Chapter 23

Turned out that Eligor taking over a body was simpler than I'd thought. I'd fully expected to need to shoot the cop, to take him to the brink of death.

"No!" Cowboy held up his hand, then just grabbed the cop before I could ask him what he was doing. He put his mouth over the cop's, not quite a kiss. The cop went for his gun, I grabbed one arm and Easter grabbed the other.

A silvery substance that I knew to be Eligor's essence flowed out of Cowboy, and into the cop. He jerked hard, and I pinned his one arm to the inside of the trunk as Cowboy and he kind of tumbled in.

Cowboy scrambled off him. "He's out."

The cop lay there a moment with his eyes closed and then he slowly sat up. "This body will do. You didn't have to hurt it." He shivered and shook his head once. The radio on his chest squawked to life.

"Shane, you there?" A woman's voice echoed through.

I nodded at him and Eligor answered. "Yeah, good."

"Got a call from the coffee shop that you were dealing with some ruffians?"

"Just . . . some people passing through needing directions."

"Ten-four."

I nodded. "Let's go."

We piled into the car, and I took the driver's seat. "When we get there, Eligor, you go first. See if you can put the handlers down, or whatever it is you do."

"If Gardreel is there, he'll—"

"Try," I snapped. "That's what I'm asking you to do. Fucking try."

He bobbed his head. "Okay."

We drove in silence, except Ruby licking her lips every now and again. She sat at Cowboy's feet, staring up at him with a kind of adoration you'd reserve for meeting a god. He stroked her head. "Thank you, for getting him out of me."

"No fun, is it?" Easter laughed. "You would have broken if they'd had you long."

Eligor shook his head. "No, we would have killed him. There is too much demon in him."

I looked at him in the mirror. "The lines between fallen and demon are thin."

He shrunk in his seat. "They are. And it is why I am trying very hard not to cross it." He pointed to the right. "There. Take that turn."

As we rounded the corner, the facility came into view. I'd never seen one from the front entrance. It looked like a high-end spa with flowers and shrubberies bursting to life all around the white stone, two-story building. There were no guards, but there were lights on all over the building, and in the gardens, making the stone glow.

The sign read Odessa Rehabilitation Center—A place to heal.

"Creepy," Easter said.

I nodded and parked the car. "Let's go. Ruby, you and Emmy with me."

All four doors opened, Emerald tucked in behind me, and we headed to the glass front doors. "Eligor, in front."

He stepped up and I slid behind him. We weren't hiding anything. The receptionist saw Eligor and buzzed the door open. He went in and I was right behind him.

There was no hesitation. I lifted Dinah and shot her, sending her backward in her seat. Eligor sucked in a sharp breath.

"Easter, clear the room," I said as I made my way around the desk. There were no cameras showing here. I pulled up the computer screen. Empty. There was nothing. I went through the desk drawers full of pens and paper—the usual shit—until I found what I was looking for.

A key card.

I grabbed it and went to the elevator and got us all in and hit the lowest floor. Fifteen. Fucking fifteen floors below.

"Small box," Easter said as we started down.

Cowboy snorted. "That's what you're worried about?"

"If we get caught, we're going to have a hell of a time getting out of here," she said, and he blanched.

Emerald grabbed at the back of my pants, wrapping her fingers around my belt, her body trembling. I didn't have time to comfort her.

The doors slid open.

Two guards stood with jaws slack. Easter drove the butt of Diego into one, and I slammed Dinah into the other. Both guns groaned. "I hate it when you do that," Dinah muttered. "I'm going to have a sore ass now."

"You'll just leave them?" Cowboy asked. I was already bent over the first, with my knife. I drove the tip through his uniform and into his heart. He jerked once and that was it.

Cowboy bent and helped me without being asked as we dragged the bodies into the elevator and set them, so their legs were in the door, keeping it from being called up.

The facility here mirrored the others. White walls, white floors, white everything. "We stay together, keep it tight." I led the way, feeling for my mother, feeling for her pull like I had with Emerald.

Only there was nothing.

Not a single push into any of the rooms.

I didn't panic easily, I didn't even get scared easily, but the idea of being trapped in another facility, of being duped into it . . . was not pleasant.

"I can't sense her," I said.

Emerald stepped past me. "You need me, because she's dead, right?"

"Kept alive on machines," I confirmed.

"I can find her." She took the lead, and I was right behind her. Here, no one walked the halls. There was not a single sound, which was . . . not good.

Emerald jogged down the curving hall, turned left at the first intersection and then stopped in front of a door on her right. "Here."

I tried the door, and it was not locked. Bait. I knew bait when I saw it.

"Can you connect with her without touching her?" I already suspected I knew the answer.

Emerald shook her head. "No. I . . . I can't."

Easter tapped me on the shoulder. "We'll wait here, Eligor can scan for handlers. We got your back."

I nodded and slipped inside the room, Emerald right behind me.

The woman on the bed did not look like my mother. She was bald with electrodes pasted all over her bare skin and upper body. A respirator hissed and hummed as it forced oxygen in and out of her. Tubes and wires everywhere.

"The spell to put a soul into a weapon, that's what you need," I said softly. Emerald didn't hesitate, just picked up my mother's hand. On the side table was a pad of paper and a pen. She grabbed the pen and then bowed her head over her other hand holding my mother's.

I walked around the bed, looking down at the body. Trying to make it fit with what I remembered. But there was nothing.

"That her?" Dinah whispered.

"Her body," I said. "It's not really her. Eleanor isn't here."

"I thought maybe . . . maybe she would be here, you know?"

I did know.

The time slid by, and the body never moved, there was no moment of recognition on her part that I was there. It was three minutes tops before Emerald sighed. She scribbled something down on the paper. "Here, this is what you need. But there is something else."

And she wrote fast on a second piece of paper.

I stared at it.

Knowing exactly what it was.

"Cowboy, hit the EMP!" I shouted as I grabbed Emerald and bolted from the room.

"That'll blow the elevators!" he yelled.

"I know." I ran back toward the elevators as the pulse passed over us, shredding the security system, backup generators, everything.

The space fell into complete and utter darkness. Easter and I each pulled a flashlight before we'd taken two steps.

"There is no one else here," I said as I got to the elevator. I reached up and took the panel off. "We climb."

I shoved Emerald up first, then I got going right behind her.

The ladder inside the shaft was tight and in a very short time everyone was huffing. I counted the floors as we went. At the floor below the lobby, I held everyone up. "Here." I made my way around the shaft and jammed a knife between the doors. "Easter, get the other side."

Between the two of us, we peeled the doors back just enough to get Emerald, Cowboy and Eligor through. Then they held the doors for us to slip through.

The second floor was a solid dark. "Eligor, status report."

"They're waiting for you out front," he whispered. "Gardreel is with them."

"He set the bait, all along. Once he lost Vivian," I kept my voice low. We weren't moving anywhere. "The body had not only the spell we needed, but the spell he needed. He knew we'd come."

Emerald sucked a breath. "I'm sorry!"

"Not your fault," I said. "You couldn't know. But now that you and I have both seen it, even if we destroy the paper, he knows we know."