Revenant (19 page)

“I’m there.” He turned to me and pointed at the house. “You good? It’ll mean no bodyguard for a while.”

“I think I can manage, Detective,” Jason said with a grin. “And we’ll keep you informed if we learn anything.” I knew Jason was talking about the book in Dags’s chest.

With a nod, Joe moved to Mastiff’s car, and the two drove off.

I looked at the house. “I wonder where Mom is.” We all moved to the back door. I hesitated. Something felt off.

“What is it?” Rhonda said.

“Do you sense anything weird?”

“Weird? Oh, come on, Zoë. This is your mom’s house. Weird doesn’t describe it.”

True dat. But. “Why are all the lights off? Mom never turns the kitchen light off—it’s why she bought that energy-efficient one.” And then the hackles along my back rose. Someone was in the house.

Jason seemed to sense it as well. A different presence, and I could see the subtle transformations about him that warned anything or anyone around he wasn’t human.

Beware.

Rhonda and Dags both seemed to arm up with magic as her right fist glowed green, and the inside of his palms hummed a brilliant blue-white. But still no sign of Alice or Maureen. I moved my body into Wraith form and went as incorporeal as possible but still visible to them. Wow. I was getting pretty good at this.

“Revenant.”

It was a single word spoken from Jason, his First Born’s voice echoing from within the timbre.

There was a Revenant inside. I looked at him as the four of us stood outside the back door, at the foot of the porch steps. “It’s not Lex?”

“No.”

“Anyone you know?”

He nodded slowly. “Inanna. And she’s very . . .” He hissed. “Frustrated.”

Uh-oh. I wondered what frustrated meant to a Revenant. From his reaction, it couldn’t be good. I know for me it meant sex. WANT. I hoped Mom was still out with Jemmy somewhere up to no good and not inside, like, dead on the floor or something.

“She’s looking for something,” he added as a side note.

I pursed my lips. “The book?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Or it could be me. I’m afraid she and I didn’t part on good terms the last time we were together.”

“When you say together”—I tilted my head and my wings rustled—“you mean like together, together. How long ago?”

“Last host.”

“You mean like with Archer.”

“Kinda . . .”

“But you were a girl.”

He looked sideways at me. “Your point?”

“Hey,” Rhonda hissed. “This isn’t the time!”

Oh man, I was intrigued by then. Jason squared his shoulders and took the first two steps. “Inanna, I know you can sense me. Please, there is no one here to harm you.”

There was a deep laugh from inside, kind of like the dude from the 7-Up commercials. Reeeal spooky. Man, if that’s Inanna, then she’s got one hell of a sore throat. I glanced at Jason. He seemed not to notice. Rhonda? She was pale, but I knew that face. It was the one she used when she attacked soap scum.

Abruptly, the back door burst out and something man-sized and dark flew at us. I yelled and launched myself up, grabbing Rhonda and taking her with me because she was closest. Rhonda’s reaction to being hoisted into the air was a deafening shriek.

I looked down to see what looked like a man in a black, hooded robe, tackle Jason to the ground and hold something up over his head. Dags was moving closer to them, his hands transformed into balls of light.

“What’s going on? Put me down!”

I hovered a few feet up and watched as Dags hit the robed guy with a few blasts of light. It appeared to have some effect on the dude in black because he fell off Jason. I took that moment to land us far enough away that the intruder couldn’t immediately attack.

Boy was I wrong. I’d barely got us to the ground when parts of my body began to burn. I looked down to see slashes again, just as Lex had made before. Blood flowed out as I put myself in front of Rhonda, our initial position protecting her from the largest of the attacks, but I could see deep gashes tearing at her jeans.

“Zoë!”

I turned to see Jason back on his feet. He was motioning me to move. “Get Rhonda and Dags out of here!”

Rhonda was easy, she was behind me. But Dags had engaged the guy. I could see the air almost waver every time he sent a slash at Dags, but the Guardian was blocking them with the light of his palms.

I turned to Rhonda. “You run! Call Mom! I’ll get Dags!”

She nodded and didn’t argue.
Yay.
Then I moved a few inches from the ground and barreled into the dude in black, tackling him and sending both of us into the side of the house, putting a dent in the wall where the botanica’s books were. The impact wasn’t as painful as I thought it’d be.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was the speed with which the guy recovered. He was up and back on his feet, a gun in his hand.

And he fired it at Jason.

The Revenant went down.

Then Robe Guy turned it on Dags.

“NO!” I bellowed, and moved in front of Dags. Robe Guy fired several times at me, and I felt the strikes like pins and needles in my flesh. But I’d had it. I opened my mouth and SCREAMED—

THE
power of my scream wasn’t lost on the Revenant. He vanished in a whirlwind of dirt, debris, and old copies of newspapers Mom had stacked on the back porch. When I ran out of breath, I turned to Jason and knelt beside him. Three large, bloodied holes decorated his shirt, and he lay on his back panting. The body that was Jason Lawrence was shaking.

Rhonda moved to the other side, and Dags joined her a few seconds later, moving a little slower than usual.

“We need to call—”

I looked at her. “Call who? Nine-one-one? I don’t think so, unless they know how to treat vampires.” No, calling anyone was a bad idea. Unless it was Mom.

I held out my palm. “Give me your phone.”

She did as she started pulling Jason’s shirt away from him, exposing the bullet holes. I pressed Mom’s speed dial, but Jason’s hand grabbed at my wrist.

I looked down at him. “No need . . .” And he smiled. He was shaking. But he was also
smiling
.

I closed Rhonda’s phone. “You mean to tell me you can withstand bullets but not a stake?”

Rhonda sighed with relief as the bullets started pushing out with sickening squishy noises. I was reminded of the bullets falling from Daniel’s body when the Horror possessed him. The pinging noises as they hit the floor. “I guess bullets aren’t as effective?”

Jason finally sat up with a little help and nodded. “They hurt like a stone bitch—but Inanna didn’t want to kill me. She just wanted to stop me to go after her real target.” He shook his head. “Or I should say he. Looks like she managed a male this time.”

“Real target?” Dags asked.

Jason finally stood with a groan. I did as well and felt my body shift back to human. Dags remained on the ground, looking up. “The real target is you. I told you I could sense the book, and I’m sure most everyone else can too. He probably thought you had it in your possession—not that you were possessed
by
it.”

I held up my hands, looking at the slashes along my arms, legs, and forearms. They weren’t as deep as Lex’s. Just surface cuts that would cause agony if covered in salt. I noticed Rhonda’s were the same. Sliced clothing, but the wounds beneath weren’t dangerous. I thought about the guy in the robes. I’d seen that type of robe before. “Uh, Rhonda, did that robe look—”

“Familiar?” She was dusting herself off and examining a long slice on her upper left thigh. “Yeah. Those were ceremonial robes. A lot like the ones Bonville’s followers used.” Rhonda looked at Dags. “It looks like there are still neophytes out there, Dags. And they’re still wanting that damn book.”

The look on Dags’s face caught my attention. He was pale— too pale. I knelt beside him and put my hand on his arm. He started to pull away, and I pulled him closer. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

His gray eyes focused on mine. “I think—” He blinked a few times. “I think I got hit.”

“What?”

I helped him lie back on the ground and moved his shirt away. And there, beside the book, was a hole. Blood had pooled from it, but not a great amount.
Phock!

“Oh shit.” Rhonda moved in, her hands glowing green again. She closed her eyes as she held her hands over the wound and the protruding book. Dags made an odd sound and closed his eyes. I pushed at his shoulder, but he didn’t stir. I looked at Rhonda. “What did you do?”

She opened her eyes, and her hands stopped glowing. “We need to get him inside. I tried to remove the bullet—but I think I failed.”

“Son of a—”

“Just shut up and get him inside!”

Wow, it’d been a while since I’d seen Rhonda this take-charge. Still in Wraith form, I put my right arm under Dags’s shoulders and my left under his knees, my wings flapping slightly to balance the weight.

“Zoë, let me get him,” Jason said as he came closer.

I nearly growled at him. “I’ve got him,” and with ease I lifted him, moving quickly to the door. My heart thundered hard in my chest, and I remembered the helplessness I’d felt a month ago when he’d been in ICU. And I’d been unable to do anything for him.

I turned sideways to get him through the splinters and spires of broken wood. Mom’s stained-glass window lay in a tangled mess on the first porch step.

Wow, she was gonna be
pissed
when she saw that door.

“
WHAT
THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY DOOR?”

I winced. She was going to blame me. That much I could see coming. I could be in a different state, and the woman would blame me for everything.

We were upstairs in my room when she and Jemmy came in. Rhonda had called her and told her what’d happened, and she and Jemmy had made record time coming back from the herb man’s house. Though why buy herbs this time of night? I decided it really wasn’t a good idea to ask.

The minute they saw Dags—and Mom got a load of the book sticking out of his chest—the two of them grabbed Rhonda and went into a powwow in the other room. I pulled a chair up next to my bed and watched Dags breathe. He was stable but unconscious. Rhonda had been a basket case with a purpose since getting him inside.

I’d thought nothing of undressing him, wanting to see more of him. Rhonda seemed a little nervous and bolted from the room when I removed his pants.
What? He’s wearing boxers!

Uh . . . no. He wasn’t.
Wow
. . . I didn’t know Dags went commando.

I got him under the cover and downshifted into just me. In this form—me—my eyesight wasn’t as defined or shaped to the things that lurked in the shadows, but was still aware of them. And they of me. As Wraith, I could see the book burning bright in his chest. But I noticed as me—

I saw something—it just wasn’t a defined book. It looked more like—

Well—like when a TV network pixels out a brand logo sometimes.

I blinked and put my hand on the area. My hand looked fine, but the skin beneath it was just blurry—except for the bullet wound, which was trickling blood—no book.
Nada
. Shifting back to Wraith, there it was. Downshift, blurry.

“You’re going to get dizzy doing that,” Jason said as he came in with a pan of hot water and clean towels. He had a pack of sterile gauze tucked under his arm and tape carried on a finger. “You can’t see the book as a human—I mean you should see something.”

“Why is this?” I took the pan from him and set it on the nightstand. Headless Mary was watchin’ me. “I mean, before when I would OOB, I could still see things when I was back in my body.”

“I don’t know the rules when it comes to how your perception works,” he said. “I just know that when I am not a part of another’s soul, my own perceptions shift and change. Like this.” He set the rest of the stuff on the bed. “I’m locked into what Jason perceives. Looking through the eyes of a human in the physical plane. Maybe your own perception has moved with your change.”

The way he was taking about Jason, I thought I was speaking to Mephistopheles. I watched his movements—patient and deliberate. There was no hesitation as he opened the gauze, neatly folding each piece before he set it upon one of the clean towels. This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed his elegance, and I wondered at that moment if the dance of this seemingly mundane action reflected Mephistopheles’ centuries as a human? Living day to day in a human body.

I shifted again, so I could see the book. And I found if I looked harder, I could kinda see where it entered his skin and ended, and then, “Jason, I think I can see the other book.”

“You can?” He moved from the opposite side of the bed and came to stand to my right. “You can see the Grimoire?”

I narrowed my eyes as I focused on it. It was like refocusing Dags’s body in Photoshop, making it transparent. And there at the center of everything was a large, tattered-looking book. He literally had a book in his—“Wait. This is the astral body I’m looking at. This book is connected to his”—I looked up at Jason—“his soul.”