Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (34 page)

I looked at my dad, then back to TC.
"How is he with Dags? You mean he's with him, advising him? Or he's
with him, protecting him?"

"We don't know how," Dad said. "We
just know the last location sequence in his programming put him in
the vicinity of the Guardian and Rhonda Orly. We know he's not been
deleted—that would be something very evident in all planes. But he
is incommunicado, which, like TC said, has forced a dialogue
between the planes."

My head started spinning.
"So you're telling me I have to work
with
the Ethereals now?"

"To stop their rogue, it would be
helpful," TC said. "I don't see this truce lasting forever. The
Seraphim is not a patient individual. And don't be fooled at all by
this. We're not." He pointed at himself and then at Dad. "Once we
get rid of Zacharel, you can bet on the Seraphim calling in all the
markers to try and take that damned book."

"And kill Dags."

"Possibly." TC nodded. "That's exactly
it. So I figured you'd be a bit more than enthusiastic to give me a
hand?"

Oh, great. I felt like Kirk
greeting the Klingons in
Star Trek
VI
. I'm supposed to invite the enemy in and
help them fix their own problems? Just…awesome. Yay. Super. "You
mean, a hand in kicking Zacharel's ass, right? As long as I don't
have to work with any Cherubim."

"You mean Gabriel." Dad folded his
arms over his chest. He was wearing the same clothing as before. I
guess it was his new uniform. "I won't lie and say that Gabriel is
sorry for what she did. That will never happen. Arrogance runs deep
within the First Choir, I'm afraid."

And a good deal in the Second. I
wanted to say this out loud, but I was also a little curious as to
what they getting to. I mean…I was missing a foot. What help could
I be? And yet the Phantasm and a Virtue were in my room, and they
were in the Society House.

Whoa. I pointed at Dad. "How are you
in here? I explicitly told them to shoot you on sight."

"I'm here because Nona said I could
be, and I'm afraid her orders override your own. And, by the way,
that is not a nice way to treat your father."

Mom? As far as I knew, she'd agreed
with me after he'd locked me in the Throne. So if she'd changed her
mind, it had to be damn recent. I looked at TC. "Is my mom
awake?"

"No. She's still in intensive care and
she's very weak. Adiran's been staying with her this whole time."
He glanced over at my dad. "He's removed himself from
play."

"Play? You think this is play? Daniel
is dead, asshole. Gabriel killed him." I looked at Dad. "So, you
convinced Mom you were all good now? That you weren't some evil
genius bent on destroying her and me? That you weren't trying to
put the Seraphim in control of all the planes so you
could—"

Zoë.

I stopped. That wasn't Inanna. That
was Mephistopheles.

I swallowed what I was
about to say.
Yes?

Shut up and listen. That
goes for Inanna as well.

Only Mephistopheles could
do that to me.
Yes, sir.

He didn't answer, so I pretended that
made him happy. It also made sense I could hear him. I was at the
Society House, which was where Jason and Nick said they were going.
Was Manuel here?

And what about Umayma?

Listen to
Adiran.

Fine.

"Zoë, Gabriel did not kill
Daniel Frasier. Detective George Mastiff did. And rightly so.
Without Inanna forever in battle with that mad part of him, he
would never know peace." He held up his hand when I opened my mouth
to go all medieval on him. "You
know
I'm right. She was seconds away
from him, banished by the Eidolon, and Daniel's psyche was ready to
kill you. He was too dangerous as a Revenant. Did it ever occur to
you what might have happened if she'd lost control of him while
still bonded? What kind of monster would he be then? With all the
powers of a First Born at his fingertips?"

I really hadn't considered
that. Or even thought of it. Dad was right.
Inanna, was it difficult to keep the madness away?

I felt her pause inside of
me, and I knew she was looking for the words.
I—yes, Zoë. It was a constant battle. His soul had been
damaged and the only way it could ever be healed was for it to
return to the Well of Souls.

Not sure I wanted to know what that
meant. But in a way, it did make me feel a little
better.

TC moved to the door and looked back
at me. "Zoë, we've made a deal with Gabriel and we're going to have
to ask you to abide by it."

Well, that statement snapped me back
to the present problem and away from considering souls. "Deal with
that bitch? What?"

He opened the door. "I'll let her tell
you."

I grabbed the side rails with both
hands (ow with the tube hand) and gripped as hard as I could when
Gabriel strolled inside the room. She nodded to TC in an almost
reverent way, ignored my dad, and stopped at the foot of my bed.
"Stupid monkey. Thinking you could go up against an
Eidolon-wielding Dominion." She shook her head. "I'm here to make
you whole again." She reached out and held her hand over where my
foot should have been.

The blanket moved and shifted just
before the pain started. I fell back against the pillows and
half-shifted as something grabbed and twisted itself inside of
every muscle, from the ones in my face and scalp to my chest, my
arms, my stomach, my thighs. TC and Dad were on opposite sides of
the bed with their hands on my shoulders, pressing down as I
screamed.

As soon as it started, it
stopped.

I lay panting as if I'd just run a
marathon. Sweat down over my forehead, over my eyes, my cheeks, my
neck. I was drenched in it.

WTF?

And then my left foot itched again. I
ignored it. It wasn't supposed to—

I wiggled my toes.

When I looked down at the foot of the
bed, I saw a lump on the left side to match the one on the
right.

Gabriel jerked the blanket off of me
to reveal a brand new foot. New, because I still had polish on the
right one. No polish on the new one.

I moved it at the ankle, wiggled my
toes again, and then, with TC's help, sat up to take a long look at
it.

"It's real. Touch it."

I reached out with my right hand and
did just that. It was real. I could feel it—but it couldn't feel
me. The water running down my face wasn't sweat anymore as I broke
down in front of everyone. I didn't want to do the ugly-cry, but
damn, I'd sort of resigned myself to be footless and getting a
prosthetic shoe-foot.

"There's a price," Gabriel
said as she poked the foot in the center and it twitched. "For
this, you give me the page of the
Grimoire
that Nona hid away. You have
until the job is done and Zacharel is no more. If I don't get the
page within twenty-four hours of that, then I take the foot back
and your new nickname will be Stumpy."

Chapter Thirty-Six

After Gabriel left, the room became a
convention of doctors, Society scientists, occultists, and the
Society police. I endured the probing and prodding and the X-rays,
but put the kibosh on the idea of tissue sample and a
biopsy.

I wanted out of there, and I was even
more happy to walk out of there on my own.

And I did. Still dressed in my
hospital gown. Only as I made my way to the door, I slowly
converted the shift into clothing. Black jeans, serious
cock-stomping boots, and a tight turtleneck. By the time I emerged
in the House's entrance, I was fully clothed and ready for
action.

And really damn hungry.

Jason had ordered a buffet be set up
in the parlor to the right of the front double doors. Chicken,
steak, lobster, potatoes cooked in seven different ways—fried being
the best—green beans, corn, cornbread, biscuits, gravy…I was in
heaven as I piled my plate high.

I ate because if I didn't, I'd sit
down and cry. All of this reminded me of Daniel. He and I'd been to
several buffet restaurants while we were seeing each other, before
the crazy took it all away. He always loved the fried chicken on a
buffet, that and the green beans.

And I…

Halfway through, I lost my
appetite.

I put my plate on a side table and
stood by the farthest window. It seemed like every human in the
House was in the parlor. It felt like a party. I didn't know why.
Daniel was dead. Dags was still missing.

And now a fucking Cherubim wanted to
take from me the only chance I might have at returning Dags's
memories of me. For now, I had the appendage, because I would need
all of myself to fight this Dominion. But afterward—could I
knowingly give up that page and sacrifice those memories I believed
contained my future happiness just so I could keep my
foot?

I think what upset me the most was—I
didn't know what I was going to do. She wanted the page, and
Zacharel wanted the Eidolons, and no one knew where either of them
were.

Nona apparently told my dad she no
longer had them. And that was all she would say.

What I wanted at that moment was to go
Wraith and slip through those walls and visit her. But I also
didn't want to wreak havoc on the machines helping her.

I reeeeally wanted my
mommy.

A piece of chocolate cake with white
icing was put in front of my face. I looked down at it and grinned.
"I'm not really that hungry."

"Not even for cake?" TC moved the
plate from my face and set it on the shelf with my discarded food.
"That might be from the blood they gave you. For
Inanna."

Oh. Ick. I didn't know they did that.
I looked at my left hand. Pincushion city. "Why does this feel like
a party? Don't they realize Joe's missing? He's one of them and
they're," I glanced back at them all. "This isn't
right."

"It's the calm before the storm. And
Joe wouldn't want us to worry too much. They won't hurt him as long
as he doesn't give them the Destruction Eidolon. And I know he
won't."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I have it."

My jaw dropped. "You?"

"Yeah. He gave it to me after you
moved into the apartment above him. Didn't want it anywhere near
the two of you. In fact, he worked pretty hard to try and keep your
life as normal as possible when you were home."

"He did?"

"Yes. Zoë, you have to know how he
feels—"

I put my hand on his shoulder. I had
to reach up to do it, which was nice since I was usually the tall
one. "TC, don't. I don't want to know. Anyone that feels something
for me, the moment I feel something back, they get hurt. Or
killed." I sniffed. "I don't think I could take it anymore if
something happened to Joe."

"Then we need to get to
him."

"It's been three days, TC. Why haven't
we heard anything?"

I didn't like the look on his face. "I
suspect they've been quiet because they've been trying to get to
the Eidolon. The Destruction stone is one of the more powerful,
because it can destroy the others. And when this is done, I think
that's what we need to do. Just line all of them up and destruct
all of them."

I smiled at his grammar. "I agree. And
you're waiting on them to contact us."

"Yes."

"Would…would that mean Joe was
dead?"

"No. Joe's leverage. As is Dags. I'm
pretty sure Rhonda's already communicated to Zacharel how important
both of those men are to you."

"Hey, Zoë, you in here?"

I turned at the sound of Manuel's
voice. He was waving at me from the doorway. I patted TC's arm
again, and he grabbed me into a quick hug before I threaded my way
through the people to where the handsome Revenant stood. "Hey,
Manuel."

"Wow…that foot's really working, isn't
it?" He was looking down at my boots. "Which one was
it?"

"Aw, if you can't tell, then where's
the fun if I give you the answer?" I smirked. "So what is it? And
where's Jason?"

"Oh." His expression darkened. "No
one's told you? Azrael didn't?"

"No." Panic! "What is it? Where's he
at?"

"A meeting's been called about you.
And Inanna." He looked so sad. "So he and Nick took off with
Umayma. I gave them my vote, witnessed, and volunteered to help out
here. I'm not as old as Mephistopheles or Frejya—I mean, Morgan
isn't—but she's a lot like me in that we don't like
politics."

"Meeting about what?" I felt Inanna
inch forward, but she didn't take the wheel. "They're not still
wanting to use the Banishing stone on Inanna, are they?"

"Well, they can't. Because no one
knows where it is."

"I thought Gabriel had it."

"She says she doesn't. She left it
around Daniel Frasier's neck. But it never made it with him to the
morgue. So it's in the wind at the moment, and a few of them—not me
or Tel—think that Jason did something with it."