27. Benedici
Benedici
Isla
I shouldn't be here.
Shouldn't be doing this.
But Alastor said hewas going tobe watching my friends to keep them safe, which means he's close.
I'm still riding the headache-inducing buzz of all the champagne earlier, but fortunatelyfor me, New York has a taxi every two fucking steps.
Sneaking out from underneath Eamon's nose was thedifficultpart, one that I knowI'm going topay for later.
Pretending to sleep for an hour, waiting for his breathing to ease into soft snores while fighting against sleep myself, was an absolute pain in the ass.
Once he was sound asleep, I eased my slippers on to keep the sounds of my steps to a minimum, carrying my sneakers with me until the hotel door clicked shut behind me.
All of the stealth training Eamon has given me has paid off, but only to his detriment.
Once I had myrealshoes on, I bolted down the hallway to the elevator, hiding the sounds of my movements with the rolling of a room service cart.
Even with all of that, Iknow Ihadmaybe10 minutes before Eamon's instincts told him something was wrong.I needed to be far enough away that he would remain clueless for just a little bit longer.
The boutique hotel down the street and across from Charlie and Mike's place has a small barrightup against the glass, so anyone inside could easily see people coming and going from the building. If I was Alastor, that's where I would be.
As I enter the hotel, the clerk looks at me passively, barely acknowledging me as I point toward the bar. I can only imagine a place like this has snobby assholes coming and going at all hours; one more seemingly rude, definitely drunk girl won't even show up on their radar.
I let my eyes subtly travel the bar, from the sparkling black floor to the deep green high tops.Sheer curtains drape between the booths,giving an imitation of privacy but stillletting me see whereevery personin the room is standing.An emergency exit sign flickers behind the furthest table, and Iclock how long it might take me to run to it, knowing it'll let out into the side alley should I need an escape. The only weapon I have on me is a small knife, but hopefully, there won't be any need to use it since armed security dressed casually cover each corner of the dark room.
27 people in the room, four of which are security, six staff. So, of the 17 patrons, what are the chances that any of them are hunters on the lookout for me? Slim, hopefully.
An especially dirtyman sits in a booth, quietly twiddling his thumbs, an empty tumbler sitting before him while he tries too hard not to look at me. His dark blonde hair reflects the light, catching on each snarl and disheveled strand. The coat he wears is the darkest brown, almost too impeccable to match his purposefully messy look.
I slide into the booth across from him, looking at the face of someone I never thought I'd have to see again unless I had a gun pointed at him.
Alastor lowers his head, laying it ontop ofthe table, "You shouldn't be here."
"You look like shit," I respond. "You smell like it, too."
With a pained laugh, he lifts his head. The evidence ofjusthow terrible he's doing becomes more obvious as he does, the deep purple underneath his eyes, the whites of them far too red. "You're one to talk. Did you even shower after your latest romp with the demon, or did you just spray tequila on yourself and call it perfume?"
My fist aches to smash his stupid face in, but beforeI can, he drags both hands down his face, using his nails to dig down his flesh, dragging his lower eyelids to droop before releasing them. "Fuck— fuck, no. I'm sorry. I didn't— I shouldn't have said that. Old habits and all that."
I glare at him, the dig at my personal life only stinging for a second before I remember who this asshole is. "How's your shoulder?" Sarcasm drips from my tone.
Hejustlaughs again, rotating the arm I shot not too long ago, "It's fine. Not even close to the worst thing someone's done to me."
Empathy for what he's also been through begs to flow through me, but I can't let it. Can't forget that no matter what our family did to him, what he did to Bel left her so traumatized she was a shell of her former self because of him.
"Are you going to tell me what you to-"
His hand slams down on mine, quieting me. "Don't even talk about it." He looks around, suspicion making his eyes wide. "You have to pretend we never even had that conversation. Never speak of it again."
"Al," I scoff. "Come on. You had to know I would track you down and ask."
With a roll of his eyes, he removes his freezing hand from mine, "I had hoped my wasting of a burner phone to warn you would be enough to keep you far away from this. I've counted no less than 12 hunters swarming, looking for you."
"Well I've been here all day. What's stopped them from finding me?" I don't let the fear fill my chest. If they wanted me, I've been easy pickings. I can only imagine Alastor is plagued with paranoia.If they were here,they would have found him aseasilyas I did.
"You don't know how they operate, Isla. I do." He twiddles his thumbs again, his gaze darting up to the server coming to ask if I need anything. Twirling his glass toward her, he responds, "One more of these for me."
"And for you?" she asks me.
"Tequila soda," I shouldn't be having another drink, but if I don't, the pounding in my head from the come-down of this afternoon will never abate.
Alastor continues as she walks off, subtly glancing at her curves, "I've spent every second since I got here running interference."
"How?"
"I— okay, listen. Don't get mad."
That's not comforting. "What have you done?"
"I knew that the Sanctus Sculitis knew that wherever Bel goes, you go.So like I told you, they've been tracking her, and I've justkind of...co-opted their investigation tactics."
"What the fuck does that mean?" My eye starts to twitch, "Co-opted?"
He holds his hands up in defense, the dirt between his fingers making me sick to look at, "Well, once you know what tech they use for tracking, it's not hard to tap into it."
"So even after everything, after all the warnings to leave her the fuck alone, you've been stalking her." Rage bubbles up in my chest, and I have to fight every instinct to reach across and strangle this fucking psycho.
"Yes— I, no— well, yeah." He scratches his face again, his madness becoming more apparent every second. "But for good reason. Look. The Sanctum wanted to make Bel and Cas and Fritz pay for their bullshit, but someone up at the tippy top told them to leave it alone. Said to focus all their efforts on finding you . But one of the avenues they're using to do that is your friends. They have eyes on Bel, Mike, Charlie, all three of them, just waiting for you to show up."
"And you've done what with this information?" Realization dawns. "You caused the crash today."
He nods.
"And our phones going out."
Another frantic nod.
"And the booking issues so we had to go to a different hotel last minute."
"I—I know it doesn't make up for what I've done.But I just—"heblinks a few times, knocking his head with the palm of his hand, "I needed to do something , don't you get it? I need to fix it. I've done so many things, Isla. So many wrongs I don't even know where to start with making them right. Someone like me isn't deserving of forgiveness, I know that." His voice cracks as he speaks. "But I have to try. For everyone else's sake.
As misguided and absolutely insane as it is, his actions have probably kept all of us safer than we would have been without him.
"And how haven't they found you?"
He laughs, "Look at me. I don't even look like myself. I can feel the fucking filth underneath my fingernails. I'm so horribly gross that people look away in disgust. No one would suspect it's me. It's easy to blend into a place with 20 million other people."
"And what's your plan now?" I ask as the tequila is placed in front of me.
He downs his dark liquor all in one go, thanking the waitress and asking for another before she's even had time to walk away. "The plan is to send you back to wherever the fuck you've been hiding, and just hold out for the next... I don't know, 10 years or so."
"Ten years?" I push, "What happens then?"
His eyes glance around the room, darting out the window into the dark night before meeting mine again, "Well, it's more like eight and a half-ish. But their weapons will stop working."
It can't be that easy. "Do they not have any more blood to use or what?" Surely, if they have blood farms, they've got a stash of blood they can use.
He starts breathing hard, panic overtaking his face, "No, they have more blood than they know what to do with. More women to keep bleeding, too. What they don't-"
I interrupt him with a hand on his forearm, "Do you know where they keep them?" If I can find out where they are, I can let Eamon know, and he can break them all out.
He shakes his head, "If I did, I would have told you to tell your boyfriend when we spoke on the phone."
I'm choosing to ignore the boyfriend comment. "Then how can you be so sure they won't be able to fix their weapons?"
He laughs manically, "Because I stole the cookbook."
"The cookbook?"
"The Sanctus Sculitis Benedici," he confirms. "Their most sacred text. The one with all their history, enchantments, edicts."
Panic claws up my chest because if he really took that... he's definitely fucking dead when they catch him. "What kind of idiots only have one copy of something like that?"
"It's sacred to them. Kept behind a team of security 24/7 and only brought out once a year for worship, once a decade for actual use."
"Then how the fuck did you get your hands on it?" I ask.
His eyes go vacant as he stares into whatever memories haunt him. "The blood on my hands goes much further than you could possibly imagine, Isla. I've lost count of the lives I've taken. In the aftermath of the explosion you caused, things were... they were messy. With the scrambling to hideit all, truths about what happened that day fell through the cracks.
"While trying to gain access to their computers, I saw a little blip in their usually well-regulated vault holding the book. I didn't make it out unscathed, but the men watching it didnt make it out at all."
"Why?"
"Why what?" he asks, thanking the server as she places another glassin front ofhim.
"Why do it in the first place? You were royalty there."
He twirls the glass around, not willing to look at me. "When did you know you were different?"
"What do you mean different?" I can think of a million ways that I am different from others.
"Like... different," he shrugs. "Different from how the family says you're supposed to be."
"Are you really sitting here asking about my sexuality right now?" I can't believe this shit.
He nods, defeated. "I was thirteen."
"What?"
His red eyes meet mine again, the similarities in our faces more apparent the longer I look. The gray-tinged green, the cool-toned brown strands entwined with his dark blonde. More than that, I see the hollowness in his expression,one thatI can only imagine is mirrored in me.
"My best friend, Howie and I were talking about girls. You know how boys do. Admiring them, wanting them, without any of the knowledge of what it even means to want someone." He clears his throat, "And as we were talking, I realized those feelings I didn't understand, didn't know how to do anything with... I had them for Howie, too."
A sick feeling gnaws through my stomach, remembering the time when we were teenagers when Alastor disappeared for months, his family telling everyone that he was unwell.
"I tried to hide it. Knew even then that it made me an abomination,"hecontinues, "But my dad knew. Somehow. Could tell by how much time I spent with Howie, how much I talked about him. When dad talked about my future, my time hunting before taking a wife, it clawed into my heart that the person I would be with forever wasn't the person I considered my only solace in a world full of hateful sycophants."
"Alastor, I had no idea. I'm so-"
His palm raises, stopping me, "Don't."
I just nod, realizing this is something he needs to get off his chest, and I'm the only person he could possibly tell it to.
"I hated you," he finally confesses. "Spent the last 15 years hating you. Little Isla who would be useful no matter what. You could fuck anyone and everyone, and yet they still wanted you to be one of us. You had a freedom I would never have."
"That's not fair," the argument slips out. "I didn't have freedom . I had a chain that they used to rip me back every single time I walked out. And when they got me back time and time again, you have no fucking clue what kind of punishment they doled out on me. The cleansing s I had to go through."
He nods, "I know that now. But at the time... we were just kids, Isla. And they were... the things they did to us, the things they're still doing to other people just like us. It has to stop." His voice cracks on the final word of his rant. "I have spent the last 15 years just trying to survive. Doing anything I had to in order to just live another day. And then... something inside me snapped. And I didn't want to survive anymore if it meant the world keeps spinning as it always has. Either the Sanctum stops existing, or I do."
"You can't possibly think you can take them down alone," I wish he could, honestly. But that's impossible, and we both know it.
"Oh, of course not," he scoffs. "But I took the one thing that can make them powerless. Then in a decade or so, once their weapons stop working, your giant demon friend can take his people in and take them out."
"And if they get to you before their power runs out?" I ask.
With a shrug, he signals to the waitress again, "Then they'll kill me."
"And the book?"
Another manic, defeated laugh leaves his throat, "It's safe."
"Safe where?" If he hid it, there's no chance they won't find it eventually.
Mischief lights up his face, the sneaky little shit. "You have it. Wherever you and all your stuff disappeared to before auntie interfered."
My mind spins, thinking about all the unpacked boxes gathering dust back at the compound in Alaska.My chest caves in, panic and hope warring in my body at the prospect of it being hiddenawaysomewhere that no one in thewhole world evenknows exists.
He cackles, taking the drink from our server before she can even set it down, "See? Even with all their tech, they had no fucking clue where you went. So I knew— I knew you would be the safest person to hold onto it. And ," his words start to slur. "When they do find me, they won't even be able to torture its location out of me. I stuffed it nice and snug between all your sex books and collectors edition classics."
I know the exact box he's talking about. Eamon unpacked it last week, putting every tome on the bookshelf in the living room. Well, apparently not every one.
"I've had it this whole time?" I practically shout before he grabs my arm.
"Fuck," he whisper-yells. "Keep quiet!"
I'm going to throttle this asshole, "Why didn't you tell me? Don't you think I deserved some kind of warning?"
"No?" he laughs. "No offense, I. but I'm desperate here. I tortured someone in front of your friend, then also tortured her boyfriend to draw you guys out. I'm not above doing underhanded shit."
"I can't believe this. What the fuck is the matter with you?"
"So much," he admits with a chuckle. "The better question is why haven't you or your boy toy found it yet? I'm assuming wherever you're staying, it's with the Biberé."
"I... I just haven't had a chance to unpack everything. I'm on the run, you know."
He looks at me suspiciously, "Or maybe your boytoy did find it and decided not to tell you."
"No." The word tastes bitter because as much as I want to believe Eamon would tell me, I have no reason to trust him to do that. "No, he wouldn't hide something like that from me."
"K," Alastor sounds as convinced as I feel. "So why don't you ask him? And while you're at it, have him tell you about his little mind-speaking trick."
All the blood rushes out of my limbs and face, gathering in the pit of my stomach, "What?"
He nods slowly, "Biberé have this nifty little talent. They can speak directly into someone's head. Like a telephone line straight into your auditory cortex. Some are more powerful than others, but even I know yours has abilities outside of what the Sanctum knew was possible."
Every time I wondered if he could hear my thoughts. Every fucking time I thought it was a phantom voice in my head because I was going crazy with cabin fever. He was actually there, taunting me from inside my own fucking mind.
My breaths start coming faster, heavier, nearing the point of hyperventilating. "Why are you telling me this?"
He shrugs, "Because I knew he didn't."
"How could you possibly know that?" My voice wavers, the world around me blurring as I struggle to breathe.
"Isla. I've spent my whole life hunting his kind. I know how they work. I can tell from a headline of a newspaper from the other side of the world when it was a demon attack. And I know that the more powerful a demon is, the more likely they are to fly under the radar. That's how that Fritz guy has survived 1,000 years.If Eamon is even half as powerful as he seems, he couldprobablysneak into your mind and plant thoughts without you knowing he was ever there."
"No," I say, trying to convince myself as much as I am him, "You hurt my friends, you hid shit from me, you fucking tricked me to save your own ass, you're only telling me this now to hurt me. Why should I believe anything you say?"
"Look," he speaks like I'm a frightened animal that might bolt at any second, "I hate the Sanctum. And I'm going to make them pay for everything they've done. But that doesn't mean I suddenly like the demons, or that I'm willing to let them keep lying to the people who fall for them."
Fall for them. Hischoice of words threatens to bring the tequila and champagne back up. I stand suddenly, wobblingon my feet, "I have to go."
"Isla, stop," Alastor reaches for me, and I move out of his reach, "Sit down. Breathe."
I shake my head, wiping the tears away with shaking hands, "No. I can't be here. I have to... I have to get out of here."
Holding the tears and fury at bay, Imanage toscramble a $20 out of my purse and throw it on the table, but Alastor doesn't even look at it, standing to stop me. I shake my head, holding my hands up and making it clear that if he touches me, I will hurt him. "I. Please. Just calm down." Alastor's eyes dart to something behind me, and I know what I'll find before I even think about spinning.
Goosebumps rise onthe back ofmy neck, his presence clear before I even turn around or hear his stupid voice.
"Isla," Eamon breathes a sigh of relief from the entrance to the bar, his voice carrying all the way across to me and Alastor.
When I do face him, the terrified, furious expression he wears drives me further into madness. As he watches me, relief relaxes his face as he walks towards me, every step bringing him closer to the rage I'm about to unleash on him.
"What's wrong?" he finally asks, standing within reach. He doesn't get mad that I left, doesn't scold me for putting myself in danger, just looks at me with those big green eyes and openly terrified expression.
And I fucking hate it.
Before I can stop myself, I pull my fist back, aiming right for his stupid fucking nose.