Mostly Dead
“Let me get this straight.” Zara stood before us back in her apartment, having arrived about an hour after we got back—with Sellie and Ryann in tow. “You were chased through the city by shrieking eels.”
Nic and I sat on her couch. My shoulders were hunched and I stupidly felt like a kid being scolded for lying when I said the dog ate my homework.
“They weren’t eels, exactly—they were sort of...eh...smoke. Shaped a little like eels.” Nic looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she sat back and waited.
Zara’s gaze moved between the pair of us. “Did you both get high and fall asleep watching The Princess Bride on demand? Shrieking eels? Seriously?”
“Inconceivable!” Sellie declared from behind us.
We all glanced over. Ryann gazed at him in horror. Through Ellie’s eyes, Sean looked around. “What? I don’t get to make jokes?”
“No,” Zara said coolly. “Shut up and sit in your corner.”
“Where’d you find him anyway?” Nic asked.
“Oh. That.” Zara rolled her eyes. “Strip club. Gay strip club. He ditched Ryann and she was beside herself—turns out he just wanted to look at half-naked men. Maybe they don’t have those in hell.”
Ryann’s face went several shades of red.
“It does explain why he didn’t try to cop a feel when he had me pinned naked to a table.”
“Had I known you would escape and return to my brother, I would’ve made an exception,” he said with a chilly smile.
Zara frowned and I didn’t suspect the sexual threat fazed her in the least. “Gross.”
“And way to be the evil gay stereotype,” Nic muttered with a roll of her eyes.
“At least he wasn’t being chased by shrieking eels.”
This was all so fucking useless. “How about instead of not believing us, you explain how you neglected to fucking tell me my goddamn sister was killed in the center of where these kids were being sacrificed?” I bit out. “That one just slip your mind?”
“I wasn’t sure it was relevant yet,” she said simply.
Nicolette shifted beside me. “You knew?”
“Tsk tsk. I’m not stupid, Nic.”
“I think it’s pretty fucking relevant now,” I snapped.
“Time for the interrogation portion of our evening.” She turned Sean’s way. “‘And the sisters will rise, jaws will open, and hell will come to Earth.’ Sound familiar?”
“Didn’t you say it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” he simply replied.
Zara walked, her heels making a decisive click on the hardwood. “It sounds more like a Giles line but, actually, that was you. Your weird little prophecy. Time to explain.”
Sean said nothing, watching her with an icy stare. I didn’t know Ellie at all but his body...looked less like it had before, like an entirely new person had really settled in. Hair was combed back, chin lifted, shoulders squared. He wore a pair of pressed linen pants, too, and a button down shirt that didn’t look like something scruffy Ellie would wear.
“I’m gonna take a really wild guess and say the sisters are Mish and Queen Bitch over here,” Zara continued. “And that by raising your former sister-in-law, the apocalypse—or what you think is going to be an apocalypse—will get a jumpstart. How’m I doin’?”
“What I think will be the apocalypse?” He cocked his head to the side. “You said yourself someone is going to the trouble of raising Mishka Thiering from the dead. Sacrificing innocents. Is that something one does for no reason?”
“People have done stupider things thinking it’s the end of the world. Belief, in this case, means shit to me. Talk. Who’s doing this?”
He shrugged. “Could be anyone. A number of people are quite interested in seeing the end of the world. Many who would benefit from it.”
“The Veil?”
Another shrug and an easy smile.
“See, here’s what I’m wondering.” Zara paced steadily, her gaze locked on Sellie. “Five and a half years ago, when we found out this whole thing was orchestrated by someone trying to get into this Court of the Black Veil, Peter had heard a few people suggest Mishka Thiering wanted in, and we assumed you were trying to take out the competition. But it turns out you went after Peri’s family as well and I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a fucking clue who they were—and was on the other side of the world at the time. Care to comment?”
“No.”
“So I am thinking that you had another reason for trying to kill Peri.”
I shifted and tensed, gaze darting between them. What the hell?
Sellie kept his poker face.
Zara continued. “I think you were scared shitless about this potential end of the world deal. You were building your vampire army and trying to join a powerful secret society—both providing protection. And you went out of your way to take out the two people who could potentially jumpstart the whole apocalypse.”
“Interesting theory,” he said at last.
“Oh, I’m getting to the best part.”
“Do tell.”
“Now you’re going to help us because if whoever is trying to raise Mishka Thiering from the dead succeeds, the world ends and you kiss your sweet new body goodbye.”
“You’re already planning on exorcising me.”
“Yes, we are, but you think you’re going to outsmart us and live to visit gay bars another day. It’s in your best interest to play along. So. Would you like to help us stop this resurrection, avert the apocalypse, and keep your meat suit a bit longer?”
She’d just made so many moves I could scarce wrap my head around it but, there we were, Sean O’Connor on our side suddenly. I wasn’t sure how stopping the apocalypse was going to find the Veil, but it was a start.
****
Nic set up an interactive whiteboard, wheeled out of the front closet, and began jotting notes as Sean talked and Zara led the whole conversation. Ryann leaned against the far wall silently, electing to not participate either out of exhaustion or defiance—I didn’t know. She stayed quiet with her fingers worrying the silver cross at her throat. I chewed on another microwave pizza pocket thing and listened while the others did the thinking.
“Shrieking smoke eels,” Zara started. “What are they?”
“Sentries to ward off meddlers before the final ritual,” he said. “They came from the Oblivion dimension, where I assume Ms. Thiering is. There must already be a tear between worlds there to allow them through.” Tension thickened between him and Zara, stretching on and on as if he knew what more she was expecting. After several long moments, he relented. “And you know I know more than I’m sharing about opening dimensions.”
Zara didn’t blink. “Precisely. I did ask you once why you would build an army out of vampires instead of demons. You spent years on that project.”
“I did. Summoning a single minor demon is simple enough. Building numbers is difficult because it requires propping the doorway between open and any number of things can come through.”
“They had a knife,” I spoke up. “The ones starting this. When I saw them.”
“Demon weapon,” he said simply. “Oblivion magic is needed for the killings. That’s how you prop the door open—with magic. Furthermore, they’re trying to raise someone from the dead with no body—either they’ll make her soul corporeal, or...” He shrugged loosely and smiled. “They’ll have to provide her one.”
So another psychic, maybe? “You should find the other mediums in town.”
Zara nodded. “Nic, get on it. Not that these guys can’t import, but send any known psychics in the city—including Parker and Ted—into hiding. I’ll pay.”
Nicolette nodded and pulled out her cell phone to text.
“Next, what else do they need to do to complete this ritual and prop open the door? How many more sacrifices around town with that knife?”
“If we know the locations, we can intercept and grab them,” I filled in, and when Zara nodded, I felt a happy little sense of vindication—I thought of stuff. Stuff that was right. Go me.
The impatient sigh and shake of Sean’s head, however, slapped that feeling away like a strong open palm across the face. “If the sentries are through, it’s too late for that.”
“Peri stopped one, though,” Nic said as she put her phone away. “And no other body turned up in the area.”
“Persephone stopped it by spilling blood, I presume?”
Oh, fuck. My stomach went cold at the thought. Of course, if I had half a fucking brain cell, I would’ve kept the woman alive to interrogate her, not smashed her face on the cement. So I inadvertently gave them the final piece they needed. Wonderful.
“How are they going to perform the final ritual?” Zara asked.
Sellie raised his hands and let them drop dramatically “More blood rituals? Not my area of expertise. I knew a man, once, who had some experience with necromancy. Pity he’s unavailable.”
Zara said nothing. Had to wonder if he meant the corpse we moved the other day.
“How do we get rid of the sentries?”
“They’d dissipate by now in their natural form. Can’t sustain it in this dimension.”
“You know a lot about them,” I said dryly.
“Before settling on my vampires, I tested widely. Of course.”
Sick fuck.
“So,” he continued. “By now they will have taken human hosts who will defend the site before the final ritual.”
“How do we get them out of the humans?” Nic asked.
Zara’s gaze flickered to me briefly before returning to Sellie. The blonde vampire hadn’t noticed and I figured I got Zara’s drift—she thought we should just kill the humans anyway, and probably knew I’d be up for it.
“They’ll drift, for a time,” he said. “Until they dissipate—really, it would be like suffocating for them—or until they take up residence in the next body.”
So much for killing them if they were just going to body jump. Maybe we could...cage them? The fuck I knew how to go about that, though, and if I thought of it, guaranteed one of the smart people had too. I’d leave it to them.
“Can we exorcise them?” Zara asked. “Trap them? Peri and Nic said the circle of sacrifices held them off—can we make something smaller?”
Another shrug. “Not my area of expertise.”
Yeah, right. “Next question,” I spoke up. “Is the Veil in on this? Since you were a member and you didn’t say ‘apocalypse, please,’ I’m assuming no.”
“Probably not,” he conceded.
“Might one of them come to stop it?”
“Possibly.”
Useless bastard.
“I suggest going back to the site during the day to have a look around and see what might’ve been left behind.”
“In the middle of those...things?” Nic asked, aghast.
“Daylight might be safer. I could go along—”
“No,” all of us said in unison.
“In the morning, Ryann and Peri,” Zara said without consulting either of us. The Hunter looked as if she was about to object, but instead said nothing, much like she had been for the past hour. “So both of you get your rest.”
It had been a long day, what with the arrest and all, so I didn’t argue. I tossed my plate in the sink, grabbed a bottle of water, and turned back to see Nic gesturing me toward her room. I followed, thumping on my sore shot leg.
“My head hurts from trying to keep up with Zara’s thought process,” I said with a yawn as I stepped into Nic’s room. My gaze went to my little spirit shelf, still set up in the corner and out of the way. Untouched. I should sit by it and meditate for a while. Should. But I couldn’t bring myself to go over and bring the photos into sharp focus, to face them, so I sat at the end of the bed and went about unlacing my boots.
“She has to be several steps ahead of us at all times,” Nic said. “I’ve never played chess against her and don’t think I’d want to.” Her lips parted, as if to say more, then she seemed to think the better of it and opened her top dresser drawer, rifling through for a pair of flannel pajama bottoms.
“Nic.”
She glanced at me again.
“What?”
A sigh. “She isn’t in this to help you. Right now your goals intersect...she has put herself—and Nate—ahead of everyone else, and him because he’s hers. Crisse help him should he ever piss her off.”
I already knew I couldn’t trust her so this wasn’t anything new. “So?”
“I want you to know she’s a narcissist and everything Zara does is for Zara. If she thinks the apocalypse is helpful to her, she’ll line up the next victim for them. If she will benefit from allowing the Veil to succeed over you, she will help them. And when Bravo Division gives her the order and payment to take your life, she will do so without hesitation.”
I followed that logic for a moment. “But if it doesn’t benefit her to do so?”
“Exactly.”
Huh. I’d better start making myself indispensable. “And you fit in where? Won’t she fuck you over as well?”
“She has use for me, should something happen to her. I’m Plan B.”
“And you’re so insistent on helping me why?”
“Would you believe I believe in your mission?”
“No.” But if felt like a lie the moment I said it. She hung around for some reason, even when it would be safer—saner—to run for cover. She had a purpose for sticking around and yeah, for all I knew, it was because she believed in the mission.
The air bubbled, words building up that I didn’t know how to say, tension rising ’til I felt something might burst.
Nic shrugged and smiled, not offering any other explanation. “Bonne nuit, Peri.”
She exited the room and the door shut softly, unspoken words still drifting in the air.