Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (56 page)

I recognized many of the plants from my own trips to and from the Nether. Some were poisonous, some beneficial, some a dangerous combination of both. Certain vines would choke whatever they got coiled around, and others looked like giant, grotesque versions of a Venus flytrap, which would take a bite out of anything—or anyone—that strayed within reach.

We were passing a bank of tall, glass-walled cases lit with greenhouse bulbs when a particularly large carnivorous plant lunged at me. It hit the glass and left a goopy wet smear, then continued to snap at us with serrated-leaf teeth until we’d passed a small bathroom and moved out of sight.

Nash shuddered. “Those are beyond creepy.”

“People fear what they do not understand,” Angie said with sage authority.

“I understand that those things will take your hand off in a single bite,” he said, waving her forward.

She laughed and opened the door to a small office. “Yeah. And they’re quieter than a dog.” Angie cleared her throat, then tossed a gesture at a shelf mounted on the wall behind her cluttered desk. “These are my vessels. Take a look if you want, but you break it, you bought it. And I know reapers aren’t paid in human currency,” she added, with a bold glance at me probably intended to disguise the unease dancing behind her eyes.

“Whoa.” Nash circled her desk, and with one glance at the figurines lined up on the glass shelf, I understood his fascination.

There were twelve small forms, each cast from hellion-forged steel, smooth, shiny, and flawless, with a wicked bluish gleam. Every human figure was unique—each twisted in a different display of agony. Some were hunched, their metal jaws clenched in silent pain. Others were stretching, or writhing, or reaching toward relief that would never come, mouths thrown open in frozen screams.

Each had a loop at the top of its head, ready for the ribbon that would be threaded through it, to anchor a helium bouquet.

“You actually sent balloons out with these?” Nash breathed, equal parts surprised and horrified. But I knew what was coming before she could explain.

“Not Mylar balloons.
Party
balloons,” she said, and I groaned. “You know,” Angie continued, mistaking Nash’s horror for incomprehension. “The red and black ones.”

The ones full of Demon’s Breath.

The packaging solution Kaylee had come up with to help a friend of mine had really caught on in Netherworld black-market circles, but most of the blame for that fell on me. A few months before we’d lost Kaylee, I’d become the mule unwittingly ferrying Demon’s Breath—street name: frost—into the human world.

Clearly, the industry had gone on to thrive in my absence.

“Business was good, but you boys are late to the party. The reclamation department seized all my inventory a couple of days ago.”

“So, how does it work?” Nash asked, as if he hadn’t noticed the past-tense nature of Angie’s verbs. “People call up and order a bunch of balloons full of Demon’s Breath, with a human soul chaser?”

“Not often, no,” she admitted. “The balloons are affordable enough, because the real price comes after you’ve huffed them.”

I shivered at the thought. Whichever hellion had contributed his breath to the balloons would have a hardwired mental connection to the user, once he or she had inhaled. That connection would be used to extract payment from—i.e. torture—the user for the rest of his or her life. Which would be short and painful, if that user was human.

Nash had narrowly survived an addiction to frost, thanks to the fact that he wasn’t human, and I was not eager to put him within reach of the substance again.

“However, the souls are rare and expensive, and most humans don’t have any use for them anyway,” Angie continued. “Those orders come from very special and exclusive parties.” She frowned, crossing her arms over her apron again. “But you already said you’re not customers, and you’re definitely not with the reclamation department, so why are you here, and what’s the fastest way I can get you out of my shop?”

“Why would you keep these, if you can’t refill them?” Nash ignored her question, running one finger over the arched back of a tiny metal man writhing in torment. He seemed both fascinated by and sympathetic to the figure’s pain, and when he spoke, his voice sounded distant. Distracted. “They must be expensive. Surely you could recoup some of your losses by selling the weights.”

For just a second, Angie’s expression was unguarded, and I saw the truth written in every line of her middle-aged face.

“She
can
refill them.” I stepped closer, and though her eyes flashed in anger, she backed up until she bumped into her own desk. “She
will
refill them. Soon, I’m guessing. Which is why she’s eager to get rid of us.”

Nash turned away from the figurines, and his irises were a storm of shifting colors in every shade of anger, and aggression, and some terrible, dark hunger. “Your supplier’s on his way, isn’t he? When will he be here?”

“More important...” I said, drawing her attention away from Nash, who seemed to have strayed from the point. “Who is it? Who’s your supplier?”

“You wouldn’t know him,” the shop owner said, trying to edge away from both of us at once, and when I saw us reflected in her eyes, united in purpose, I realized what a powerful force we could be together, as long as Nash kept his eye on the prize and his head out of the potential clouds of Demon’s Breath.

“It’s a pretty small world, Angie,” he said, and I could feel his Influence roiling through each word like smoke rising from flames. “And we know a lot of people. Just give us his name, and we’ll take it from there.”

“Nash...” I let a little warning seep into my own voice. I hadn’t heard him use his Influence in years, and as a teenager, he’d had issues in the realm of self-control.

“I know what I’m doing,” my brother whispered, without taking his focus from the cornered florist. “Angie wants to tell us. She’ll feel a lot better if she tells us, won’t you, Angie?”

For a moment, she looked like she was about to vomit up some serious information. Then she burst into laughter instead.

Nash blinked in surprise, and I had to swallow a little shock of my own at the realization that we’d been played. Whatever Angie was, she wasn’t scared of us, now that she knew we weren’t there in an official capacity, intent on seizing her stock.

“I sell Demon’s Breath and black-market human souls to a clientele who—for the most part—have no business being in the human world. Do you really think I’m weak-willed enough to cave beneath the Influence of a baby
bean sidhe?
” She glanced at Nash in derision. “You’re, what, eighteen? Come back and see me when you’re a
hundred
and eighteen, and I’ll let you try your luck again. Maybe I’ll let you try more than that.” She looked him over as if she could see right through his clothes, and my brother looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him in the presence of a woman. “If memory serves, you
bean sidhes
age well.”

“I’m twenty,” Nash mumbled, and I had to stifle a laugh. If she’d still be around to receive him in a century, the difference between eighteen and twenty wouldn’t mean a damn thing to her.

“A baby,” she repeated, staring up at him in appreciation. “A very pretty baby.”

Nash’s jaw clenched and his irises began to storm.

“He may be a baby,” I said, drawing Angie’s attention again. “But he has the right idea. I think you
do
want to tell us who your supplier is.” I let my will leak into my voice, feeding it to her one word at a time, so that it could corrupt her own thoughts and desires and slowly begin to replace them with my own. Angie was too stubborn for a sudden takeover—her will would have to be romanced. Slowly seduced.

Right or wrong, that’s what male
bean sidhes
do best.

“I think you’re dying to get that burden off your chest, so you can breathe easier,” I continued, and her derisive smile began to fade.

“Absolve yourself,” Nash said, when he caught on. “Tell us who he is, so we can get rid of him for you, and you can go back to being an upstanding, cougar-freak of a citizen.”

Her eyes flashed in irritation, but I could see our Influence starting to work. She might be able to resist one of us, but she couldn’t resist us both.

I’d never met a woman who could.

“Let it go, Angie.” I stepped closer, but she was already pressed against her desk and could not retreat. “Just say it,” I murmured. “Let his name slide over your tongue. It’ll feel good. I promise.” Her gaze dropped to my lips, and I swear she groaned.

My brother stepped forward and we stood side by side, a united force for the first time in years. For just a second, I felt invincible. “We need you, Angie.” Nash’s voice was low. More rumble than true words, but she understood every bit of it. “You’re the only one who can give us what we need. You want to give us what we need, don’t you?”

“He’s a reaper,” she breathed, her gaze flitting back and forth between us, taking in mouths, and eyes, and everything else she hungered for, with our voices crippling her willpower and driving her needs. “His name is Thane. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

Just what we’d been waiting to hear.

Nash stepped back and grinned at me, and my knuckles met his in a long-overdue fist bump of fraternal solidarity.

Nash

“You soulless little bastards!” Angie shouted, as I wrapped the length of duct tape around her wrist for a third lap.

“Oh, we both have souls,” Tod assured her, while I ripped the roll free from her wrist with my teeth. “But we came by them honestly, unlike you and your new inventory. Speaking of which, how big is the shipment?”

“I’m not telling you another damn thing!” she screeched, and Tod stood, finally finished taping her ankles to the legs of the chair.

I shrugged and sat on the edge of her desk, where she could see me. “Not that it matters. We’ll be turning them all over to his boss.” Except for Kaylee’s mother’s soul, on the slim chance that Thane still had it and carried it with him. And that
was
a slim chance.

We knew Darcy Cavanaugh’s soul hadn’t been devoured or destroyed because Aiden was still suffering her loss as if it’d happened yesterday. He couldn’t let her go because part of his own soul was still wrapped up with hers.

Angie’s head swiveled—it was the only part she could still move—and her gaze landed on Tod. “If you’re a reaper, how’d you do...that?”

My brother grinned at her, and his irises shifted in slow swirls of satisfaction and amusement. “How did I reduce you to a puddle of cougar goo?” She glared over his phrasing, but I laughed out loud. “Well, I had help.” Tod extended one arm toward me, and I bowed, taking credit for my half of our performance. “And you are looking at the reaper voted most likely to make women wish they could see death coming, two years running. But the truth is that though I’m a reaper now, I was a
bean sidhe
first.”

“And foremost, obviously,” I added. “I’ve never seen you lay it down like that!”

“I rarely need to.” He spread his arms, inviting both me and Angie to look at what nature had frozen in time. “Usually this is enough to do the trick.”

“Cocky little shits, aren’t you?” Angie grumbled. “I hope Thane rips you both limb from pretty limb.”

Tod laughed. “I’ve gone up against him twice, and I’ve won both times. I don’t think my odds get any lower with my brother here to help out.”

“Especially if we can maintain the element of surprise,” I added. “Which is where this comes in.” Tod held her head still while I pressed the last length of duct tape across her mouth.

When we let her go, she cursed at us from behind the tape.

“You know, you’re really getting worked up over nothing,” Tod said. “You’ve served your purpose. Bad guys would just kill you, but all we’re asking for is a little quiet. And maybe a couple of those candy bars hidden in your bottom desk drawer.” Where we’d found the duct tape.

“Seems like a fair price for your life.” I ripped the wrapper from a chocolate-covered peanut bar and tossed something with nougat in it to Tod. “So, what do you think she is?” I said, with a glance at the bound freak of a florist.

He shrugged. “Some kind of parasite? Or maybe a half-breed? Something long-lived, but short on defensive abilities. Unless she was just playing with her food, before we busted out the vocal duet and prevented her from eating us.” He shrugged and took a bite of his candy bar, then spoke around it. “Either way, she can cross over, assuming she harvested all those weird-ass plants from the Netherworld herself. Let’s just hope she can’t cross while she’s all tied up.”

Angie was trying to say something from behind her sticky gag, but it sounded like more pointless yelling. “We better insulate her a little more.”

“Agreed.” He pulled open the only other door in her office, and I hauled Angie into her own closet, chair and all. When we closed the door, we could hardly hear her. “Tell the truth.” Tod glanced at me with the wicked grin he used to wear habitually, but I hadn’t seen in two years. “You’ve wanted to tape Sabine’s mouth shut. You’ve
dreamed
about it. You must have.”

“Nope.” I shook my head, letting him see the truth of that in my eyes. Then I gave him a lighthearted smile. “The only person I dream of shutting up is you. I like all Sabine’s parts. They work together. As a whole.” My hands mimed tracing her shape in the air in front of me.

Tod’s smile faded slowly, like air leaking from a balloon, and the morose stranger my brother had become since Kaylee’s death was suddenly back.

“She wouldn’t want to see you like this, you know. All sullen and listless.”

His raised brows were a challenge. “If she were here to see me, I wouldn’t
be
sullen and listless. Not that I am either of those. Would someone who’s sullen and listless dare you to go slap one of the meat-eating plants in the glass case, without getting your hand bitten off?”

His mischievous grin was forced, but it was the best I was gonna get, at the moment. “Is it poisonous?”

Tod’s smile grew when I didn’t immediately refuse the dare. “I don’t see how
that’s
relevant. And anyway, you know as much about Netherworld plants as I do.”