Jim came out of his coma with the nape of his neck on fire. He had no clue how long he'd been out, but Ad had clearly moved him back to the bed: The softness under his head was definitely a pillow and not the cold, hard tile by the shower.
As he sat up in the darkness, he was shocked: He felt curiously strong, miraculously steady. It was as if whatever state he had been in for . . . well, hours, assuming he was reading the clock right . . . had rebooted him inside and out.
Which was all good news.
The tightness at the tippy top of his spine, however, was anything but: Isaac.
Isaac was in trouble.
Swinging his legs off the bed and bolting upright, he felt no dizziness, no nausea, no aches or pains. Except for the ants at the base of his skull, he was not just ready to go, but roaring.
"Adrian!" he called out as he went to his duffel and yanked out a pair of jeans.
Where the hell was Dog?
Through the open connector, he could see that the lights were on in the other room, so the angel had to be in there.
"Adrian!" He went commando and jerked on his pants; then grabbed for a shirt. "We've got to go!"
He snatched his crystal gun and dagger along with his coat. "Yo, Ad--"
Adrian all but skidded into the room with Dog under his arm. "Eddie's in trouble."
Well, didn't that just make that nape of his feel soooo much better. "What?"
Adrian undid Dog's leash and let him scamper over to say hello. "He's not answering his phone. I just called. And called again. And called a third time. Never happens."
"Fuck."
As Ad weaponed up, Jim checked over Dog and put some food down and then he and his wingman--literally--took off. Man, he'd never been so grateful for the blink-and-you'll-miss-it ride of those flapping numbers on their backs: Only minutes later, they were in Beacon Hill.
He and Adrian landed in the walled garden in a shimmering blaze and they kept themselves hidden from prying eyes because it was only four in the afternoon. The house looked fine on the outside and the red glimmering spell was still in place, but his neck was killing him. And where in the hell was Eddie--
"Shit," he spat as he saw the soles of the angel's combat boots sticking out from under a bush.
Jim beat feet over and crouched down. The guy was flat on his ass, looking like he'd played chicken with a bulldozer and lost. "Eddie?"
The grounded angel opened his eyes. "Holy hell . . . what . . . I don't know what happened. One minute I was up. Next . . ."
"You were a welcome mat."
Adrian reached out a hand to help his best friend up. "What the fuck was it?"
"No clue." Eddie slowly got to his feet. Then he looked over at Jim and cringed. "Jesus Christ . . ."
Jim frowned and glanced around. "What?"
"Your face . . ."
Okay, maybe he only just felt better. Hopefully the looks part would come later. "You're saying my days as a calendar model are over?"
"Didn't know you were into that." Eddie shook his head. "Listen, Isaac wants to talk to you. ASAP."
Jim glanced at Adrian. "You stay with the welcome mat."
"Like I would be anywhere else?"
Jim jogged over to the house. The back door was wide open, which was another piece of bad news--and shit only got more critical as he went into the kitchen.
God, you never got used to the smell of a mortal gunshot wound: There were different flavors, gut versus chest versus brain, but the palette was everything metallic between the lead of the shot and the copper of the fresh blood.
First body he found was a man he knew: Captain Alistair Childe. The poor guy was lying in the archway that led out into the front hall, having crumpled to the floor in a heap.
Not the source of the blood, though. There was none on the clothes or the tile, and Childe was breathing evenly in spite of the little knockout nap he was having.
Body number two was halfway down to the front door and clearly the source of the smell. . . . Yeah, wow, that bastard was a candidate for a closed coffin if Jim had ever seen one: His face was distorted from the inside out, the bullet having traveled up the meat and bone of his chin and nose before exiting on a hrow-open-the-doors-and-sing-like-Ethel-Merman routine at the crown of his skull.
Going by the snake tattoo around the guy's neck, it had to be Matthias's second in command.
And Isaac was standing over the guy with a puss full of what-the-fuck.
Rothe looked up and raised his weaponless hands. "He did it himself. He fucking did it . . . himself. Damn it. . . . How's the father?"
Jim knelt beside the captain to double-check. Yup, Childe had been beaned on the head, likely with the butt of a gun, but he was already starting to moan as if he were coming around.
"He'll be all right." Jim rose up and headed down to Isaac and the other guy. As he got closer, the smell got worse--
He slowed and then stopped altogether. And rubbed his eyes.
A shimmering gray shadow covered the body of Matthias's second in command from head to foot, moving around the arms and legs and blown-off head in the same way Jim's spell shifted and covered the house they were all in. And the blood was all wrong--gray, not brilliant red.
Devina, Jim thought. She was either in the man or had taken him over.
"He just put it under his chin and pulled the trigger." Isaac sank down onto his haunches and nodded to the gun that was in the corpse's right hand. "He used my weapon to do it."
"Get away from the body, Isaac."
"Fuck that, I have to clean it up before--"
Jim wasn't interested in arguing and grabbed hold of the guy, pulling him up and back a couple of feet. "You don't know what it is."
"The hell I don't. He came to pick me up."
Jim glared at Isaac. "Last I heard you were lamming it."
"Change of priorities."
Damn it, get abducted for twelve hours and the world goes to shit: Isaac turning himself in, dead demon in a civilian's front hall, no one making sense anymore.
"I won't let you go back in, Isaac. Or sacrifice yourself to keep someone else alive." Because how much you want to bet that was what was going on here.
"Not your choice. And no offense, but I still can't imagine why you give a shit." The soldier took out one of XOps' transistors, which had this time been disguised as a Life Alert. "Besides, it's moot. I've already resummoned."
That blinking light made Jim want to holler. So he did. "What the fuck are you doing? Matthias is going to kill you--"
"So."
A patrician voice interjected. "I thought you were coming forward with information on Matthias."
Jim glanced over his shoulder. Alistair Childe had gotten to his feet and was coming down to them, his hand on the wall like he needed help balancing.
"I thought that was the plan, Isaac. And, Jim, I thought you had died over in Caldwell. Three or four days ago."
Jim and Isaac both hopped on the Total Pass Train and ignored the rhetoricals. Which was easy to do considering how much needed figuring out.
The fact that Matthias's number two had come in and killed himself with Isaac's gun was only surface dressing. The core truth was that Devina was all over this situation. But to what end? If Isaac was the target, why the fuck hadn't she just taken him now while Jim wasn't around?
"Did she--he have a clear shot at you?" Jim asked. "At any point?"
"You mean to kill? Hell, yeah--I was up against the wall, palms planted, with my weapons on the floor. That's about as clear as you get."
"This makes no sense." He looked down at the body. "No sense."
"We have to get rid of the body," Isaac said. "Before I go, we have to--"
"I'm not letting you turn yourself in."
"Not your call."
"God damn it--"
"My thoughts exactly." Isaac frowned, his narrowed eyes roving around Jim's puss. "And what the fuck happened to you last night?"
For a split second, Jim strongly considered banging his head against the wall, except that was redundant, given the shape he was in. How the hell was he going to get Isaac out of this mess?
It wasn't like he could come clean and explain what was really doing: Well, see, I really did die, and Matthias is not the problem. I'm trying to keep you away from a demon who wants your soul. And I don't have a clue what she's playing at here.
Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon.
Isaac didn't wait for an answer to the question about Jim's face. Clearly, the guy had been in a brawl with eight hundred bouncers or some shit, and that was not his business. What did have his name written all over it was this operative who'd somehow managed to magically fix his own arm before he killed himself.
Unless . . . twins?
Shit . . . yes. That had to be it. And what a tool for Matthias to fuck with people's minds. No wonder he'd picked the SOB to be second in command.
As Jim cursed again and took up wearing a path in the hall's runner, Isaac bent down and quickly unbuttoned the second in command's sleeve. No trace of anything on that forearm in the form of a surgical repair, no evidence the skin or bone had ever been broken.
Twins. Had to be.
With a quick rip, he tore open the black shirt, buttons popping off and bouncing on the floor. The bulletproof vest that was revealed was a surprise. Yeah, they were standard-issue, but why would you bother with one if you were going to turn your skull into a pi?ata?
Unsure exactly what he was looking for, he stripped the Velcro straps off the vest--
"Holy . . . crap . . ." He leaned in to make sure he was seeing right.
All down the guy's stomach there were deep scars that formed a pattern, and as Jim took a looksee and started in on another round of cursing, Isaac kept going with a fast pat-down. Cell phone, which he put aside. Wallet with a hundred in cash and no ID. Ammo. Nothing in the boots except socks and soles.
Stepping over the body, he headed for the kitchen to get a trash bin. As he was pulling the thing out of its cabinet and wondering how many arms and legs would fit in it, he heard footsteps behind him. Obviously, the peanut gallery had followed, but come on, people. No more talk; they needed action. Grier was locked in the damn closet upstairs and he had to get the shit cleaned up before he let her out--
"You lied."
Isaac froze and cranked his head around. Grier was standing on the far side of the island with the cellar door just shutting behind her. How in the hell had she . . . Crap, there must be a hidden stairwell that linked to the basement. He should have guessed there would be multiple escape routes.
As she stared at him, she was white as Kleenex and shaking in her shoes. "You never intended to come forward. Did you."
He shook his head, not knowing what to say and all too aware of what was in her front hall. This situation was totally out of control. "Grier--"
"You bastard. You lying b--" Abruptly, she focused over his shoulder. "You . . ." She pointed at Jim, who'd come to stand in the archway. "You were the one in my room the other night. Weren't you."
An odd expression filtered across Jim's features, kind of a fuck-me, but then he just shrugged and looked at Isaac. "I will not allow you to turn yourself in. "
"Your new theme song is getting on my nerves," Isaac bit out as he decided to bag the bin and go unstructured with some of Hefty's best.
Chatter, a lot of chatter from just about everyone--and all of it directed at him. But whatever. Selective deafness was something he had excelled at as a kid, and what do you know, the skill set came back to him without a hint of rust.
Isaac bent down under the sink and prayed that the most logical place for more trash bags was in fact--bingo. He took out two of them along with a broom and dustpan that were not going to survive this particular job.
God, he wished he had a hacksaw. But maybe with some rope, they could fold the bastard up tight and carry him out like a sloppy suitcase.
"Stay with her," he said to her father. "And keep her in here--"
"I saw it happen." As Isaac froze, she glared at him. "I watched him do it."
There was a long, silent pause, as if she had snapped all the chains of the men in the room.
She shook her head. "Why did you even pretend to go along with it, Isaac?"
As she stared at him, the trust was gone from her eyes. And in its place, there was a cold regard that he imagined people in laboratories wore as they watched the results of petri-dish cultures.
There would be no talking to her, no denying the shift he'd made. And maybe that was for the best. They had no business being together anyway--and that was before he layered on his professional pursuit of excellence in the field of deading up people.
Isaac got his Merry Maid on and headed for hall. "I need to move the body."
"Don't you turn away from me," she barked out.
He heard Grier coming behind him as if she had every intention of yelling at him some more, so he stopped short and pivoted around just as he got to the archway. As she pinwheeled to keep from running into his body, he pegged her in the eyes.
"Stay here. You don't want to see--"
"Fuck. You." She shoved past him, marching by until--"Oh . . . God . . ." She choked off the word, her hand coming up to her mouth.
Bingo, he thought grimly.
Fortunately, her father was on it, going over to her and gently maneuvering her out of eyeshot.
Cursing himself and everything about his life, Isaac continued down the hall, more determined than ever to take care of the problem . . . except his urgency took a time-out as he came up to the body.
A cell phone was in the corpse's hand and the thing was sending a message; the little screen on the phone was glowing with a picture of an envelope going into a mailbox over and over again.
Okay. Time to back the bus up, here: Guys who had no frontal lobe geeeenerally speaking didn't reach out and touch something with their T-Mobile.
A little glowing check mark appeared, indicating success.
"Isaac, you're going to need more than a dustpan to handle that."
At the sound of Jim's voice, he looked over his shoulder. And had to blink a couple of times. The man was standing in the dark part of the hall, well away from the light that came through the arches of the study and library . . . but he was illuminated, a glow surrounding him from head to foot.
Isaac's heart did a couple of jumping jacks in his chest cavity. Then seemed to take a little breather.
There had been a number of times when he'd been out in the field, in the middle of an assignment, and things had gone tits-up on him: You thought you knew your target's patterns and resources, weaknesses and protective covers, but just as you were about to move on him, the landscape changed sure as if someone dropped a bomb in the middle of the town square of your perfect plan. Weapon malfunctioned. A potential witness fucked your timing up. The target stepped out of range.
What you had to do was a fast recalibration of the situation, and Isaac had always excelled at that. Hell, that video game he'd unwittingly trained himself on had made his mind totally open to the lickety-split.
But this shit was out of his expertise. Big-time.
And that was before Jim took out a long dagger . . . that was made of crystal. "You're going to let me handle this now. Step away from the body, Isaac."
