box.

“You will find your answer in those four.” She pointed up.

“Boxes?” Thomas asked hopefully.

“Shelves. Touch nothing else. Nothing may leave this room.” She marched herself back to the front, leaving us alone.

“Well, this is going to be fun,” Thomas said, grabbing the first box. I took the one next to it and we sat on the floor.

“What exactly are we looking for?” he asked.

“Something that tells us how to shut down a pathway to the underworld.”

“And we know this exists because…”

“Because that’s what the angel is planning to do.”

“Right, but who’s to say it’s information people in the Abyss have access to, not some sort of angel-only-knowledge she brought with her?”

It wasn’t that I hadn’t considered it. It just wasn’t acceptable. If I failed to find out how to do this, our whole planned was ruined. There was no way I was going to fail us. I’d call down Uriel for help before I came back empty handed. “Just shut up and look.”

An hour passed, then two, and there wasn’t even a close call. Absolutely nothing even mentioned Hell or the Underworld or anything remotely exciting. It sucked. I threw the last folder in the box I’d been sorting through and leaned back against the wall, rubbing my eyes. When I looked up, Thomas was watching me.

“Were you really going to turn me in?” he asked.

I met his gaze with unwavering eyes. “Yes.” It wasn’t entirely true. I considered it, but whether or not I could have gone through with it . . . well, that was obvious.

He looked down at the folder in his hands. “You know I never would have turned you in.”

I snorted.

“I’m serious. I wasn’t supposed to hire you in the first place. I came looking for you that night for one reason. To capture you and bring you in, but I couldn’t.”

I chewed my bottom lip. Engaging him was a bad idea. Letting him weasel his way back into my head was an even worse one. “Why not?” My voice was soft and surprised even me.

He smiled a little, knowing he’d snagged me. “Because you came outside with me. You were so confident and curious and …accepting. You were the first non-vampire to ever treat me like a person and not a disease.”

I leaned forward, resting my arms against my knees. “And you betrayed me.”

“What would you have had me do?”

“Not betray me for starters.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t betray you. I helped you.”

“No. Had you truly wanted to help me, you would’ve told me everything from the start. You wouldn’t have given me half truths and led me into a trap.”

He glared at me for a moment. “Tell me. Are you more angry that you willingly walked into a trap or that I bruised your ego?”

“Go to hell.” I stood up to get another box.

“Wait—funny you should say that.” He held up the folder in his hands and I took it.

Scanning the page that had stopped him, the words almost leaped out at me. “Ancients’ life blood can be used for many purposes, not the least of which is closing portholes to other worlds, hence the cause of their near extinction.” That was all it said in a footnote of an otherwise uninteresting essay on immortality. I read it again three more times, then typed the exact wording into my phone. “Do you have any idea what it means?”

“It means it’s impossible. First, you would have to find an “ancient,” whatever that is, willing to be sacrificed. Second, you would have to find a way into Hell—the tricky part to that being, you’d need to be dead. The jinni could do it, but the moment he sets foot in that place, the whole of everything Hell has to offer will be after him. He could never succeed. It’s hopeless.”

“We’ll see about that.” I started back toward the entrance.

Thomas caught my arm. Immediately I felt the pull of him. “Femi, walk away from this before it’s too late. Right now, we can leave. I’ll go with you. Your friends are as good as dead. They just haven’t come to terms with that fact yet. You know there’s no way to win this.”

I yanked my arm away from him and punched him square in the nose. “I said no touching.” I stormed back through the building and to my car, Thomas practically having to run to keep up.

As soon as I was in the car I called Baker to share what we found.

I was met with silence that confirmed Thomas was right. Worry gnawed at me. Then Baker whispered, “That’s perfect, kitten,” and my anxiety eased a bit. “See you back at the prison.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hey, Fem?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Be careful, would ya? I don’t like that vampire.”

“Way ahead of you.” I hung up and stepped on the gas with full certainty that we could actually do this.

Blunt shards of rock shot up from the desert ground. Gray clouds rolled through the darkening sky, while remnants of the sunset made the small cluster of mountains glow red like they burned from within. Perhaps they did.

I didn’t transport to the exact spot because we didn’t know where the exact spot was yet. Besides, I needed to see who else was up here and dispatch them quietly to clear the way for our plan. The scrubby vegetation gave little shelter as I wove my way up the mountain. The place pulled me to it like a magnet, however. Calling me like home. The feeling that I didn’t like this plan settled in. The pull of the mountain was too strong, and we knew too little about what we were dealing with.

A crunch of earth behind me was the only warning I had before I was hit with a frenzied attack. It was hard, it was fast, and claws dug into my back, ripping my flesh, shredding my shirt. Pain and the more comfortable emotion—anger—flooded me. I whipped around, blue flames shooting from my body, and grabbed the creature by the neck. It was a deformed, bloody human, with eyes that glowed yellow in the dark. It snarled and gnashed with its pointed teeth and chewed off lips. The consuming anger was such a comfort that I gave into it, fed it. The skin of the creature’s neck bubbled and blistered beneath my hand. I pulled it so close we were almost nose to nose and a primal scream ripped from my own throat as its head dislodged. Burned through.

My skin crackled with power. A wild, angry, scream sounded in distance, like an echo of my own. Judging by the sound bouncing through the mountains, several more creatures were headed my way, but I didn’t care. This was glorious. The blue flames burst higher. Control was overrated when letting go felt like this. Four of them hit me at once. I ignored their attacks because pain was nothing. My body would heal. My arms shot out wide, grabbing two of them and slamming them together in the middle, trapping the third. The three burst into flames in front of me, filling the air with the stench of burning, rotten meat and screams. I turned to the fourth, who was too stupid to run away, grabbing it by its matted hair. My fist met its face repeatedly until the bones were soft beneath it and blood splattered against me with every punch. I dropped the beast to the ground and spun in a circle, waiting for the next because I could feel another presence near me.

The angel stepped out of the shadows letting her light free. “You have finally accepted the gift I have given you.”

I stared at her. The primal part of me wanted to attack her, she was my enemy, while the other side struggled to regain control.

“It was only a matter of time. No matter how you fight it, inside this is who you are.”

I moved toward her, putting us within an arm’s reach of each other. “Then what’s to stop me from killing you?”

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound: alien yet lovely enough to make a person drop to their knees. However, it wasn’t Olivia’s laugh, which only infuriated me more.

She reached through the flames still flickering and stretching out from my chest and pressed her palm flat against my heart. All at once the fire was extinguished as if it had never been. “For the same reason I can’t hurt you. There is a soul within each of us connected with a stronger force than either of us could ever break.”

“I’m not going to break that connection. Just you.”

“Not without destroying her too.” Her arrogance and confidence seeped from every pore. She was going to win this battle and she knew it. “However, I am willing to make a deal with you for your complete cooperation.”

I focused on the dim light within me that was Olivia to keep from attacking her, rage still barreling through my veins.

“Would you like to hear it?”

“Not really. We’ve tried deals before. They don’t work.”

“Nevertheless, you will listen. I will allow you to have your precious Olivia back once my mission is complete. I do not like it here. Observing is one thing; participating is another. I will go to the background again and everything can be as it was, once we close the path from Hell. That is all I ask for.”

This was what I wanted and she knew it. The temptation to agree was strong, but would she keep her end of the deal? The angel manipulated us at every turn. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, but she hadn’t lied. There would be consequences to helping her. But consequences were easier met with Olivia by my side than facing a world without her. With the pathway closed, Hell would have no way to get to either of us. The chance for a boring, happy life dangled in front of me like a carrot.

“What sort of assurance do I have that you will hold up your end of the deal?”

“You have my word.”

“Not good enough.”

She glared at me. “What do you want?”

“I want it written in your blood. I want a binding contract that you cannot turn back on.”

She pulled a quill and parchment out of the air and ran the sharp tip of the quill over her wrist. Light poured from it. “I don’t bleed,” she stated.

“You’ll find a way.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

She waved her hand again. The light turned red, then slowly thickened to the consistency of blood. She dipped the quill and scratched it over the parchment. When she was finished, she handed me the paper and I reviewed what she wrote for loopholes. When I was satisfied, I rolled the parchment and looked back at her.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You know what I want. I want you to take on the Seal of Solomon and to help me close the porthole.”