Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (36 page)

I Probably Shouldn’t Trust Me Either

The elevator doors blew inward, just missing me as I stepped back into the dark. It took a few long seconds to interpret what I was seeing/hearing/smelling. Leo stood in the shaft, wreathed in shadows, stinking of combat and explosive residue and his own blood. His swords were circling in La Destreza. To his right Katie fought, her swords whirling, her clothing catching the light, pulling it all to her, her grace and brilliance seeming to make the shadows darker. The two stepped toward the dungeon, toward me, feet lifting lightly, as if in a dance. But they had been injured with both swords and gunfire, numerous times, and crimson stained their clothes.

Peregrinus followed, lunging, lunging, lunging, his swords flashing. Humans took cover behind him, their guns firing at the dancing vamps. From the room where Bruiser and the others waited, shots were returned, steady, targeted shots, not random cover fire. Two of Peregrinus’ humans fell. The street gang raced behind the walls, out of sight. Their guns fell silent.

The gunfire assured me that whatever Bruiser and his boys had planned, it wasn’t to let Peregrinus win, which meant that Bethany was still on Leo’s side. That was good to know.

Katie moved out from Leo’s side as the fighting spread past my hiding place, into the room. That put her in line with Peregrinus. In my line of fire.

Peregrinus was dressed in plate metal from head to foot, looking like Iron Man, if Iron Man had worn blue armor
splashed with bloody trim like macabre lace. He also wore the quartz crystal necklace, with the smoky inclusion of a dragon.

And Katie was still in my way. If I missed.

Peregrinus lunged again and again, moving farther into the room. Faster than even Beast could follow. At his back another form appeared, landing in a crouch as if dropped from the floor above.

Holy crap. The Devil.

She was still alive.

Peregrinus had fed her quickly enough to save her.
Impossible
. Unless he himself had already fed from the Son of Darkness. Yeah. Sure. He had done that the first thing when he got here. Drink. Get stronger. Drink down his humans, Naturaleza-style, the ones he’d left in a drained pile. Then start whatever ceremony he had been planning on. Which, if priestesses weren’t necessary for the change, could mean that the Devil was an Onorio . . .
Holy crap
.

The Devil raced through the fighters, avoiding everything, every sword, every gun, her own swords spinning with the grace of angels’ wings, steel wings of death. Her fighting method was different from other vamps’. Not just lunge-lunge-lunge, but rather step-step-lunge, step-lunge, step-step-lunge, like a dance. Add in a lunging pirouette with a lunging sword sweep, like a bird’s wing with death on the flight feathers, and it was beautiful and deadly and mesmerizing. Around her, three human fighters fell, their cries and blood and the stench of bowels released in death adding to the chaos. And with the rhythm of the Devil’s steps, her dance of death, I had a clear shot.

Now,
I whispered to Beast. Together we stepped into the Gray Between. Time stuttered and shuddered and slowed. Stopped. Or nearly so. Though the Devil’s swords still moved, ever so slowly.

I slid between her blades, easing between the cutting edges. The swords slid an inch. Two more. Three.
Careful.
Careful,
I thought. If Beast lost control, I would be in several pieces before my eyes could blink. I wasn’t sure I could heal if I was in pieces. I had never died that way before. A shaft of light thrust through the path of the Devil’s blades, illuminating Bruiser, leaping high, toward her. His mouth was open in a scream, his face full of wrath and lethal purpose. His blades were out to the sides, like a raptor in flight. But he wasn’t
going to survive the leap. Faster than he was falling through the air, the Devil’s blades turned toward him. Only an inch at a time, but I could see the trajectory of the swords and the bloody death to come. My heart clenched, a painful contraction.
No . . .

I stepped close and placed the working end of the Judge against the side of the Devil’s neck, into the freshly healed scars left by vamp fangs. Making sure her swords were still out of cutting range, and Bruiser out of range of any through-and-through .410 pellets, I squeezed the trigger. It took a lot more muscle than I expected. And it took a lot longer. I squeezed and squeezed, muscles trembling, the trigger moving slowly. Finally, the gun clicked. Shook.

The explosion was a visual thing as much as a tactile experience, the barrel shoving back in my hands, leaving a small space between the barrel and the Devil’s neck. A puff of hot gray smoke appeared, burning her skin, a low roar that grew in volume. Pellets emerged in a tight, narrow pattern.

My hands fought the kick, which was slow and heavy, trying to shove my arms up. The pellets and something plastic-like began to depress the skin of her neck, pierce the flesh. Disappear inside her. Spread out, the pattern widening. Her cervical spine snapped. I held my position as the barrel emptied.

As soon as the barrel of the gun was empty, I ducked and backed away. And my belly began to cramp. It started faster this time, and harder. Deeper. I grunted with pain and doubled over. I stumbled and dropped to one knee, gripping my belly with one hand, while the other still held the Judge. I managed a partial breath and tilted my head to see my handiwork.

Nothing had happened. The smoke from the shot still filled the air. I breathed it in, smelling blood, barely tingeing the air. Human blood, smelling a lot like Onorio blood. The Devil’s blood.

I had just killed a human with malice aforethought, with malevolence and planning. An assassination. I had killed a human while I was in no danger of my own life. I had just committed murder. I blew out a breath, forced myself up into a crouch, my guts on fire. Lurching, I reversed my path through the fighting until my back touched the wall. The brick was cold and wet and slick. The Devil’s swords faltered. A faint hesitation in movement. I watched as shotgun pellets burst from her throat. Out the far side of her neck. Her head tilted. Her eyes
started going wide. Her knees went weak. Time sped in juddering, shuddering motions, like stop-and-go photography.

Bruiser was landing within the path of the Devil’s swords, his arms beginning to fling outward to deflect the Devil’s strikes. He would have survived the landing. He might even have survived the Devil’s assault. I could have disabled her. I could have done any number of nonlethal things to assure Bruiser’s life. Instead I killed her.

No one would thank me. Not the cops she had killed. Not their families. Not Reach, whom she had tortured.

I am a murderer. An arm of vengeance.
The words were bitter in my thoughts.

Beast huffed in grim delight.
Beast is best hunter.

In for a dollar, in for a death.
I forced myself upright and walked to the vamp, approaching Peregrinus from behind. He had dropped his short sword and was lifting a hand, his fingers nearly touching the crystal quartz prison on his chest. He was getting ready to use it, to force the hatchling to work for him, to twist time. He was going to ride the
arcenciel
. At his side, Bethany also reached, her black eyes glittering, her gold earrings and beads halted in flight, her face fully vamped out. Desire and avarice wrenched her expression into something feral and fierce. If she got the crystal, things might go from pan to fire.

I pushed my body past the pain and reached around. Slid my fingers between Peregrinus’ hand and the necklace. Took the crystal quartz that hung around his neck, gripped it in one hand, and yanked. The thong holding it in place snapped and flew free, suspended in the air. Wrapping around my wrist with a quick bite of pain as the leather ends linked with my speed, my bubble in time. The crystal was cold in my hand, like holding dry ice, a burning frost. I curled my fist tighter and turned away from the fighting.

Nausea flooded up my throat and I gagged. My abdomen coiled and spiraled and knotted. I vomited and the splash that hit the wall was pure blood.
That can’t be good.

I fell and felt a sword pass slowly over me, the roar of battle like a far-off jet engine, battering my eardrums. I cradled the crystal against my body as I heaved, and heaved. More and more blood erupted from me. The world spun drunkenly. I had lost too much blood. Something inside me had ruptured and it wasn’t healing over, not while I was in the bubble of time.

Price,
Beast thought at me.
Price is high. Must stop now.

I left Peregrinus fighting the two vamps, knowing that Bethany had been thwarted in whatever her goals might have been. Bruiser and the other Onorios would protect Leo, Katie, and Grégoire, no matter what Bethany might have wanted or planned. And without the crystal, without riding the
arcenciel
, and without the Devil, Peregrinus was done.

I looked at the thing hanging on the wall of Leo’s dungeon, believing in my gut that it needed to be beheaded. Beast’s fear response might be the only proof, but I trusted it more than I trusted logic or evidence. Of all the things in the dungeon, in the sub-five basement,
that
psycho thing needed killing. I couldn’t get there, do the deed, and get the
arcenciel
up, outside, and free before I died, however, not without blood in my veins, so that was a moral decision I didn’t have to make.

I took the crystal to the elevator shaft and looked up. I could see part of Eli’s face, a few floors up, leaning over the edge and trying to get a view. He had probably heard the Judge fire by now.

Still in the gray place of the change, the energies moved around me like black fireflies, but slower, jerky, not fluid and smooth. I bent and set the crystal on the clay floor. I snapped open the pocket on the thigh holster Bruiser had given me and pulled out the hatchling’s scale and set it beside the crystal.

I shouted, “Soul! I’ve got the hatchling!”

From behind, I heard a sound, a single ringing bell, as sword blade impacted sword blade. The note rang out for what felt like seconds, low and deep and sonorous. Above me, a ray of light appeared and illuminated the shaft. A flashlight had been turned on and was shining down.

From the dungeon came the low, deep clang of swords and the first boom of the Judge reverberating. Time was catching up with me.

I knelt, pulled a vamp-killer, and reversed it. I brought the hilt down on the smoky crystal. It shattered slowly with tiny cracks and splits and a near-metallic clang. A black metallic claw emerged, followed by a shoulder and wing, all metal, and covered by spines. It occurred to me that, for the moment, the dungeon might be the best place for me. I backed away, back into the scion lair, as
time
in the Gray Between, and the bubble of time around the previously imprisoned
arcenciel
, synchronized into its own version of slo-mo.

The imprisoned
arcenciel
leaped from the crystal quartz into the air. In midflight, her wings beginning to spread, she changed from metallic to a rainbow of lights. Landed on the floor of the elevator shaft several floors above, next to Eli’s head, still looking down. Lights like a dozen rainbows shifted from her like pixie dust. She called, a ringing, silver tone, like the sound of a thousand bells and the warmth of sunlight. She looked back once and met my eyes. She called again, the sound like carillons ringing. With a leap, she flew out of sight, toward the outer door, which Eli had left open and unguarded for just this moment. I fell to my butt, the pain wrenching as if I were being cut in two. I had committed murder tonight, killed without combat, with sneak attack. An assassination. The death roiled in my stomach and burned there like acid. The Devil had needed to die, but her life and death sat on my soul like weights.

I understood why Joses had worn an
arcenciel
. I understood why vamps wanted them. Riding one let them do, in a limited way, what the
arcenciels
and Beast could do naturally—enter the Gray Between and move outside of time. But without the pain of the
price
placed on me/us by an angel.

For now, Joses was a prisoner, and the
arcenciel
was free. It might not be perfect, but it was good enough.

Now no one had access to folded time, to time bubbles, but me—if I was willing to nearly die—and my Beast. And the
arcenciels
.

And maybe the Anzû.

Crap
. I sheathed my blade. Oh well. Nothing was perfect. Nothing.

I vomited blood one last time, falling forward onto the clay floor beside the scale left behind by the
arcenciel
and the shattered crystal prison. I bounced, my head turned to see into the battleground. My hand landed beside me, still holding the Judge. My skin was white-white-white, bluish, nearly purple, empty of blood and low on oxygen. And still my guts pulled and tore and the sick taste of blood and stomach acid coated my mouth.

Change,
Beast thought at me.
Now
.

Reaching into the Gray Between, I sought her form. Time began to slide forward in blocks of action, quaking, trembling motions still too slow for reality. The explosion of the Judge still echoed. The screams of battle ripped across my eardrums, faster now. And again, faster still, as time began to unfold.

A light as bright as a phosphorescent torch lit the elevator shaft. Peregrinus danced back, and back, into the light, his feet moving around me where I lay. The fight followed him, his men firing, the sounds like a dozen bass drums beating all at once.

In the same instant, the Devil fell and Grégoire whirled and leaped to cut across Peregrinus’ torso. Brother fighting brother, the oldest tale of them all. Peregrinus’ knees buckled, but he wasn’t finished. The vamp was too strong, too old, too powerful for most weapons. He had, after all, brought the Devil back to life. Moving as if my hand weighed fifty pounds, I released the Judge and pulled the bag holding the sliver of the Blood Cross. Ripped the bag free from my neck. Slid the pointed end from the drawstring opening.