Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (38 page)

I looked to my other side. PP and Mrs. Allen were gone. She’d probably call the police.

Artemis came into view then, her stubby tail wagging in excitement, ready for more.
She hunched down by my side with a begging whine. Reyes stepped beside me, and his
incorporeal body reentered his physical one. The robes settled around his shoulders,
then disappeared as he dragged the man off. Grateful, I stood, wiped my face and hair,
then stepped to the woman, who sat on her knees, now staring at the grass where I’d
been.

I knelt down and talked to the demon inside. “This is not going to end well for you.”

She looked up at me, her lids fluttering, and said, “Let me go now and I’ll spare
the woman.” Then her brows crinkled and she stared into space again. She was fighting
it. The woman. She was fighting the hold the demon had on her.

Sensing the new danger, Artemis crept forward until her jaws were at the woman’s neck,
her teeth bared and glistening, saliva dripping off her jowls. The demon flinched,
and its head turned toward her. Artemis struck in the next instant with a ferocious
bark that shook the windows. The demon didn’t stand a chance. She yanked it out and
tore it to pieces until it was nothing more than a heavy vapor. From there, it evaporated,
its immeasurable darkness dispersing in the air.

The woman collapsed into the cold grass, and I turned her head to make sure she could
breathe. Reyes bent to help, and only then did I realize that he had fought a demon
while his incorporeal self was out of his body. He’d never been able to do that. Normally
when his incorporeal self left, he entered a seizurelike state.

I leaned back, regarded him warily. “You—You’re—You told me you couldn’t do that,”
I finally said accusingly. “You fought a demon without—” I fought for the right words
“—without your soul.”

Reyes was checking the woman’s pulse. “Couldn’t,” he said absently before turning
back to me. “Can now.” He stood and offered me his hand. He seemed distant, hurt.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You just can now?” When he only shrugged, I asked, “Is that
all of them?” I hoped that with the absence of Hedeshi, their leader, there would
be no more demons to contend with.

“For now.” He frowned and looked past the building down the alley. “Until they figure
out a better way to get at you.”

We were still at an impasse with the picture. And I still had to wonder if he had
been cleared of murder charges only to become an arsonist. Why would he burn down
that building? Any of them? He’d lived there, but why burn them down?

I had to remember what he came from. I’d been tortured by Earl Walker once and only
once, and I had been changed mentally, physically, and emotionally. I became a different
animal. What would years of that do to a person? Decades of living and breathing fear,
day in and day out? Of being used and abused, beaten and starved, with no haven, no
safe place to hide? The thought cinched my ribs around my lungs.

He watched me from underneath his lashes, his expression knowing. “You aren’t feeling
sorry for me, are you? I would hate to have to remedy that.”

Yep, he was still mad. “And just how would you accomplish such a thing?”

The resignation on his face stole my breath. “Believe me when I say you don’t want
to know.”

Before I could manage a reply, a thunderous crack exploded in the air behind him.
He turned toward the sound and I looked past him, sensing danger instantly. The world
thickened and slowed, but not fast enough. Reyes stepped in front of me as a bullet
that had been rocketing toward my head tore through his chest instead. It exited out
his back and continued its journey, the metal fragmented, but whole enough to finish
what it had started.

Then, in a feat that stunned me to my core, Reyes turned, too fast for me to see,
and caught it in midair.

I stumbled back and looked on as Reyes opened his palm to examine the bullet. But
he was corporeal. When the bullet hit, he hadn’t had time to separate. To try to stop
it with his incorporeal self. Blood spread across his T-shirt so fast, I grew light-headed
at the sight of it. He coughed, and blood bubbled out of his mouth.

His gaze met mine as he fell to his knees and whispered, “Run.”

I rushed forward to catch him and caught a glimpse of the culprit cowering on top
of a building down the street. I expected another demon. Perhaps one who’d wised up
and decided to bring weapons of mass destruction to the party. But it was the blond
biker from the bank robbery. The one who had been kicked out of the military, who
hadn’t finished his sniper training. I stood there, beyond flabbergasted. Apparently,
he
really
didn’t want any witnesses.

Anger surged inside me faster than the splitting of an atom. Like a volcano bursting
through the top of a mountain, fury erupted out of me in one blinding flash. Windows
shattered and shards of glass hung like a menagerie of shimmering color as I walked
toward Blondie, determination locking my teeth together. He was reloading the rifle,
his movements slow in the adjustment of time, sluggish. He brought the butt to his
shoulder, leaned his head over until the image from the scope came into view. Just
as his finger started to squeeze the trigger, I reached into his chest and crushed
his heart. It beat once, twice more, then stopped altogether. And satisfaction coursed
through me like cool water dousing a wildfire.

Blondie grabbed his chest, his mouth dropping open, fighting for air seconds before
he fell face-first to the ground.

Reyes appeared beside me. He examined me, the blond, then turned back to where we
had been. Where we still were. When I looked back, I saw myself kneeling on the ground,
looking back at me, into my own eyes. Reyes’s body lay next to me. Before I could
make sense of any of it, I awakened to my previous surroundings with a startled gasp,
like I had never been outside my own body, like I had not just seen it from a great
distance. I looked down at Reyes.

He curled into himself, his breaths hard and shallow.

“Reyes!” I shouted, scrambling toward him and trying to find the wound to put pressure
on it. A bullet had ripped through his chest. Even the son of Satan wouldn’t walk
away after an injury like that.

We heard sirens in the distance, and he struggled to his knees.

“Get me … into the shadows.” He nodded toward a trash bin. “Behind that Dumpster.”

“You need an ambulance.”

“No.” Anger hit me like a wall of fire. He grabbed my shirt with a bloodied hand and
jerked me forward. “I’m not going back, and you’re not sending me there.” He pushed
and fell onto his hands, trying to catch his breath. It reminded me so much of the
very first time I saw him, when I was in high school and he was fighting for air beside
a Dumpster after being beaten. I’d let him down then. I did nothing to save him, and
his life took a definite turn for the worse. I would not let that happen again.

I touched his shoulder, forgetting that he was more wolf than canine, more panther
than cat. There was nothing domestic about Reyes Farrow. He could turn in a heartbeat,
had proved it a dozen times. But when he did turn on me, when he rocketed from prey
to predator, my shock was complete.

He struck so fast, his movements were nothing more than a dark blur. I was vertical
one moment and horizontal the next. And he was on top of me, his body rock hard, unbending,
unyielding. He leaned into me until his mouth—his sensual mouth that had only recently
sent shivers of passion thundering through me—hovered at my ear. The warmth of his
blood spread over my chest and shoulders and pooled in the divot at the base of my
throat, and I wondered how much longer he’d live. Surely no one could survive that
much blood loss. Not even a supernatural being. He sent a thigh between my legs, parting
them for a better fit.

“I told you,” he said, his voice like a low growl, rippling through me in white-hot
waves. “Don’t—” One hand wrapped around my neck as his mouth nuzzled my ear. “—ever—”
The other slid up my shirt, the pleasure of his touch leaving heat trails in its wake.
“—pity—” His hips pushed my legs farther apart; my hands cupped them in reflex. “—me.”
His mouth crushed mine, the kiss raw and needy. I wrapped my arms around his waist,
then sent one over his steel buttocks, pulling him into me, wanting him inside. Despite
our situation. Despite our circumstances.

Only Reyes Farrow could do this to me. Could make me beg for him, no matter the setting.
No matter how dire the predicament. And he knew it. He knew exactly what he did to
me.

I felt a smile behind his kiss a microsecond before he lifted off me and vanished
into the dark. A rush of cold took the place of the heat that had blanketed me. I
dropped my arms to the ground. Closed my eyes. Breathed. A whimper sounded beside
me. Artemis lay in the distance, watching. Every few seconds, she’d inch closer, crawling
on her stomach. Then she’d stop and focus on something in the distance, pretending
not to notice me.

One of the men woke up then, his movements slow and lethargic as he rubbed his head,
the back of his neck. He tried to make sense of his surroundings, but couldn’t seem
to manage it. No telling where he was from. Two lay dead, and three others lay unconscious
still as the first patrol car skidded to a halt in the parking lot. Right in front
of the Englishman’s body. And on a building top down the street, they’d find another
body, that of a blond biker who was almost a sniper in the Marines, who’d wanted to
serve his country but now robbed banks and tried to snipe people.

I covered my eyes with my arms. I didn’t care what kind of connections I had, no way
was I getting out of this unscathed. This could even put Uncle Bob in the spotlight
if he tried to cover any of it up. It could jeopardize his career. His retirement.

A patrolman rushed over to me. He said something I couldn’t quite make out, because
another realization had washed over me, and I suddenly couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

I’d killed a man. I’d reached inside his chest and stopped his heart. Like I had the
authority. Like I had the right.

My world tumbled back into a familiar place. One of darkness and desperation and denial.
Then I was being lifted. Bright lights flickered past. Blue scrubs. Silver instruments.
Somewhere in the fog of reality, Uncle Bob appeared. Then Cookie. I felt cool sheets
beneath my body and warm hands cupped in mine, and I realized I was in the hospital
for the second time in as many months. I heard familiar words:
concussion, stab wounds, fractured ankle.
The last one surprised me. I didn’t remember that part. But that’s what adrenaline
did. It pushed pain aside and thrust you forward.

I forced my lids apart.

Dad was there, too. Close by. As was Uncle Bob, and I knew I could tell them. They
would know what to do.

I pressed my mouth together, closed my eyes, and said, “I killed a man.”

When I looked again, they glanced at each other, worry in their expressions. “One
of the men outside your apartment building? Because it looked like they fought each—”

“No, a man on a roof. A bank robber who wanted to kill me.”

Uncle Bob’s brows furrowed. “When, pumpkin? We don’t—”

“Tonight. Right after I was attacked. He was on a rooftop and I killed him. After
he shot Reyes with a fifty-caliber rifle, I reached inside his chest and stopped his
heart.” Soft sobs drifted out of me as Dad took my hand.

“Sweetheart, that’s impossible. If Reyes was shot with a fifty-caliber rifle from
a sniper on a rooftop, he would not be alive.”

“He wouldn’t even be in one piece,” Uncle Bob agreed.

“You don’t understand,” I said, sorrow drowning my words, “I killed a man. I lost
control. I killed him.”

“Shhhh,” Dad said, cradling my head against his shoulder. “You’re not like us, hon.
I know that. And I don’t care who or what you are, I know one thing for certain: Your
actions are above the laws of man. I’m sorry for saying that, but it’s the truth.
You are here for a reason.”

“Robert. Leland.”

I looked up to see the police captain from Uncle Bob’s precinct walk in. Uncle Bob
nodded to him, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “You don’t remember anything.”

Ever the champion, he was still fighting to keep me out of jail. Or prison. Or the
nuthouse. But this was bigger than any of us. There was simply no explanation for
what had happened. Then again, what was I supposed to tell them? The truth?

Special Agent Carson walked in right behind the captain.

“You’re quite an asset,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. He glanced at Uncle Bob,
then back. “You managed to solve four cases in one day. I think this is a new world
record.”

“Four?”

He counted on his fingers. “The disappearance and death of Harper Lowell. A missing
persons case from over two decades ago. The disappearance of several people who seemed
to have been drugged and dropped on your doorstep. We’ve had a rash of those lately.
And the apprehension of an escaped serial killer. But come to think of it,” he said,
looking at his hands, “that might technically be five. Or maybe even six.”

“A serial killer?”

He nodded. “You’re about to make us one of the most respected departments in the country.
One of our consultants single-handedly took down the Englishman, a convicted serial
killer who escaped from Sing Sing three months ago.”

It figured Hedeshi would have chosen a serial killer as his host. I wondered how on
Earth he got him out of Sing Sing.

“And he’s not even from England.”

I blinked in surprise. “He wasn’t English?”

“No, he was originally from Jersey. He just spoke with an English accent. No one knew
why. But I have to admit, I think it’s odd that all this would happen to you in one
day, especially considering the other guy,” the captain said.

“The other guy?”

“Yes,” Agent Carson said, “it would seem one of the Gentlemen Thieves died of a heart
attack on the rooftop of a building on Central. He had a fifty-caliber rifle in his
hands, and it looked like he was getting ready to do some damage. It’s odd that he
would just drop dead like that.”