Twice Dead (37 page)

“Trevin, we’ll handle this from here,” Elizabeth said as she shook wrinkles from her dress.

The snake’s head dipped in agreement, but it didn’t retreat. Ronco surged forward, headed not for the serpent, but for
me
. I wasn’t surprised. I lifted my claws, keeping one eye on the snake and one on the charging vampire.

The snake lifted its head, its mouth falling open, and a human voice emerged, “The silver, fool.”

Silver?
Oh crap.

“Run!” I turned, taking my own advice. Bobby and Steven did the same.

Not that any of us had a chance.

Ronco tossed something thin and light-weight, and a cord wrapped around my bare neck. My skin went numb, my throat closing, and I stumbled, falling to my knees. Bobby glanced back as I fell. He stopped. Doubled back.

No!

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. I clawed at the silver chain, but my fingers turned numb at the first touch, and my claws dripped with blood as I scratched skin I couldn’t feel.

Ronco slammed into Bobby. Another chain of silver glinted in his hands. I had to stop him. I had to…?

The serpent slithered closer and coiled around my body, constricting. His mouth opened inches from my face. His fangs flashed, dripping poison.

“Trevin, enough.” Elizabeth’s ballerina slippers made soft sounds as she trudged through the snow toward me. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Just this one?” Again the snake’s voice emerged perfectly clear, as if spoken from a human throat. His head dipped closer.

“No. We couldn’t explain her death. Besides, she’s much more useful as a decoy. Now go.”

The snake’s tongue flicked out and danced over my cheek.

Then he uncoiled and slithered back toward the warehouse. A scream tore down the street, and I looked up to see Steven fall, thrashing in the silver cords binding him. Bobby was already down.
No.
My stomach twisted. I flailed again with the cord, but the numbness was traveling down my body, making it hard to move. Ronco hauled Steven off the pavement, dragged him toward the SUV.

“Aaric, travel to me,” Elizabeth chanted in a sing-song voice, and the Traveler stepped into the space beside her.

He looked around, his thick brows cinching. “Elizabeth, what is the meaning of this? What is going on?”

“Ronco and I followed
her
.” She made the word sound distasteful as she jerked her small hand in my direction. “She met with a pair of shapeshifters, and we’ve captured them. I think the Collector will be pleased.” She pressed her forehead against his hand, and his eyes went distant, as if he were talking to someone else without moving his lips.

“She
is
pleased. You will be rewarded,” he said as his eyes focused again.

With her face pressed into his hand and tilted toward the ground, the Traveler couldn’t see the cruel smile that twisted Elizabeth’s lips. I could. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

The Traveler scanned the bloody street. “The Collector will send a clean-up crew.”

“Ronco has already sent for one,” Elizabeth said, tilting her head to look at him. Her face was once again pleasant, with no hint of the smile she’d worn a moment ago.

“Very well. Hurry home. Dawn is approaching.” He leaned down and kissed his companion lightly. Then he vanished as if he’d never been on the street.

Elizabeth turned back to me. When I’d first left Firth for the human world, I’d been unnerved by the unblinking glass eyes and painted smiles of porcelain dolls. Staring at Elizabeth’s perfect but cruelly carved features, I decided that my fear was well justified.

“You can’t speak, can you?” she asked, her voice tinny with mock concern. She knelt beside me and rearranged her skirts to keep them off the ground. “Not being able to speak isn’t good enough. You must not be able to
share
.”

Share? What the hell does that mean?
Not that I could ask.

Elizabeth lifted my wrist. I tried to jerk away, to struggle, but my arms were numb. Useless. Her fangs flashed, but instead of biting me, she drew out the moment.

“It’s one of my abilities,” she whispered. “I lock away memories so no one can find them. And no one knows, except those few who cannot expose my secret. Like you.”

Then she sank her fangs into my flesh. The first wave of sensation hit me. I could barely feel my body, but the traitorous pleasure? That I could feel. My eyes bulged. When she pulled back, she smiled at me, my blood still staining her teeth. She giggled.

I blinked at her, incapable of doing more. What I wanted to do was rip Elizabeth’s throat out so that damned giggling would stop. Ronco dragged Bobby to the car, the shifter’s head lolled to the side. My hearing was too damaged by the silver to know if he was breathing, but if I could have moved, I’d have killed both the vampires or died trying.

A second SUV pulled to a stop behind Elizabeth’s, and two vampires jumped out. They hauled a large metal coffin from the back and hefted off the thick lid. Then all eyes turned to me.

No. Oh, hell no.
They were
not
putting me in a coffin.

They were.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

As the vampires lowered the lid over me, Elizabeth reached inside and snagged the silver chain from my throat, pulling it free. Feeling slowly returned to my body, so I could feel the tires on the pavement as we drove, feel the coffin sliding as the SUV took a turn too fast. Voices filtered in through the metal walls surrounding me.

“—It’s fine. We’ve improvised,” Elizabeth said, and I strained to listen.

“If you hadn’t insisted on all the theatrics with the bodies, she never would have stuck her over sensitive nose into this,” a raspy voice said.
The snake mage, Trevin?
He was in the car?

“The girl was an unexpected element. But it’s fine. I have plans for her.” Elizabeth again. Was I ‘the girl?’ “Besides, it is all working out. Marina’s unbalanced, unsure, and her allies are pulling away from her. It won’t be long now.”

The mage’s reply was in a language I didn’t know.
Who is
Marina
?

“Go. We’re almost there,” Elizabeth said, and the SUV slowed, the coffin sliding forward as the vehicle braked.

The scream that had been trying to escape finally tore free of my silver-burned throat as the vampires hauled the coffin out of the SUV. I screamed in panic, I screamed in rage, I screamed for help, I screamed for Nathanial. I hated the idea that Elizabeth could be listening, could be smiling at the sound, but I couldn’t stop. Once I could feel my hands I clawed at the interior, shredding the satin lining until my claws scraped on ungiving metal.

Then dawn hit. My senses felt it, and retreated. And there was nothing.

Chapter Thirty-One

As night fell a scream burst from my lungs even before my eyes opened to the sight of shredded satin inches from my nose. My own scream filled my senses, competing with the blood rushing through my ears.

Then I heard another sound.

A tremor ran through the coffin lid as something hit it.

Metal scraped against metal.

I fell silent, listening.
Rescue or…?

My hands had shifted back to human form while I slept, leaving me without my claws and way more defenseless than I liked, but the lid was already moving. I slammed my shoulders against it, shoving myself free of the coffin. My fist lifted as I sprung upward. My arm cocked back. Then my gaze landed on crystal gray eyes framed by dark lashes. I froze.

Nathanial.

His arms wrapped around me, dragging me against his chest. The metal lid clattered to one side.

I didn’t move at first, too stunned by his presence. After how we’d parted last… “You came for me?”

“As soon as I could.” His lips pressed the words into my hair, and he held me tight enough it hurt.

My body finally relaxed, and I wrapped my arms around his waist, held him as I let him crush me against his chest.

“My memories—”

“Were altered,” Nathanial said before I could finish. “That is the only logical explanation. I should have seen the scales in your memory, but there was nothing, and that cannot be.”

I nodded, clinging tighter to him. The fact he believed me, that he believed
in
me again, made something inside me seem to click back into place. I looked up, and his lips pressed ever so lightly against my forehead. My eyes fluttered closed, and I drew in a deep breath, drinking down his spicy scent. But mixed in with the scents I associated with him was the smell of freshly turned dirt and drying blood.

I pulled back. His arms tightened before releasing me, but he didn’t stop me from stepping away. Nathanial wore most of last night’s tux, but his white shirt was torn and mudstained.

A spray of crimson covered his cuffs.
Not his blood.

My nose told me that much.

He must have seen the questions in my face. He ran a hand through dark hair clumped with wet mud and said, “Gil has poor timing and a unique definition of ‘help.’”

There was definitely a story behind
that. And I bet it
involves the void.

Before I could ask, he took my arm, and steered me toward the door. “We have to leave this city. Immediately.”

“She has Bobby.”

No need to say who ‘she’ was. Nathanial paused, muscles stiffening along his back, but he didn’t say anything as he continued toward the door.

A slumped figure slouched just inside the doorway, a stake protruding from his chest. I blinked, but I didn’t ask any questions—the vamp smelled like the blood on Nathanial’s cuffs.

“Hermit?” a voice whispered behind me.

The skin between my shoulders tightened, and I whirled around. The room was empty. Or, at least, mostly empty. It was little more than some forgotten cellar, and I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the metal coffin I’d been locked in wasn’t the only one in the room.

“Hermit, is that you?” The decidedly female voice issued from a box sitting upright against the far wall.

“Stay here,” Nathanial said. Then he grabbed the crowbar he’d used on my coffin.

He jimmied the lock off the upright coffin before cramming the crowbar into the seam. As Nathanial pushed aside the lid, Samantha stumbled free. She was no longer disguised as Nuri, but neither did she look like the confident, dark-haired woman she’d been during my last night at Death’s Angel.

She lunged for Nathanial, her fangs extended and her thin lips curled back. He didn’t dodge, but held up his wrist. She grabbed it, sinking her fangs deep.

“The hell?” I surged forward, ready to rip her off him.

Nathanial held up a hand and motioned me to stop. I did, but my weight remained on my toes, my muscles twitching with the need to yank her away. After a moment, Samantha pulled back. She licked her now full, pink lips.

“Thank you, Hermit,” she said, straightening.

Nathanial acknowledged her thanks with a nod.

“Chameleon. Did Tatius send a private message for me?”

Samantha pursed her lips, and her appearance changed, melding into a green-haired Tatius. The change was frighteningly accurate, but as this fake Tatius hooked its fingers in the loops of shiny vinyl pants and glanced at me, the eyes held none of the weight of the true Tatius’s stare.

Using his voice, Samantha said, “We can acknowledge that blood both complicates and engenders loyalty, brother. Your blood runs through Kita, but our blood is the same, and we have history. Return. I will reconsider my position on our companion.”

Our
companion?

“Those were his exact words?” Nathanial asked.

Samantha shimmered back into her natural, dark-haired appearance. “He made me repeat the message twice.”

Nathanial nodded, the movement slow, as if he could buy himself time to think. Then he turned and held out his hand to me. “Back to Haven?”

“Better the devil you know and all that. What about Bobby?” And Steven. I was responsible for the city-shifter as well.

Nathanial frowned, and Samantha’s plucked eyebrows pinched together.

“Bobby?” she asked.

“A friend.”

“A
mortal
friend?” At my nod, she waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Mortal lives are short. We should escape while we can.”

Yeah, that wasn’t an option I was considering. Turning my back on her, I cocked my head, staring at Nathanial.

“We will find him,” he said, “but we must hurry.”

* * * *

“Here,” I whispered, stopping in front of a door and scenting the air.

Samantha—who had merged her appearance into Ronco, an effective but disturbing disguise—leaned against the wall and inspected her knuckles as I sifted through scents. I definitely thought I could
probably
smell bobcat and wolf.

Damn fickle vampire nose.

A pair of vamps turned the corner ahead of us, and my muscles tensed, my fists curling. I waited, not even breathing. But, after nodding to us, and receiving a nod from Nathanial in return, they kept walking. I had no idea what illusion Nathanial cloaked us in, but it was working.
As long as
we don’t run into any of the older psychic vamps.

Once the pair vanished around the corner, I pulled open the door and slipped inside, Nathanial and Samantha at my heels. The room beyond was large, dark—and filled with the scent of wounded shapeshifters. Nathanial’s fingers brushed my shoulder, reaching for me, trying to hold me back. It was too late. I was already running. I dashed across the room, headed straight for the tawny haired form slumped in a chair.

“Hey!” someone yelled behind me.

Crap. Guards
.

I didn’t slow. Raised voices lifted in my wake, followed by the crunch of bones snapping. Someone grunted. I didn’t look back.

“Bobby?” I knelt beside him and he lifted his head.

His eyes were red and swollen as he looked at me, but his skin was pale. Way too pale. He’d been stripped down to just his pants, and the chains binding him to a chair had sunk into his flesh, ugly welts spreading across his bare chest, his arms.