Fury’s Kiss (32 page)

Alex and Rachel ushered the boy down the hall toward the stairs, but Jackson ignored me, planting himself firmly at my side. I wanted him out of danger, but it helped to know he was there. The two of us advanced with Hester, flanking Hélène, who simply laughed at our approach. Sirens wailed in the distance and I knew they were headed for us. Someone would have called 911 about Spiro’s dramatic exit from the house by now.

“Maybe after I kill you and your friends, I’ll have some fun of my own with your boyfriend,” Hélène mocked me. “There must be something to all that cutting Spiro enjoyed so much.” She winked. “Don’t tell anyone, but I always felt a little…stifled in my marriage.”

She turned her attention to the hallway behind me, where Nicky retreated with Alex and Rachel. “I bet you feel just terrible,” she called out to the boy, “since you’re the one who told me all about Tara. And now it’s your fault she’s going to die.”

Nicky turned to face her and I could see the change in his eyes. He screamed and the Fury in me recognized pure, inarticulate rage.

“Nicky, don’t!” I yelled at him, but he didn’t listen, just ran toward us.

I dashed to intercept him before he could complete his collision course with Hélène, but it was no good. She threw me aside with the same power she’d used to push Spiro through the window, then did the same to Jackson and Hester. She grabbed the boy in a bear hug when he reached her, and he kicked and clawed, trying to hurt her. She just petted his hair like she was soothing a tantrum while she kept one arm coiled around his throat.

“Get out of my way,” she said as I struggled to my feet. “Or I’ll snap his neck.”

“You won’t make it out of here if you do,” Jackson warned, his eyes hard with determination. I knew he was thinking of his brother.

“Maybe, maybe not. But I’ll enjoy it either way.” She pursed her lips and blew Jackson a kiss.

“Stop it,” I said. “Just tell us what you want and let him go.”

“I want you dead. With you out of the way, these mortals don’t have a hope of stopping me.”

Flashing blue and red lights lit up the townhouse and there was a pounding at the door.

“Boston PD! Open up!”

Hélène’s eyes went wild. Time was running out. Carefully, I stepped toward her, halving the distance between us. “Let Nicky go and I’ll come the rest of the way. As long as you’ve got that necklace, you’re the boss.”

She shoved the boy toward Jackson, who caught him before he could fall, and I stepped closer. If I was going to take her out, it had to be now, while she was still within the warding Hester had placed on the house and surrounding block. If I let her leave, or if the cops took her outside of it, she would jump to a new body and be gone before anyone could stop her. I wasn’t sure I could overpower her—if I could even get close enough and hold her still long enough to deliver the Fury’s kiss—but I knew I had to try.

“You want me?” I asked. “You got me.”

I stepped into her grasp.

Chapter 30

Hélène grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me toward the stairs, intending to throw me over the railing to the lobby five stories below. I grabbed her around the waist and she grappled with me, expecting me to push her away. Instead, I pulled her closer. The front door splintered, then burst open as we wrestled at the top of the steep staircase, and footsteps pounded toward us. I pulled Hélène close and pressed my lips to hers. She struggled to get away, but I breathed into her lungs, forcing my will into her.

Each time you think of me
, I spoke directly into her mind
, you will suffer the pain you have inflicted on others a thousand fold. And there will never be a moment, ever, when you don’t think of me.
The sigil fell from her hand, bouncing on the carpet, and she began to scream.

“Raise your hands and step away from Ms. Perris!” a male voice ordered me. The cops had made it up the stairs to where Hélène and I struggled, but I held on. I wasn’t done with her yet. Unable to form a coherent thought through the madness I’d inflicted on her, Hélène DeVille would never again carry out deceit’s work, but she had more to answer for than just what she had done to me and my loved ones. She had an entire century of pain, suffering, and stolen youth to pay for.

My exhale ended, and I began to breathe in, stealing the breath and sound from her scream. Hélène’s eyes widened, as she grasped on some level what I was doing to her. The hand she tangled in my hair twisted harder, yanking my head back, but I just lifted her higher to accommodate the new angle of our deepening kiss.

“This is your last warning!” the cop ordered again. “Release Ms. Perris!”

But still, I ignored him. With each passing second, Hélène grew lighter in my arms. Her kicking feet grew feeble and the hand wrapped in my hair, trying to drag my mouth away from hers, lost its grip entirely. When I’d sucked in nearly all the air she had to give, I lowered her to the ground. I’d just set her down when a shot rang out, and I tore my mouth away, expecting to feel the sting of a bullet. But there was no pain. I looked down. A few steps away, there was another body at my feet, blood pooling beneath it.

I stared at it for a long moment, unable to understand what I was seeing. Then it sank in. Jackson. The wounded, still form at my feet was Jackson. My strength abandoned me, and I dropped to my knees next to him, saying his name over and over, begging him to be OK. But his eyes stayed closed and he lay still and silent, bleeding onto the thick, dark carpet that covered the stairs. When I realized that he wouldn’t wake up, I screamed and rose to my feet. I tore down the steps to advance on the men in uniform below.

I would kill the one who had shot Jackson. He had taken my mate from me, and now he would pay.

“I—I—” The man in blue couldn’t speak. The scent of fear was sharp in the air, and I drank it in.

“You will die for this,” I snarled at the cop who’d shot Jackson.

“Stop!” his partner ordered. “I’ll…I’ll shoot!”

“Then
you
will die too,” I hissed and swung my head around to look at him.

When he saw the blood streaming from my eyes, he stumbled back against the wall, but managed to reach for the radio he carried at his shoulder with shaking hands and call for backup. Trembling, he raised his gun and pointed it at me and another scream rang out from above, echoing off the marble and tile. It was as furious as any raptor’s cry, swooping from the sky to fall on its prey.

I raised my head and shrieked an angry, delighted response, recognizing the cry for what it was. Finally, my sister Furies had come, when I needed them most.

I turned my head to see Alex prowl up behind the cop with the gun, materializing out of the shadows with feline stealth and eyes that glowed green in the dark. A dusky leopard pattern showed faintly on her skin. The tiny, rational bit of humanity that was left inside of me, buried deep under rage and grief, spared a second to wonder how Alecto and I hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t realized that where Alecto went, Tisiphone and Megaera were sure to follow.

Then another scream rang out, and I stopped thinking of anything but the kill. Rachel leaped from the fifth floor railing to land in a crouch beside me, the air barely stirring with her passage. Her eyes shone with a feral, orange light.

“Drop it,” Alex growled in the cop’s ear.

He started, noticing her behind him for the first time, and nearly pulled the trigger in shock. His gun swung wildly toward her and she plucked it out of his hand. The one who’d shot Jackson sank to his knees and put his gun down on the floor carefully.

“Don’t hurt me,” he begged. “I’ve got kids. A wife.”

I didn’t care. He’d killed my mate. I reached for him.

“Tara.” Alex spoke again. Her voice was steady, despite her fearsome appearance. “It’s not worth it. Jackson wouldn’t want this.”

I paused, bloody tears streaming down my face as I beheld the man who had killed my mate. There was no fresh blood on his hands. I wavered, but I knew Alex was right. Jackson was gone, and hurting this cop wouldn’t bring him back. There was no vengeance to be had in killing a man who’d thought he was doing his job.

I threw him away from me, not caring where he fell.

If it was anyone’s fault Jackson was gone, it was mine. The connection I’d fought so hard to establish between us had dragged him right into the middle of the Perris’s sick schemes. I turned back to where he lay on the stairs. Hester crouched over him, trying to revive him, and my rage faded as I went to his side. I rocked over his body, keening with loss, regret, and guilt. I wished I had said all the things that had been in my heart when I’d had the chance. I wished I could die with him. Rachel knelt beside me and held me as I rocked.

Suddenly, Hester grabbed my arm to still my movement. She bent over Jackson, looking and listening, and grabbed his wrist. “There’s a pulse! He’s come back!”

Feverish hope rose in my throat, and I cradled Jackson’s head in my lap while Alex went outside to flag down the ambulance that would be coming for Dimitris’s body. I promised whichever gods were listening that I would give anything if Jackson just lived.

“Thank you.” I looked up at Hester. “How can I ever repay you for this? While I was set on vengeance, you…you were the one who saved him.”

She smiled gently. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Your powers are new, and a Fury’s instinct is hard to overcome. Besides, there’s nothing you or I could have done to save him—he did it himself.”

“But I saw you—”

She shook her head. “I helped keep his body going while he made up his mind, but if he’d decided not to come back to you, there’s nothing I could have done.” She rested a hand on my shoulder. “He came back for you.”

Finally, the paramedics arrived, and Hester slipped away to scoop up Apate’s necklace before it was picked up by someone else. I noticed vaguely that someone moved to the staircase to attend to Hélène, but I had eyes only for my mate.

When they loaded him into the ambulance, I climbed in after him and prayed it wasn’t too late.

Chapter 31

The next few days were the longest of my life, and I spent them in a chair next to Jackson’s bed, refusing to leave his side for any longer than the few minutes it took to go to the washroom or bolt down a meal in the hospital cafeteria. He’d been shot in the chest, the bullet just missing his heart, and he had yet to regain consciousness after emerging from surgery. The cop who’d shot him had meant to hit me, but his aim had been thrown off when Jackson dove in front of the bullet.

On Jackson’s third day post-surgery, I sat at his bedside reading the newspaper version of events out loud to him. I wasn’t sure he could hear me, but his condition was stable and the doctors said he would eventually make a full recovery. I wanted him to know I was there for him, even if he wasn’t fully conscious. And I knew he would want to know what had happened to Hélène.

“So the official version is that Christos Perris was the latest in a string of serial rapists and murderers,” I summarized for my sleeping mate, “trained to carry on an evil family legacy. Supposedly, Graves caught him in the act of attacking me and he killed himself rather than face life in prison. And we were all apparently in hiding after that, under FBI protection. Not on the run from the law, like the media ‘incorrectly’ reported.”

I skimmed the headlines. “Hm, let’s see. What else? Oh, yeah. Dimitris Perris’s death was ruled an accident, and the cops who showed up at the mansion on the Square conveniently forgot that we were ever there.” I wrinkled my nose. “I think Graves just didn’t want to deal with the paperwork. And wait till I tell you what happened with Rachel and Alex.”

Privately, I doubted the two cops who’d been first on the scene would ever truly forget how my roommates had emerged from the shadows to threaten them with glowing eyes, but I didn’t worry about it much. I still carried a bit of a grudge against the one who’d shot Jackson.

“Guess that bastard Perris got what he deserved,” Jackson interrupted me, and my eyes flew from the paper to his face. His voice was gravelly from disuse and his usually tan skin was pale against the stark white sheets.

“You’re awake.”

He tried to speak, but not much came out. I reached for the cup of ice chips I had on hand and fed him a couple.

“What happened to Elena?” he asked when he could speak again. “Or should I say
Hélène
?” The French name was incongruous with his Texan drawl, and I had to laugh.

I could feel the evil grin that spread over my face as I thought of my revenge against her. “I took away her youth and cursed her so she would suffer all the pain she inflicted on her victims. She’s been taken to a psychiatric facility, where I understand they have to keep her sedated around the clock to keep her from screaming twenty-four-seven. There was no way to explain what happened to her, so Graves had her admitted as a Jane Doe and hushed it up. Elena Perris is officially listed as a missing person.”

Jackson coughed and I fed him another ice chip. I teared up as I thought of how close I had come to losing him. “You’re so stupid.” I sniffed and wiped at my eyes. “What were you thinking, throwing yourself in front of me like that? I’m a Fury, remember? I could have healed myself.”

“I love you,” he said simply. “I’m your
somatophylax
. What else could I have done?”