Pandora's Ring (11 page)

“I thought we were staying on task,” she said with a lazy smile.

“Just trying to enjoy the moment,” he replied, and bracing one hand on her hip, used his other to line himself up to her, and pressed in experimentally at first, then out.

She moaned. “Tease.”

“Patience.” He chuckled and pushed deeper.

Her hips rose and took him in further.
 
He sighed at the same time she moaned. “Ah…”

He pulled out and fed himself deeper again, leaning over her with a smile. “So, do you feel good?”

“Dumb-ass question, Eli,” she said, moaning.

“Just wait until we get going.”

“Believe me, I’m waiting.” She smiled then laughed, and finally moaned as he slid to the hilt, gently taking her legs in each hand. “If your oral is any indication, this is going to be mind blowing.”

“Granted, I can cheat and just replicate the physical effects,” he said, and jerked in again. She gasped. “But this is much more fun.”

“We’ll have to experiment later.”

Eli quirked a lip. Later? That was fine by him. He bent and licked her neck, soothing the nerves there of the damage Cyrene had done and awakening new pleasure. “Gladly. Now. Let’s enjoy this.”

* * * *

It was several hours before they slowed, and Samantha laid her head on his shoulder,. Eli stroked her hair.

“Eli. How’d we get here?” she asked.

“Car,” he replied.

“Whose car?”

He glanced to the side. “I kind of hijacked one. You sort of helped.”

“Hmm. I don’t remember.”

“You told me to get a car, and I wasn’t interested in arguing.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

He chuckled, kissing her temple. “About four hours away mid to upper state.” She didn’t speak for a moment and he lightly stroked her shoulder. “It’s good to hear you talk. How do you feel, now?”

“Quieter,” she chewed her lip in thought. “Strange, though. I can still hear them…they’re all there. But instead of me being right in the middle of the crowd, it’s like the crowd is way below me, and I can go down any time I want.” She paused, a little awed. “Eli, there’s something like thirty thousand in there.”

Eli nodded. “Yeah.”

“How am I alive? You thought I was a goner at one thousand.”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. What you’re describing though, that’s about how it should be. Still accessible but far away.”

“Is that what it’s like for you?”

“Sort of. It’s more like everyone is standing in an impossibly long line for me, though.”

“Because your soul energy is like a big string.”

“So you remember that much.” She nodded, and then rolled onto her side to look at his face. “What do we do now?” she asked. “We can’t hang out in upstate New York for the rest of our lives.”

“I have a friend,” Eli said. “Come to think of it…” He reached over to his pants, dug around in a pocket and came back to bed, checking through the texts. There were five unread messages. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Hold on.” He read through them.

4:19AM: Cyrene’s on the war path, says your target went in-between and you revealed one of the truths? What the fuck?

6:34 PM: All right, I’m clear. I’m going to start looking for you in the morning. Location should take twelve hours.

3:02AM: Hammy’s got your scent. Be there when we find you.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Francis was a level-headed guy, and loyal as his hell hound, Hammy. He glanced at the clock. Four in the morning. “Good. He should be here around breakfast time.”

“Who?” Samantha asked.

“His name is Francis,” Eli said, getting up and holding out his hands. “He’s a friend of mine and a good guy.”

“Is he Damned?” Samantha asked skeptically, putting her hands in his.

“Yeah. But so am I.” He smiled.

She returned it. “I’m still confused how the Damned can be such decent folks.”

“I’ll explain it sometime.” He nodded. “It sort of depends on why we’re Damned and who decided to prey on the leftovers.” He ducked into the bathroom to hide his sigh, not wanting to explain his melencholy. Samantha looked after him.

“I guess this is one of those things I ask about later.”

He smiled. “If you could, I’d appreciate it. For now, I was going to spoil you as best I could with cheap-ass motel soap and hot water.”

“You sure know how to distract a girl.” She slowly levered herself out of the bed, groaning and wincing. He quickly went to help her. “Besides, if we’re having company, I’d love to be clean.”

He nodded.

“And maybe I should phone in to quit my job,” she said. “What day is it, anyway?”

“Wednesday.”

“Yeah, you know my phone has some angry messages on it.”

“It was pretty obvious you were kidnapped, actually. Of course, I could sense the wards Cyrene shattered.” He perched her on the lip of the counter and started to run the water.

“Bitch was disguised as you, by the way.” She closed her eyes, hissing as she stretched out her arms. “I had just thought I could use the wards to force you to tell the truth and find out if you were lying about my mother.” She looked at the blood still under her nails. “Guess not.”

“There’s more to the story,” he said quietly, and took her hands to guide her into the bath. “There has to be, because you’re alive, Samantha. If she’d gone through with it, you wouldn’t be. You’d be in with Diego, still an infant.”

 
“But what does the ring have to do with it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and took the miniscule soap out of its wrapping. “Francis is a genius at this type of obscure stuff. We’ll tell him everything, he’ll check you out, and I just bet he’ll have a theory for you.”

“All right,” she said, leaned back and let him wash her weary body.

* * * *

His phone rang at 5 AM. Samantha was asleep again, and Eli quickly answered. “You here?”

“Yeah. Super 8?”

“Room 403. Make sure no one sees Hammy. And quietly–she’s sleeping.”

“Right.” He heard Francis sigh. “Damn, you’re fucked, Eli. I thought you said you didn’t like her.”

“You’ll get it when you get here,” he replied, and terminated the call. There was a quiet knock. Eli rose, peeped out through the spyhole and found Francis’s salt and pepper hair.
 
He opened the door, and Hammy the Hellhound woofed quietly in greeting.
 
He ushered them in, holding up a finger to his lips as he patted the hell hound. “Hey, boy,” he said, and then shook hands with Francis. “Thanks for coming.”

“Shit clearly went down,” Francis drawled. “You never said who, exactly, screwed up Cyrene. You don’t have the raw power, boy.”

“It was her,” Eli said, pointing to the bed where Samantha was curled up on a clean blanket, the bloody sheets piled in a corner.

Francis’s expression snapped to a frown. “You’re telling me a mortal broke Cyrene’s soul bonds and then knocked her out?”

“Hey man, don’t wake her up.” Eli held up a hand and waved them into the bathroom. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know how, but it had to do with the ring. Remember you thought it might be an artifact? You were right.”

“Was I?” he asked. Hammy sat on his haunches at the bathroom door. More or less a gigantic black boxer, he wiggled in joy because they’d found their target. “I can check her out while she’s asleep, as long as you tell me everything.” Francis eyed Eli. “Including how the hell she’s still alive.”

“Right.” Eli rubbed his temples. “At least there’s breakfast.”

* * * *

Francis didn’t speak or move as Eli filled him in on the events which led to shattering the ring, and then retraced their steps to their current room. He grimaced when Eli finally finished. “You’re damn lucky you didn’t actually kill Cyrene, or your hiding place wouldn’t have held up so well.”

Eli’s mood soured. “I was hoping she’d managed it.”

“If she’d killed her, the soul energy would have been twice as intense. Even you probably couldn’t have saved her then, Eli,” Francis said softly and sat on the bed beside Samantha, stroking her hair. “I guess I see what you mean about her, though. All the grace of thirty thousand saved souls, all the compassion of a mortal, none of the blinding justice of the Angels.” He nodded. “Sort of the good of everything, bad of none.”

“Watching her gain that power…” Eli shook his head. “I’ve never seen or heard anything like it.”

“I imagine. It’s never been done before.” Francis patted Hammy’s knobby head, turned it enough his hot breath wasn’t blowing in Samantha’s face. “Frankly, if I wasn’t looking at her now, I wouldn’t believe it. A ring can contain one soul, maybe two for something of high quality and sentimental value. But twenty thousand? That’s simply not possible.”

“But that’s–”

Francis cut him off. “You said she was babbling something about two voices fighting?”

Eli nodded.

“As wildly unlikely as it is, two voices brings it back to the realm of logic.”

“How do you mean?”

Francis hummed tunelessly, frowning. “A ring cannot hold twenty thousand separate souls. However, one or two souls with bonds on twenty thousand souls? That might be possible.”

“You’re saying the two fighting are Damned.” Eli murmured.

Francis nodded. “And given who the ring belonged to, I’d even say there’s a good chance we could guess
who
they are.”

Eli frowned. What did they know about the ring? It belonged to Marie Parker, who married young to a rich man who was wild about her. So much so, to this day he had not remarried. Sentimental value, quality– Check. Marie made a deal with Diego for her firstborn child. Only, she decided not to give up the baby. Diego was dead. He hadn’t asked when, he’d assumed it had been recent. But what if that was wrong? What if his last job had been collecting on Samantha Parker? Which meant… “Diego.”

Francis nodded. “He was up around thirty thousand souls when he disappeared.”

“That means…” Eli glanced at Samantha again, floored. “That means the second voice is Marie.”

“Marie Parker,” Francis repeated. “In order to fight Diego for her daughter’s soul on even ground, she must have Damned herself soon after the birth.”

“Can you even do that?”

“I did.” Francis frowned. “It takes a huge amount of will and someone worth fighting for.”

Eli found himself breathless. That explained a lot about Francis. He thought about asking who Francis had been fighting for, but they’d never talked about their past before, and now probably wasn’t the time to start. “But if she couldn’t beat him, then...”

“She would have settled for trapping him,” Francis confirmed. “Very neat. Very easy to understand. It explains a lot.”

Eli sat and patted Hammy’s head. “Gods. She’s been fighting him for twenty-five years.”

“And the agitation of the souls and the fighting rubbed off on Samantha, making her more sensitive, as well as probably conditioning her to receive the souls when you finally broke the ring.” Francis shook his head and sat back. “She needs to get in there and talk to them.”

“Damn, Francis, she just got off the initial near-death experience.”

“I know,” Francis said. “But even with your support, if she wants to live, she going to have to start figuring out what powers she has and utilize them. She can’t do that if Diego is still locking in on those souls. And we aren’t even counting what Marie is like as a Damned. She could have lost her mind by now.”

“That’s a pleasant prospect,” Eli commented. “And now we have to tell her Marie’s alive after all.”

“After a fashion, anyway,” Francis said. “I’ll leave you to it. Hammy’s still itching for a run. How about I get a room here and we do it after breakfast?”