Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (27 page)

Joe yelled and dropped his shield.
Immediately the others were on him, swinging swords, and he was
fighting back, a mixture of gunfire and flashing magic.

Daniel's body shuddered, and I could
hear Inanna screaming inside of his head. She was fighting the
power of the stone, fighting it with everything she had. Daniel
held on with the little strength that remained, but when it was
over, she was gone, and Daniel lay on his back, his chest heaving
up and down, his eyes staring up at the sky.

"That's much better." Gabriel looked
at me. "Now…I could do two things. I could let Gibbons finish what
he started that night, or I could just let Daniel continue on his
natural course."

I didn't understand. I looked from
Gibbons to Daniel. Hell, I'd rather take Daniel.

And then I remembered what Daniel's
course had been before Inanna had claimed him.

Daniel sat up slowly and lowered his
head. I pushed myself up against the concrete. I was so damn tired
when I finally got Dad's coat off of me. Once it was gone my
strength returned….but I couldn't shift. I tried again to unfurl my
wings, but…nothing.

"Residual effects," Gabriel said as
she stood and watched me for a few minutes. "That, and we've
successfully cut the Phantasm off from the Physical
Plane."

What? I reached out with that other
part of me, and she was right. I couldn't sense him. I looked down
at my arm, and his mark was gray, like a faded tattoo. What…how had
she done that?

"Zoë…" Daniel said as he pushed
himself up onto his feet. Blood from his wounds covered his chest,
neck and dripped from the fingers of his damaged arm. "It's so very
nice to see you again. Now…where were we? Oh…yes…you were next on
my list to kill." He looked at Gabriel, who gave him a gun. He
loaded a bullet in the chamber. "May I?"

"Let's give her a few
minutes," Gabriel looked at me. "I'm sorry, Zoë, but you're just
going to have to…
run!
"

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I ran. I ran as fast as I could given
the state I was in. I ducked past a couple walking hand-in-hand and
then dove into a cluster of trees. I had to get Daniel as far away
from people as possible. He was insane again. And he would kill if
he believed someone was going to get in his way.

I stumbled once and landed on my left
knee. My leg went numb from the knee down, but I managed to pull
myself up by grabbing onto a skinny birch. I was still by the lake,
running in the woods there as fast as I could. I called out to
Geist, to TC, to anyone I trusted.

But I did not call out to my
father.

He was the reason I was in this shape.
Offering me his coat as a means of making me feel there was a nice
guy in there…and then pretending to care about Mom. Asshole. I
planned on killing him myself. I didn't know how, but at that
moment I vowed he would die by my hand. And Mom would just have to
hate me for the rest of her life.

I heard him charging after me,
crashing through the brush. I could lead him out into Atlanta
traffic and hope someone ran him over, but I didn't really want to
hurt him. I wanted Inanna to get back in him.

Inanna…oh damn. I really didn't know
if First Borns could live for long outside of a host. Could they?
Had Jason ever told me? I thought as soon as their host died,
they…

Wait… Daniel wasn't dead. Did that
mean there was some tenuous strand of hope there? That maybe she
was holding on by a thread of hope? I got this crazy picture in my
head of Inanna as a balloon tethered to Daniel's wrist as he ran
through the woods, batting the balloon all over the
place.

The ground disappeared out from under
me, and I tumbled forward. I'd found a ditch that filtered water
from the road into the lake, and I wasn't ready for it. I felt and
heard the crack when my ankle twisted, and I went down hard. But I
didn't have time to sit and feel that pain. I tried again to
shift…and luckily I got my bunny slippers. They growled and took
care of the pain in my ankle as I got back up and ran through the
woods again—

Gibbons appeared in front of me. When
I stopped, a pile of dead leaves kicked up in front of me. He was
smiling at me, grinning. "Need to finish this,
Zoëtrope."

I was breathing really, really hard.
"You….can't call….me that…"

He pointed to his face. "Your Dad said
I could. See?"

"No…you didn't have….that when ….you
attacked…you changed it…"

"Are you sure, little Zoëtrope? It was
a long time ago…and you'd always told me you were bad with memory.
You were pretty sure you had ADD, talked about it at dinner after
the play."

ADD? Play? Dinner? What the fuck was
he talking about? I'd never done any of those things with Karl
Gibbons.

He started laughing as he moved with
me, mirroring me with the trees between us. I could hear Daniel
getting closer and closer. "Aw….you don't get it, do
you?"

I licked my lips and finally calmed my
breathing. "What, that you're a freak that needs to be put
down?"

"Oh, I've already been put down. My
maker saw to that when he found out I'd failed. See…you need to
come and talk to me. Find out the truth. You want the truth, don't
you? The truth about Barry Stephens?"

Barry? "You killed Barry!"

He laughed again.
"No…I
was
Barry!"

I heard the crack of the branch a
split second before Daniel grabbed me. I managed to kick back with
my foot, and my slipper grew teeth and latched onto Daniel's shin.
He yelled and let go, and I would have gotten away if the damn
slipper hadn't have found him so tasty.

"Let…go!" I told it, and it did, but
it was too late. Gibbons was in my way again and Daniel was getting
to his feet.

Zoë…

"Now, little girl, you just come to me
and old Danny boy here, and we'll take care of you—"

Daniel looked at Karl, pointed his
gun, and shot Karl Gibbons dead in the face. The man dropped like a
stone, dead—again. "He was on my list, too," Daniel said, and
redirected his attention on me.

Joe had told me that Daniel had become
a bit obsessed with finding Karl Gibbons after he'd learned of my
rape. It made sense that no matter how insane he was now, he was
not going to pair up with Karl. But that also shot down any chance
I had at finding out what the hell Karl had meant when he said he
was Barry Stephens.

Zoë…please…

Daniel held gun out and then pointed
it at me. "Well, well…this is where we were nine months ago, isn't
it? Only Cooper was too stupid to stay out of the way."

Please, Zoë…let me
in.

Wait…was that Inanna's voice? It
sounded so different than before. Not as strong or commanding, but
more of a soft sigh.

Let me in. Invite me in
and I can help you. If he shoots you, he'll kill you.

"Why don't you just get back into
him?" Yeah, I was talking out loud, and it made Daniel
hesitate.

Not while he's wearing the
Eidolon. Let me in and we can take it off of him, then I can
return.

"You sure?"

"Who are you talking to?" Daniel was
looking around him. "Is that witch here? Is she? That demon
possessor? That Horror you infected me with. You're are all demons.
Devils. And it's up to me to bring down the righteousness of the
Lord!"

Please…let me in so I can
stop the madness.

Let her in. I was one of her Rights.
But a First Born inside of a Revenant?

Right now, I didn't have a lot of
choice. I could hear voices somewhere. The Powers and Gabriel were
coming. They could grab the Eidolon after he killed me. And if they
found Dags? What would happen to him if they banished the Familiars
the way they'd banished Inanna?

Well…I don't think so.

"I invite you in, Inanna." It sounded
lame out loud. But damn…it sure packed a wallop.

My body had been overshadowed
before…when I wasn't in it. And there were a few times during this
wild adventure of mine when a Daemon or a Symbiont had hitched a
ride. But nothing…nothing compared to this.

Voices, inside of my head. A cacophony
of voices and opinions, suggestions, knowledge, understanding,
disbelief…. I was overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of what
comprised the being known as Inanna. And just there, to the right
of my mind, was Daniel. The man I'd loved. The cop that knew right
from wrong. And he was smiling at me.

May I take control this
once?

Her voice was changed again. It wasn't
as if I were hearing her from outside, but from inside. And the
voice—though it had her pitch and tone—had a little of mine as
well. "Yes." I was too messed up from the crazy in my head. It was
as if my mind had gone from a broom closet to the size of an entire
planet. There were vast rooms, staircases, observatories, fields,
castles…so many memories. So many things to see….

And in the center was a book. It
wasn't Dags's book. It as much smaller. Thinner. And the symbol on
the front cover made no sense to me. Not at first.

Inanna took over my body and shifted
me into Wraith, and I kicked the gun out of Daniel's hand. He was
stunned for maybe a split second before he came at me, and he
wrestled with me. He struck me, I struck him, and then we were
tumbling back down that damn ditch and into the trees
there.

We landed with me on top, and in a
final move Inanna reached down and grabbed the Eidolon and ripped
it from his neck.

She left me at that moment and I was
alone back inside of little me. I collapsed on the ground and
Daniel fell on all fours beside me. I sensed she was back with him,
and then he straightened up on his knees, held up his hand, and
yelled out for someone to stop.

Six shots echoed in the air over me. I
wasn't sure where they came from at first, and I was so very, very
tired. I wanted to stay where I was and just sleep.

Until I saw a dark hole in the center
of Daniel' forehead. Another one at the base of his neck, and
several more spread over his chest as blood pooled from all of
them.

He fell forward next to me.

Dead.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It was one of those moments of instant
replay again. The kind where you see the events happen slowly and
there's nothing you can do about it. Like being in a car accident
and you can't make it stop. I looked to my right, into Daniel's
dead eyes, and watched as his soul rose out of his body.

Detective George Mastiff and Constable
Alfred Carter came into my line of sight, towering just past
Daniel's body. Both of them had their guns drawn. Constable Mae
Theotokos hovered above me and put her hand to my neck. "She iz
alive."

In slow motion, I watched as Joe
appeared and slid into home as he grabbed for his best friend and
former partner. But Daniel wasn't going to move anymore. Joe's face
was a mirror of the agony I was feeling inside, but I was just too
tired to move. Too tired to blink or to speak or to even think. I
felt my eyes burn and knew I was leaking over my cheeks.

Zoë, I am so…very
sorry….

Inanna's agony was as palpable as my
own as she reseated herself inside of me. The second joining, only
minutes past the first, was nothing more than the return of an old
friend. She made the aching go away. And she cried inside with me.
I knew then that Inanna really had been in love with Daniel. And
for now, she would carry a part of him with her, as she'd carried
her previous hosts.

I admired Daniel as his soul watched
the events. He looked good. Better than before. And then he caught
my eye and he smiled. He spoke to me, but there was no voice. It
didn't matter…I'd learned how to read lips.

Everything's okay, Zoë.
Live, for me. I love you. I always have.

I closed my eyes as I felt him vanish.
Joe and I could have been his tether, but neither of us wanted that
for him. So he passed forward into bliss.

While I sank deeper into a darkening
pain.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I sat in one of those weird, cushioned
folding chairs they have in hospital rooms—the ones that fold down
into a makeshift bed. Not all hospitals had them anymore. Lots of
facilities had been remodeled and this type of retro chair wasn't
part of the new look.

But they were here in EUH.

I watched as the nurse did her daily
thing—checking vitals, changing IV bags, switching catheter bags.
And then the doctor would come in and do his checks, read the
chart, shake his head, and then leave. After that, the room
remained pretty quiet.

Except for me. I was prone to burst
into tears now and then. No warning. No real idea why. Except for
the hole I felt in my chest. The aching, drowning feeling I'd had
since I'd woken and realized…it hadn't been a dream.