Payable On Death: A Jax Rhodes Novel, Book One (The Jax Rhodes Series 1) (9 page)

"I must not have made a great impression. You've been lying to me, working against me all this time."

"From the moment I first saw you, I've been trying to figure a way out of this. It really was a coincidence, running into you at the gym and then again at the shelter. I was supposed to stay away. I just… I couldn't get you out of my head. So I followed you to the bar.” Dane fidgeted, clearly embarrassed by his actions.

“That night in the alley, I wasn't supposed to intervene. I just couldn't stop myself. I thought he was going to take you away or worse, kill you. I'd only just found you, and yet the idea of losing you terrified me. You weren't the job. Your mother was. I was supposed to keep her from finding you. That's it, nothing more. After my stunt saving you from Lazarus, the Devil wanted retribution. I either kept up the ruse or faced all of the sins I'd freed people from over the years." His shoulders dropped, almost crumpling in on himself.

"You knew? You knew she was my mother? And you kept it from me to save your own ass?" I lashed out, smacking him hard on the face, backing away from him when he reached for me.

"I deserved that. And more. Please, just hear me out. I damn my own soul for the sake of others, but I don't have to live with them, their sins. Do you know how old I am? How many sins I've consumed? It would destroy me."

"I've heard enough." I got to my feet, disgusted with the level of deception both sides were capable of. First Tommy and now Dane. Admittedly, the latter hurt a hell of a lot more.

"I didn't know she was your mother. I didn't know what you were, not until dinner. I didn't ask questions—at least not the right ones. And Thomas didn't say anything. He never made a move to stop it. He just kept circling you and I couldn't figure out why you were at the center of it all."

"Shut up. Shut up. I can't trust you. You're a fucking liar."

"I know I don't deserve your trust, but I'm asking for it all the same. I want to help you. I've been doing some research, finally started asking the right questions. I know what you are. You're the key. Please, let me help you."

"I think you've done enough already." Swatting his outstretched hand away, I backed up a step.

"I saved her. In the end, I'm the one who washed her sins away. Not your precious Tommy. Think about that. I've always been on your side. Even when I wasn't supposed to be. Remember that when they try to convince you otherwise." Dane stepped forward in an attempt to close the distance between us.

At that moment, a nondescript black sedan pulled up to the curb and stopped.. Thomas rushed out of the passenger side, wrapping his arms around me in a bear hug and snatching me off the sidewalk. The driver strained to reach back and open the rear passenger door. It flew open and Thomas shoved me inside. I heard Dane shouting, arguing with Thomas as the car door slammed shut.

The back doors locked with an audible click, sending me into panic mode even though I knew Thomas wouldn't hurt me. His friend, the driver, I wasn't so sure about. Still on my back after being tossed onto the seat, I kicked repeatedly at the window hoping to break the glass. It didn't so much as crack. Thomas jumped in and the car pulled away before his door even closed.

I sat up, facing the rear window as my captors and I sped away, watching Dane chase after us until we reached a speed that outpaced him on foot. Huddled over, out of breath, he stopped running. And then he shrank from my view until he disappeared entirely.

A piece of my broken heart stayed there with him.

The car finally
slowed as we approached an empty, rundown warehouse across the street from the H & S Bakery. There'd been several attempts at a neighborhood revival but none of them had taken hold. Still, people held on to hope that with enough renovation, change would eventually take root. What they never understood was meaningful change didn't just come with infrastructure. Trash still over flowed from the can on the corner, skitting across the street like urban tumbleweed. Taggers still left their marks in a rainbow of spray paint along the plywood construction fencing. Despite the developers’ best efforts, the city remained the same.

The driver killed the engine, threw on the e-brake, and exited the car. Blond hair blew back from his face in the light breeze, exposing a familiar jaw line. Even with his back to the window, I could see the resemblance.

"Is he your brother?" I turned my attention from the agitated man waiting outside for us to the angel riding shotgun.

I tried not to freak out, to stay calm, take in the surroundings, the details. If I got out of here, it wouldn't be because I lost my cool. I wasn't entirely sure if I'd been kidnapped or not. They never bothered to bind or gag me. Just tossed me in a car and drove away from the person I was already walking away from. Albeit in a rapid and violent manner.

Thomas tried to warn me about the Sin Eater, told me to stay away. And I didn't listen. I was sort of stubborn like that.

"Yes, he is my brother, in more ways than one." Tommy opened the door with his right hand, grabbing my arm with his left. "Are we going to have a problem?"

"I don't know, Tommy. Are we? You plucked me off the street, threw me into a car, locked me in like some common criminal in the back of a patrol car, and drove me halfway across the city to an abandoned warehouse. Does any of that seem like a problem to you? Because it sure as hell seems that way to me." I tugged on my arm, trying to jerk it free. "You're hurting me, Tommy. You want to let go?"

"Not yet, not until we get inside. I've seen you at the gym. You love to work inside. You're not catching me with a short right hand. If you listen to what we have to offer and still refuse, we'll let you go. You can go back to your life, floundering amongst the mortals seeking refuge in the good deeds you think you've done whilst the Devil nips at your heels, ready to collect on the contract for your soul."

He pulled me out of the car, turning me so my right arm was chicken winged behind my back. I couldn't help it, I resisted, throwing my body forward, causing him to pull my arm higher until the pressure in my shoulder was excruciating. Anymore and it would have popped out of socket.

"Why do you insist on doing things the hard way?" Tommy's brother led us through the first floor of the empty warehouse to the freight elevator in the back. He pulled the rope, forcing the two metal grate doors apart and stepped inside.

"My entire life has been the hard way. I didn't know there was a different way to go."

Tommy shoved me in after his brother and closed the doors behind him. He pressed the button for the third floor, which was weird because I would have sworn the building wasn't more than two stories from outside.

The engine clanked into motion, my stomach dropping a little as we began our ascent. The elevator lurched past the second floor, coming to a hard stop on the third. I half-expected to be on the roof, where they'd drag me out of the elevator and toss me over the side. Were these two young men with their cherub faces actually merchants of death? Maybe they were in league with the Devil, more of his fallen angel kin. He'd tried more than once to get me to end my life, as recently as an hour before.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when the doors finally opened.

A training facility, complete with brand new equipment, sprawled out before me. A treadmill, weight bench, and sit up bench occupied one corner. A balance beam and balancing blocks of varying heights were in another. There was a speed bag, body bag, and two training dummies, one padded and one of the wooden martial arts varieties. A climbing rope hung from the twenty foot ceiling in front of a rock wall that lined one whole side of the room. Every untouched surface gleamed in contrast to the dingy cobwebbed floors below us.

None of it should have been there. None of it was possible. And yet, there it was.

"You wanted to talk. I decided it would be a conversation best had with visual aids." Thomas released me and walked out onto the bamboo floor, his arms outstretched to emphasize the gym.

"Am I supposed to be impressed? I could accomplish the same thing at the BBC." I knew he heard the lie—it was impossible to miss the awe in my voice. As much as I loved Baltimore Boxing Club, the warehouse contained equipment to train in all styles of fighting, not just traditional boxing.

"My brother told you we wanted to teach you, to give you all the weapons you need to truly become a demon hunter. Now you can see he speaks the truth with your own eyes." With an indignant look on his face, Tommy’s brother crossed his arms over his chest.

"Knowledge can be a powerful weapon, do you plan on arming me with that as well?" I was tired of being treated like a mushroom- kept in the dark and fed a bunch of shit.

After my last run in with the Devil, I couldn't deny the fact I needed help. Whatever mess I was caught up in, I knew I wouldn't survive it on my own. Dane lied about a lot of things, practically everything. The one truth he'd actually spoken was I was at the center of it all. Caught in the middle of some age old battle between angels and demons. I didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but I was slowly putting it together.

Left with little options, knowing I couldn't go back to the life I'd been living, trying to find a nonexistent loophole into Heaven, I decided it was time to make a stand. To pick a side, even if I wasn't entirely sure they were on mine.

"Tell me what I want to know, Tommy, tell me why I should fight for you."

"You spend your days helping those less fortunate than you, selfless acts for the most selfish reasons. We're offering you a chance to make a real difference, to save yourself."

"Nice try. Your brother already told me I wouldn't go to Heaven if I died." I squared off against Tommy's brother, whose name I'd yet to learn.

"She's seen too much, Thomas—knowing and believing are two entirely different things. This will never work. The best we can do is wait, hope that this one manages to stay alive long enough for us to find another way."

"Patience, Joseph." Tommy motioned for me to take a seat on one of the benches lining the left side of the training mats. "You need to hear this, Jax. It's not the salvation you've been seeking, however, it's not damnation, either. And that is all that awaits you if you refuse."

"The Sin Eater?"

"After all you've learned of him, you'd still seek him out?" Joseph turned his back on me, obviously disgusted I would even consider it.

"He can't save you, Jax. I understand why you'd consider it, I do." Tommy looked to his brother and back to me, his expression softening. "He can't save a soul that isn't there to begin with. You've bargained yours away. And so it sits, in Purgatory, waiting to be reunited with your body and your debt to be paid to the Devil when you die. And you will, if you continue on your own, and you will take all that remains of humanity with you to burn in the pits of Hell."

That sounded pretty serious.

"I'm listening."

"You are the last Elioud."

"You don't have the authority, Thomas. We were warned not to tell her. She needs to make the choice on her own."

"And she will, but not before she's given all the information. Trust me, I've spent the last three years with her. She wouldn't be here if she didn't want to be."

"She is born of wickedness, a fallen bloodline. She must choose to serve divinity on faith. Knowing is not believing, brother. You are blinded by your feelings for her, consciously choosing to ignore an order from the archangels. I cannot assist in this." Joseph stepped into the sole ray of light peaking in through the dingy windows and disappeared as if he'd ridden the sunbeam straight to Heaven.

For all I knew, he probably had.

"What happens to you if you tell me?" His refusal to do so earlier suddenly made sense.

I chose not to ask about Joseph's comment regarding Tommy’s feelings for me and instead remain focused on the task at hand. I'd suspected as much when I thought Tommy was just a normal teenager. That seemed awkward enough. Now that I knew the truth, that he was a grown man—well angel—it became even more so. Thomas, slightly older and all man sat beside me, but he was still Tommy to me.

"I will be denied ascension into the next circle of service."

"Like, you'll lose your promotion?"

"I suppose you could put it that way."

"Why? Why would you give that up for me?"

I still didn't know exactly what he expected me to do or even what was really at stake. The fact he'd sacrifice his own future, one that would last far beyond my lifetime, confirmed I'd made the right decision. I may not have ended up in the warehouse entirely of my own free will but I was right where I needed to be.

"Because you wouldn't agree any other way. Because I believe in you. And it's not just for you, not entirely. This is the best chance we've got because if we fail, what comes next will rival the apocalypse."

"Tell me."

"You know the story of the Fallen. Two hundred fell from grace at the feet of women, bearing the Nephilim. One hundred and ninety of my dark brothers were imprisoned in Tartarus while ten roamed the Earth, becoming the first demons. The Nephilim begot your kind, the Elioud. Your father was the last Nephilim to give in to the darkest part of themselves and you, you are the last Elioud.” Tommy started to reach for me, but changed his mind. He looked at his hand, now clenched in a fist as if it betrayed him.

“You’re the one he's been waiting for, the last piece of his collection. He's already halfway there with your contract. If he succeeds, if you die and your soul is rejoined with your body in Purgatory, allowing him to collect your soul, he will have turned all the heirs of angels to him and can unleash the rest of the fallen, who have no doubt gone insane with rage after so many lifetimes of torture. You are the key to unlocking Tartarus." Tommy seemed lighter, as if a  weight lifted from finally telling me the truth,

"So you want me to work for you instead. As a demon hunter. I'm all for slaying demons and keeping the ninety pissed off, crazy Watchers from getting out of jail but doesn't all of that seem more likely to, you know, get me dead? Sort of realizing the prophecy you're trying to prevent?"

"Here's where it gets interesting."

"Yeah, because it's been a real bore up till now."

"If you agree to become a Warrior of Light, you will be granted certain gifts. Immortality of a sort."

Tommy was right, that was interesting.

"Of a sort? Care to elaborate on that?"

"Well, it's pretty much how it sounds. You won't die, not by mortal weapons or wounds. Not at the hands of demon or man or any combination thereof."

"Except?" I was still waiting for the ‘of sorts’. There was an exception in there somewhere.

"Except for the Spear of Destiny."

"The spear that pierced the side of Jesus?"

"That'd be the one."

"Well, that's not so bad actually. I mean, it's a holy relic, right? It's probably stored away in some church. A demon can't get it, never mind wield it. Even I can't get it. Wait, are churches open to me again?"

He cleared his throat, practically squirming in his seat when I looked at him. For the first time since I'd seen him in this form, Thomas looked nervous.

"It's not in a church, is it?" I sighed. There's always a catch.

"We don't know where it is. We need to find it before they do."

"Because if they find it, we're right back to square one." That sort of evened the odds. I liked it better when they were tipped slightly in our favor.

"If you accept, their mission changes, just not their focus. You are still top priority. Instead of trying to finish converting you, they are going to be trying to kill you."

"So I need to kill them first."

"So, what do you think, Jax? You've been extinguishing demons for years. Ready to make it official?"

I didn't take long to think about it. Just enough to make Thomas sweat a little. I'd made up my mind awhile ago. When he'd first asked me, in fact, it's why I didn't resist more when they picked me up off the street. Thomas knew me well enough to know I'd have gone it alone, fighting on my own, risking my life, risking it all, until he told me the truth.

"I'm in."