Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (38 page)

The floor gave way beneath me and I
fell. I heard TC yelling out for me as my wings unfurled and
stopped my rather quick descent. I managed to hover in the stars.
But there wasn't anything above me or below me but that vast
expanse. "TC? Hello? Zacharel, what the fuck?" My voice echoed out
around me.

"Such language, Wraith."

It sounded like he was below me. So I
eased myself down, sort of sensing this was all still an illusion.
Once I was on both feet, the expanse disappeared and I was in an
underground room.

Actually, it looked like an
underground dungeon. Cages lined one of the walls. Chains hung from
the ceiling, and scattered around me were ancient instruments of
torture. A guillotine, a rack, an iron maiden, etc.

Sort of gave a new meaning to the
phrase "going medieval on you."

"You don't have them, do
you?"

I turned to face him as my wings
curled under and vanished. "I do."

"I don't see where. Unless that
come-fuck-me getup you're wearing has pockets in some very
interesting orifices."

"Damn, Zach. Are all Ethereals as
potty-mouthed and asinine as you?"

"No. I'm unique." He put his hands
behind his back. "So…do we jump at each other again, Zoë? As we did
in the club that night? Oh, by the way, did you enjoy your little
feast?"

I swallowed. I didn't want to remember
I'd devoured souls that night. "Where is Joe?"

"Oh, he's right over there. You'll
have to go look to get a good view of him. I'm afraid he's not in
the best of health."

Shit.

I sprinted to the row of cells and
found him in the second one.

It was worse than I
thought.

Dried blood stuck to most of the floor
as well as his clothing. He lay on his left side, faced away from
me. But I could see his bruised cheeks, his bloodied lip. His left
arm rested at an odd angle against his thigh….

When my gaze traveled down to his
right hand—there wasn't one. His forearm ended in a clumsily
wrapped swath of bloody cloth. His left hand was also missing,
replaced by a bundle of tightly wrapped, bloody rags.

"It was so easy to take him—after
all—you'd already taken so much of his strength. I salute you for
making it easy for me. Alas, all he had to do was give me the
Destruction Eidolon. But he refused. Over and over again. I'd heard
a witch's power rested in their hands. Much like the Guardian's
hands. One hand receives while the other hand gives. I'm afraid
your cop didn't want to tell me which was which, so I took them so
he couldn't escape. If he'd have just told me which one gave, I'd
have only removed the one."

I tried to sieve through the bars and
found I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried.

"Can't do it. You see, I've used the
Eidolon I appropriated from your mother to reinforce everything
down here. If you break it, it reforms." He reached up and dug
under his collar to retrieve Mom's necklace. The green stone
wrapped in silver. "These are such ingenious little
devices."

Ever see colors with emotions? I
always had. Blue when I was content. Green when I was happy. Purple
when I was depressed.

And red.

Red when I was angry.

There were several shades of red in
the universe.

And I saw them all in that
moment.

A direct attack wouldn't help. He'd
somehow blocked TC from being with me, which meant he had a ward
strong enough to hold the Phantasm back. I guessed he'd had
Rhonda's help. She was nearby. And so was Dags.

My main concern was Joe. All that
blood…was he even still alive?

I thought a mile a second, looking
into my Wraith-y toolbox for something I could use against this
asshole. But the only thing that kept coming to mind were the
Eidolons themselves. Each was powerful—but even powerful things had
weaknesses. They all bore a type of kryptonite to explore. Dad told
me there was a riddle in the Eidolons.

But he never gave me the actual
riddle. So…maybe it wasn't something tangible, but
something…ethereal.

The one around his neck
created.
Creation
was a vast word, meaning many things, subject to
interpretation. If it were the opposite, then it would be
destruction.

But Joe already had a Destruction
Eidolon. I had Banishing, Possession, and Command.

What was the answer? What would give
me the upper hand?

"So quiet, Wraith? I doubt he has much
time left, so I suggest you give me the Eidolons and I will allow
you to say your goodbyes."

And there was another, deeper shade of
red on the horizon.

Red. Destruction. Anger.

Green. Happy. Creation.

Blue. Contentment. Banishment? I
thought I'd started to see a correlation in the colors—but how
could Banishment be contentment? Unless it was one of those weird
meanings. Like, when the stone had banished my powers as a child,
I'd grown more content out of ignorance? Banishing something could
lead to being content, I supposed.

But purple? Possession. Depression.
Yeah, depression did feel a bit like being possessed. Not feeling
in control.

Command. That stone was clear. No
color. No emotion. The dismissal of emotion from
everything.

The opposite of Creation is
Destruction. The opposite of Possession is Command. The opposite of
Banishing is—

Acceptance.

One could banish something, or one
could accept it.

But how could this be helpful for us?
Or in defeating Zacharel?

Zoë, ever since this
happened to you, I sense you've kept it at a distance. That you've
believed in your heart that if you lost yourself to what you were
born to, you'd damn your soul for all eternity.

I swallowed.
Yes.

But what is worse than
where we are? Joe is dying—I can feel it. Dags is near, and so is
the witch. Everything you hold dear is within your grasp. All you
have to do is take it.

You mean I have to accept
it.

There was a long
pause.
Yes. Just as you accepted
me.

I needed the Eidolons—but I'd left
them at the Society House and in my mom's shop.

Bring them to you. You
made them. Now remake them.

Was it that easy? Could it really hurt
to try? I thought about both Boxes, made a mental image of the two
of them merging into one, and then made another image of that
single Box beside me—

My hidden Box formed to my right. I
didn't call it or summon it. It was just…there. Gone from Mom's
shop, the Society House, to here in Between.

I reached into the air and slipped my
hand into it. I knew by just feeling which was the Banishing stone
as I pushed the read-later letter away.

Once I pulled it free, the blue stone
lit up like a tiny azure torch.

"You…you have the Banishing stone. I
thought Gabriel took that from you." He stepped forward. "Give it
to me. With that I can banish that damned, irritating
Familiar…"

I didn't bother answering him. I
thought of him as nothing more than an irritant bent on personal
gain at the expense of innocents.

I held it in my left palm in full view
for the Dominion to see.

He reached out to take it.

"You see, Zacharel.
I
do
know which
hand gives and which hand receives." I closed my fingers over the
stone.

Now, a year after my meeting with TC,
I accepted who and what I was, as I touched Zacharel's outstretched
hand with the other.

My eyes met his. "And which hand
takes."

Chapter Forty-One

A bright indigo light engulfed the
room. Zacharel screamed as the stone sank into my hand and made
itself a part of me.

In that instant, I knew something I
didn't know before. My dad was right. There are six
Eidolons.

The sixth was me.

I was the sixth stone. I am
Acceptance.

Warmth like the naked body of a lover
filled me, covered my skin, and I threw my head back, my arms out
wide and my wings unfurled, all in preparation to
accept—finally—what I was.

What I
am
.

I am the Wraith, the only one of her
kind.

And I was really fucking sick of
assholes like this one stomping on my good time.

When I opened my eyes, the room was
the same, but Zacharel was nowhere to be seen. The green Eidolon
lay on the ground, and I grabbed it up before I turned back to the
cell and yanked the door off the hinges. I felt a slight tingle as
my slippers stepped into the puddles of half-dried blood around
Joe. He was deathly white, his lips pale and his eyes closed. I
lifted him to me and touched his face with my ashen
hands.

"Joe…please…don't leave me. I can't do
this by myself." Ice-cold skin. My eyes burned as I made myself
hold back tears. I didn't know if Zacharel was gone or dead or sent
back to the Ethereal, and at that moment I didn't care. All I
wanted was to fix what I was responsible for.

Me. I'd been the one to make Joe too
weak to fight back.

I glanced around the cell but didn't
see his hands. I had one of his fingers safely tucked away—but what
freakin' good would that do? Joe was a human! Not a monster…like
me.

You accepted, Zoë.
Self-recrimination isn't going to make this situation
better.

"Better?" I pulled him to my chest and
stroked his hair. A small part of me was amazed how soft it was. He
always wore it spiked up. I kept looking at his eyes, willing them
to open as a part of me feared they never would. "How can I make
this better? Inanna? I'm no God. I'm a Wraith. I take the dead. I…"
And abruptly I knew the answer. "I protect the planes."

Yes.

Had I ever proclaimed that before? I
couldn't remember ever saying it myself. "And—they have broken the
law."

Yes.

"The Seraphim, his First and Second
Choir. They have profaned the most fundamental law governing the
Inner Planes and tried to manipulate the Physical."

I felt the tug as Inanna moved from my
body and created a ghostly image of Eshe to my left. "Yes. And it
is you who must punish them. Until you accept all of your gifts,
that isn't possible."

Punish the Seraphim? I looked at her,
shaking my head. "I—how can I punish a Throne?"

"By taking from them what they hold
most dear. What is it the Seraphim wants?"

I looked down at Joe. "I
thought I knew the answer to that. And until a few minutes ago, I
would have said he wanted the
Grimoire
."

"But what can the
Grimoire
truly do? The
Seraphim's ultimate goal has always been to shut the Abysmal Plane
away from the Physical. The
Grimoire
doesn't contain a spell that
can do that."

I kept my gaze on Joe. "Then he only
wants the book because of the Revenant spell, and he wants it
because of who it's in." I looked up at her. "He believes that by
controlling Dags, he can control me."

"By controlling everyone you love. The
best form of control is to take away everything you hold dear."
Inanna/Eshe knelt down beside me. "You've taken the first step to
becoming what every creature in the Ethereal Plane doesn't want you
to be. When your father realized what you were destined to become,
he tried his best to prevent it, Zoë."

"The Banishing stone…" I
swallowed as the craziest idea in the world came to me. "The
Possession…all the Eidolons…" I licked my lips. "They're a part
of
me
, aren't
they?"

She didn't have to answer.

I felt footsteps vibrate on the ground
before I heard them. The pounding of feet as two people abruptly
appeared through one of the doorways.

My heart leaped into my throat when I
saw Dags. He looked…good. A bit dirty, and his clothes could use a
good washing. He smiled when he saw us and bolted forward, then
stopped again as he saw who was in my arms.

"Joe!"

I don't know why I did it—but I pulled
Joe away from him. Instinct, maybe? The need to protect him because
I'd failed before?

Dags stopped just inside the cell door
and looked at me. "Zoë? You look…different."

"You look the same. Are you okay? Did
Zacharel hurt you?"

"No." Dags smiled at Inanna/Eshe. It
was obvious he didn't know who that was. "Hi. I'm Dags McConnell."
He offered her his hand.

Inanna/Eshe smiled, but didn't take
it. "Darren. It's me."

He frowned at her for a few seconds,
and I watched as he either figured it out for himself, or Maureen
or someone told him. His color drained away and he clutched at his
stomach. Within seconds, he turned and vomited.