6 Under The Final Moon (17 page)

The muscle along Alex’s jawline jumped and it twisted my heart. “There is nothing worth losing you. Nothing. I—I’ve pushed you away for as long as I could because I wanted to protect you.”

“From who? The other fallen?”

He avoided my gaze, his handing going limp in mine. “From me.”

“What do you mean from you?”

“I fell from grace because I was imperfect. I lusted after the power of the Vessel of Souls.”

I straightened. “You were tricked though, you were duped. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

Alex let out a growling little chuckle. “I knew.” Something flitted across his face, something dark settling in his features.

I scooched back on the concrete, and for the first time I could remember, I felt fear when I looked into Alex’s eyes.

“At least that’s what I told myself. That I was pushing you away because that bad was still inside of me and because of it, I could hurt you. I could take advantage of you and take the Vessel.” He shook his head slowly. “But I started to realize that I could never, ever hurt you. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to keep you safe.”

A sob choked in my throat. “And that’s changed now?”

“I don’t exist, Lawson. I’m dead. I’m doomed to wander, to be”—he gestured toward his body as though it were something less than astounding—“this for all of eternity.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I can’t give you a life. I don’t have anything to give you.”

I felt my teeth digging into my lower lip as my whole body thrummed, electric with the adrenaline of the fight, with the carnal want of having Alex this close.

“I can give you something, Alex. I can give you life.”

We drove home in silence, and when I walked into my apartment, I went directly for my laptop, popping the thing open and shaking out Abelard the monk’s card. I’d thought it was strange that a man who wore burlap underwear would have a glossy business card with a phone number and address, but now I was thankful.

There was something that I could do to step in and stop all this. There was something that I could do to straighten the bad in the world, free Will Sherman, and bring Alex to grace. The fact that I could very likely die while doing it didn’t seem like the greatest trade-off in the world, but I would rather die of my own accord than at the hands of a Grigori warrior bartender or waitress.

I plucked up Abelard’s card and studied the black raised numbers on the white cardstock until they swam in front of my eyes. I had my hand on the phone, dial tone droning, when Nina poked her head in.

“I’m going to order Italian from that guy that I like. I feel like delivery. Don’t want to go out.”

I looked at Nina and a lump grew in my throat as my best friend rambled on in her hot-pink velour tracksuit, trying to decide if she wanted the light-colored guy or the darker one for her dinner.

The place she was talking about made incredible homemade pasta with fresh bread, and for deliveries to our place, offered a side of blood from a breathing donor. They also did gluten free.

Nina finally stopped talking long enough to pause and stare at me, fists on her hips. “Something’s up with you.”

“I’ve been attacked multiple times in multiple days and I think I’m developing a perpetual goose egg in the middle of my forehead.”

“No.” She tapped a perfectly manicured fingernail against her pouty lips. “That’s not it. You’re all weight-of-the-world-y.”

I looked away, knowing that Nina could read me, as well as smell me, from eighty paces.

I challenged her stare, but she didn’t flinch, so I slid Abelard’s card against the desk to her. She snapped it up and immediately dropped it, screaming, “Ow!” and sticking her index finger into her mouth.

I felt my eyes widen. “Did that burn you? Because it belongs to a monk?”

Nina screwed up her face and showed me her finger, a faint little slice down the middle. “Paper cut.”

As quickly as it happened, it healed up over itself.

She leaned down, picked up the card, and glanced at it. “What were you planning on doing with this?” Nina looked up, her coal-black eyes fierce. “And if you say anything other than starting a prayer circle I’m going to kick your ever-loving ass.”

“Well, that’s kind of harsh.”

“I know what he wanted you to do, Sophie.” She flicked the card so it fluttered back down to my desk.

“You do?”

“I heard every word. He wants you to do some ritual. Some ritual that may
kill you.
I can’t believe you’re actually considering it. You are, aren’t you? God, I can’t believe you, Sophie! You’re so selfish.”

I gaped, taken aback. “How am I being selfish? If I—if the Vessel of Souls can be hoodooed out of me, then we’ll all be safe. Will wouldn’t be tasked with watching over my danger-magnet butt and Alex . . .”

“Alex can get his wings. Ring a fucking bell, Sophie. Neither of those men’s lives is worth yours. And you don’t even know if this Abelard guy is legit! Did you even check him out?”

“I—I think he has a Facebook page.”

I could see that Nina was fuming. She threaded her arms in front of her chest and glowered at me.

“Can’t you see this from my point of view at all, Neens?”

“No, no I really can’t.”

I wagged my head. “Someone will always be after me. Someone will always be chasing me.”

“Boo freaking hoo,” she snapped, her eyes fierce. “Join the club. Every time there’s a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
marathon or anything starring Wesley Snipes, Vlad and I have to take cover from the hordes of tiny blondes scissor kicking and wielding wooden stakes or, you know, whatever Wesley Snipes did in
Blade
.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah but nothing. In addition to that, I’ve also got to get around all the inanimate shit that wants to kill me, too. Like the sun. And fire. And fucking garlic. Think your life is bad, Sophie? I can be killed by a spice. A spice!”

“Garlic won’t kill you, Neens, you just don’t like it.”

Nina ignored me and ranted on. “And all people want to do is chase Vlad around so they can rip off his shirt and see his sparkles.”

“That sounds really dirty.”

“It is, if you mean I-just-threw-up-a-little-in-my-mouth dirty.”

I sighed. “I’m not as strong as you, Nina.”

She batted at the air. “And you’re not as pretty as me either. But that doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice yourself to a monk, who, for all we know, could have sewn that awful burlap ensemble in his basement. Hell, he could even be Grigori. Aren’t they tricksters, too?”

I shook my head. “No, no, that one is only my pops. The trickster god is my dad.”

“So, we’re two chicks who have mortal enemies coming out of every corner—”

“Including the spice rack.”

“If you give up the Vessel without really knowing what you’re doing, you’re handing your life over and everybody—the Grigori, your dad—wins. Everyone but you.”

I cocked my head, listening, only half-convinced.

Nina slid her tongue over the angled point of one fang. “You promise to do me a favor and not call Burlap Boy until we’ve had a chance to really figure things out and to make sure he’s not evil?”

I paused, looking up into Nina’s eyes. There was the typical Nina hardness, that little sheen of attitude and sass, but there was also a warmth that reminded me that we were so much more than friends. We were family.

“Okay,” I said, taking the hand she offered. “I promise.”

If my life were a big Hollywood movie, this would be the part where we broke into a training montage of me in frumpy sweats trying to sneak a donut, glaring at a jump rope, then ultimately finding joy in exercise and hot pants. But this was my real life, so I lay on the couch and read pro-Satan/ pro-killing-Satan books all day, popping ibuprofen and staying as far away from hot pants as the law would allow.

I glanced at my phone when it vibrated its way across the coffee table toward me, and finally swiped it up.

“I’m downstairs. Come out.”

Nina’s eyes were shining when I met her on the street outside of our building. She was standing in front of her car, her pink-and-black key chain dangling, the little rhinestones on the moustache pendant catching the speckled bits of sun that peeked through the blanket of fog, blurring the harsh outlines of the cityscape. Nina was grinning from ear to ear, too, hands on hips, legs akimbo. I immediately slowed my walk.

“What’s up?” I asked tentatively.

She clapped her hands together. “I think I finally know why I was brought back!”

“Brought back? To . . . San Francisco?”

Having recently spent a stint in Manhattan working on her fashion line and evading the police (it’s not that long of a story, really, but she can tell it better), plus the whole afterlife thing, I was never really certain what Nina meant when she referred to being “brought back.”

“Not to San Francisco,” she gushed. “To life!” She spread her arms and burst out with the words as if everyone else thought being brought back to life was normal. Although maybe they did, since the man pushing his
carrito,
hawking chili-sprinkled mangoes, barely stopped ringing his little bell long enough for a passing glance.

I got into the car as Nina slid into the driver’s seat, still grinning, still beaming rays of stupid sunshine everywhere.

“What are you talking about?”

She gunned the engine. “You know how I’ve always been looking for my calling? My reason for being?”

“Re-being,” I clarified.

“Whatever. But you know? I mean, I tried being a novelist, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted.”

“Not exactly what you wanted? I seem to remember the words ‘abysmal failure’ being tossed around.”

She shot me a death glare. “And there was the musical and the documentary—which would have been epic, by the way, if I had had a more willing cast.”

“Documentaries don’t have casts, Neens.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me.” She narrowed her eyes at me, the sole “star” of her cast. I hadn’t been chosen so much for my optimal work or acting ability as for the fact that I was also pretty much the only member of the Underworld Detection Agency who could be seen on film.

“Anyway,” she went on, guiding her little black Lexus through traffic, “I know what I’m here for now. It’s to make people happy.”

She grinned so enormously that the bloodless veins in her neck bulged.

“To make people happy?” I asked skeptically. “No offense, but your track record is not . . . exactly”—and here I treaded lightly, because my best friend has fangs—“friendly.”

“That’s because I haven’t started yet.”

“Oh. Sure. Right.”

She swung the wheel and cut off three lanes of traffic, honks and tire screeches sounding in our wake. I gripped the dash. “When exactly are you planning on starting?”

I very slowly, very carefully, made my way over to the Krav Maga studio for my second lesson with the bouncy Melody and the terrifyingly strong Aikiko and Yuu. This time I managed to mostly stay on my feet and not get attacked by either the Grigori or Aikiko, so I was feeling pretty good when I stepped out into the crisp San Francisco night.

I was painfully aware that an undead theological army was hunting me and that there were grumblings of my father making his grand debut among the debris of the city, so I kept my head up, my keys spiked through my fisted hands, and I wore an old Jesus Jones T-shirt. I didn’t exactly go to church, and I had a vague fear that a crucifix would burn through my flesh due to my bloodline, so I thought the shirt might be a fair compromise—or at the very least, a tick mark in the “trying not to be evil” box.

The city was teeming with energy and life like it did every evening around this time. The buses were loaded with business people in suits and sneakers, throngs of them heading out at every stop, mixing into the crowd of diners, shoppers, tourists, and wanderers. I scrutinized every face that passed me, wondering which one was going to advance, to attack; which one was listening to my father whispering horrible, murderous things in his ear right now.

Somewhere, sirens rang out. Car horns honked. People chattered. Church bells rang. The city moved in harmony, nothing so obvious or showy as strangers striking up conversations or people bursting into song, but a peaceful, moving coexistence.

I found myself boiling with anger.

My father, for whatever reason, had chosen now to pull the strings. He had abandoned me and worked his evil away from me, but now it was here, in my city, and blood of mine or not, I wanted him to leave.

I had to find him. I had to stop him. And I knew that for the good of everyone—San Franciscans, Nina, Vlad, Alex, and Will—I had to do it on my own.

I sucked in a deep breath and felt the heat roil through my body. I made a beeline for the little shop in the back of an alley in Chinatown.

I hadn’t been to Feng and Xian’s shop since the massacre that had killed Xian. The place was boarded up with huge sheets of graffiti-covered plywood, but even behind the wood and spray paint smells, the place carried the bitter stench of death. It invaded my nostrils as I closed in, and as I shimmied down the narrow alleyway I paused, listening. My hackles went up, suspicion pricking at the back of my neck. When I didn’t hear anything, I sucked in my stomach and pushed myself all the way through the narrow tunnel to the alleyway behind, and landed with a breath-stealing thud on my back.

I blinked twice and saw stars, bright pinpoints of glorious white light and then I saw Feng, eyes pulled into narrowed slits, eyebrows angry slashes.

“Sophie Lawson?” she said.

There was more than a hint of distaste in her voice, but she leaned over and offered me a hand. I let her help me up and brushed off the rotting vegetables and general garbage that litters every San Francisco alleyway.

“Hi, Feng. Thanks for not . . .” A starburst of pain shot out at the back of my head and I let my words trail off.

“What do you want? Finally want me to kill that rabid dog?”

The “rabid dog” to which she was referring was Sampson. Feng and Xian were werewolf hunters and, up until Xian’s fairly recent death at the hands of a nutcase, had been the sole reason that our werewolf files at the Underworld Detection Agency were painfully slim.

“No. I need to talk to you about something else.” I jutted my chin toward Feng’s workshop, a cement block room with all the charm and warmth of a jail cell. “Privately.”

She studied me for a beat, then offered a sharp, quick nod and pushed me into the workshop.

“I—I think I need weapons.”

Feng glared up at me, clearly taking me in, clearly certain that a weapon and me would only result in one thing: me shish-kebabed.

“I don’t do weapons, I do bullets.”

They were all lined up in glowing Lucite cases behind her. I was rather impressed at this swanky new addition, even if was a collection of body-shattering ammunition. But they were shiny and silver and glinted under the lights, looking both elegant and dangerous—and I liked shiny things.

“Why did you come here?”

“I think I need something . . . special.”

Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure why I had come to Feng. She made silver bullets that tore through werewolf hide and were made to eradicate a species. I didn’t know if I would need a weapon against my father, or if there even was one available.

Feng’s eyebrows went up. “Explain special.”

I swallowed, not sure why I was nervous that this nut job would think I was a nut job. “I need something—a weapon, or protection, or some kind of defense against the devil.”

Feng’s tight lips quirked up into a smile. “What kind of devil?”

I blinked. “
The
devil. Satan, Lucifer.” I stopped going, suddenly worried that using too many names would Beetlejuice forth my jackass of a dad. I wanted to meet him, to defeat him, but I wanted the opportunity to have some sort of defense or chain-mail underwear or something when it happened.

She snorted, her teeth showing through her wide grin, and shook her head. “There is no defense against that evil. There is nothing you can do when you face it. If
T’an-Mo
wants you, he will have you.”

I took a step backward. “Oh. Oh. Well.” I waved like we had just shared a remotely normal conversation. “Thanks anyway.”

I turned and had my hand on the doorknob when Feng spoke again. “It’s not a weapon like you think.”

I looked over my shoulder, eyeing Feng as she advanced, the hard meanness gone from her expression. She almost looked . . . thoughtful.

“It’s not a weapon like you think that will stop him. He cannot be stopped with mere force.”

“I don’t understand—”

“He is force. He is violence and hate and danger and pain. He cannot be stopped with blades or bullets.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for that.” It wasn’t that I’d had my heart set on getting a weapon from a woman who, not very long ago, had been my mortal enemy. But I really hadn’t expected her to drop the “basically, you’re totally screwed” knowledge on me either.

I turned back to the door.

“But he can be stopped. He can be pushed back to where he belongs.”

This time, I didn’t bother turning around. “And how would one go about doing that, if there isn’t a weapon that can be used against him?”

I heard Feng let out a long, slow breath. “Like kind,” she said slowly. “The trickster tricks.”

My shoulders sagged. “Thanks, Feng. Have a nice Armageddon.”

I heard the door snap shut behind me, and as if on miserable cue, the rain started in cold ribbons. I pulled my hood up over my head and trudged to my car, suddenly feeling the weight of the situation sinking into my muscles.

My father was going to get what he wanted. He could pull the strings and bring his darkness to the world and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, Vessel of Souls or not. I was
Sophie Lawson: Total Waste of Skin and Tear Ducts.

As the rain continued to sail down, it hit my cheeks, burning there, mixing with the tears that were already there.

I drove home with the radio off, listening only to the thudding sound of rain on the hood of the car, to the sound of tires splashing through puddles and my windshield wipers scraping drops away. I wanted to formulate a plan, but my mind kept rolling, kept flashing images of little Oliver Culverson, of the maniacal grin of the man in my dream. I had longed for a father my whole life. I was desperate for his approval, his love, and now I was ready to kill him to defend my friends, my city, from this man who I had spent my entire life dreaming about, building up, and wishing for.

By the time I got to my apartment building, the rain had grown into heavy sheets that reflected back the streetlights and pelted my car in a whooshing cacophony. The rush of the water mimicked the rush of the blood going through my ears, and I tried to focus on the road in front of me even as it swirled and blurred. I didn’t care what it took; I was going to make this right.

I was going to find him.

I had no other choice.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly sure how to find the devil right off the bat. Sure, I had a hollow, terrifying memory of the homeless guy who’d turned himself into a human torch calling forth my father, but being completely engulfed in flames wasn’t something that interested me.

There was always a couple of guys at the Powell turn who claimed that Satan lived in the strip clubs or Congress or in J.K. Rowling books, but I was pretty sure they were just guessing or had their own agendas.

So really, where does one go looking for the one from whom everyone else is trying to hide?

I really had no idea.

Once I’d pulled the car into the underground lot—and said a prayer to the god of apartment buildings to thank him for sending me a dry spot to park my car—I was more focused and more determined. My jaws hurt from the constant clench and I was chomping to get in front of my laptop to start my research another way. Feng had said it was going to be hard to stop my father—she hadn’t said it was going to be impossible.

I plodded up the stairs, exhaustion lingering in every muscle, but when I got to our floor, I straightened. I felt the familiar tingle on the back of my neck that meant something bad—something really bad—was happening. But it wasn’t so much a feeling as it was a scent. A horrible, noxious scent. It seemed to permeate my every cell, filling my nose with its bitter stench, making my eyes water.

I paused, trying to place it. I had smelled the sickly sweet stench of death that comes, seconds before, to claim the living. I knew the wretched scent of flesh decaying, the dull, copper-penny scent of blood. Even the sharp, enveloping smell of fear. But this wasn’t it. It was bitter, but smelled like rot—mold, maybe. There were traces of fear and fire and—chocolate?

I raced across the floor just as Will threw his door open, a panicked look on his face. His hair was disheveled, his eyes slightly red, and he was shirtless. It wasn’t until he sprung through the doorway that I realized he was also pantless, clad in nothing but an excruciatingly well-fitting pair of boxer briefs and a fire extinguisher. He dashed past me, rested his palm flat against my door, and then yelled, “Is anyone in there?”

We both heard the clatter of metal as the sickening stench of fire that must have enveloped something horrific puffed from under the door. I thought of Nina and Vlad, of what the burning flesh of a vampire might smell like, and my stomach went to liquid. I didn’t think, I just moved. I body-checked Will and sunk my key into the lock. I was pushing open the front door when Will grabbed me.