Hear No (Hidden Evil, #1) (2 page)

He withdrew a smooth moonstone and handed it to her. Her gaze dropped to his mouth when he began speaking, so she could read his lips.

“This won’t help you against Zyra and those with her, but it’ll protect you from anything else that might be coming,” he reminded her. “Keep it with you, okay?” His eyes drifted automatically to the velvet bag clenched in her other hand.

Neither spoke about the stones or how the four people chasing them were a minor nuisance compared to the evil that would follow. Scott was charged with protecting her, and she was charged with guarding the secrets of the stones. Dormant since the Creation of the universe, the stones in the velvet pouch had been hibernating since. Until now.

Amira took the blood-streaked moonstone from him. Scott’s clothing was soaked with blood, but he stood solidly on his feet, armed with a few knives and at least one handgun.

“Car’s out back. Keys,” he said, holding them up. “I’m going to try to finish this here and now. You go out back and drive away. Don’t look back.”

“After picking you up,” she said hopefully, searching his face. “Right?”

The hard planes of Scott’s face softened. He cupped her cheek with one hand and gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead.

“I’m not coming with you,” he said. “Amira, I’m dying. The only thing I’m good for now is distracting them long enough for you to escape.”

Hot tears trickled down her cheeks. “No, Scott!” Amira’s whole body shook at the thought of losing him.

“Stay calm,” he told her. “We’ve planned for this our whole lives, just in case. What’s your mission?”

“P…protect the stones at all costs,” she said. It was getting hard to talk. Her throat hurt. She switched to sign language, struggling not to cry. “Stay alive. Stop the four archdemons from finding the stones.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Easy, right?”

She shook her head.

“One more mission,” he said. “Walk away from me tonight. Make it to the Rosewood Center.”

The tears were falling faster. She didn’t want to acknowledge his words.

“Okay?” he asked, taking her arms. “Stay alive. Keep the stones safe. Walk away.”

Amira flung her arms around him, not caring if his blood soaked her, too. They’d been in this together since she was tiny. The idea of leaving him to die was unbearable, even if she knew that the stones could never fall into the hands of another without bringing great evil.

Scott held her close for a moment before pushing her away. He placed a finger to his lips and motioned to the room outside the bathroom.

Unable to hear if their pursuers had found them, Amira held her breath.

Scott tucked the keys to the car into her pocket and she did the same with the stones. He withdrew a knife and a gun and nudged her behind him, taking up position in front of the bathroom door.

He twisted his upper body enough to see her.

“On the count of three, run. Got it?” he said.

She swallowed hard and nodded.

Scott was collecting energy from their surroundings, and she sensed him connect with the Other Side, the dimension within a dimension where the spirits of the dead and supernatural creatures existed. It was also where the energy of the universe originated, and Scott was pulling in so much of it, he glowed.

It would kill him, she knew, but he had already accepted his death. She wanted to crawl into the tub, curl up and sob.

Stay alive. Keep the stones safe. Walk away.
Scott was right. Her mission was far more important than the lives of the two of them, no matter how much she loved him like a gruff but gentle big brother that raised her.

Facing the door, Scott held up one finger.

Adrenaline surged through her.

He opened the door, his muscular shape too thick for her to see if anyone awaited them in the room beyond.

Scott held up two fingers and stepped into the hotel room, his body radiating too much heat for her to stand close.

The door to the room opened, and Scott’s body jerked as bullets hit him. Amira froze. He returned fire and dropped to one knee.

Heat rolled over her, hot enough that she struggled to breathe.

Scott held up three fingers.

Sensing he was getting ready to explode and level the top floor of the hotel, the people crowding the doorway scattered.

Scott pushed her, and Amira ran, darting through the doorway. The four pursuers were scrambling to get down the stairs on either side of the second floor, and she raced after them, the heat of Scott’s impending explosion singeing the hair on her arms.

The explosion sent her flying over the railing into the murky pool below. Amira plunged into the lukewarm water. She kicked herself up to the surface, recalling briefly how disgusting the greenish water had been when they passed it initially. Swimming to the side, she hauled herself out and looked around for pursuers. One flailed around the other end of the pool while another appeared to have landed on the top of a car. The other two weren’t visible.

The four would heal, the same way Scott could and she could, but it would take them time.

Amira flung water from her arms and ran, racing through the common area in front of the building. She reached the other end and stopped to look back at the room where she’d left Scott.

Her breath caught, and tears blurred her vision once more. The top floor of the hotel was gutted where the explosion occurred. The building around the crater was burning around it, the scent of fire in the air. She half expected to see Scott emerge and wave at her to tell her he was okay.

He didn’t, but another form did, a shadowy, muscular man that stood at the railing in front of the room. She stared, grappling with who – or what – he was. There was no floor at the railing, and he seemed unaffected by the fires around him.

As if sensing her, he turned his head towards her, and she stifled a scream.

He had no face.

“Are you ready to feel the fires of Hell, keeper of the stones?” His voice was in her head, a dark, grating hiss that scared her. “Shadowman is here for you.”

It’s not possible.
And yet, there he was, the first of four archdemons who would do whatever it took to steal her secrets.

Amira turned and fled. Her heart broke for Scott, but she had to protect the stones no matter what.

Chapter One

Six weeks later

Nathan shut the door of his restored Pontiac GTO. Tall, lean and relaxed, he was the kind of man who commanded the world around him with the authority of the Roman centurion he once was, three thousand years before. He walked to the curb where a blonde woman sat sobbing in front of a house party still raging at three in the morning. Behind her paced a nervous man in his late twenties, one whose expression was a mix of guarded hopefulness and irritation.

Looking from the sobbing woman to the man, Nathan stopped.

“
This
is your emergency?” he asked. “A crying girl?”

“Well … I … god, can you just help me out?” the man replied.

He’s gotta be a newbie.
Nathan was expecting the world to be ending, based on the text he’d received that summoned him here. He opened the trunk of his car and pulled the knives hidden in his waistband free, tossing them in the back. He always kept one on him, usually strapped to his calf, but the rest he wasn’t going to need to deal with a sad woman and her incompetent caseworker. Instead, he grabbed a black satchel out of his trunk, slammed it shut and then approached the curb.

It was a warm desert night in Tucson, Arizona, the kind that made him want to walk barefoot instead of wearing his loafers. He knew two things without a doubt and how to master the classy-casual look was one of them. The downside: it meant not going barefoot. He lit a cigarette, debating whether he could lower his standards enough to put on some sort of semi-stylish sandals.

After a deep drag, he faced the man behind the crying girl.

“What’s her sign?” he asked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“S… scorpio,” the crying girl answered.

“All right, newbie,” Nathan said to the man. He set down the satchel beside the girl. “The only reason I’m not leaving is because she’s a fellow Scorpio.”

There was a sigh from the other man, who raked a hand through his hair then rubbed his face. A young, recently appointed spirit guide – a cross between a glorified medium and supernatural case worker, Joey appeared to be no older than Nathan and was ready to panic, a sign of how new he was to his duties.

“What’s your approval rating?” Nathan asked curiously.

“Sixty five percent.”

“So no one will be surprised you couldn’t handle this. I’ll take it from here, Joey.”

“Can I watch?”

“I don’t give a shit.” Nathan sat down next to the sobbing woman.

He took a few puffs of his cigarette, listening to her cry. She was a first gen, an angel incarnated for the first time as a human. She had a soul, a finite life, emotions, none of which an angel possessed when in its pure energy form. She was in her mid-twenties, old enough to realize what angels soon discovered when they became human: that there was evil in the world.

“I’m glad this is it,” he said to Joey. “Things have been weird lately. Lots of messes to clean up. This is a nice break.”

“I haven’t had to clean up any messes,” Joey admitted.

“How long have you been in the corps?”

“Two months,” answered Joey. “Messes. You mean like demon possessions and stuff?”

“That and a rash of first gens with extreme breakdowns. Pretty much every first gen has a meltdown when they realize they can’t go back to the Other Side anymore and are stuck in the human world. But lately things have been weird.”
Not to mention Scott getting killed. First time for everything.
He shook his head. “A lot of guides are overwhelmed. I’m the only one allowed to work freelance, but at this point, I need a clone.”

“I don’t want to be you. This is bad enough.” Joey motioned to the woman.

Nathan opened his bag. “Here’s your first tip. These are all you need, Joey.” He held up two items: a cigarette and a snow globe filled with glitter rather than fake snow. “First gens love anything that glitters or sparkles. Reminds them of home. You can buy these globes in bulk straight from China for fifteen cents a piece.”

“N…nate?” the woman asked, peeking through her fingers at him.

“Yeah.”

“I want to go back.”

“You can’t, baby,” he replied softly. “You signed the paperwork. Remember?”

Her sobbing grew louder. Nathan didn’t blame her, but after so many similar interventions, he found it hard to care much anymore. He held the cigarette out to her.

“Have a smoke. It’ll calm you,” he directed.

“N…no! I can’t … body … sacred!”

“You reek of alcohol. A cigarette isn’t going to do much more damage,” he replied, amused.

She didn’t budge.

Joey snorted, as if satisfied Nathan hadn’t cracked the girl yet.

Nathan held out the snow globe. He shook it, and glitter tumbled within the sphere, reflecting in the streetlight.

His second area of expertise: angels. He could spot one – first gen or ten thousandth gen – a mile away, and he knew how to handle them in their human or energy forms.

He shook the globe again, waiting for the inevitable –

“Sparkles,” the girl murmured. She took the globe from him.

Nathan lit the cigarette for her and passed it over.

She took it, too. She was calming, transfixed by the glitter. She took a huge draw on the cigarette, coughed, then shook her head.

Nathan glanced at his watch. The drug took about two minutes before she’d start to feel it, though if drunk, it might be faster. He sat quietly, waiting. The girl was turning the snow globe slowly, her blue eyes on the tiny flashes of color tumbling within the glass.

“Are you going to talk to her?” Joey asked.

“In a minute,” Nathan replied. “Can you get the red bag out of my car?”

Joey hesitated, on the verge of refusing. Too curious to know how the master spirit guide worked, he relented and went.

Nathan watched him. If this was the worst the new kid had to deal with, it was a damned good day in his book.

The first gen giggled.

Nathan glanced at her. She was glassy-eyed and grinning. She began waving the dome.

“Oooohhh … rainbows!” she said, mesmerized by something only she could see.

He took her cigarette before it fell from her fingers.

“All right. Tell Nate what’s wrong,” he said.  He relaxed and leaned back, enjoying the warm night beside the hallucinating ex-angel trying to capture invisible rainbows with her hands.

“I want to go back,” she said in a sad, faded voice.

“Understood. What else?”

“Did you know my toes are too big?”

“No.”

She pushed off one sandal to show him perfectly proportioned feet and studied them critically.

“He said they were big.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Ex.” Her sorrow was clear. “I just wanted him to be happy. Why are humans not happy like angels, Nate?”

“Because they have to deal with people who think their toes are too big,” he replied drily.

She sighed.

“You want my relationship advice? Don’t try to make him happy,” Nathan replied. “Be yourself. If that’s not good enough for him then find someone else.”

Joey was staring at him from the car. The young spirit guide’s eyes slid to the girl in a look of such longing, Nathan rolled his eyes.

“But he makes me feel the way sparkles do,” the ex-angel lamented.

“You didn’t get in a fight about your toes. What made you break up?” Nathan asked.

“I want kids, and he’s an Aquarius.”

“Jesus Christ,” Nathan muttered. “This is sounding like every break-up I’ve ever had. I need those sparkles more than you.”

She giggled once more.

“Aquarius men are notorious for not wanting to settle down. But you knew that when you got into this relationship. So, if he won’t commit, he’s not for you. Got it?” Nathan waved at Joey. “Red bag.”

Joey bent to reach into the car and withdrew the red bag, staring at it.