Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) (26 page)

“Holly.” Laura stepped closer to me and took my hands in hers. “It all goes back to the balance of the worlds. To make the spell permanent, it involves a human sacrifice. A life for an immortal life. Blood must be spilled on the place that was the origin of the spell.”

“Anthony’s grave. His headstone. That’s where all of this started.” Tears burst into my eyes, but I blinked them back. Now his note made everything abundantly clear. Anthony’s revenge was killing my boyfriend in order to create an eternal life for himself. I’d known he was evil, manipulative, and power-hungry, but I had no idea he’d go this far to get back at me for something I didn’t even mean to cause.

“I’m so sorry, Holly,” Laura whispered.

“Don’t be.” Constantine placed his hands on my shoulders and gave them a comforting squeeze. “We’re going to find a way to stop this.”

“I hope you’re right.” My heart thumped hard against my chest, a snake twisting its way around my lungs so tight, I could hardly breathe.

“This isn’t just about Nathan.” Constantine gave me a steady stare, his eyes glittering with something dark. “If Anthony makes this permanent, there will be no way to stop the immune spirits from coming through to this world. If that happens, we’re all in danger.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and leaned into his supportive embrace. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to move that grave,” Constantine said.

***

After only three hours away from the Seaport cemetery, Constantine and I were back for more, this time Laura by our sides. We each had a shovel, a shaman rifle, and a pair of combat boots in our possession. The sun peeked over the horizon, sending shards of pink and yellow across the sky. If we were caught out here in the daytime like this, the cops would surely arrest us, but there was no other alternative.

George and Anthony could arrive here at any moment to end Nathan’s life.

When we reached the crest of the hill, I gripped the shovel tight in my hands as I peered down at the headstone, half-expecting it to be splattered with blood. My shoulders sagged in relief when it looked just as it had only hours before. The dirt mound was an uneven lump after our hasty recovering of the empty coffin, and pebbles of dirt had sprayed onto the words carved into the stone.

I wanted to smash that thing to pieces with my fists.

“Listen, we’re going to take turns with this,” Constantine said in a low voice. “We’re risking a lot by being here. Anthony could show up at any moment, along with his sorceress pal. Together, they could take us out pretty quickly.”

“Right,” I said with a nod.

“We’ll do the digging in twos,” he continued. “Laura, you stand watch first. Make a circular sweep around the cemetery. If you see anything at all, whistle and hide. After ten minutes of shovelling, it’ll be Holly’s turn to stand watch. Then, it’ll be my go. This will keep our arms from getting tired and our eyes from closing. With any luck, we can be out of here within the hour.”

“Got it,” Laura said, pulling the rifle to her chest as she strode several feet away from the grave. With a sigh, I rolled back my shoulders and began to stab at the dirt around the headstone. Whoever had placed it here had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure it was set deeply into the ground. Constantine took the other side, and the only sounds that punctuated the silence were our heavy breathing and our shovels clinking against the stone.

Ten minutes blurred by, and my shoulders already ached. Laura returned and gave me a nod. Lifting the rifle into my arms, I began to pace around the cemetery, eyes darting to every shadow that moved. As I kept my attention on the ground below, I thought back to everything Laura had learned in the book. In order for us to save the world, Anthony would have to die. Killing someone had always been a line I swore I’d never cross, but I also knew I wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on Anthony Lombardi. Not this time.

Down the hill, I saw the flash of something red before it disappeared into the snow-dusted bushes by the church. Squinting, I raised the rifle to my eye and peered through the scope. Even though the sun had begun its slow rise into the sky, the world was still muted by the gray dawn, heavy with mist. The red thing flickered into the scope before disappearing back into the shadows.

Someone was out here. We weren’t alone.

My whistle pierced the morning air, and a moment later, Constantine was by my side, hands covered in dirt. I pointed to the bottom of the hill where I’d seen the flash of red. He scanned the area, shook his head, and motioned me to follow him back to the grave. In the ten minutes I’d been gone, Laura and Constantine had freed the headstone from the ground.

“Someone is down there,” I hissed as the two of them lifted the stone between them.

Constantine tossed me his keys and grunted as Laura almost lost her grip. “Go get the car and pull it around to the back. We’ll load it in there. Keep your eye out. It could be nothing or it could be something. Be alert.”

“Got it.” With a steely spine, I headed down the hill while Laura and Constantine struggled down the back side of the cemetery with the weight of the headstone in their hands. I tried to act nonchalant, but I knew the rifle on my back would destroy the false image of my easy stroll through the graveyard at dawn. Hopefully, Edmund Cutter wouldn’t turn up and open the church for an early morning wake. Otherwise, we were screwed.

I slowed when the flash of red appeared near Constantine’s SUV. Taking off into a trot, I cast my glance around to find the source of the color. Maybe it was just a cat, and my paranoia was in overdrive. No other cars were around, and anyone visiting a loved one’s grave wouldn’t be creeping around in the shadows. And I knew Anthony Lombardi well enough to know he wouldn’t be caught dead acting as a peeping tom.

Still, my shoulders remained tense until I reached Constantine’s car and eased myself behind the wheel. The car groaned to life under my fingertips, and I pressed my foot on the pedal, spinning the car through slushy mud. With one eye firmly on the world behind me, I aimed the car around to the back of the cemetery, a small stretch of land just on the other side of the sloping hill. A big red sign said no parking was allowed, but since we were committing theft, I doubted a traffic violation would make that much of a difference if we were caught.

As soon as I parked the car, I flew outside and opened the trunk just as Laura and Constantine rounded the corner, red-faced and panting. We hefted the headstone into the back, the SUV groaning under the sudden heavy weight. Constantine brushed his hands on his dark jeans, leaving smears of dirt, and scanned the cemetery hillside.

“Any sign of the mystery person?” he asked in a low voice.

“I saw another flash of red, but no one showed.”

“I don’t like it,” Laura said, rubbing her forehead. Her Intuition seemed to have been kicking in a lot lately, just like mine. I felt the same uneasy prickling just above my eyebrows, though it could have been due to the graveyard theft rather than anything else.

“If it was Anthony or George, they would have tried to stop us,” Constantine said. “Hopefully it was just a curious stranger.”

“Who hopefully didn’t report us to the cops,” I said, thinking of the look on Sheriff Lynch’s face when he’d warned me to stay out of trouble. I didn’t think any explanation would save me this time. “I’m not in any rush to end up in jail again.”

“Again?” Constantine laughed, one of his rare smiles appearing on his face. “The more I learn about you, the more I realize I underestimated you. Bennett, too.”

“Speaking of, where the hell is he?” I asked. “Shouldn’t he have been in on this Rambo mission to steal a murderous shaman’s headstone so he couldn’t cast a spell to give shaman-resistant spirits free access into our world for the rest of eternity?”

Constantine’s lips quirked. “Well, when you say it like that.” He motioned for his keys, and I tossed them over. “Get in the car before someone sees us. I’ll explain on the way.”

After we’d climbed into the car and begun the drive home, Constantine let us in on my dad’s plans.

“He’s going to meet us back at your house,” he said. “He has a plan to use the headstone to lure George and Anthony out from wherever they’re hiding. Once we have them in our sights, we’ll take it from there.”

“You mean you’re going to kill Anthony,” Laura said.

“We have no other choice,” he said. “The book was clear on that much.”

“And George?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Laura, but we’ll do what we have to do,” Constantine said. “George is powerful and dangerous, and even though I’d rather not spill any more blood, if it comes to that, we will.”

CHAPTER 24

D
ad was waiting in the driveway when we pulled up in front of the old white-panelled farmhouse. The way he stood with his shoulders thrown back combined with the stern expression on his face, he barely looked like the father I remembered from my childhood. That man had been lighter, happier, full of life. The last time I’d seen him standing in this drive, he’d been waiting for me to get home from school to take me to Boston for a comic book shopping spree.

A week later, he was gone.

As we pulled up beside his truck, he made a rolling hand motion to lower the window. The window whirred down, and a moment later, Dad popped his head inside. He didn’t meet my eyes as he barked out our next instructions.

“Pull the car around back where it’s out of sight. We don’t want anyone to get ahold of this headstone while we’re making sure we have our next moves hammered out.”

Constantine eased the car into the postage-stamp backyard. The side of the SUV brushed up against the trees that lined the back edge of our property. Mom wasn’t going to be happy about the ruts in the grass when she got home from her meaningless trek to find Anthony Lombardi. My heart squeezed thinking about her. She was officially MIA, and there was nothing to do but wait.

After we climbed out of the car, we made our way inside the house where Dad was waiting for us in the living room. Astral appeared, weaving in between my father’s legs, purring and meowing and making more of a fuss than he ever did with me.

Dad squatted and ruffled Astral’s fur, rubbing his neck the way he used to every night before bed. The familiar greeting made my heart pang. Dad still hadn’t explained his total absence from my life these past few years. He hadn’t explained why he’d never he called. And he hadn’t explained why he still tried his best to avoid me now.

“Where are the other team members? “I asked. “I figured you’d have a whole crew with you on this.”

“Most of the men are wounded.” He stood and gave Constantine a somber nod. “The others are out scoping the town for any sign of the targets. We’ll rendezvous with them when we’re on the move.”

“The targets,” Laura said. “You mean George and Anthony.”

“That’s right. John and I will lure them to the headstone. When they show, we’ll take them out.”

“Just you and Const—I mean, John?” I asked. “What about me and Laura?”

“Holly.” My dad’s face lost its stony mask for a moment as he met my eyes with a piercing stare. “You’ll be staying here.”

“The hell I am.” Narrowing my eyes, I stepped closer to him, meeting his unflinching gaze head on even though he was a foot taller than me. “They have my boyfriend. This is my town. I need to be there when we take them down.”

“Holly, I need to talk to you alone,” Dad said, giving Constantine some sort of signal with his eyes. The soldier gave my dad a nod before edging out of the living room and disappearing behind the Chilean beads. Laura raised her eyebrows at me, a silent question-mark. She wouldn’t leave unless I gave her my okay.

“It’s fine, Laura,” I said.

Dad watched her back out of the living room, and when silence fell around us, he finally spoke. “I think it’s time I explained my absence in your life.”

“You think?” I crossed my arms. “It’s been years, Dad. Or should I call you Hank? Because you don’t seem too concerned about being a father to your only child.”

My dad dragged a weathered hand down his face, his jaw clenching as he stared hard at the floor. “Give me a chance to explain. I assume your mother told you she forced me to leave because of my lifestyle.”

“Your thieving lifestyle?” I said. “Of course she did.”

“Well, that’s only partly true.” Dad began to pace in front of me, his eyes darting around the living room at what must be distantly familiar artwork and trinkets, as if he’d taken a step back into the past. “She asked me to stop my cons. I refused.”

Dad sighed and sank into the couch. He looked so familiar there, so natural, so right.

“I know all of this, Dad,” I said, moving to perch across from him on Mom’s chair. “It still doesn’t explain why you’ve never be in touch, especially with everything that’s happened in the past year. Mom was sick, and you didn’t do a thing to help.”

“When I refused to quit my cons, your mother and I made a deal.” He let out a bitter laugh. “We used to do this kind of thing all the time. Make bets on life. She took me to a tarot card reader and forced me to have a reading. The deal was, as long as the cards held no hint of my future imprisonment, I could continue. Otherwise, I had to leave. We put the future of our marriage in the hands of a tarot card reader. I never should have agreed to it.”