Chapter 20

CHAPTER

TWENTY

The sun came up just as I had started to drift to sleep.

We cruised down the empty two-lane road surrounded by just enough wilderness to give the morning sunshine something to play with. The amber glow lit my eyelids, pulling me from the uneasy sleep that had been teasing me. Barnaby snored softly in the back seat, somehow angling his body so he could lie across the seats without twisting himself into a pretzel.

Zane was the only one of us that looked alert, skin still warm from getting fresh blood, his eyes bright and free from any sort of weariness. He had his fingers draped over the wheel, posture relaxed, a human in every sense except for his blood eyes.

“We’ll stop halfway like before,” Zane said before I could ask. “You two can sleep better in beds.”

“I would murder someone for a bed right now.” I pressed my palms into my eyes and rubbed them, the grit of exhaustion grinding under the pressure. “How long have we been driving?”

“Only about two hours.” He punched the buttons on the console to summon some heat, and I melted back against the cushion in tired annoyance. “You should try and rest.”

“I’m not going to get any sleep.” I watched the distant forest, my mind floating back to the cemetery. None of it seemed real; it felt like I’d had a long, weird fever dream that involved confronting my old family, talking to skeletal heads and making out with a vampire. The urge to demand an explanation from the universe was almost overwhelming.

“Do you think we’ll hear from them back in the city?” Zane asked, reminding me that my emotional blocker had yet to be turned back on. I touched the device, still at odds with whether or not I wanted to commit to shutting him out again.

“I don’t know. I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ve been tailing me longer than I realized. I thought I had lost them when I ran but…I guess I’m not as clever as I thought.”

Zane’s fingers tapped on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road.

“You never told me that your falling out with your family was over a Thrall.”

The pressure bouncing around in my chest almost made me hit the switch, but I forced myself not to.

“Yeah, well.” I adjusted in my seat, suddenly feeling confined. “Not something I toss out to people. Especially another Thrall.”

“I’d like to know.” Zane spared a second to toss me a glance before planting his vision back onto the road.

I listened to Barnaby snore for a few minutes, infinitely jealous that he could sleep so soundly after everything that had happened. If I had the ability to shut down and pass out to avoid talking about everything I would have, but I didn’t have the luxury of sudden narcolepsy.

I also knew that I owed Zane answers.

That was the part that finally made me snap the emotion blocker back on.

I saw him shift, saw him furrow his brow and curl his fingers around the leather of the wheel. It made me feel like an asshole, but I couldn’t tear myself open that much, not when I was still reeling from everything.

“You know how you know in your heart that Sandros was a good guy?” I asked the pensive Thrall beside me. “There’s no doubt in your mind that your maker was a good man, someone you loved and adored?”

Zane popped an eyebrow up as he gave a nod.

“Yes?”

“That’s how I felt about Magnus. One of my earliest memories was him finding me.” I pivoted my focus back to the woods and crossed my arms to keep my heart safe. “There’s nothing before that—no parents, no birthdays, no awkward first days of school. Nothing good. I was eight when Magnus pulled me from a vampire den.”

Zane said nothing, listening to me while staring down the road ahead, so I continued.

“He took me in as his own, trained me up, gave me a purpose and a family for a decade. I went from a half-dead blood bag for a bunch of vampires to a loved member of the Saint’s Army. I got to stomp vampires and go home to people I loved. It was a sweet gig. It was the best years of my life.”

“What changed?” Zane’s fingers remained around the wheel, grip tightening.

“I saw that he wasn’t perfect. That he had a dark side I had been ignoring.” I hugged my chest to keep my heart from spilling out. “I found a Thrall he had been torturing and I…made a choice.”

I knew Zane looked my way, but I kept my gaze out the window. My eyes stung and I couldn’t bear the idea of him seeing me vulnerable. I was too tired to let my pride slip away, because it was the only thing keeping me upright.

“I tried to cut him loose to end his suffering, and I made a mistake. That mistake cost us two lives and our compound.” I coughed to give myself an excuse to sniff back some tears. “I ran away after that and never saw them again until yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, Dallas.”

“I don’t want that, Zane. I sure as hell don’t deserve it. I got two people killed because I couldn’t handle myself.” I rubbed at my face to wipe away the waterworks.

“Thank you for telling me.” Zane spared a moment to look my way, and I caught his gaze for just a second. “Even with that blocker on, I know it was hard to talk about.”

I shrugged, easing my arms from around my ribs to give my lungs a break.

“I felt like I owed you that much.”

“You don’t owe me anything, hunter. You never do.”

I felt like being nice, felt like thanking him for listening and caring, and hell—I almost reached out to take the hand still gripping the wheel. There was a mini battle in my bruised, misshapen heart over wanting to keep the status quo between us and giving in to the urge of just being a sappy idiot around the vampire. I didn’t get to be gooey around people, and had only ever experienced the sensation to try once before.

I wanted to go full romance novel and hold his hand, do the thing where we lace our fingers together and sit in silent comfort. Maybe he could kiss my knuckles and tell me everything was going to be alright.

I would have gladly handed over my soul for that moment. And somehow, within all of that sappy bullshit, I wanted Sias to call me and tell me he wasn’t mad at me, and that everything was fine between us. He would tell me that I hadn’t ruined our relationship.

A boy could dream.

I was lost in my stupid imagination and let the moment pass as Barnaby sat up with a snort. He grumbled and tugged his phone from his pocket, glaring at it with the groggy grumpiness that only he could manifest.

“I don’t understand how we can be so far away from anything remotely civilized, yet random phone numbers can still find me.”

“Ah, hell.” I pulled my busted phone out and examined it, trying to turn it on. The fractured screen displayed stripes of purple and blue, marred further with massive areas that had gone totally dark. I tried to apply some pressure into places to get the screen to respond, knocking it against my palm in an effort to bully it back to life.

“It’s a lost cause.” Zane adjusted his hands on the wheel. “We’ll get you another one back in the city.”

“They’re so damn expensive to get a good model phone these days. Dex charges me extra, I swear she does.” I exhaled and tossed the busted phone onto the floorboard. “I’m going to come out of this trip in the red.”

“Well, at least you’ll get relief from telemarketers,” Barnaby grumbled, tapping his phone.

“What are we going to tell Florence when she asks about what we found at the Silence Steps?” Zane asked. “I’m sure she knows we left.”

“We tell her the truth.” I shrugged. “We didn’t find anything.”

“So, we’re not going to tell her about the council, or who we ran into?” Barnaby leaned forward between our seats. “Shouldn’t we at least let her know that the Saint’s Army is aware of her little passion project?”

“Fuck no.” I tried to find another comfortable way to lounge in the seat, but gave up and just sat like normal. “Best-case scenario, they fight each other and blow themselves up or something.”

“What’s the next move, then?” Barnaby looked between us. “Where do we look next for the key or blade or whatever?”

“Yeah, um…about that.” I cleared my throat and looked to the vampire, who seemed to be battling indigestion from the subject. “I think we figured it out.”

Barnaby blinked rapidly. “What? When?”

“Earlier in the cemetery when we were walking back.”

Barnaby looked like he was about to explode and flapped his hands around as he demanded, “Well then tell me, you dimwit! You dragged me out here to help you solve it! Don’t hold it hostage now.”

“It sort of uh…” I tried to rummage through my vocabulary to piece the words together, unsure of how exactly to explain what happened without it sounding impossible or insane.

Zane did not have to rummage, and instead opted to just go full blunt transparency.

“It flew out of Dallas’s chest and turned into a scythe.”

“What??”

Zane and I heard it at the same time, and we looked to each other with the same level of confusion.

The outburst from the back seat sounded like it was in stereo, and Barnaby’s cheeks started growing red hot.

“What was that?” I asked first, rotating in my seat.

“What was what?” Barnaby shrugged a little too defensively. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I heard another voice.”

“No, you didn’t,” he snapped. “You’re tired. It’s just me back here. Obviously. Who else would be back here?”

“I don’t know, Barnaby. Who else would be back there?” I inspected his phone, which he was not making an effort to hide. The screen lit up again with an inbound call and he punched the hang up button. It hadn’t been a phone call, and there was no mistaking the additional voice.

“Obviously no one.” Barnaby presented the back seat and idle phone. “I think you’re hearing things.”

“Yeah, okay.” I rotated back around in my seat. “I guess it was nothing.”

Barnaby fidgeted for a bit before attempting to get back on track.

“So? What did you do with the scythe?”

“We left it in the cemetery,” I said. “Seemed dangerous.”

“Dallas tossed it into a grave and kicked some dirt over it,” Zane confirmed. “We couldn’t risk it.”

The choking noises radiating from the back seat were not coming from Barnaby, and his sudden interest in his bag is what finally snapped me into action.

“Barnaby, what the hell did you do?”

“Nothing! I didn’t! Ah, you maniac!” Barnaby tried to lift his bag out of reach as I began to climb into the back seat. The back of my jeans was gripped and I was yanked back into my seat by Zane.

“You’re going to make us crash.” Zane snapped his eyes up at the rearview to glare at the panicked incubus in the back seat. “Barnaby. What did you do? ”

“I think the jig is up,” the muffled voice admitted. “No use in hiding now.”

“I had it under control,” Barnaby hissed at his bag. “I told you to just stay quiet.”

I was about to make another attempt at grabbing the bag when Barnaby exhaled like he was about to confess to murder and reached into it.

The moment Funus was tugged gently from the confines of Barnaby’s shoulder bag, I felt my soul leave my body.

“Barns! What the fuck!”

“You saw what was happening! I couldn’t just leave him there,” Barnaby pleaded. “He was going to get turned into ash unless I did something.”

Zane turned traitor and sounded impressed. “How did you manage that?”

“I grabbed him while Magnus was arguing with Dallas.”

“Are you insane?” I pulled the conversation back to the matter at hand, which was that Barnaby was in fact, insane. “We can’t take Funus back to St. Athesall. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Why can’t we? What’s the harm?” Barnaby shrugged like he wasn’t holding the decayed head of a necromancer in his lap.

“Did you forget that Funus is one of the most powerful necromancers that has ever existed?” I quizzed the frazzled idiot. “Even if he is a head, he’s dangerous.”

“If I could defend myself a bit,” Funus chimed in. “I appreciate the recognition of my status but I actually can’t do much in this state. And with all of my fellow council members dead, I was going to be stuck in there alone with no one to talk to. Can you imagine!”

“He’s also a paragon of necromancy information, Dallas, which is very useful considering you just mentioned a scythe fell out of your chest,” Barnaby quipped. “So, as a matter of fact, you’re welcome.”

“Don’t smile, you dick,” I yelled at Zane so I could vent some frustration. “Whose side are you on right now?”

“He’s got a point, hunter.”

“God, you are the worst bodyguard. How is this not a major threat? He’s part of the council, deadly as hell, and we’re just chauffeuring him back to the city like he’s a lost puppy we found.”

“Relax.” Zane tapped the strap across his chest. “And put your seat belt back on.”

“Your priorities are fucked.”

“Please tell me you didn’t leave the scythe back at the cemetery,” the head fussed. “I don’t know if you fully understand the importance of what you’ve described.”

“We didn’t leave it behind.” I snapped my seat belt back on as Zane grunted at me. “It’s in the trunk.”

“Did it actually fall out of your chest, or are you being hyperbolic?” Barnaby probed. “You have a tendency of doing that.”

“It fired out of me like a gunshot and ripped a hole into a tree.” I rotated to glare at him. “How’s that for hyperbolic?”

“Is he joking?” Funus rotated his eyes up to look at Barnaby, who shrugged helplessly.

“When I killed a necromancer named Edras Roe, a long stick got stuck into my chest,” I explained to the wary head. “It sticks out sometimes when I have to give Zane blood. Today it exploded out of me and turned into a scythe, and ripped a hole into the void. It sealed back up, thank fuck, but we left promptly after that.”

Funus’s yellow eyes flared.

“Goddess. Quite literally Goddess ,” he floundered. “My good man, you have been touched by the divine hand of the mother of death herself.”

“I was worried you were going to say that,” I grumbled. “We have some nasty people looking for this thing. Us discovering that it’s been hiding out in my sternum is not ideal.”

“That’s why it hides within the chosen,” he agreed. “To keep it safe until its needed.”

“Here’s the part you’re not going to like, bone man. Remember when I said in the tomb that I wanted to destroy it? I meant it. That thing cannot get into the wrong hands, and there are a lot of those.”

I had expected the head of the Goddess’s council to object or gasp in horror, maybe even call me some choice words for even pitching the idea in his presence. Imagine my surprise when the animated skull managed to look sheepish without any eyebrows.

“The Goddess’s scythe can no more be destroyed than death itself can be destroyed. It’s eternal, I’m afraid, as much a part of reality as life and death.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” I slumped in my seat. “This is why I want to go full time into fish training. I hate magic crap.”

“Can we hide it?” Zane asked. “Get it back into Dallas’s chest somehow?”

“Why don’t we put it in your chest?” I countered. “I don’t want that thing back in my body.”

“Yes, I believe so,” Funus said.

I swiveled to watch the skull. “That doesn’t sound confident, Funus.”

“Well, I’ve never seen it myself though I assume it can be done.” His eyes rotated as Barnaby exhaled another frustrated breath. “I’ve been alive a long time but I haven’t seen everything, you know.”

“Not you. It’s this person who keeps calling me.” Barnaby was frowning so hard he was sprouting gray hairs from the effort. In a moment of defiant anger, Barnaby adjusted Funus on his lap and smashed his thumb into the screen in the most aggressive way to answer a phone call imaginable. “Who is this? Why in all the Gods’ names are you calling me?!”

An entire performance played across Barnaby’s face in a matter of seconds. Anger melted into confusion, lifted into shock then softened into concern, before his eyes swung over to me with a look of gentle embarrassment.

I stared at him as he held the phone out and said, “It’s um…it’s for you.”

“Me?” I plucked the phone from his grasp and turned back to sit front facing in my seat. Zane offered a brief look of curiosity as I tapped the speakerphone button. “Uh, hello?”

“Dallas.”

I hadn’t heard Sias’s voice since that night, and it caused a ripple of old familiar tingles mixed with a sharp stab of unease.

“Sias?”

“Gods, where the hell have you been? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“I kinda smashed it.” I rubbed at the prickling crawl of nerves dancing down the back of my neck. “How did you get Barnaby’s phone number?”

“Where are you? I’ve been going to your apartment for two days. Are you somewhere in the city?”

My stomach started to sour at the seriousness of his tone, the edge to his words a sharpness I hadn’t heard before.

He was angry, but not in the way I had thought he’d be. It wasn’t the type of sharpness honed from betrayal or frustration, but something much more primal.

He was scared.

Something had made the untouchable Sias Llon’nai afraid.

“No, we’re about two days out.” I sat up straight. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you hurt?”

“Is Zane with you?”

“I’m here,” Zane answered. “Sias, what’s going on?”

“Someone is using some powerful magic tech in the city,” Sias said, tone grave. “They’re using it on vampires.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, mind fraying at the edges. “What kind of magic tech?”

“I don’t know what kind, but it’s something new. The vampires are somehow able to retain their natural abilities after being turned, and this reeks of magic manipulation via tech.”

“How do you know it’s tech?” I asked.

“How do you know it’s vampires?” Zane added.

Sias was silent for a while, his breath exhaling in a long stream that I knew meant he was smoking.

He was stressed. Very stressed.

“Sias?”

“Bastian is dead.” Another long exhale. “He showed up at my house unannounced, which he was not welcome to do. When I answered the door to tell him to leave, I noticed he seemed off. He had been turned, and almost got the upper hand by using his jinn abilities on me.”

My heart sank into a pool of ice water, my stomach curling in on itself in panic.

“Sias, did he bite you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure ? This isn’t the time to be brave or shield me from something. Tell me right fucking now if he even grazed you. Time is a factor.”

“He didn’t bite me. I’m alright,” he assured me with the calm firmness he always had. “I would have led with that, I promise. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure Bastian is dead?” Zane asked.

Sias sounded wounded when he answered, “Yes. I’m sure. I handled it myself.”

“Were his eyes red or green? Did he say anything to you?” I jumped back in, my body on fire with anxiety.

“Red, and not much. I told him he wasn’t welcome back since I didn’t trust his disregard for people’s boundaries. He had been keeping his distance until that night, so I was surprised to see him. As soon as I answered the door, he surged inside and tried to compel me to not fight back. His magic was weak, but present. It almost worked.” He paused to take a drag and finished with, “I found a piece of metal tech in the back of his skull.”

“Do you recognize anything about the tech? The style, the components?” I tried for anything that made sense, anything I could think of as a tangible lead.

“No, hence my concern. This is new, deeply complex, and violates about ten different Demon Human ethical magic usage mandates. Whoever crafted this has a terrifying amount of resources as well as a bottomless pit of nothing for ethics,” Sias growled on the other end of the phone, his snarl carrying over the sound waves. “I want whoever is responsible found, Dallas. And I want them gone.”

“Do you know of any rival necromancers who could access tech like this?” Barnaby leaned into the conversation. “It has to be a necromancer if vampires are involved, right?”

“No one that comes to mind, but you’re right. A necromancer is involved if there’s vampires, but they don’t normally turn people in the city. It’s too risky, and they sure as hell don’t go after people who would be noticed if they were gone, like Bastian. Nothing about this adds up.”

“Who else do we know that has access to magical tech?” Zane chimed in. “Do you think Dex would be able to analyze what Sias found if we brought it to her?”

“Worth a shot,” I mused. “She might be able to help us understand what it is, or how it works.”

“Can she be trusted?” Sias jumped back in, sounding understandably hesitant.

“For the right price.”

“I’m serious, Dallas.”

“So am I,” I said. “Dex is the best type of loyal, one that can be quantified with a number. She won’t double-cross a good paycheck. If you get me that tech, she can help us track down who did this to Bastian.”

“My concern isn’t that she’ll fail. My concern is that you and Zane are now targets,” Sias explained, anger boiling with each word. “If someone is playing God with tech and death magic, then a rogue necromancer and vampire Thrall roaming the city is going to be very alluring to the psychopath doing this. I want Bastian avenged, but I want you two safe more than that. I will not allow anyone to jeopardize that.”

The dread in my stomach eased just a fraction. I felt like an asshole for being happy that Sias was worried about me.

And about Zane.

“We can take care of ourselves, Sias. We know how to handle necromancers.”

“When you’re back in the city, call me, do you understand?” His tone gave me goose bumps and I rubbed at my arm to try and hide them. I was fairly sure Zane saw them.

“We’ll be there in two days. We’re going to stop to rest?—”

“Zane,” Sias cut me off. “You don’t need to sleep. Drive straight through, don’t stop. I want you both back in my city so I can get eyes on you.”

“I’ll get us back,” Zane confirmed.

“Thank you, love. And Dallas? You will call me when you reach the city. Tell me you understand.”

I had to shift in my seat a bit to remain in character.

“Yeah, I understand, Sias.”

“Good boy.”

The call ended with a few beeps and I glared at the side of Zane’s head.

“You’re taking orders from him now?”

“He’s scared, hunter.” Zane tossed me a look. “This is serious.”

“Nothing about this adds up.” I tossed Barnaby’s phone into the back seat. “Who the hell has the capability to do this?”

“I don’t know.” Zane set his jaw. “But we’ll find out.”

“So…” Barnaby snuck back into the conversation. “Does that mean we’ll be sleeping in the car for the next day and a half?”

“We’ll stop for gas and bathroom breaks, but that’s it.” Zane flicked his gaze up to the rearview. “Get comfortable.”

“Whoever this is needs to get stabbed extra for this,” Barnaby complained, very distraught with his situation. He placed the talking skull in his lap on the seat next to him. “I’m prone to back problems and this is not going to be good for me.”

“I don’t know. I think this vehicle is rather comfortable,” Funus said, moving his jaw to test the bounciness of the cushion. “Beats sitting on a slab of stone for a few centuries.”

“Oh good,” I announced. “At least the skull is happy.”