Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (41 page)

"Ah. Good. That's really nice to know.
And Jason? Where are he and Nick? I haven't seen Umayma,
either."

Ooh. Wow. They really hadn't filled
him in. "Jason and Nick aren't here—they flew out of town back to
Canada a few days ago. Seems there's a rift forming in the Revenant
group—which I'm the cause of, or mine and Inanna's bonding is—and
they're all hashing it out. I don't know why it's such a big deal.
I mean, she's here." I put my hand on my chest. "And she's
staying."

"Is Daniel there, too?"

I started to speak but closed my
mouth. "Yes. He is. It's one of the blessings of having her with
me, because she can show me his thoughts, his feelings, his hopes
and dreams. And it feels like he's still here with me."

"You still love him."

"I will always love
Daniel." I narrowed my eyes at him. "What's this about? I mean…if
everyone filled you in, then you know what I've been going through
having lost you like that. You know what we did to try and set
the
Grimoire
right. I'm just glad you remember me at all." That wasn't
really true. I'd be happier if things were the way they were
supposed to be.

He and I together. In love.

Dags nodded. "Yes I do. In
fact I remember you more than anyone. You burn brighter in my
memories than my family. The past few weeks the doctors have
brought back a few things here and there—snippets really. They
think my memories are all there in the
Grimoire
and what I've been able to
see are some of them bleeding through…" he sighed. "What they want
to do is open up the book and see the pages themselves. Find the
page Gabriel put in and take it out. Take a fine tooth comb and
study it. But…I can't do that. I can't allow anything else to be
done to that book, Zoë."

"I'm sorry."

"My life—all of it—is crystal clear
until after I met you at your mom's shop. Then things start fading
out. Do you know what it's like to be told you've missed an entire
year? That you've been attacked, kidnapped, beaten, tortured almost
to death, and the only thing that saved your life was having a
witch shove some magic book into your soul?"

I noticed his voice getting a little
tense. He was angry. I hadn't even considered he'd be upset, but it
made sense.

I took a step toward him and stopped
when he held up his hand. My expression fell and I put my hands to
my chest. "Dags?"

"One of the nurses in the infirmary
was married to a former S.W.A.T. officer. Three years before he was
shot on the job. The incident was questionable and he made the
decision to quit instead of face an IAB audit of the event. He'd
been out of work since then with no job prospects when the Society
hired him to lead their new security detail. She got the job as
nurse. They were trying to have their first child."

Oh God.

I realized whom he was talking about
and my heart dropped into my stomach.

"Until you ripped his arm
off."

My hands covered my face.
"Dags—"

"She said they're not even going to
arrest you, or punish you, because you're some demonic
abomination."

Demonic…
abomination
? Was that what they
thought of me?

Air rushed from the room. My ears
popped when I heard the disdain in his voice. I couldn't speak. Yes
I'd noticed the looks and the whispers of people as I walked in the
House, the strange looks. But I'd assumed they were all sad for me,
for having lost my love again.

It…didn't occur to me that what I'd
done to that guy would be viewed so…

Good God. They saw me as a
monster.

Realization hit me in my stomach. I
had no memory of ripping that guy's arms off—but they'd seen it.
They'd all seen me do it.

Mom had been the one to break the news
to me, about the man I'd maimed. About his wife.

"I have to think it's big of the
Society. They promised to take care of the two of them, especially
when they found out the morning after you maimed him that his wife
is pregnant. Now he'll never be able to wrap both his arms around
his child."

My knees turned to water under me as I
moved my hands from my face and wrapped my arms over my chest. I
started shivering.

"I saw for myself what you
did to Rhonda. I wasn't really aware of what you were doing or what
was happening." He looked down at his feet. "I saw Rhonda's face,
Zoë. I felt something inside of her whither…and
die
."

No…please.

"There's no other way to say this,
Zoë." Dags's expression hardened when he looked up from his feet
and into my face. "I think you're a monster. I think what you did
to that man is unforgiveable, pointless, and senseless. I can't
condone the Society's non-action against you. No one trusts you
anymore. They believe you're a thing that should be put down. But
for some reason, they won't touch you. Rhonda was mean and vengeful
but did it really justify you taking a part of her away. Killing
it? You and I might have been in love once. But I wanted to let you
know that I'm happy we aren't now. Detective Frasier bore so much
heartbreak loving you, and when he died, they said you didn't even
shed a tear." He took a shallow but audible breath. "I don't want
people like you in my life. You're why I'm leaving. I can't be a
part of a society that harbors creatures like you. And I won't let
them turn me into one."

How could I explain to
him—to anyone—that I
had
shed tears. So very man of them. All for Daniel.
But that having Inanna within me was as I'd said, like having him
near all the time. Maybe if she wasn't there his death would have
taken more of a toll on me.

I just didn't know.

I stood in stunned silence as he stood
and turned his back on me. My wide eyes brimmed with fire and tears
when he shut the back door of the SUV and moved around me—giving me
a wide berth—to the driver's door.

When he started up the SUV, I shifted
and became as incorporeal as possible. He didn't see me as he
backed out and thumbed the remote to the garage door.

There was nothing left to
see.

Epilogue

Nona stood just outside the Society's
examination room, her arms crossed over her chest. She peered
through the window and watched as the doctors examined Sergeant
Jefferson's new arm. It was paler then the rest of his skin,
lightly sprinkled with faint spiral patterns like vines.

"Miss Martinique?"

She turned at the sound of Lucy
Mullhaly's voice. Lucy had been with the Society since Rhonda's
uncle had run things, originally working as March Knowles's nurse.
She'd happily accepted her new job to help in the Society's
Infirmary. Given her expertise with all things Planar—Nona had
promoted her to Director. "What did you find?"

Lucy looked dubious. "The arm's fully
functional. He's passed all sensory tests as well as endurance
tests."

"He still doesn't know how he got
it?"

"No. He's sticking to the story of
having a dream, and in the dream he spoke to an angel."

Nona put her hand to her chin. It
amazed her how anyone could work at the Society and not see the
reality in front of them. The Sergeant had actually battled Powers,
seen a Dominion and nearly been stomped by a Wraith and the
Phantasm. And he still believed in angels. "And the angel told him
she was giving him a new arm."

"That's what he said." She put her
hands on her hips and blew out a frustrated sigh. "Nona—we took a
biopsy of it—and I have to tell you," she thinned her lips. "I
don't like what I just learned."

"It's Zoë's isn't it?" The declaration
was out before she could stop herself. From the moment she'd seen
the pattern on the sergeant's arm she'd known.

Her daughter had been missing for a
week. She'd walked out of Nona's room in the infirmary to talk to
Dags—and never came back. No one had seen her. Not Azreal. Not
Jason.

Not even her father.

Lucy cleared her throat. "Yes…and no.
It's Sergeant Jefferson's arm. It's got his DNA, the blood typing,
everything is his. There's just this tiny little bit of foreign DNA
that matches Zoë."

"Right—she gave him her arm. She used
the Creation Eidolon to put her arm on him."

"No…" Lucy shook her head, keeping her
gaze locked with Nona's. "I mean she might have used the stone for
that. In fact I'm pretty sure she did, hinging on the information I
was able to glean from Mr. Martinique in the stone's production. It
can regenerate damaged flesh, muscle, bone, but it can't recreate
an entire limb without more material to work with. Considering what
Azrael told me about Gabriel's recreation of Joe's hands, Zoë used
the same magic principle when she gave Jefferson a new arm. She
combined the magic of the stone with another part of
her."

Nona looked back through the window at
the sergeant. "I don't understand."

"Different areas of the body contain
different markers. Meaning if you gave me skin cells I could tell
you if they were from someone's epidermis, muscle, tongue,
brain…"

Nona looked at her. "Spit it
out."

"The marker we found in his arm…came
from internal muscle." Lucy hugged her upper arms. "She used the
Creation Eidolon for the magic, but she used her heart to make it
flesh."

•••

Joe sat in his favorite chair, in the
quiet of his living room, the TV on but the sound muted just in
case he might catch the slightest vibration of movement in Zoë's
apartment.

Gone a week. Just vanished. Dags had
been anything but helpful, recounting again his last meeting with
her. Every time Joe questioned Dags it was the same.

Until an hour ago, when Dags left a
message on Joe's phone, telling Joe he might have been a bit harsh
with her. After hearing from Nona what Zoë did for Jefferson, Dags
felt bad about what he'd said.

If there was one thing Joe knew more
than any of those that counted themselves among the Wraith's
friends, it was that her heart was the most fragile thing about
her. In a single year he'd watched her bend like the wind, with
wide eyes, clinging to hope that someone would return her love.
That someone would love her for herself, and not fear her for what
she could become.

And in all that time, he
believed he was the one. He had hoped Dags could be the one for
her, but with Gabriel's magic that chance was gone, and Dags…was
his own person again. Gone from the Society to find himself in this
world. And with the
Grimoire
all but silenced, it appeared the kid wasn't the
nexus of the war any longer.

"I told her I thought she
was a monster."

Joe set his beer on the coffee table
in front of him before he rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed
his face with his hands. How could Dags have said those things to
her? And how many times had Nick and Jason tried to explain to him
that what really attacked Sergeant Jefferson wasn't Zoë, but the
growing imbalance of control inside of her.

A First Born who still bore the taint
of a mad Revenant? Daniel was gone, but his memories, his hopes and
dreams and his worst nightmares still lived inside of Inanna, and
now dwelled inside of Zoë.

This is what the other Revenants
feared. That Zoë would lose control until Inanna was all there was.
This was the truth Nona refused to believe. Joe thought Adiran
would at least listen to them, but he wanted to please his wife and
wanted his daughter's approval.

They were all blinded by their own
motivations. Zoë needed support. She needed help.

Not…
rejection
.

"Where are you?" He spoke to no one in
particular. The apartment was empty. Even Azrael's visits were less
frequent. Grapes rotted in the fridge, and the milk had gone
sour.

Joe hated milk.

A brisk knock at the door. Not one of
Zoë's knocks. Joe believed he'd know if she was near. That his
heart would feel that familiar pang of envy and regret. Who ever it
was could go fuck themselves.

But the knock persisted.

"All right all right!" He barked at
the door as he stood and wove around the couch and the table to the
hall and the door. The wood vibrated with the insisted banging
which only managed to make him madder. "I said I'm coming. What do
you want?"

He punctuated the last word by opening
the door. He wasn't sure who he expected to see. But it wasn't
Chris Kringle.

Or at least a pretty good
facsimile.

He was probably in his early
seventies, with white hair and a trimmed white beard. It was closer
to a longer Van Dyke than a full beard. His hair was long and
pulled back in a band at the back of his neck, and he wore a white
suit. The suit reminded Joe of Colonel Sanders, or a southern
gentleman plantation owner.

In his left hand he held a cane,
topped with a single silver wing. His feet…were bare.