Pandora's Ring (4 page)

“Well, yes, but if you’re serious, I’ve no recourse.”

“I’m serious.” She smiled just a little. After everything she’d seen today, she didn’t exactly think he was lying, but knowing how far her threshold would get her might be useful in the future.
 
“I want to see if it works.”

* * * *

Eli cringed inwardly. Did she have to include the butt scratch?
 
“I’ll have you know this is the most inane thing I have ever done.” He stepped inside. The burning started in his legs, and to stop it he started to move his feet, trying to recall what the Charleston even looked like. He’d never been a dancer. His tongue burned. He stuck it out. His throat tingled. With a grimace, he made his monkey noises as quietly as possible, muttering through them. “Damn it! Did you have–ooh, ooh, ah, ah!– to require–aie, aie!–the butt scratch?”

Samantha was staring at him with comically wide eyes, but muttered, “Duh. Go on.”

“I could still–ooh, ooh!–hurt you doing this.”

“That’s part of the test,” she said, crossing her arms.

His hand felt as if it were in a white-hot fire, and finally he hissed and gave in, madly scratching the crack of his ass as he jumped around with his tongue out. By the time he finally felt the urge to jump out of the room, Samantha was bent over laughing. He adjusted his shirt and grunted. “Glad you’re feeling better.”

“That was the best thing ever.” She cackled, slapping her knee. “Okay, okay.” It occurred to him she wasn’t going to make this easy. “While your intentions are pure, you are welcome in my home.” She nodded. “Should do it.”

Eli frowned. Could he enter on those grounds? Honestly, he wasn’t sure what his intentions regarding her were any more. If he entered, and the protections tossed him out, would he ever be able to recover the trust he’d gained? He grimaced. “I’m not certain that’s going to work.”

“So you are out to get me?” She asked softly.

He sighed. “It’s part of the long story. Technically, I’m ordered to have very bad intentions toward you.”

“Your orders and your intentions are separate. What do you want?”

What in the world did he want?
 
Going back to his quiet time of offering something less hellish than life didn’t seem to be an option any more.
 
“I want to tell you what’s going on so I can figure out what’s going on.”

She shrugged. “Try. Your intentions sound pure, but it’ll be good to know how far those words get me, anyway.”

He took a breath, frowning. She had already folded this into her worldview. With a small grimace, he stepped forward, nearly winced in expectation. But the burning pain never came, and he sighed.

Samantha rose, nodding. “So either you’re okay, or the words don’t get me very far at all.”

The pulse of her concessions wrapped around him like invisible strings. He took a breath. No one had ever tied him so completely with words. “No,” he murmured. “I think it’s probably the most iron-clad requirement I’ve ever heard.”

She tilted her head. “What’s it feel like?”

“Fishing line. Around my wrists, ankles, neck, and each, single claw.” He tried on a smile which came out more like a grimace. “It’s a little terrifying.”

“Do you often feel fear?” she asked.

“No,” he answered honestly. “Do you?”

“No.” She turned. “Not fear. Bathroom’s that way. Wash your hands–I’m going to change.

He nodded, complying with the strings of words trailing behind him.

2

When he came out of the bathroom after nearly five minutes, Samantha was sitting on her chair, frowning at the computer screen. He watched her for a long moment, as if trying to decide what to tell her. It was so strange that she could
feel
him in the apartment, track his every movement, and with careful thought feel how his concessions hovered over every inch of skin, like a vulture waiting for betrayal.He sat on the couch across from her. “All right,” he said. “I’m going to throw a lot of information at you.”

“I’ve got it.” She spread her fingers across the computer keys. Notes. She could focus on notes and keys and the screen and pretend this was just another client meeting.

Eli eyed her. “I need you to be honest with me,” he said. “Because other than the Angelic and Damned descendants, you’re the most sensitive human in the world right now.”

She blinked. “Angelic descendants? How many of them are there?”

“Less than five hundred,” he said. “Their numbers roughly equal the number of Damned descendants.”

“And you’re a Damned?”

“Yes.”

“And so was that lady?” She shuddered.

Eli nodded. “I need you to tell me about her. Seeing is a big deal…but breaking out of a glamour is a bigger one. I need to know how tough of a Damned you were up against.”

She took a deep breath, staring at the comforting glowing light of her screen. Disengaging her fear from her mouth, she forced herself to speak. “She was beautiful. You know Nicole Kidman? Like her, perfect twenties coif, short skirt, smirk.” She crossed her arms. “I didn’t see her, exactly. I saw a crow, sitting on the bench between us and I said it was weird how tame they were…” She tensed. “She asked me how I saw her pet.”

Eli frowned. “So she had a crow as a familiar? Was it Damned?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “It screeched at me…and I saw hell.” She shivered, remembering that beak opening, the fire she had glimpsed down its gullet, and rubbed her face. She needed to get a hold of herself, take some deep breaths.
 
It was over for now.

* * * *

Eli pursed his lips. A Damned who wandered as a blond bombshell, with a Damned crow as a familiar? He pressed air through his teeth. There were only a handful of demons with crow familiars. The birds were petulant in life, in death they would only cleave to someone with an equal amount of mischief and sheer thirst for carnage in their heart. His heart dropped.

“Shit,” he breathed. “Samantha…shit.” This was bad, really bad. She quailed under his gaze. “You broke a glamour off of Cyrene.”

“Um?” Samantha’s eyes were widened. “What’s that mean?”

He rubbed his hands, shaking his head. “Damned…you know the term
sell your soul
?”

Samantha nodded.

“We’re the ones you sell to. Our power is directly correlated to the number of souls we’ve collected. I’ve got around seven thousand.” He stared at his hands.
 
They were shaking just at the thought. “Cyrene as more than twenty.”

“How do you…” Samantha was staring hard at her computer screen, obviously not looking at him. “How do you get your souls?”

Eli shook his head. “I’m just a scavenger. I don’t usually actively go after them. That’s why my count is so low. Most make deals. Some yank them out from under the Angels, off war zones, plagues, droughts, that kind of thing.”

Eli could feel the rising horror in the air like a mist of botflies. “You said…you said my mother had some unfinished business…with a Diego,” she whispered. “Is…is that what this is about?” Her voice had dropped until a pin’s falling would have drowned it.

Damn, she’d made the connection fast. He nodded.

“What?” She swallowed. “What was her deal? What was the business? You freaked out when you found out I was her daughter.”

Eli’s jaw twitched. Shockingly, he didn’t want to tell her. He’d never relished hurting people unless they deserved it. Sure he was a Damned, and he enjoyed a good slaughter of a war criminal, but this wasn’t on his list of ‘fun things.’ Still, the way Samantha watched him, he knew she’d call him on a lie.

“I told you my orders intended you harm.” He sighed, looking down. Just because he hurt her didn’t mean he had to watch. “The orders were to follow through on Diego’s failed tie up of a first-born harvest.”

It took a long time for it to sink in, but he felt the repercussions dawn on her. “What?” she asked. “Firstborn h–” She lost her breath, tried again. “Harvest?”

“Harvest,” he repeated. “Your mother asked a boon of Diego. He demanded her first-born in exchange. She agreed.”

 
He ventured a glance at her. In the cold computer light, her hand was covering her mouth, eyes were wide and brimming with tears.

He was relieved when the computer went to sleep and the monitor flicked off.

The first response to a deeply emotional disaster was denial. At least, that was what he’d always heard, and here it was holding true. After the screen on her monitor went dark, Samantha drew her fingers over the mouse pad, waking the screen up again. “No. No, there’s no reason to think you’re telling me the whole truth.”

“The concessions?”

“So long as you aren’t trying to hurt me, your intentions are pure. Your information is wrong.”

Eli rubbed his forehead. “Look, I can’t offer you anything to prove it, because the fact is I was sent with hardly any information at all. Do you really treasure your mother’s memory so much?”

“Of course I do,” she snapped, voice a bit too shrill. She rubbed her temples. “Look, I still have work to do, or at least pretend to do. Can you come back tomorrow?”

He frowned. “It’d be safer if I stayed. I don’t know if I made a big enough deal about you breaking that glamour.”

“I won’t let anyone but you in.” She looked up at him. “Please. I’m serious. I need to be alone right now.”

“And I’d rather not test your threshold,” he said.
 
Technically it didn’t matter
who
got the soul, so long as the records achieved balance. But harvesting Samantha himself and letting Cyrene get her were two very different things. He didn’t think he could allow the bitch the pleasure of getting her paws on Samantha, especially since it was quickly becoming apparent just how valuable and talented the mortal really was. “Cyrene is dangerous and unscrupulous. She’s also got a big mouth. You’re in huge danger.”

“I know, I know.” She shook her head, pleading again. “Please.”

This was a bad idea, he just knew it. But the way her lip trembled, he knew what it was like to just want to be alone so a proper melt down could be had. And he had just dropped a bomb on her. He sighed. “I’m checking on you. Six o’clock tomorrow morning. In the mean time I’ll try and scare up some answers.”

She nodded. He slid out the door, relaxing as the strings around his consciousness loosened and fell away. The door wasn’t enough to muffle the sound of her sobbing.

* * * *

“Francis. Got anything for me?”

“Eli! I was just going to call you.” Francis’s voice was
 
loud, even over the background noise of whatever bar he was in. “Hey, why don’t you meet me at the Park? I’ll bring the sipping whiskey!”

“Francis, how much have you drunk?” He kept his voice calm, pretending to be a concerned friend so any listeners would be thrown off track. “Did you rob a liquor store?”

“Nah, nah. Look, I’ve got some important stuff for you. Say, half an hour?”

“Sure,” Eli said, and hit the red button. The Park was exactly half an hour walk from Samantha’s apartment, if he hurried. Less than twelve hours was pretty quick turn-around. He’d been expecting to have to hound the older Damned.

Francis was waiting for him under an orange lamp, leaning against the pole, his hell hound crouched at his feet.

“Hey,” Eli said. “Everything okay? You so–”

Francis whipped around, grabbed his elbow. “Listen,” he hissed. “You didn’t tell me your target was being stalked. I’m in a whole mess of trouble right now.”

“I didn’t know myself.” Eli growled. “What’d you find?”

“Your target, Samantha Parker, the daughter of Marie Parker is fucking up the balance. Do you know how big a deal that is? The Doll said she told you!”

“So the Angels get a leg up, so what?”

Francis cuffed him across the ear. “It’s not that simple, boy. The balance isn’t a justice scale. We don’t give a shit about the Angel’s having a leg up. But we do give a shit about the world coming to an end.”

“So what is the balance, then?”