Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (37 page)

"Well, that'd be hard to do. Rodriguez
is dead."

"Rodriguez? He didn't make the
Eidolons. He was the one who stole them."

"Who made them?"

I did.

The voice surprised me, since Inanna
had gone quiet. "You made them? What for?"

As weapons to use against the
Ethereals. But I was betrayed and had to switch hosts, so I hid
them away. Rumor and innuendo led Mr. Rodriguez to their resting
place.

"You made the Banishing one, for my
dad?

Pause. Yes. He told me what he planned
to do with it, and I felt it was necessary to hide you away from
your great-uncle. But Adiran was attacked that night and unable to
return. Many years passed before the Seraphim forgave him and
accepted him as a Virtue.

This was a whole new spin on an old
story. I stared at TC, who nodded. "Hide me from my great-uncle?
What does that mean? My great-uncle died years before I was born.
He died in the fire that killed my father."

Who told you he died?

I took a step back. "He
didn't?"

TC now looked a bit worried. "Zoë, do
you not know where your great-uncle Domas is?"

My heart skipped. When I looked at his
face, I knew…

I knew!

But I couldn't say it.

So TC said it for me.
"Abraham Domas
is
the Seraphim."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I'd just had the ultimate pile of shit
tossed into my lap.

"No…" I found myself saying as I
looked at TC. "No, no, no, no…" And in my head I just kept
repeating it, until the colorful metaphors broke lose. "That's not
possible! Why are you saying that?"

I didn't expect anyone to answer that.
I wasn't really sure I believed what they'd just told
me.

My great-uncle was the
Seraphim?

The same ass-hat who
started all this mess with his experiments was the
Seraphim
?

I grabbed at my hair on the
sides of my head and belted out, "How in the
hell
did that happen?"

TC winced, but he remained calm. So
did Inanna. I was the one having a cherry ride of a bad trip right
then. I thought I heard thunder somewhere, and had to reorient
myself as to where my physical body was. My mom's house.

My great-uncle's
minions
attacked my mom
!

"Calm down." TC's voice held a note of
command in it. He was probably getting a headache from my
outbursts. "The last thing we need is for you to get so pissed off
you let that Horror out again."

Okay, that stopped me cold. I stared
at him and lowered my arms. "That can happen?"

He gave me that
duh
look I hated. "Yes?
The Horror is still a part of you, luv. Right now you're in control
of it. The last thing any of us wants to do is have
it
control
you
."

Do you really believe I would allow
that to happen?

He shrugged. "Sis, I don't know if you
could stop it. It was powerful and it took the Eidolons, along with
you, to put it back in the bottle."

"But…" I ran a hand through my unruly
hair. "You're saying it could pop out again?"

"Yes."

"Why in the fucking hell didn't you
tell me that before?" I glared at him with my best Wraith-y pissed
off look.

It worked, 'cause he took a step back.
"Hey, I thought you knew. Why is it no one ever tells you things?
Just like I thought you knew Domas was the Seraphim."

"No!"

"Calm. The fuck.
Down
." He came toward me,
and I stood my ground. If he wanted to scrap, I was ready. I wanted
to wale on something. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I
watched as the ends of my hair wrapped sensually around his wrists.
Not in a confining way, but more in a playful way. I wondered if my
Abysmal side remembered more about my relationship with TC than I
did. "I am sorry. I won't assume anymore that you know things. I
just assumed Rhonda would have at least filled you in on that bit
of — "

"Rhonda knew?!" I backed away and
hovered over the debris. "How long has she known?"

"Zoë, calm down. I don't
know."

"And Mom. Does she know?"

"She just found out herself. And I
have to give her credit—she put it together on her own. Adiran
didn't want to tell her, but she confronted him and—"

"Is that why you did the sudden
buddy-buddy act with my dad? Huh? Did you forget what he did to me?
I could have died in that damned egg."

"No, you wouldn't have, because no one
was going to allow that to happen. Zoë, there's still a lot more
you obviously don't know—"

"No shit!"

"Get down here
now
!"

I did. He had this thing in his voice
that I couldn't always ignore. I didn't remember him having it
before, so I had to wonder if it came with the job of Phantasm.
"Don't yell at me."

"Then stop yelling at me and listen. I
want to tell you everything I know, but right now we have more
pressing agendas that need to be tended to."

Wow. His diction sure had changed. But
I knew what he meant.

A rogue Dominion was threatening my
long-dead great-uncle, a.k.a. the Seraphim, whose dream was to
close the Abysmal Plane and create an Ethereal-policed Physical
Plane.

Good
God,
I have the world's most
dysfunctional family!

I don't process things very well. I
don't think I have the brain capacity or the strength to really
understand the horror of everything happening at once. So when I
thought about it—Dags's loss of me, Joe's finger, my foot, Rhonda's
betrayal, Daniel's death—I had to fight against the urge to dig a
hole somewhere inside myself and hide. I didn't want to think about
them, so I compartmentalized them. Stuck them into their individual
boxes with the stupid idea I'd look at them later.

But when was later?

Later
had to be
now
. This shit had to stop.

Emotions for a Wraith—not a good idea.
I doubled over inside with worry for Dags and Joe, mourning for
Daniel—who'd left a big fucking hole in my life—and rage against
Rhonda, Gabriel, Zacharel, and every other dumb-ass punk that
wanted to damage my calm.

"Zoë?"

I realized I'd shifted back to just
me. I stood in the middle of what had once been a thriving
business. All destroyed because of some damned megalomaniac's
wants. "I want it all to go away, Azrael." I used his given name to
let him know I was reaching my end. I stared at his boots and felt
his hands on my shoulders again.

"It can, once we finish what your
father started."

That…didn't make a damn bit of sense
to me. I looked up into his face and frowned. But before I could
ask, he pressed his lips to mine. There wasn't the re-emergence of
that snake-like tongue I remembered, the one that'd taken me
hostage so long ago. The man that kissed me now was warm, and felt
alive as I accepted his kiss.

I realized in that small second that a
part of me was comparing it to Joe's kiss.

TC pulled back and gave me a very sad
smile. "We can't stay here. We have to start the end of
this."

"I know. I think I know where they
are."

"Between?"

"Yes." I gave him a long sigh. "I want
a normal life, Azrael. I just want to be happy. I want to get
married, have kids, be a soccer mom—and not know any of
this."

"I don't know that you or I are ever
meant to find peace, luv. I can't see the future—never have. But
what I do know is that you're destined to do a great thing. You
were born for it." He took my hands in his. Again, warm, firm,
smooth hands. "You're going to have to trust me on that. We might
have started out on opposite sides, but right now, it's going to
take the two of us to move this forward and set the planes
right."

I frowned up at him. "I have no idea
what you're talking about, but I'll agree to it, on one
condition."

He tilted his head to his right
shoulder. "Anything."

I licked my lips and swallowed. "That
no matter what happens, if Rhonda Orly has to die—I want it to be
by my hands."

Chapter Forty

We teleported to the building in
Between, Georgia. The same abandoned, overgrown building Maureen
had used to drag her Revenant victims into to kill them, and the
same place where Joe and TC had pulled me out of the Abysmal Plane
and Rhonda had erased Dags's memories of me.

I really didn't like this
place.

It hadn't changed much—if at all. I
was pretty sure I spotted the same weeds growing against the
building. And my 'Spider-Sense tingled when I opened the door—we'd
come to the right place.

In fact, Tamera met us just
inside.

To the casual observer—i.e., kids
stepping in to smoke pot or do drugs or make out—the place would
look like it should: an abandoned power relay station. But to us,
well, it was a place between the planes.

TC had explained to me that before
Bulwark, the Guardians had lived in these places. Houses between
the worlds. Alongside the Irin who watched the Physical Plane for
those intruding from outside. But since they were all
destroyed—before Dags and I came along—they were
abandoned.

TC told me the fact that the
structures couldn't be destroyed annoyed the Seraphim. I had no
idea why that would bother anybody. I figured my great-uncle Domas
was just a control freak.

In the past, I'd never had a clear
picture of my great-uncle. Not really. Not even after reading a
good bit of the Dioscuri Files he'd written about his experiments
and observations. He just seemed—methodical. Very
scientific.

But now I had a bigger
picture of who he was. The first thing that came to mind was
comic book super villain
.

TC and I stepped in together. Wraith
and Phantasm. Sort of a king-and-knight kinda thing. Or so my
pea-brain wanted to color it.

I looked around to see if I could get
an idea of where Joe and Dags were, but nothing showed up on the
Wraith-dar.

We looked bad-ass. TC still
had on his
Matrix
gear and, well, me—for the first time, I felt I looked
intimidating in my Wraith form. Though the left, white bunny
slipper was still a weird-ass thing. Looked like I put them on in
the dark.

"Do you have the stone?" Tamera, still
dressed in her hospital gown, offered out her hand. At least her
wrist had been tended to, thought the bandage had seen better
days.

"No way," I piped up. "Not handing
anything over to you. I want to see Joe."

Her expression darkened as she brought
her hand down. "Fine. But you're just delaying the
inevitable."

"Tamera!" a voice exploded from the
right.

TC and I did a half crouch when we
heard it, and turned to see Zacharel step through a door with its
frame hanging sideways. I knew the dilapidated surroundings were an
illusion. I just couldn't see through it for some
reason.

Tamera jumped at Zacharel's voice. She
bowed her head like a good little servant and backed away. Zacharel
held out his hands. "Welcome. To both of you. I trust you've
brought my prize?"

"I trust Joe's alive and you plan on
putting his finger back on?"

"Oh, that." Zacharel looked troubled.
"I'm afraid I don't have that kind of juice." His attention zeroed
in on my white bunny. "But I see someone's been consorting with the
First Choir. Touché, little Wraith. The Seraphim give you a fake
foot? I sort of liked my trimming the fat."

"That's enough, Zacharel," TC said.
His voice had a tremble to it. Not that he was trembling, but that
everything else around us was. "Where's the cop?"

"Where are the Eidolons?"

"You first."

"I'm afraid not. You see, I don't
trust—"

TC waved his hand and our
surroundings changed. We were inside of the anteroom with the
endless view into space. It reminded me of the
Well of Souls
I'd seen in that egg.
To the left was the spiral staircase that led to the two floors of
rooms below.

That's when I saw the blood. It'd been
splashed and splattered over the floor and over the stairs. I
didn't remember there being blood before.

"Impressive."

"Hardly," TC said. "Zacharel, do you
really want to go up against me?"

"I'm not stupid, Azrael." Zacharel
moved to the staircase and started down. "I don't plan on dealing
with you at all."