Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (33 page)

He cried out—and I wondered if he felt
pain because he was tied to Rhonda—and if Rhonda felt it, too. So,
thinking about that, I urged that wee slipper to do its
worse.

Zacharel went down on his side, and
that's when the Powers surged forward. I took in a deep breath and
Screamed. They all dissolved like they should—

And then seconds later reformed
again.

Mother…guppy. I was fucked. Ef You SEE
Kay! Ed!

Zacharel brought his sword down on my
lower leg—

—
I couldn't remember that
kind of pain. Ever. Agony froze my lower body as I lost the grip on
my sword. It gave off one final flame and disappeared as my own
body moved from Wraith to human. I brought my foot up to see the
damage…

But there wasn't a foot. There was
just a bloody, stumpy ankle…

My vision dimmed as I stared at the
end of my ankle and my blood-soaked hands. Zacharel held up my foot
and my now-gray and dying bunny slipper. "Zoë, you were never
supposed to live, you know. Adiran was a fool to fall in love. He
should have just stuck to the plan and left Nona. But he didn't…"
He leaned down as he pointed the end of the sword at my heart.
"Because he fell in love."

Something dark appeared in the middle
of Zacharel's chest as I stared at him. It moved and twisted,
reminding me of something burrowing a hole. A few seconds later,
when Zacharel didn't skewer me with his sword, I recognized the
thing in his chest was another sword.

It was black, as if carved from
obsidian. And it was routing out a really big hole in Zacharel's
chest.

The Dominion silently screamed and
vanished. My dead bunny hit the ground beside me.

I lay on my side, staring at it. I
shivered as I shakily reached out to pet its furry little
head…

"Zoë? Zoë? Talk to me."

It was TC's voice. He was there beside
me, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. "My bunny…"

"Oh, damn it, Azrael,"
another voice said. "How do we fix
this
?"

"I don't know. We have to get her out
of here—"

"Joe," I said as their
faces dimmed.
Oh God…I lost my foot…the
mother fucker HACKED OFF MY FOOT!
"Get
Joe…help Joe…"

"Honey," TC said as he lifted me in
his arms, "you mean Halloran? He's not here, Zoë. Joe's not
here."

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ever have one of those dreams that's
so horrific and so frightening that when you wake up, you're so
relieved it was just a dream you wanna go down on one knee and
scream, "Thank ya, Jesus!"?

I've had plenty.

Unfortunately, this wasn't one of
them.

I know I floated for a long time, sort
of shifting in and out of happy talk. You know the kind of talk we
all get when we're so drunk or doped up on meds we're out of our
mind? Usually the memory is the first thing to go there. Not me. I
remembered too much of it.

And what felt like years was, in
reality, a few days. Three, to be precise.

It was New Year's Eve when I opened my
eyes. I already knew I wasn't in a regular hospital. It was too
clean, too upscale, and too…techy. This was a room in the infirmary
of the Society House. I was half-propped up on a mound of pillows,
my left arm in a sort of brace with a zillion tubes running out of
it and my right index finger decorated by a clamp.

I stared at the missing lump at the
end of the bed for a long time.

And the crazy thing was…the missing
foot itched.

Zoë?

At the sound of her voice, I got
angry. Like—really angry. I blamed her for this. She was this
all-powerful First Born and together we're supposed to have First
Choir powers. So why was my foot gone?

Yeah, it was all her fault.

Zoë, please? Talk to
me?

I stared at my foot.

Okay, then I'll talk to
you.
I felt the absence of something when
she appeared beside the bed, again in her Eshe persona. She gripped
the railing on the bed (which now made sense to have up since, you
know, I was missing a foot and might fall out) and I felt her eyes
on me. "I know you're mad at me. Bonded like this, there's very
little you and I can keep from each other. But I—"

"Where's Joe?"

I shifted my gaze from my missing foot
to her face.

She looked worried. I did not like
that look. "I don't know. I didn't see what happened to him after
you damaged his soul."

Great. More guilt. I was such a
fuck-up. "I don't understand what happened with that. I mean, he
touched me before and used me as a battery. Why did it work in the
reverse when I touched him?"

"You just answered it. He touched you
with his receiving hand. Joe works off of an instinct inherent in
most natural Witches."

"Natural?"

"He's the son of a Witch who was the
daughter of a Witch who was the daughter of a Witch. The lineage
goes on and on. Usually the sex of the natural alternates. Because
Joe was born a boy, his mother and father didn't give him the
training he really needed to harness and control what he does,
because they didn't think he'd been born into the
legacy."

"But he was."

"Yes. He told Daniel this just a few
days ago." Her expression fell and I saw very real sadness etched
into her face. "There's been so much loss and sadness,
Zoë."

"You said you didn't know where Joe
is—but you have an idea."

"I suspect Zacharel took him, same as
with Dags. He knows Joe has the Destruction Eidolon, so I'm a
little afraid he's going to…"

Oh, snap. I pushed myself up on the
bed. My foot itched like a muther. "You think Zacharel's going to
torture him to get to it."

"Yes. I do. Joe may be a Witch, but
he's still very vulnerable. Zacharel has Rhonda, and she knows
Joe's weaknesses."

"I'm not sure he has any."

"He has one." Inanna/Eshe looked
directly at me. "You."

My face grew hot. "I'm not
having this conversation right now because I am
not
his weakness."

"Why do you do that? Why do you deny
others' feelings for you as well as deny yours for
them?"

"I don't have those kinds of feelings
for Joe Halloran." I felt like I was protesting a little too much.
And a little too loud. "No matter what, we have to find Dags and
Joe now. We have to end this."

"I want it
all
to end. I want to set
things right."

Something tickled on the edge of my
senses. Sort of like one of those annoying niggles. Ever get those?
I do. It's like when you stand at the front door and look
around—and you just know you've forgotten something, but you can't
for the life of you remember what.

Until you're already halfway down the
road. It's the feeling that something isn't right. Or maybe it is.
Or something's trying to tell me something but I'm too stupid to
hear it.

"Inanna, how can this ever be put
right? And why in the hell was Zacharel talking smack about my dad?
It just feels like I have holes missing…" I saw my missing foot
again. Or the space there. "What am I gonna do? I can't walk,
Inanna."

"I take the blame for this, Zoë. It's
my fault. My full responsibility."

My heart plummeted. It was my fault. I
was stupid enough to take on a Dominion, having had success once
before. I knew the deck was stacked against us. The Eidolon changed
the stakes and gave Zacharel the edge. I should have grabbed Joe
and did that teleporting thing out of there—even if I did have to
drag him through the Abysmal for a second.

"No…"

"Zoë, it is my fault. Because I made
it happen."

Wha—? I frowned at her. "You made it
possible for him to hack my foot? I don't see it. He was too
powerful."

"No. He's not. Not really. The
Eidolons are not little Gods, Zoë. They're not invincible. They're
pieces of a much larger mistake. Their creation was supposed to…"
She hung her head.

I scratched my head. "I'm not
following."

Her head snapped up, and
she vanished.
I think your visitor should
answer your questions. And please, Zoë. Listen to him.

The door opened before I could figure
out why she'd gone all cryptic.

TC stepped in, posh in his trench
coat, black jeans, and combat boots. He held the door open as
another figure strolled in behind him.

Adiran Martinique.

"What the fucking hell?"

TC gave me a crooked smile as he bent
down to kiss my forehead. If I hadn't have been so freaked out, I'd
have smacked him. "Yeah, she's your daughter, all
right."

"There's a good deal of Nona in there
as well," Dad said as he came around the foot of the bed and stood
to my right. My gaze tracked him all the way around, and I made
ready to shift and scramble his ass if I needed to.

"Your damned coat cost Daniel's life."
I'd been thinking that all along. If I hadn't have been weak, I
could have prevented Gabriel from putting that damned necklace on
Daniel's neck—and he'd be alive still.

It could have all been
prevented.

So, why didn't I believe
that?

"Damn it, kid. I didn't think you'd
try and shift with that thing on you. I told you I made it from
essence. It was Ethereal in nature. The only reason it didn't kill
you is because you're half mine."

"I don't claim you."

"I'll always claim you,
Zoëtrope."

"Stop calling me that."

"Then stop acting like a
four-year-old."

I raised my monitor-clamped
finger and pointed it at him. "See? That's the only age you can
remember, because guess what—you were fucking
gone
for anything after that.
Yeah…skipped town. Out the door. And then you came back and shut me
up in that—"

"Will you stop bringing that up?" Dad
shouted at me. And it wasn't some maniacal freako shouting. This
actually sounded like what I believed a father shouting at his kid
would sound like. It's what the neighbors' dad had sounded
like.

Regardless of why, I stopped
talking.

Dad moved away and put his hand to the
back of his head, then he returned to the bed and leaned over it.
"Did it ever occur to you that I put you in that damn Throne
because it was the safest place for you? Weren't you listening when
I said that in the preserve, Zoë? Everything I have done, I have
done to protect you and your mother. That Eidolon was supposed to
banish all existence of your power from you. But I was too stupid
to tell your mother what it was I was doing—so she hid it away from
you. I thought keeping her in the dark was actually helping. What I
didn't realize…" he gave a long sigh "…was that it was pushing her
further and further away. Until I lost her in the arms of that
bloodsucker."

Dumbfounded
didn't even come close to halfway describe how I
felt at that moment. Did I believe him? He was saying everything I
wanted to hear, just like he had at the preserve. Could I even risk
my heart again? Did I want to?

"Zoë." Dad put his hands on the
railing. I got the impression he wanted to hold my hand but was
afraid to try. My dad…afraid of anything? "I don't want what's
happening to happen. But I got caught up in the politics, in the
power, and in the whole idea of exploring the planes beyond the
ones we suspected. So when Domas came to me, he told me I had the
correct DNA to help him with his experiments."

"Don't do this," I said. "I can't
believe you."

"I don't blame you. I might
not agree with everything the Seraphim wants, but I can't stand
around and allow a rogue Dominion the opportunity to try and use
the
Grimoire
to
destroy the Throne, no matter who's seated there. Zacharel must be
stopped."

Pushing myself down into the pillows,
I glanced at TC. He had touched my left hand, the one caught up in
all the tubing. "TC?"

"Listen to him, Zoë. You have to know
this."

"Did you? Know this?"

"Some of it. But not all of it. I
picked up bits from Inanna, and from Geist. What you have to know
right now is that, for a while, we're going to have to trust the
ones we've been fighting. We're going to have to work together to
stop this idiot."

"I understand that. I figured that out
when Dad told me about the rogue. But where's Geist? I thought I
was talking to him, that you'd sent him to me like you said you
would, but it turned out to be Zacharel. And he said they'd shut
down all communication with the Abysmal Plane when we were
fighting, and then I couldn't sense you. I couldn't…" I looked at
my missing foot.

"I'm so sorry, luv. I found out too
late Geist isn't in the Abysmal Plane, nor is he in the Ethereal.
In fact, it was his disappearance that triggered talks between
myself and the Seraphim. That's when you couldn't contact the
Abysmal or me, but he couldn't contact the Ethereal, either. When
the Seraphim and I meet, both planes seal as a precautionary
measure. We suspect Geist is with Dags."