Page 39

Kerry

“Do we need to contain the soul somehow?” Jax chewed the edge of his thumb. “Won’t it leak out when we kill this thing?”

“Yeah, and we want it to. So Chessie can do her thing.”

I leaned my hip against the hospital bed and frowned down at the kid. She was in rough shape.

“What if she can’t?” Gigi glanced over at Chessie. “I’m not doubting you. I’m just wondering what would happen if a freed soul can’t find its body.”

“Don’t ask that if you don’t wanna know,” I warned her.

“I want to know.”

“It’ll make a nice snack for a lucky predator.”

“But if it is untainted and, by some miracle, survives the Principalities of the Air,” Chessie interrupted, “it can make its way home to Heaven.”

That’d take a miracle , but whatever they need to believe to sleep at night, I thought.

“What if the body is too far away?” John asked.

“Hank, you got a pyx or something on you?”

“Here.” Earl reached inside his suit coat and brought out a round wooden box, then tossed it to me.

I fumbled it as it burned my fingers, but managed to chuck it to John without dropping it.

“This is a pyx. I dunno what churches use it for, but you can hold a soul or a demon in it.” I blew on my fingers and waved Gemma back when she tried to heal them. “There are other things you can use, too.”

“Like reliquaries, monstrances, and lunettes,” Jax butted in. “Ms. Chapman did a unit on sacred vessels last month.”

“Being the principal isn’t enough?” I asked. “She has to teach, too ?”

“Only senior-year mission skills.”

“Can we do the Q and A later?” Gemma stomped one foot. “I want to heal this little girl!”

“Okay, Short and Sweet.” I patted her on the head.

She turned so red with temper, I was surprised steam didn’t lift off her skin. The good side of my mouth quirked up in a half-smile. The morning was suddenly looking a lot brighter.

“I’m gonna pull it off now.” Then I stopped and thought about it. “Wait. I’ma put a shield around us first. I don’t want it to have any chance of escape while you noobs are taking pot-shots at it.”

I heard a few grumbles, but ignored them as I put a shield around the whole room and added a ceiling. I doubted it would head underground; bigger and badder things than ticks lived there. Still, desperate prey did dumb things.

Aw, I’ll be here. I won’t let it slink down the sewer drain.

“Gemma, Chessie, you’re limited to this hallway, but it’s plenty big. Pick a corner and stay there.”

Bracing my feet, I flooded my arms with power, headlocked the tick, and wrestled it down. I had to put some muscle into it before the head came free with a disgusting sucking sound. Long strands of shiny soul dripped from its tongue like spit, and it kicked and bucked to get away. As it snapped its mouth pincher thingies at me, I changed my hold on it so I could hold it over my head, far away from where Gemma would be, and she didn’t waste any time. Brushing against me, she scooped the kid up in her arms and bolted, Chessie and August at her heels. When they were clear, I looked at the others.

“Who’s first?”

“You’re just going to hold it there?” Gigi scowled.

“Well, I was , but the way you said that makes me think you don’t want me to?”

“Too easy.” She waved one hand. “Like shooting fish in a dadgum barrel. Let it loose.”

Fish in a barrel? Whatever. She wants it loose, I’ll let it loose.

“It may not move quickly because it’s pretty full,” I told them, “but then again it might because it wants to survive. Everyone set? Okay, here goes.”

The second I set it on the floor, bolts of orange, black, green, and purple zapped the tick, bouncing it all over the place, and I almost laughed. The looks on their faces were too determined, too serious, for me to find this funny, though.

I called out some suggestions until Jax told me to shut up because they wanted to figure it out themselves. So I shut up and went into ‘supervisory capacity’ with Hank and Earl. With my arms crossed over my chest and my hands in my pits, I leaned a shoulder against the wall and watched.

They kinda came up with a game plan after a few seconds of blasting at it. Gigi ’ported around to keep it distracted while John and Jax tried to get it flipped onto its back by firing at its legs on one side. Tara was handicapped by being indoors, but she was quick-thinking and grabbed an IV pole to lever it over.

It would have worked, too, if Jax and John had been faster and if the thing hadn’t figured out Gigi wasn’t a threat. When it did, it ignored her and went for Tara, who quick-stepped back until her shoulders hit the wall. She tried a shield, but it was thin and flickering and wouldn’t hold it off for long.

John threw himself across the tick’s back, dug his fingers under the shell, and planted his feet. With a mighty pull, he ripped off the hard casing and flung it across the room.

That’s when things got very interesting.

A cloud of pearly souls wasn’t the only thing freed. Dozens of baseball-sized ticks skittered every which way on their crazy-fast legs.

Screaming, Jax jumped up on a counter, and Tara climbed onto an empty hospital bed. I rolled my eyes. Like height would save them. These suckers could climb.

Gigi started to weave a net, her power like ribbons of midnight in her hands. That was good thinking, but she wasn’t going to be fast enough. John would be overrun in another thirty seconds.

“If none of you mind, I’ll take over now.” I pushed away from the wall, dropped my arms, and flexed my fingers.

“Kill them, Kerry!” Jax screeched. “Before they hurt Gigi!”

“Or me.” John was calm, at least.

Good to know he can keep a clear head in a tight situation.

“Don’t anybody move.”

I wound up and bowled the power out in a ball, and blue washed across the tiles. I steered it around John and Gigi and woulda left it cleanse the whole floor, but I didn’t know which corner Gemma and the others were in. I made sure every one of those bugs was goo, then pulled back the wave, absorbing the power until I could go outside and release it into the sky.

“Amazing.” Earl stared at me with wide eyes. “That was as quick and clean as a surgeon’s scalpel.”

“Just like Gemma asked you to do.” Hank nodded. “You need to go outside?”

“I can hold it.” I shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“It had babies?!” Jax was wide-eyed as he climbed off the counter.

“Spawn,” I corrected. “Can do anything an adult can do. They’re just smaller. They grow as they eat.”

“How long do you think it was eating that little girl?” John went over to Tara and lifted her off the bed. “For it to be that big, I mean. The spawn was pretty small.”

I traded a look with Hank. He jerked his head in a nod, so I told them the truth.

“A tick that size would have to eat, oh, maybe ten souls.”

They all looked at me.

“You mean, it killed at least ten other people?” Gigi was white-faced.

“Worse than killed.” Earl shook his head. “Sucked out their soul and converted it to food. No way to recover it because there’s nothing left.”

“How long—” Tara stopped and swallowed. “How long does it take to suck out a soul? If one had latched onto John, how long before—”

“Twenty-four hours, give or take.”

“How did that child get a tick on her here at the Sanctuary?” Jax looked angry. “And how did her warden not notice?”

I’d been wondering the same thing.

“She doesn’t live here,” Earl explained. “Her name is Lilas Tyne. She’s nine, almost ten. She lives with her mother in Phoenix. When Mrs. Tyne couldn’t get her awake this morning, she called their warden, who rushed Lilas here for help.”

Earl said more, but my attention fixed on Gemma as she came around a curtain hand-in-hand with the little girl. And my breath caught.

My angel was glowing. No, I mean, she was glowing . The golden remains of her power glittered on her skin and hair and eyelashes, and her sunshine smile alone coulda lit up the room.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

The taint reared up and ground against my sternum like a buzz saw, but a little bit of pain was a small price to pay for a glimpse of Heaven.

#

Gemma wanted to make sure the little girl was settled before leaving the hospital and told me it was okay if I wanted to go back to bed, but I didn’t wanna leave her. I was wide awake now, anyway.

The others left, but Hank stayed with me. I think he was a little worried I’d go looking for Vickers. A part of me wanted to, but not as much as the rest of me wanted to stay near my girl, so Earl showed us to an empty room where we could wait.

Not more than five minutes passed before I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I almost tuned them out, but a faint odor came with them. One I knew from somewhere…

Ah! Reilly Argaud .

And I was suddenly all ears.

Hank noticed something was up and quirked his eyebrows. I put my index finger over my lips and gestured to the hallway. He nodded.

“—died about an hour ago. No way they’ve processed her body yet.” Argaud’s voice confirmed my nose and my memory.

“You want me to sneak into the morgue, steal a necklace off a girl’s corpse, and sneak out.” Travis Peale’s voice came from the other side of the wall. “During daylight. With people running around everywhere. And how do you suggest I do this?”

“I don’t know, Peale, but figure it out,” Argaud demanded. “I want that necklace in my hand within the hour.”

“Look, there is no way I can—”

Peale’s voice cut off into a nearly soundless whine, and the footsteps stopped.

“You’ll do it, Peale.” Argaud sounded pissed. “This can get worse. Much, much worse. Be a good boy and do what you’re told.”

“Stop,” Peale gasped. “I’ll do it, Reilly. Just stop. I’ll do it!”

“I know you will. Now make it fast.”

Then one set of footsteps went back down the hall, taking Argaud’s stink with it. A few shuddering breaths came from Peale, then his footsteps went by us.

“Well, wasn’t that interesting?” Hank muttered.

“Sounds like Peale’s in over his head.” I frowned.

“What necklace and what corpse?”

“Find out what girl died about an hour ago and you’ll know more. I’m telling you, Warden, Argaud’s hands are deep in something Diabolical. I hope you’re still looking into what happened with that harpy.”

“Clem’s all over that.” He scratched his jaw and looked thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll stop by and check in with him. See how his investigation’s going.”

“Have fun.” I lost interest when I saw Gemma walking toward me. “As for me, I’m gonna take Gemma wherever she wants to go.”

“Oh, yeah?” She held out her hand, and I took it. “I never got to finish my breakfast.”

“Perfect! I’m—”

“Starving!” They thought they were so funny, saying it together, but I only shrugged since it was the truth.