CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fuck. Jace had known
there hadn’t been enough blood on the floor, and Sunshine had tripped every one of his bullshit
sensors.
“The girl he’s with,
she’s helping him, isn’t she?”
Stephen nodded.
“They’ve been looking for someone touched by an aura demon for
years. They think they’ll become immortal if they help these
demons. They were fucking thrilled to find me and Sam. There aren’t
many people who survive what that demon does to you. If the ritual
my parents and their cult were working hadn’t been interrupted, I
don’t—”
“Sam’s known this guy
for a while,” Jace said, his thoughts racing too quickly for him to
wait for Stephen to tell his and Sam’s life story. “Why didn’t
he—”
“He had someone else,
but she wouldn’t help him. And now she’s gone.” Stephen sucked in a
shaking breath. “At least, I hope she is. She’s not in the basement
anymore. I went to Ezra’s to try to break her out, but she wasn’t
there.”
“Ezra’s been keeping
a woman locked in the basement of his building?” All Jace could
think about was that it could have been Sam locked away down there,
and it made his fists itch to smash her ex-boyfriend’s face
in.
Stephen nodded. “He
found her through the same database that helped him find Sam, but
this girl didn’t have anyone looking out for her, no one who really
noticed when she disappeared. Ezra told me she was my little sister
Emma, the one Sam and I thought died, but I don’t know if that’s
true.”
“But they needed
someone from your family to make the spell work?”
“Yeah, if he’s using
the same box our parents used. The box and the demons work
together. All aura demons have an artifact they’re connected to.
Sometimes it’s a statue or a bowl or something. For these demons,
it’s a box. Ezra tracked it down about a year ago and found out the
collection it was part of was due to come to New York this spring.
He has clearance into most of the museums and knew he’d be able to
get his hands on it.”
“So he’s had a woman
locked in his basement for almost a year? While he waited for this
box to come into town?”
“I know it sounds
crazy,” Stephen said, obviously hearing the doubt in Jace’s voice
loud and clear. “But that’s exactly what he did. It’s also why he
started something with Sam. He wanted to keep her close and try to
get her on board in case he couldn’t convince Emma to do what he
wanted. When Sam broke up with him, he came to me.”
“And you decided to
help him?”
“He was blackmailing
me.” Stephen scowled, a dark expression that made him look far
scarier than the man he feared. But then, Ezra probably used his
glasses-wearing academic look to his advantage. No one ever
suspected the short, aging intellectual. “Believe me, I didn’t want
any fucking part of it.”
“What did he do,
threaten to expose your side business?”
“No, he threatened to
kill the woman he told me was Emma, and to hurt Sam. I felt like I
had to do what he asked … until I saw the box today … until it was
full….” Stephen shuddered. “I knew then that I couldn’t finish the
ritual, even if it meant risking Ezra hurting my
family.”
Jace grunted, not
bothering to hide his doubt as he ordered his bud to call Sam.
Thank God he’d programmed her number into his earpiece on the way
to Ezra’s from the hotel.
“You can’t call her,”
Stephen said, pulling Jace’s hand away from his ear in a movement
that made the Contis behind them twitch. “Her bud’s dead or she’s
not answering or …”
“Or what?” Jace
asked, raising a hand to let Frank know he didn’t need
backup.
“Or he’s already got
her,” Stephen said, the pain in his voice leaving no doubt how
horrifying he found the possibility. Messed up or not, the man
loved his sister, probably more than anything in the world. “He was
so happy when she stopped by his place this morning. You can’t
imagine. If I hadn’t been there, in the bedroom with Sunshine,
getting the new access codes to the museum, I don’t think they
would have let her leave.”
Shit! A part of Jace
wanted to make a run for the bar without wasting another second,
but something in Stephen’s story didn’t add up. Jace didn’t know
jack about demonic rituals, but he did know a thing or two about
the criminal mind. “If Ezra needed Sam, he could have taken her
long before now. She’s half your size and—”
“It has to be a
willing sacrifice. The person has to choose to engage in the ritual
of their own free will,” Stephen said. “Emma refused, no matter
what Ezra did to her, and I think he knew Sam wouldn’t do it
either, no matter what that box promised her or what kind of
threats Ezra made. Sam’s a good person, and she doesn’t love anyone
enough to put hundreds of other people in danger. Even me. Or at
least, she didn’t. Ezra seems to think that might have
changed….”
Sam had said she
loved him. Jace could still hear the word echoing in his ears,
remember the way his tongue had cramped from the effort it took to
keep from saying it right back to her. Now he might not get the
chance to tell her how she made him happier than any man had a
right to be after the day and a half he’d had.
“How would hundreds
of people be hurt?” he asked, forcing himself to concentrate on
understanding what they were up against. Whether or not this
demonic ritual was going to work, he needed to know what Ezra and
Sunshine thought was going to happen and what they were going to do
to Sam.
“When the demons are
made flesh, they’ll be faster and stronger than anything human, and
we’re nothing but food to them. Some of the people they attack will
die, but some of them will become hosts themselves.”
“But I thought you
just said it needs the person to be willing, and that it has to be
someone who’s been touched by the—”
Stephen shook his
head impatiently. “No, once a touched person—like me or Sam—is
fully taken over and becomes demon,
that demon … person … thing can possess
other people without consent. They’ll have to. There are over a
dozen of those aura demons connected to the box. They won’t be able
to share one body for long, and—”
“What will they do to
Sam to make this happen?” Jace asked. What Stephen was describing
was too wild to believe, but a part of him couldn’t keep from
imagining and fearing the world he described.
“I told you, they
need her to take up the box, and willingly invite the demons inside
her. She’ll host them in her body while Ezra does his chanting shit
and the box firms up the connection between the demons and the
flesh they are inhabiting.”
“And why the hell
would she do that?”
“Ezra will promise
her immunity for the people she loves,” he said, the flat look in
his eyes giving Jace the creeps. “But he’s lying. The demons are
pure evil. There will be no immunity. We’ll all be turned into
monsters sooner or later, no matter what Ezra says.”
“How will we be
turned into—”
“Where do you think
the demons in the ruins came from?” Stephen asked, his voice rising
hysterically, drawing the attention of both the Contis and the
Death Ministry members nearby. “Thousands of years ago, they were
human.”
“You’re
insane.”
“I wish I were. The
box showed it to me. I don’t know if it meant to, but I saw it. I
saw how the world was before.” Stephen picked at his chapped lips,
his hands shaking with genuine fear. “Ancient people found a way to
bind the aura demons to objects and banish the posessed people into
caves beneath the earth, but that’s not going to happen this time.
Ezra is one of the only people who’s studied this stuff, and he
doesn’t want to stop the demons. He wants to make them offerings
and—”
“Offerings.” A sour
taste rose in Jace’s mouth as he realized what Stephen had to be
talking about. God, how could he have called this monster a friend
for so long? “You helped him kill them, didn’t you? You killed the
Choes and—”
“No! I swear I
didn’t!” Stephen looked genuinely horrified. “I wouldn’t. Ezra
hired someone to do it and sent the demons along with him. He chose
the Choes to scare me. The man he hired even took some of Sam’s
flowers over there and left them on the ground, to send a
message.”
“But you killed the
man he hired,” Jace said, knowing it was the truth even before
Stephen’s eyes dropped guiltily to the ground. “I should have
known. You followed me and Sam when we left the
hospital.”
“I had to.
I—”
“You had to sneak up
behind me and sucker punch me? And rip a man’s eyes out?” It was
hard to believe that Stephen could have done such a thing. He
wasn’t a big man, certainly not big enough to scare a Death
Ministry thug just by looking at him—but he’d basically just
confessed to the murder. Still … how had he managed it? And so
fast? It had been less than ten minutes from the time Jace had been
knocked off his feet to when he discovered the body.
There was something
off here, something he still wasn’t getting.
“I’m sorry. I just
had to make sure you didn’t get in the way,” Stephen said. “I
didn’t want to hurt you, but I had to get that man’s eyes. I didn’t
think I had a choice … but once I’d done it…”
Stephen shivered,
clearly traumatized by what he’d done, but that wasn’t enough to
make Jace feel an ounce of pity.
Jace blinked against
the bright sun. He was getting a killer headache, and none of this
was making as much sense as he’d like, but there wasn’t time to
waste standing around interrogating Stephen. He had to find Sam and
make sure she was safe. He turned back to the docks, prepared to
tell his uncle that the plan had changed, but was stopped by
Stephen’s hand on his arm.
“Where are you going?
We have to find her.”
“I will find her,” Jace said, his skin crawling as
some of the glop from Stephen’s hair fell on the sleeve of his new
sweater. It was thick and yellow, and, now that he was closer, Jace
could smell the slight odor rising off the stuff, the smell that
was eerily similar to…
“Holy fuck.” He
ripped his arm away and drew his weapon, going straight for his
automatic without bothering with the stun gun.
Stephen was the
snot-covered monster he and Sam had seen in the hall. He was the
one who’d wounded Ezra; that had been
who he was coming back to see if he killed, not some drug lord or
gangland thug. Stephen was the creature who’d survived a leap out
of a four-story window. And if he was half as strong and fast in
his human form as he had been when he’d been that … thing, then Jace was going to need all the
firepower he could get.
“Get down on the
ground!” His uncle and the rest of the Conti hunters were beside
him in seconds, forcing Stephen to the ground and pulling his hands
behind his back.
“I didn’t hurt you.
Or her!” Stephen protested. “Please, I can’t help it. The demons
did something to me when I was a kid, the same thing they’ll do to
all of us if we don’t—”
“Shut the hell up and
tell me where that box is.” Jace aimed his gun at Stephen’s face as
his ex-best friend began to get shinier, stickier. Stephen’s story
of humans turned into monsters suddenly didn’t seem nearly as
fantastic.
“It’s gotten worse,”
he said, his voice rising hysterically. “Ju Du quills used to keep
it under control, keep me from changing, but they don’t
anymore.”
Well, shit. That
cleared up a few dozen questions about Stephen’s involvement in the
demon drug industry.
“But now I can’t
control it. I can’t—”
“Where’s the box?”
Jace demanded, his voice loud enough to make Stephen flinch and
fall silent for a moment. Stephen blinked as if he were awakening
from a dream, and the slime covering his face began to fade away
once more.
“It’s hidden under a
bed at the museum. Ezra couldn’t risk removing it from the building
because there’s a tracking device embedded in the wood,” Stephen
said, taking a long, deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself
down, “but Sam doesn’t know about—”
“Yes, she does.” Jace
cursed. “She saw the box in one of her visions.”
Stephen made a sound
somewhere between a growl and a sigh. “Her dreams aren’t real.
Can’t you—”
“What is wrong with
you?” Jace crouched down, bringing his face closer to where
Stephen’s was pressed into the pavement. “You know that your
connection to these demons turns you into some kind of slime
monster, but you can’t admit the possibility that it might be
making Sam have dreams and visions of things that are going to
happen?”
“I … I … Sam isn’t
like that,” he said, though Jace could see the doubt in his eyes.
“She isn’t like me. She’s good inside. She—”
“I don’t think ‘good’
has anything to do with it,” Jace said, feeling a moment of pity
for Stephen. He’d obviously assumed the side effects of what the
demons had done to him were his fault, and it had screwed him up
accordingly. “This sounds like some sort of infection or possession
or something.”
“Some infection.
Let’s just hope it ain’t catching.” Uncle Francis stared
dispassionately down at Stephen’s face, his nose wrinkling slightly
as the yellow ooze swam across the other man’s skin. “That shit’s …
gross. A demon’s causing that?”
“An aura demon,
allegedly,” Jace said, ignoring the grunts of disbelief that
sounded from several of the other hunters. At least Uncle Francis
didn’t look nearly as skeptical as Jace would have expected. But
then, it wasn’t every day you saw a man turning into some kind of
freak of nature right in front of your eyes. “But I don’t think the
demons can hurt Sam—at least, not without a human’s help. We’ve got
to find this Ezra guy before he finds her.” Jace filled his uncle
in on what Stephen had told him, then motioned for the other men to
let Stephen up off the ground.
“Just tell us which
museum this box is at.”
“It’s at the History
Project, but why would Sam go there?” Stephen asked as he stood up,
his entire body shaking from the effort. The man didn’t look good,
not good at all. “She’ll probably go to her house or back to the
bar. She wouldn’t—”
“Ezra gave Sam and me
some books about the box.” Jace’s stomach clenched. “He acted like
he didn’t know much about it, but seems like that’s pretty far from
the truth.”
“He was trying to
lure you two to the museum,” Stephen said, going pale. “We’ve got
to get there. Sam’s smart. She’ll figure out where to look for the
box. It’s not on the list of the museum exhibits—Ezra made sure of
that—but the entire building’s filled with demonic artifacts
discovered after the emergence.”
“Let’s just hope she
hasn’t found anyone to read the damn books to her,” Jace said, for
once congratulating himself on being a jackass. He’d refused to
read Sam the books mostly on principle, a perverse part of him
wanting to punish her for withholding information from him and
making him feel like a fool. But now, his asshole tendencies might
just have saved her life.
“Marcus and Michael
can go check out the bar,” Uncle Francis said, taking control of
the situation without wasting another second. “We’ll send Tommy
over to the girl’s house, and then the rest of us will take the
museum. Sound good?”
Jace nodded, then
turned to give Tommy directions to Sam’s while Uncle Francis
motioned for Marcus and Michael to escort Stephen to one of the
vans.
“You’re locking me
up?” Stephen asked, sounding as thrilled about that prospect as
Jace had thought he’d be. “You can’t lock me up! I have to go help
my sister. If Ezra’s got her, I—”
“We can’t have a
murderer running free on the streets,” Uncle Francis
said.
“I’m not
a—”
“I’ve got excellent
hearing, freak.” Francis glared at Stephen as Michael and Marcus
dragged him toward the van. “I heard everything you said to my
nephew. Just knowing you were the one who fucked with him this
morning is enough to get you on my bad side, which ain’t a good
place to be.”
“But I—”
“But if those guys
standing over there figure out you killed one of theirs …”
Francis’s voice dipped to a whisper as he jerked his head toward
where the Death Ministry members still lingered close by. “Well,
then you’ll be on their bad side, too. Call me crazy, but I’m
thinking that would be even worse for you.”
Stephen paled and the
slime swam over his face once more. “Things can’t get any worse for
me.”
The next few seconds
were a blur. One moment Stephen was standing between Marcus and
Michael; the next, the two huge men were on the ground bleeding
from twin wounds to the forehead, and Stephen was nowhere in
sight.
“Holy shit! Did you
see that shit?” Uncle Francis shouted.
“Get in the vans.
We’ve got to beat him to the museum,” Jace said, grateful to see
his uncle already motioning for the rest of the team to obey Jace’s
command. There was no time to debate or strategize. They had to get
to Sam before someone—or something—else did.