Death eBook 9.8.16 (21 page)

Fallon snorted. I squeezed her hand, but it was too late. Words spewed from her mouth. “Are you fucking kidding me with this bullshit? Poor broken horseman. Please, don’t make me vomit in your nose hole. If you’re looking for sympathy, check shit and syphilis in the goddamn dictionary, ’cause we’re fresh out of give-a-fucks today.”

If we survived, I was going to kill Fallon myself. As I suspected, Decay was still a few cards short of a full deck. His demeanor swung from honest remorse to pure fury. He took a step forward. I watched in wide-eyed panic as his hand shot out, but in the next second, it was beside him again.

Suddenly, the smell of lilies, which I had adjusted to since he’d entered, grew stronger as Fallon fell to her knees holding her hand out in front of her as she screamed. I came down beside her, searching for the source of her agony. That was when I noticed her pinky finger melting away. Layer after layer of skin, muscle, ligaments, seemed to separate and dissolve away as I watched.

That was it. I’d had enough. The dreams and memories about what Decay was truly capable of already haunted me, but watching him do the same to someone I loved snapped something within me. In my own blind rage, I found myself up and across the room. Then I did something I would never have thought myself brave enough to do. I slapped Decay across the face.

It worked. Fallon was no longer screaming; instead, she lay on her side panting. Ironically, I was badass enough to slap the real-life version of the devil across the face, but I could not bring myself to see how much of her hand she still had.

I turned back to Decay, who looked down at me with confusion and held his hand on his face. Being this close, I was able to watch as he gained control. His ice-blue eyes looked lost and sad as he looked beyond me to my friend on the floor.

So low, I almost missed it, he whispered, “Sorry.” Then as quick as he came, Kayne was gone again. The sanity bled out of his eye; it became cold and distant as he stepped away from me. It looked like Lord Decay was back in the house.

He looked over my head to Fallon. She screamed again. My heart leaped into my throat and nausea swirled in my gut. I shifted, staring at her, until Decay said, “I may not wish to harm my sister, and even if I did, she’d be immune as she’s my brother’s mate.
You,
on the other hand, mean nothing to me and are not as blessed. I suggest you learn not to speak unless spoken to.”

Fallon’s screams lessened. My eyes widened as I watched her finger regenerate, knitting itself back together. Quickly, I shook the shock off and moved back across the room to comfort her.

When her whimpering stopped, she once again showed me why I was so proud to call her my best friend. Strong and seemingly unfazed, she wiped her face and glared at Decay.

He returned her gaze with an empty, emotionless grin. “Well, this has been mighty fun, but I did bring you for a reason. I need the Records of Departure from the library. It has the last known locations of the final few Navah before they died off. There was a particularly gifted swordsmith who married an alchemy master I met during my studies as a teen, that I need to find. The best way for any sibling to get what they want from the other is one of two ways. To tell Mother, which is a lost cause in this case, or barter for it. That’s what I plan to do. I have something they want, and they have something I desire. I’m trading you for the book. If you can both behave yourselves, you’ll leave with all skin intact.”

There I thought the nefarious-plan-to-take-over-the-world monologue carried out by the villain only happened in movies. I was glad to be wrong; I had just gleaned two very important facts. One, he wasn’t planning to kill us. If Fallon could keep her darn trap shut, we were going to survive. And two, I knew who most likely made the athame. If we discovered his last location before Decay, we’d have a starting point for finding it. I made a side glance to Fallon, who seemed to have come to a similar conclusion and kept her mouth shut.

Decay straightened his cloak and brushed imaginary lint away, then said, “Now, if you will excuse me, I must learn the tell-e-fone. I need to speak to my brothers. Please behave and bear with us. It may take a little longer while we wait for them to arrive with my belongings.” He gave us a jaunty wave and left.

“Are you okay?” Fallon asked as soon as the door latched closed.

I scoffed and threw my hands in the air. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that? What the hell were you thinking? Did you think I was lying when I told you the bastard could melt people with a touch? Now it seems he doesn’t even need to touch to kill since he’s almost completely healed. He could have fucking killed you!” I had built momentum and was shouting by the end.

“Did you just cuss and stomp your foot?” she asked, a smirk touching her lips.

I looked down at my foot.
Huh, I guess I did.
“I was scared, Fallon.”

Her smirk turned into a sad smile, and then she gave me a hug. “I know, I’m sorry. Guess we’re even now.”

I squeezed her tighter to me. “Not even close. Me not text messaging is nothing compared to watching your best friend mouth off to the bad guy and him melting her freaking finger off. I love you, but your smart mouth is going to be the death of me.”

She moved back, so she could look at me. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

“Goodness, I hope there won’t be a next time.”

Looking around the room, she asked, “So, now what?”

Meeting her gaze, I answered, “Now? Now, we wait.”

Chapter Nineteen

DEAN

Agony filled my heart as we made our way from the roof to our floor, which held our apartments. Pain turned my blood cold and broke my soul a little more because what was in front of me, the destruction surrounding us, told me all I needed to know.

Julie was gone.

I knew it all the way down to my toes.

I couldn’t feel her, sense her.

She was either unconscious or somehow Kayne was able to block her from me. Clenching my jaw, I looked around at the mess. Everything seemed to be broken.

Was Julie?

Motherfucking hell.
No, she wasn’t.

She goddamn wasn’t.

“Keep it together, brother.” Warren’s voice was low and deadly. His hand came to my shoulder, but I shrugged it off.

“Fucking course I will. I need to get my mate back.” I snarled. I wasn’t going to break into pieces like my heart wanted me to. Finding my mate was what was important. I needed to be in the game and to do so, I couldn’t crack under the pressure threatening to destroy me. The gut-wrenching, soul-breaking heartache.

My eyes shifted to Connor up ahead as he kicked Julie’s door aside. “Falcone,” he cried.

Warren and I made it to his side as Connor helped Falcone sit. “Th-the women, where are they?”

“Gone,” Warren provided.

“Fuck!” Falcone grunted when Connor helped him stand. “We were deceived. Dean, I tried. There were too many of them. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll find them. We
will
fucking find them, so do not be sorry, brother.”

I stalked from the room hearing Falcone utter, “I’m fine. It’s healing.”

Stopping in the middle of the room, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then reopened them. I knew they’d be glowing white while I used the full strength of my gift. I threw my arms wide and yelled, “Come to me. Come to me now.”

Thousands of souls shifted up through the floor. “Find my mate. Touch me and know her touch, her smell. Find her and then tell me where she is so I can get her back and rain hell down upon Kayne and his people. Now.” Without hesitation, they did as I bade, floating through my body, one after another.

Once the final one left, I turned to my brothers and said, “I’m going out to search. Warren, call Zander. I want to know why in the fuck he told us about the warehouse, and where he heard it from. His answers had better be good or else his life will be mine. Friend or not.” With balled fists and a clenched jaw, I left to search for my mate.

* * * *

Seven useless fucking hours later, I had nothing. Our fucking brother was blocking my souls because they were also reporting back with zilch. My whole body vibrated with anger. I wanted to kill someone. I wanted to wrap my hands around my brother’s throat and strangle the fuck out of him for taking my mate. For touching her. Still, it wouldn’t be enough. For the first time, I wanted to be the one to find that knife, if it were real, and slice it through my brother, ending his existence.

I swear, if he laid a finger on her, I would torture him day and night forever. I wouldn’t give him an easy way out. If he touched her, he wouldn’t deserve an easy ending.

“Dean, come back,”
Warren ordered.

“It had better be good to bring me back.”

“Zander is here.”

Maybe I had a chance to kill someone after all.

It didn’t take me long with the speed I took on my Ducati to return to the apartments. My brothers’ presences were in the meeting war room. It indicated Zander was safe for the present. Whatever bullshit he’d spewed to my brothers, they believed. I wouldn’t be so trusting

I flung the door wide. Zander, sitting next to Warren, jumped and I sneered over at him. He stood quickly, pushing his glasses back up his nose and started babbling, “I cast a spell to feel out for evil, that warehouse came back to me in a reading. I thought he was there. I didn’t understand why my spell would touch that place… until now.” He gestured in front of him. “We’ve been doing some homework; apparently a cult used to perform sacrifices there. Kayne must have known and set it all up. The decay of the bodies was picked up from the spell because it had only recently been cleaned out. But that’s not all—”

“This is the homework you’ve all been doing? Why in the fuck aren’t you out searching for my mate? Why in the fuck aren’t you helping?” I aimed my whole attention and glare at Warren. “Instead, you want to help your friend clear his name so I don’t take his life?”

“Stop,” Warren bellowed. “If you calm down for one goddamn second, you would know we haven’t been back long, but it was after I hunted down Zander. Connor and Falcone are on their way back. Zander has new information about a book that Kayne needs to track down the athame.”

My head jerked back. “It’s real?”

A grunt, then, “Apparently. Zander found an obscure reference to it in the horsemen’s histories. We believe what Kayne’s looking for is the ironsmith who forged the athame. There was a listing in our own library back in the Middle Ages. We’ve been searching, only to come up empty. I contacted Falcone and asked him what the fuck was going on. He explained, after Zander here described it and its contents, that the book disappeared in our move to LA.”

“Fuck. Shit!” Angrily, I ran a hand through my hair. “So there is a knife. A motherfucking knife that can kill
us
and we had the book that told us the placement of the fucking ironsmith who made it and probably knows where this athame is, but now it’s lost.”

“That sums it up,” Falcone said sadly as he walked in the room with Connor following. “If I had’ve known the importance of that book, I would have kept it closer to me, but I knew nothing, and there were still so many books from our library I hadn’t read, that being one of them.”

“How did Kayne know?”

“My guess is that he had read it, but his mixed-up mind isn’t supplying the information on the whereabouts of the ironsmith.”

A growl of frustration ripped from me and I snarled, “None of this will help me find my mate.”

“You can’t sense her at all?” Zander asked.

Glaring at him, I barked, “Yes, Zander, I can. I’ve sensed her all along but I thought I’d play with myself for a few hours before I rescued her from our crazy brother who’s doing God knows what to her and Fallon.”

“That’s a lot of masturbating time,” Connor mumbled. I picked up a book from the table and threw it at his head. Damn him and his good reflexes; he dodged it.

We all stilled when the phone on the table rang. Warren reached over and hit Answer so we’d all hear who it was.

“By now I am guessing you are doing everything to find your precious Julie, brothers.” Kayne’s smooth voice rang through the line. My fists clenched at my sides. Smashing the phone would get me nowhere.

“You had better not have touched her, Kayne,” I clipped low.

“My, my… no ‘Hello, my dear brother, it has been so long since I have heard from you. I have missed you’?”

“Enough messing around, Kayne,” Warren ordered.

“Ah good, bossy old Warren. So good to hear your voice.”

“Just tell us what you want.”

“The book for the women. And do not try to pretend you do not know what I am talking about. I know one of my people was caught, and I know how weak they can be. He would have told you all about what I want.”

“We don’t—” Falcone started.

“We need time to get it. It’s hidden away,” Connor said. We all looked to him.

“An hour to get it and then the time it takes to get here. I know you can make it in a shorter time than what it actually takes.”

“And where is that?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“I will have my people send you a message over the computer.” He laughed.

“Have you harmed her?” I demanded.

His laughter died. “Not yet, but I have had a grand time with her friend. You have five hours to get the book and get here, or Julie will be up next to play with.” The line went dead.

I spun to Connor. “What in the hell were you thinking?”

“I panicked. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want him to know we didn’t have it. Maybe we have a book that Falcone hasn’t read in the library that will tell us where we lost the other book.”

“Fucking hell,” Warren mumbled. “We don’t, and now we’re fucked when we rock up with nothing.”

“We fight then,” I said, my voice hard.

“And risk the women?” Falcone asked.

Throwing my hand out, I yelled, “They’re at risk anyway.”

Warren’s computer made a ting sound. We all looked down to it. He sat and pulled it closer, then clicked on something. “Not sure how he got my e-mail, but we have a destination. What the fuck?”