Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2) (5 page)

I almost felt bad for him. But it didn’t come close to excusing him working for Milus Dei. “So you let Foley track us all down, capture everyone, and burn the Hive to the ground—all so you could get some memories of your wife, who cheated on you with Daoin,” I said. “Taeral’s right. You
are
unbelievably arrogant.”

“Yes. I was,” he whispered. “And in my arrogance, I bound myself to a promise I should never have made, and could not escape. Truly, I had not believed humans capable of such…creative destruction.” He shuddered visibly. “I must atone for my actions. I’ll not leave until Taeral agrees to accept my favor and allow me to serve his father’s house.”

“You’re not staying in here,” Sadie growled.

Reun gave a sad smile. “I’d not intended to, since I am not welcome. I shall wait outside until I am accepted. Or destroyed.” He bowed slightly, then turned and walked out.

When he was gone, I looked at Sadie and shook my head. “This isn’t going to end well.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Think we should get Taeral?”

“Nah. I’m sure he’ll notice that we have a new lawn ornament, sooner or later. If Denei doesn’t first.” I sighed and scrubbed a hand down my face. “Don’t know about you, but I feel like breaking something. Wanna go up to three and demolish some walls?” Most of the work we’d done to the hotel was on the first and second floors, so the third was still untouched.

She grinned. “You’re on.”

We headed for the stairs. Hopefully, bashing things with a sledgehammer would help me forget that there were still thousands of bad guys out there who wanted to turn me into a weapon of mass destruction.

At least Reun was no longer an immediate problem—but I still hated the son of a bitch.

C
HAPTER 6

W
ith a main room, a separate bedroom and a bathroom, the suite I’d claimed on the second floor of the Castle was officially the biggest place I’d ever lived.

The Boscos, the foster parents who’d taken me in for a few years, had a big house. But I’d never really considered the place home. They were nice enough people, if a little distracted by the sheer volume of broken kids they took in and tried to help. I just hadn’t belonged there. After that it was a dorm room at community college, and then my van.

Before that, it was sixteen years of hell on the road with the Valentines—hunters, poachers, and all-around twisted, ruthless bastards. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about being half Fae, but I’d been damned glad to learn I wasn’t actually one of them.

If only my ex-family knew that, I wouldn’t have to worry that they might find me someday. And try to take me back.

Sadie and I had spent a few hours smashing things upstairs, and we were both covered in dust and splinters. She was in my bathroom right now. Her shower quit working a few days ago, and she’d been using Taeral’s. But neither of us wanted to go in his room and find out if his mood had improved since Reun happened to it.

Taeral and Sadie had a history I didn’t know much about, and I wasn’t going to ask. Especially since there was a chance it wasn’t completely history. She did spend a lot of time in his room.

While she was in the bathroom, I planned to change and brush off. I’d grab a shower after I ate something, and then maybe take a quick nap. Getting up early when Abe called had really screwed with my sleep schedule.

I’d just tugged my dusty shirt off and headed to the closet for a fresh one when the bathroom door opened behind me, and Sadie said, “Hey, Gideon, do you have an…extra, uh…” She trailed off to a strangled halt.

I sighed, grabbed a clean shirt and pulled it on fast. She’d seen me shirtless before, when she insisted that I strip to prove I wasn’t marked by Milus Dei, but she’d only seen the front. My back was worse. I was definitely marked, but my tattoos were a poor attempt to cover the scars.

The Valentines really hadn’t liked me.

“Were you going to say towel?” I asked without turning, reaching for my gym bag at the bottom of the closet. “Think I’ve got one in here.” I dug around until I found a faded blue bath towel in the depths of the bag and turned, preparing to toss it to her.

She was right behind me.

I flinched. “Jesus Christ,” I said, handing her the towel. “Are you always this quiet?”

“Yeah, I am. Part wolf, remember?” She stared at me for so long, I thought I’d sprouted horns or something. Finally she said, “Are you ever going to tell me what happened to you?”

“Probably not,” I said automatically, cringing at how cold I sounded. I didn’t mean to come off that way. But the few times the subject had come up, I’d learned that if I didn’t dismiss it with authority, people would keep pushing. And things would get ugly.

She made the hurt in her eyes disappear. “Okay, then,” she said. “Thanks for the towel.”

As she walked away without another word, I mentally kicked myself. That probably hadn’t been the best way to handle it.

Sometimes I really sucked at being a person.

I crossed the room and plopped down on the bare mattress on the floor, ignoring the puffs of dust that swirled up around me. The rest of the bed that’d been left in this room wasn’t worth salvaging and had been hauled to the burn pile in the basement. I closed my eyes, thinking maybe the nap should come first. I’d be up all night regardless of whether I got more sleep.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I groaned aloud. So much for sleeping.

It was Abe. I’d talked to him briefly earlier, just to reassure him that the murders were done. Hadn’t told him the killer was currently hanging around my front yard, though. Reun might be strangely eager to turn himself over to Daoin, but I suspected he wouldn’t be so compliant if the cops tried to arrest him, now that he wasn’t comatose. “Hey, Captain,” I said as I picked up the call. “Shouldn’t you be off duty by now?”

“Yeah, I should. Except the new chief has some concerns about the three bodies we just found, who all happen to have matching tattoos and matching crap carved into their chests, just like the Central Park vic.” He paused, and I could practically hear him scowling. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Gideon, but didn’t somebody who sounds a lot like you tell me this guy was done?”

I frowned. “You’re not wrong,” I said. “Where’d you find them?”

“In a goddamned church. Place is a bloodbath.”

“Great.” Well, at least it sounded like Reun’s work. Maybe he’d killed them before he took down the guy in Central Park, and the bodies hadn’t been found until now. The good news was I could just go outside and ask the son of a bitch. “Listen, I might have a lead,” I said. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back. Am I picking these guys up?”

“Apparently they’re already en route to the ME. On account of this being a priority,” Abe said. “This new chief, Petrocco, he moves a lot faster than Foley did. You know I would’ve had you called in, though.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it.” It was only a little disappointing. I wasn’t concerned about the income, even though the NYPD was pretty much my only source for body moving gigs now. But I had wanted to talk to the dead guys. “Out of curiosity, where’s the church?” I said.

“It’s…huh. I didn’t even think about that,” he said, and paused. “It’s the place I found that body you were asking about last month. The Church of Light, at Cemetery of the Pines.”

My breath caught sharply, and for a second I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
That body
was my mother—my actual, human mother, who’d died giving birth to me. In Central Park.

Taeral and I had dug up the grave last month because he insisted that I had to contact a parent to reconnect with my heritage, or whatever, to cure me from being a changeling. At the time we hadn’t known Daoin was still alive. I didn’t even realize the small stone building at the end of the cemetery was a church.

I’d spoken to her. Heard her voice, even though I’d never be able to meet her. It still hurt to know that I was twenty-six years too late.

But what the hell were those Milus Dei guys doing where she was buried?

“Gideon?” Abe’s voice broke up my thoughts like a splash of cold water. “Something wrong, kid? You never did tell me why you wanted to find that body.”

“Yeah, I…” Damn. Abe didn’t know about my past either, and there was no short way to explain this. Not that I would anyway. I loved the guy, he’d been like a father to me—and he didn’t deserve the burden of knowing. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Promise. Call you back in a few minutes, okay?”

“All right,” he said. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. Thanks, Abe.”

We hung up and I pocketed the phone. The shower was still running in the bathroom. Probably a good thing, since Sadie might insist on coming with me.

But I wanted to talk to Reun alone.

Part of me figured he wouldn’t really stay. He was supposed to be a noble, some kind of Fae royalty, and hanging around waiting for permission to be a servant didn’t seem like a very royal thing to do. But I found Reun sitting in the night-damp, overgrown grass at the far corner of the building, watching the door.

He looked exhausted and a little nervous when I approached him. “Has Taeral changed his mind?” he said.

“No, and he’s not going to.” I probably shouldn’t be talking to this guy at all. The Fae half of me was Unseelie, and I’d gathered that the Seelie didn’t get along with them. Reun’s story had only reinforced that. And newfound humility or not, he was still a lot more powerful than me.

But apparently I wasn’t going to let that stop me. “I want to know about the Milus Dei guys you killed at the church with the cemetery,” I said.

He blinked. “What about them?”

“First of all. You did kill them, right?”

“Of course I did.”

“Before or after the guy in the park?”

“Before,” he said. “Why does it matter? The end result is the same—they’ve all been destroyed.”

“I’m asking for a friend. Cops kind of care about stuff like that.” At least that was one problem solved. We didn’t have to worry about some other crazy guy slitting throats and carving runes on people. Even if the people in question deserved to die. “Okay, look. This is probably a long shot,” I said. “But do you have any idea what they were doing there, at that particular church?”

Reun sighed, pushed himself up slowly to his feet and brushed bits of plants from his Robin Hood pants. “They appeared to be clearing out some sort of stronghold concealed within the building,” he said.

“What, like a secret room?”

“I suppose that would describe it. They were preparing for a journey.”

“To where?”

He gave a weak huff. “I’d not thought to ask them, since they would never arrive at their destination,” he said. “And you are not asking the question to which you seek the answer. Is there some significance to this church?”

“Not really.” I wasn’t going to tell this guy about my mother. But there had to be some reason she’d ended up buried in a place Milus Dei used. I didn’t believe in coincidences. “So you killed all three of them, right? None of them got away?”

“There were four,” he said. “And yes, I killed them all.”

I frowned. “The cops only found three bodies.”

“They’ve not found the stronghold, then. The fourth met his end there.”

So there was still a dead guy at the church. I could talk to him, find out where they’d been headed, what they were doing—and why they used that place.

“All right,” I said. If there were any more bodies in the city, I had to let Abe know. One more surprise and he’d blow a gasket. “How many of these assholes did you kill, total, and where were they?”

Reun thought for a minute. “Seven,” he said. “Four at the church, one at the park. Two inside a derelict building.”

“Great. There’s only a thousand of those in Manhattan.” I tried not to think about how casually he’d just admitted to killing seven people. “Any derelict building in particular?”

“There was a sign. I believe it said King Street Theatre.”

Well, that was something, anyway. I knew the place. There was a bolt hole in the basement, with access to the subtunnel leading to the former Milus Dei headquarters—the warehouse they’d tried to blow up with a dozen of their prisoners still inside. At least I could point Abe to the theater and tell him this time it really was all of them.