Chapter 23

23

After Thorn’s text, I realized I must return to my apartment to retrieve the other two stones. I have the finger with me, and the first one is firmly lodged in my chest, but the other two are still where I stashed them under the floorboards under my bed.

I’m not sure Chastity would appreciate me returning after all the magical cleansing we did the last time I was there.

I dialed her number, hoping she left the phone on and she was taking calls.

My bestie didn’t answer. Or maybe Chastity wasn’t taking my calls.

Well, hell.

I tried again, but the phone rang and went to voicemail.

Should I go home now? It would be wise to hole up in Thorn’s little house and stay behind the wards, then call Chastity in the morning.

But I’m antsy about leaving the stones in the apartment. What if Moira sent one of her people to sniff around and found the stones? What if my old pack, encouraged by Kye and enraged by Peta’s death, attacked the apartment, and Chastity got caught in the crosshairs?

No. I needed to get the stones now. And warn Chastity again about the dangers of staying in our digs. Perhaps she should return to New Orleans to stay with her grandmother.

After ensuring the finger was securely in my pocket, I left Thorn’s safe house and grabbed the bus. I headed downtown to Sixth Street and my apartment that Chastity and I cleansed so thoroughly I expected an angel to sit on my kitchen counter.

But it wasn’t an angel there.

I scented Moira’s grandmotherly cloying perfume as I opened the door to my apartment. My insides went cold, and I gripped the demonic finger in my cargo pants as dark thoughts invaded my mind. That bitch dared to wander into my territory and needed to die.

It was a thought as primal as hunting prey with the pack and walking patrol to keep strangers off pack land.

But that wasn’t right.

I stood in my sunshiny yellow kitchen, gripping the marble island, trying to master my murderous instincts. The voices whirled in my head, roaring back with a vengeance as if Thorn’s mark didn’t exist. And then I realized that two stones I stashed here, the eye and the heart, were calling me, telling me to take them from the interloper that invaded my house.

I didn’t spot her in the living room, and as small as it was, I wouldn’t have missed her. To be sure I wouldn’t get attacked by some associate of Moira’s, I pushed open the bathroom door on my right and then, Chastity’s bedroom door on the left and found no one there.

That just left my bedroom, which lies around the corner of the living room.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked as softly as possible. I’m so intent on moving with stealth that as I round the corner, I’m surprised by Moira standing at the entrance of my bedroom holding the two stones wrapped in silk and the obsidian blade that Thorn had given me.

“Ah, there are you, my dear,” she said sweetly. Moira smiled as if glad to see me.

As if.

“Moira,” I said coldly. “What are you doing in my house?”

“I’m looking for something that belongs to me, dear. And look what I found? Two stones of power and an athame. You’ve become quite the collector of cursed objects.”

I lowered my chin and glared at her from lidded eyes. A sensation akin to a snake gliding on the ground crawled through my body.

“Give those back, and I will not kill you.”

She scoffed. “My dear. You don’t have enough power to kill me. Not even Thorn does. It’s been a point of contention believe me.”

She placed the obsidian knife on my coffee table and unwrapped the silk around the stones, though, like Thorn, she didn’t let them touch her skin.

“I’m impressed. Do you know what these are? What they can do?”

I stepped forward, intending to yank my stones from her hands.

“Give them back,” I demanded, with all the menace I could muster.

Moira glanced up and smiled sweetly, though the malice in her eyes was plain. The hate there would kill a lesser mortal. At that moment, I saw her essential nature—enslaved and prostituted to evil. This witch had traded her soul for power.

Kill her. Kill the bitch,voices in my head said.

“You shouldn’t have things this powerful,” Moira said. “Nor should you possess the finger I gave you.” She held out her hand and crooked it with the “give here” finger wave.

“Fuck you.”

She sighed.

“Now, my dear. How will we ever get on if you don’t follow directions.”

I scoffed. “Have you met me? Listening is not my strong suit. All my teachers always said so.”

She held out her free hand, and the finger in my pocket vibrated faster and faster until it knocked painfully against my thigh. I reached for it, and my fingers clamped around it, hoping to gain control of the stone. But Moira twisted her hand, and mine flew out of my pocket and pointed straight at her. The finger rattled in my hand, and I couldn’t control it.

The Hand buried in my chest flared to boiling, and I gasped.

“You can’t win,” said Moira calmly. “You neither have the knowledge nor the power to wield that object. Better to let it go. You’ll live longer.”

I gritted my teeth against the struggle to hold on to the object when the back door opened, breaking my concentration.

“Len? I told you not—”

She rounded the corner.

“What the—” said Chastity.

The finger flew from my hand and struck Moira in the face. She stumbled, fell ass-backward on the couch, and the other two stones fell from her hand. The heart stone bounced and flew under the sofa while the eye rolled toward me.

Instinctively, I reached for the eye.

“No!” cried both Moira and Chastity.

The stone bounced up and flew at my chest. Like the hand before it, the stone flared and burned my tee shirt as it reached my flesh. Pain seared me as it sunk in, and the world whirled.

“Get out!” yelled Chastity. Raw panic colored her words, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, Moira, or both of us.

Moira scrambled to her feet faster than you would have guessed an elderly grandmother could move and pushed past me. I tried to grab her, not to get her, but to retrieve the finger she still clutched, but with unnatural strength, she pushed me hard enough to smash my body and head into the living room wall.

“Stop!” I yelled, but Moira wasn’t any better at listening to directions than me. The back door opened and slammed shut as I reeled from hitting the wall.

I spun and fell onto the couch in the same place Moira had been a few seconds before, and the putrid scent of her perfume made me want to gag. My head pounded, and my chest felt like fire.

“Mon dieu!” said Chastity. “What the hell just happened?”

“We were going to get the Hand out of my chest tonight.” I put my battered head in my hands. “But it can’t happen now.”

“No,” said Chastity. Her voice dripped with disapproval. “Now you have two demonic objects in your chest. Didn’t you listen to anything I said? Get out! You can not stay here.”

I looked up at her. “But where would I go? I can’t go back to the little house. I can’t think there.”

Chastity muttered in Creole, and while I didn’t understand the words, I got the tone. I was royally fucked.

Chastity pulled out her wallet and handed me a thick wad of cash.

“Go get yourself a hotel and figure out what the hell you will do, Len. This is way above what this Voodin priestess can do for you. Go! Before you permanently infect this apartment with evil.”

I stared at her and blinked.

Fuck.

My best friend was tossing me out on my ass. And judging by the look in her eyes, I better hightail it out of here before I suffered her considerable wrath.

I wrapped the discarded silk scarf around my hand and reached under the sofa until my hand hit the heart and drew it out. Then I carefully twisted the scarf around the stone so it couldn’t touch my skin.

Chas watched me incredulously as I stuffed the wrapped heart in my boot.

“Another one?” she said disdainfully.

I threw one of the twenties she gave me on the coffee table. “Use that to buy some more smudge sticks. You’ll need them.” I couldn’t believe the bitterness in my voice, but it was born of suffering yet another rejection by someone I loved.

I grabbed the obsidian knife Thorn had given me and stuck it in my boot. She stepped backward as I walked past her. My feet rattled on the wooden steps on my way down. My head and body hurt, but worst yet, my heart hurt.

I pulled out my phone and tried to find Thorn’s number, but it wasn’t on my call list. Damn. The last time he called me, the number was blocked.

Thorn! I need to talk to you.

But for all the talk of our connection, right now, it failed, and I have no reason why. Maybe the connection only worked when Thorn wanted it to? It did seem Thorn opened the communication between us, and that was only when we stood close to each other. And he did insinuate that communication would be unreliable.

Well, hell. I can’t reach him. It’s useless to go to the abandoned church now, but I had no idea where he was.

But I knew where he would be.

I sighed and called an Uber from my phone.

The driver didn’t believe the address I gave him, but I graced his palm with an extra twenty-dollar bill to ask no questions. Mary of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church was a solemn and eerie sight, with the broken remains of the once-grand structure a testament to the passage of time rising against the sunset.

When I stepped from the vehicle, the driver shook his head.

“You sure you want me to leave you here?”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“Okay,” he said in disbelief. The driver gunned his engine and peeled away from the church.

I gazed over the landscape but saw no sign of Thorn. I looked to the sinking orange sun and wondered when he’d get here. As I approached the ruins of the abandoned Catholic church, my footsteps echoed against the cracked pavement, the only sound in an otherwise still and silent environment. The church, once a grand and imposing structure, now stood in ruins, its stone walls cracked and covered in ivy, its roof collapsed, and its stained-glass windows shattered.

As I walked closer, I found the church grounds overgrown with weeds and vines, making it difficult to navigate. The trees around the church were bare, their branches reaching out like gnarled fingers, casting long shadows on the ruins.

As I approached the entrance, I found the wooden doors were long gone, replaced by a gaping hole that led into the darkness within.

A branch’s snap caused me to whirl, expecting to see Thorn, but instead, I came face to face with Kye. He glared at me with undisguised malice.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I heard you’d be here. Looks like that part of the intel was good. Let’s see if the rest of the info was good. Where is it?”

I cocked my head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“That power stone you have.”

One stone. Not the other two.

Moira! That bitch. She always seemed to know what the hell I was doing. When I get a chance, that woman and I will have a serious chat. With deadly implications.

“I don’t have it,” I said, lifting my chin in defiance.

Kye sniffed the air. “You’re lying. I smell it.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me now, and I’ll make sure your death is painless.”

“My death? What fresh delusion is this, Kye?” I snarled.

“No delusion. Pack justice. For Peta.”

I sniffed, listened, and cast my seeking sense, and found them. The pack was out there, maybe half the pack. Mostly the males. The females would be busy preparing Peta for her burial.

“Oh, is that how you packaged this to the pack?”

“Marvin testified against you.”

I scoffed. “Look, I’m sorry for his loss, but Marvin couldn’t testify about the amount of ham in a sandwich.”

“Liar!” Kye growled. He launched at me, and I stumbled over a piece of the church’s fallen stone, falling backward while reaching for the obsidian knife. He reached for my hand while I reached for the knife and I kicked him in the chin. He fell back and his hands slid back though he held onto the boot, tearing it off my foot.

The heart flew out, and the silk tore away, revealing the glinting stone in the fading sunlight tumbling in the air.

“Ah, hah!” said Kye as he flew toward it.

With a dexterity I didn’t know I possessed, I got to my haunches and pushed toward the stone. I outstretched my hand, heedless of anything but the danger presented by Kye possessing a cursed stone of power.

We collided in midair, but I caught the glint of turning stone and snatched it from flight.

Immediately pain exploded in my hand, and I tumbled, turned, and fell face-first into the gravel and weeds with the stone clutched under me.

But the artifact wasn’t satisfied with my hand as a resting place, and it burned through it and sunk into my chest as I screamed.