As Grier sat on the couch in the corner of the kitchen, she revisited her choice to go into law instead of medicine and knew she'd made the right decision: She'd never had the stomach to be a doctor.
Her grades and test scores could have gotten her into either graduate school, but the tipping factor had been Gross Human Anatomy, that first-year med-school staple: one look at those muslin-covered dead bodies on all those tables during her pre-admission tour and she'd had to put her head between her knees and try to breathe like she was in yoga class.
And what do you know. The fact that there was someone in an even juicier condition in her front hall was so much worse.
Surprise, surprise.
Another shocker at the moment--not that she needed one--was her father's hand making slow, calming circles on her back. The times he had done something like this were few and far between, as he was not the kind of man who handled shows of emotion well. And yet when she'd really needed it, he'd always been there: her mother's death. Daniel's. That horrible breakup with the guy she'd almost married right out of law school.
This was the father she had known and loved all her life. In spite of the shadows that surrounded him.
"Thank you," she said without looking at him.
He cleared his throat. "I don't believe I deserve that. This all is because of me."
She couldn't argue the point, but she didn't have the strength to condemn him; especially given that terrible ache in his voice.
Now that her rage had passed, she realized that his conscience was going to haunt him to the day he died, and that was the punishment he'd earned and was going to carry out. Plus, he'd already had to bury one child, an imperfect son who he had loved in his own way and had lost in a horrible manner. And although Grier could have spent the rest of her days alienating him and hating him for Daniel's death . . . was that really a burden she wanted to carry around?
She thought of the body in the front hall and how life could be snatched away between one breath and the next.
No, she decided. She would not allow the hurt and anger she felt to cheat her out of what was left of her family. It would take time, but she and her father would rebuild their relationship.
At least that was one thing Isaac had been right and truthful about.
"We can't call the police, can we," she said. Because surely anyone in a uniform who showed up would be hunted as well.
"Isaac and Jim will handle the body. That's what they do."
Grier winced at the idea. "Won't he be missed by someone? Anyone?"
"He doesn't exist. Not really. Whatever family he had thinks he's dead--that's the requirement for men in that branch of XOps."
God, morally, she had twelve kinds of problems not saying something or doing something about the death. But she wasn't going to put her own life at risk for the guy who had been sent to kill Isaac and maybe herself.
Except . . . well, apparently, he'd come to commit suicide with witnesses.
"What are we going to do," she said, talking out loud and not expecting an answer.
And the we in that was her and her father. The we did not include Isaac.
He'd lied. To her face. He had in fact had contact with those evil people--and meanwhile, she'd been thinking that they'd had a plan. Sure, he hadn't betrayed her father, but that was only a measure of comfort because obviously, he'd decided to turn himself in--or at least appear to. A man like him, who fought like he did and was as comfortable as he was with weapons? It was far more likely that he'd decided to kill whoever took him into custody and bolt out of the country free and clear.
Fine. She was letting him go.
He was nothing but sexual attraction packaged in a ticking box--and that sound was the timer running out on the bomb underneath all the hard-bodied bows and ribbons. As for the I-love-you stuff? The thing with liars was that you believed anything they said to you at your own risk--not just the stuff you knew to be false. She wasn't sure where that "admission" got him, but she knew better than to view it as anything other than more hot air.
Her mind made up, she was too tired to be anything but numb. Well, numb and feeling stupid. But come on, like that "rare combination" of raw and gentle really existed?
"Wait here," her father said.
As he got up, she realized two large men had come into her kitchen. The pair of them were cut from the same mold as Isaac and the very-definitely-not- dead Jim Heron--and the sight of them was yet another reminder of what was going on in the front hall.
Like she needed the help, though?
"We're friends of Jim's," the one with the braid said.
"In here," Heron called out from down the corridor.
As the pair headed for the body along with her father, she got annoyed with herself and pulled up her mental big-girl pants. When she stood up, her head spun, but that whirling-dervish stuff receded as she went over to the coffee machine and went through the motions of making a fresh pot.
Filter. Check.
Water. Check.
Coffee grinds. Check.
Button to on. Check.
Normalcy helped stitch her back together a little more tightly, and by the time she had a steaming mug in her palms, she was ready to deal.
Good thing, too. It was time to think about the future . . . of what lay beyond this ugly night and these gut-wrenching past three days.
Unfortunately, her mind was like a spectator at a car accident, loitering around the twisted wreckage and the bodies on the pavement, tangling up in memories of her and Isaac together. Eventually, however, she cut that unhealthy focus off, her rational side playing cop and forcing her thoughts to move along, just move along now.
The thing was, Isaac had come into her life for a good reason: Thanks to him, she had finally learned the lesson that Daniel's death had failed to teach her. Bottom line? As much as you wanted someone to change and believed they could, they were in control of their life. Not you. And you could throw yourself against the wall of their choices until you were black-and-blue and dizzy as hell, but unless they decided to take a different road, the outcome wasn't going to be what you wanted.
The realization wasn't going to keep her from helping down at the jail or doing pro bono cases. But it was time to put some limits on how much she had to give . . . and how far she was willing to go. In all her peripatetic, Good Samaritan scramblings, she had been trying to resurrect Daniel--even though talking to his ghost should have been her first clue he wasn't coming back. In discovering the truth about what had happened to him, however, and in trying to find some balance for herself, maybe she could finally put him to rest and move on.
Taking another sip from her mug, she felt a measure of peace in spite of the bizarre circumstances--
Which was when another gunshot went off in the front of the house. Out in the hall, Jim had just been approaching the body with his crystal knife when he'd felt Eddie and Adrian's presence in the kitchen. God, they'd timed their entrance perfectly. He'd been prepared to act on his own, but backup was never a bad idea.
"I'm in here," he called out.
The pair came right along and neither seemed surprised at what was on the floor.
"Oh, man, Devina's all over that one," Ad muttered as he walked over to the remains.
"What the hell are you doing with that dagger?" Isaac demanded.
Well, matter of fact, he was going to do a quick exorcism. It was the only way to make sure that Devina was out of--
The first clue to the corpse's reanimation was a twitching in the hands. And then in a rush, that godforsaken piece of meat picked itself off the ground and managed to focus the one eyeball that appeared to be working.
And didn't that just remind him of Matthias.
Isaac let out a shout and fired his weapon, but that was like shooting a rubber band at a charging bull: The bull didn't notice and you just lost what had held your newspaper together in a tidy roll.
Jim shoved the soldier out of the way and attacked in a lunge, his body tackling the zombie into the wall. The moment impact was made, the image of Devina's face overlaid the decimated features of the man whose body she'd taken control of, the morphing reconfigurement smiling in satisfaction at him.
Like she'd won already.
Jim went for the stab in a quick, powerful jab, the crystal knife penetrating between the set of eyes that were corporeal as well as the pair that were metaphysical.
A screeching sound exploded from the zombie and a shaft of black smoke shot up in a vile stench, the dark fog coalescing, and then making a beeline for the front door. At the last second, it flashed under the wooden panels, sure as if it had been sucked out from the other side--and in its absence, the body of Matthias's second in command crashed to the floor like the bag of bones it was, the source of its animation no longer held within the bounds of its flesh.
"Now it's fucking dead," Jim said as he breathed heavily.
In the shocked silence that followed, he looked over his shoulder at Isaac. The guy's eyes could have given truck tires a run for the money in the diameter department, and water was dripping off of him, Adrian and Eddie having emptied the barrels of their crystal guns over his head to protect him.
Good move. Except . . . the evil hadn't even tried to go for the soldier. It had taken off in the opposite direction.
Jim's mental circuits went Las Vegas on him, his instincts screaming that this was wrong. All wrong. Second chance at getting to Isaac . . . and Devina had passed. Again.
Why had--
Like a curtain being wrenched back from a window, the landscape of the game suddenly became clear to him and what he saw rocked him to the core. Holy fucking shit . . .
Abruptly unsteady, he threw his hand out and caught himself on the wall.
"You are not the one," he said bleakly to Rothe. "Oh, God save us all, you're not the one."
As Grier Childe burst into the archway in from the kitchen, Isaac spoke up. "We're okay. Everyone's okay."
Which was only accurate to a point. Sure, Devina had apparently pulled an Elvis and left the building. And yeah, no one in the group glowed with an unholy shadow and Jim's neck was no longer doing the OMGs. But they were far from hunky-dory.
The urgent question now became . . . who was that demon after? Which soul were they fighting over?
The cell phone, Jim thought.
As all kinds of people started talking and the air filled with voices, he put the noise out of his head and sunk down on his haunches. From beside the now twice-dead body, he picked the phone up off the floor and went into the sent box for texts.
He recognized the last number that had been hit immediately.
Matthias had gotten the picture.
The cold clarity that came upon Jim brought with it a kind of terror: He'd been trying to save the target . . . when all along, he should have been focused on the shooter.
