Immortal Flame (24 page)

Peter sputtered. “I never said I loved her.”

“Verily, it's written all over your face,” Barnaby said. “Don't fight it. It's a beautiful thing, love. They write sonnets about such things.”

“Love sure is a beautiful thing,” Dante added.

“Since when have you loved anyone but yourself?”

“Just the other day, I loved two women. Over and over and over.” Dante crammed a forkful of steak, pancake, and French fries into his mouth.

“No, you moron. Love, love. Not sex.”

Sadness passed over Dante's easygoing countenance as he chewed and swallowed. “Long time ago, bro. But you know how it goes. Can't get attached to anyone in this line of work. You outlive 'em, and that's a real bummer.”

“Okay, fair enough. So how're we going to flush out this guy—” Peter bent over double.

He couldn't breathe.

It felt like his ribs had been crushed.

“What is it?” Barnaby asked.

No air.

His head throbbed. Waves of terror flooded his senses, threatening to overload him. Allie. Her gift. Their connection. He could feel her.

Hell.

The minion had found her.

• • •

Allison studied her house for five full minutes. Nothing out of place. No movement. Peter should be here any minute. Good enough. All she wanted was to crawl under the covers of her bed.

She turned off her car and clicked the garage door closed. After surviving the panicked activity of the last twenty-four hours, the silence of her house settled into her bones with a torpid weight. With immense effort, she trudged into the kitchen, setting grocery bags on the countertop, the crinkle of paper loud in the silent house. She missed Ivy's greeting, but at least her dog was improving.

Fatigue made Allison's eyes scratchy, and she yawned as she kicked off her shoes. Dimly, she reminded herself to put a spare change of clothes in her locker at work.

Mid-yawn, she froze and stared at the kitchen faucet. It had never dripped before. But they'd left in such a hurry to track down Quincy yesterday, it might not have been turned off properly.

Walking over to the sink, she almost stepped on a shiny spot on the kitchen floor. As she knelt down, she caught the scent of metal—the tang of blood.

Blood.

Oh God.

Heart pounding, she tiptoed back around the counter.

Don't make a sound
.

She listened hard. Nothing.

But she sensed it—a pressure change in the atmosphere.

A familiar tingling started in her fingertips. She closed her hand around the key and backed toward the door to the garage.

Fingers and head buzzing, she turned the doorknob.

The door exploded inward, knocking her backward onto the floor.

A seething, bloody Anton lunged at her. “Hello, delicious lady.”

Adrenaline coursing, she scrambled to her feet, pivoted, and ran toward the front door. He reached her before she opened it, yanked her back by the hair, and threw her to the ground.

Stars burst in front of her eyes as the world spun around her.

He stood over her with a barking laugh. “Oh my, we're going to have such special fun together.”

She tore her fingernails on the wood floor, trying to crawl away, until he ground a booted foot into her thigh and pinned her to the floor. Her thigh muscle knotted under his weight.

“Tsk, tsk, bad manners.” His eye twitched and he tapped at his temple. “First of all, you shouldn't sit around when a guest walks in. You should get right up and offer him a drink.”

When she didn't respond, Anton stepped off of her leg. He reached down and grabbed the front of her scrub top, yanking her up to stand before him. His dark eyes bulged. “Well?”

He was in some sick fantasy. What could she do? When would Peter be here? Maybe she could play along and buy some time.

“May I offer you something to drink?” she choked out.

Abruptly, his demeanor shifted to one of insane politeness. “Why, yes, madam, I would like a glass of your best wine, if you please.” He released her, chuckling when she stumbled.

She limped into the kitchen.

Anton trailed after her, muttering and tapping his forehead.

Wet blood soaked the front of his shirt. Dark red smudges of dried blood coated the top of his head where he periodically scratched at the skin.

How injured was he? Could she slow him down? She retrieved a wine glass and bottle with shaking hands. After four tries with the corkscrew, she popped it loose and poured him a glass of red wine. As he accepted the beverage, she backed along the counter, sidling toward her cutlery set.

He turned to set the glass down.

She jammed a knife into his arm.

Howling in rage, he ripped the knife out and hurled her sideways into the opposite wall. At a sickening snap, blinding pain flooded her neck and shoulder. She couldn't breathe. After a wave of nausea plowed over her, she tried to identify the injury. When she moved her shoulder, the collarbone ground together with the sound of chalk scraping on a blackboard.

Anton slapped her with a slick, bloody hand, whipping her head to the side.

Was the blood she tasted hers?

He pinned her to the wall.

Allison's useless left arm dangled at her side.

“Oh, you've injured yourself, my dear.”

She screamed when he pressed against her damaged collarbone and would have crumpled if he hadn't held her upright.

“You poor thing, no one here to protect you from little old me.”

Anton propped her up against the kitchen wall, using pressure on her shifting collarbone to get her attention. She almost passed out from the pain.

“Why are you doing this?” she wheezed. She attempted to collect enough mental focus to call to Peter, but her overloaded mind couldn't do it.

A muscle twitched in his right eyelid. “Because of your lover, that's why.”

“I don't understand.”

“He's on the verge of completing his contract.” He made a
tsking
sound and wagged his finger, staring at the tip of his finger in fascination. After a moment, he blinked and refocused on her. “We all know that ending a contract with the big boss is a big no-no. Nobody gets out of a contract.” He paused. “Well, almost no one.”

Barnaby
.

She took a careful breath. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Ah, yes, you, you, you. Me, me, me. I wanna talk about me.”

He began singing a country song by the same title. Reason wouldn't work, so she hummed the song along with him until he ran out of steam.

He snapped his bloodshot gaze back to her. “Now where were we?”

She cringed away from his breath, foul like a sunbaked corpse. He had a few missing teeth where only bloody pulps remained.

“Ah yes. You, you, you … ”

While he sang, she tried to collect herself enough to call to Peter. She closed her eyes and got a burst out right before Anton leaned into her shoulder again. The two pieces of her collarbone ground together. She screamed, the blackness closing in.

He grabbed her chin. “Pay attention, lovely, lovely. It's rude to think about other things when I'm talking. So if your boyfriend figures out his Meaningful Kill, he'll be done with the contract. The big boss hates that. Hates it, hates it, hates it. Once an employee, always an employee. So he wants to make Peter pay.” Giggling, he sang, “Peter pay, Peter pay, bossy'll make Peter pay.”

When he let up the pressure for a moment, Allison sucked air into her lungs, formulating her next move against this nut job. Nothing obvious came to mind.

He said, “So you're the piece of torture, see?”

“No, I don't see,” she cried.

“Even if Peter finishes the contract, he'll have nothing to live for anymore. I'm going to destroy anyone he cares about. You. That delightful little girl. Her parents. Maybe his friend Barnaby if I can track him down.”

Her heart plunged into an airless vacuum. “No. You can't kill my family. They haven't done anything wrong.” A tear ran unchecked down her cheek as terror and pain mixed. She had to stop him.

“Sorry, rules are rules,” he said, tapping his forehead rhythmically. “But maybe we can make a deal. You do some nice things for me.” He licked his chapped lips with his bloody tongue. “And I'll make your family members' deaths swift. If you're not nicey-nicey to me, well, then … it could take a while.”

“You're an animal.”

Panic overwhelmed her as she kicked at him. He merely pressed his hand against her collarbone, stilling her with the cruel pressure.

“
Rowr
.” He growled and made a claw.

He stopped mid-paw and stared at his hand for what seemed like an eternity. His bloodshot eyes brightened, and he focused intently on Allison with a toothless smile.

“I have an idea that's going to get me in good with the big boss. Okay, you just stand there against the wall.” He reached down to his leg and pulled out a knife similar to Peter's. “So while I'm in the process of torturing you to death, I can also get loads of your life force for the big guy to dine on tonight. He might promote me. No one's ever supped on a Ward's spirit. Yummy.”

He pointed the tip of the knife at Allison's sternum and pressed hard enough to draw blood.

She screamed as the blade seared her like a hot poker.

Anton drew the knife downward, slicing her scrub top in two. “Take that shirt off, lovely, lovely. I want a pristine canvas to work with.”

She eased her right arm out of the top, and then used it to slide the shirt off her useless left arm. In a bra and scrub pants, she leaned against the wall, her knees threatening to buckle.

“Now, how well you stand there and let me play will determine how nice I am to your family when I kill them.”

The knife glowed with a greenish hue when he traced it over her sternum. As he slid it up and brought it flat against her face, the blade heated and hummed next to her ear.

Oh God, what a way to die. If she could hold still through the hurt, maybe she could help her family.

Sweat beaded his forehead. Stale steam rose from the pores of his skin.

“Oh my, my, my. The hard part will be going slowly with you. Don't want to waste any of your blood, yummy scrummy, yummy scrummy.”

Allison froze in horror, fixated on the blade now glowing bright green and poised over her skin.

He drew the knife down her arm, the blood blooming red. She burned beneath the razor-sharp blade. Turning to her torso, he trailed the knife in an agony of art along her ribcage.

She couldn't hold in the screams as Anton held her in place by her shattered collarbone and continued his slow work, laughing as her blood ran onto the floor.

• • •

Dante braked violently at the entrance to Allie's dirt lane. Peter jumped out and sprinted toward the house with Dante at his heels.

Her screams were audible even outside the house, and her terror banged inside Peter's head. Caring about nothing but getting to her, he dove through the dining room window and rolled on the shattered glass. Allie, her upper body naked save for a blood-soaked bra, stood upright by virtue of Anton's grip on her shoulder.

Peter stopped in his tracks. Lurid lines crisscrossed her arms and chest and abdomen. Blood flowed and pooled on the floor. Her glassy eyes were unfocused.

Was she even alive?

Dante crunched broken glass as he stepped up behind him. “
Herre Gud
!” his friend swore in his native tongue.

Anton smiled and dragged the flat of the blade over her cheek.

Peter lost the edges of his vision as his entire world narrowed down to a bloody Allie sagging under Anton's hand.

“You like my work? I'm quite the artist. See?” He waved the glistening, glowing blade. Anton's giggle raked across Peter's nerves. “It likes this one. Delicious.”

“You bastard!” He launched himself at the minion.

He didn't reach her in time.

Anton plunged the knife into her lower chest.

The tiny, pitiful sound that escaped her pale lips set off an explosion in Peter's mind.

He hurled Anton away, crashing the minion into the kitchen table.

Her right hand shaking, Allie pulled the glowing knife out of her chest and slid down the wall, blood squirting from the wound.

Torn, Peter looked from her broken body to Anton, who was sprawled on the floor on his hands and knees, trying to rise.

“Dante?”

“Oh, yeah. I'll take care of this one, Petey.”

His friend stalked toward Anton, his giant legs pounding the floor. Dante's ice-blue eyes had turned cold and black.

“This
oåkting
will pay.” Dante planted one foot and viciously kicked Anton in the head, leveling the minion to the ground.

The minion tried to crawl away, but with one thunderous stomp to Anton's midsection,Dante broke the minion's spine in a sickening crack, temporarily paralyzing him. He didn't wait for the minion to heal. Anton's pleas fell on deaf ears as Dante drew his knife and ran the minion through slowly and repeatedly. He then hacked Anton's head from his body and let it drop to the floor with a
thunk
.

Peter fell to his knees in the pool of Allie's sticky blood, pulling her against him. She breathed rapidly, gurgling. Air whooshed in and out of her chest wound. He put his hand on the wound to close it.

“Dante! Get me ointment and a cloth. Hurry.”

Dante blinked until his black eyes became blue again and ran off in search of supplies.

“Allie,” Peter whispered. Real tears rolled down his face, the first time since 1945.

He felt the buzz of their mental connection growing weaker. She was drifting away from him, like a boat floating from shore.

Her green eyes flickered open. Little blood vessels had burst in the whites. She licked her swollen lower lip. Her wet cough drove a wave of nausea through Peter.