Chapter 11
Ulysses
“Spying isn’t always glamorous, you know,” Rue told me, watching me from the corner of his eye, lips twitching in amusement. “Hardly ever, in fact. The whole point is to do it discreetly, quietly. It involves a lot of waiting. If it’s exciting, that probably means you’re doing it wrong.”
I dropped my head back onto the headrest and muttered, “Then I must be an expert by now, because this isn’t exciting at all.”
Rue’s chuckle gave me a soft sense of satisfaction. The god was usually so serious that when he let one of his hard-earned laughs free, it felt like a great accomplishment.
Sighing dramatically, I peeked across the truck’s interior at him, biting back a smile. “I spy with my little eye…”
“No,” he said simply.
“Oh, come on, indulge me,” I teased, and when he caved (which I knew he would), I began again. “I spy with my little eye…”
“A lamppost,” he said.
My jaw popped open. “How did you—” I crossed my arms over my chest and did my best not to pout. “You don’t know which lamppost.”
“That one,” he said, pointing at exactly the right one.
I glared at him. “Noooo,” I lied. “It was… that one,” I said, pointing at a different one entirely, and he hit me with a look that said he was on to me. I guess that was what I got for trying to play a simple child’s game with the god of spying. Nothing got past him.
Grumbling, I pulled my feet off the dash and grabbed my bag from the floor.
“I think we should split up,” I said, feeling dejected and bored out of my skull.
“We can cover twice as much area that way. And I’ll be able to smell better out of the car.
” Though I had to admit, I wasn’t hating being in the truck with Rue.
He was surprisingly good company, even with the lack of entertainment.
I pushed the door open, moving to hop out.
“You stay here at the strip club, and I’ll walk up and down a few blocks toward the lake. ”
A fist gripped my jacket, though, and dragged me back into the truck. “No.”
I tugged at my jacket to no avail, thoroughly trapped. “What do you mean no?”
He arched a thick auburn eyebrow at me, leaning all the way across my lap to pull the door closed. “I mean, no, you’re not going anywhere. We stick together.”
I scoffed. “Do I get to know why?”
A muscle in Rue’s jaw ticked, his nostrils flaring in a huff as he glared out the windshield. But he said nothing—behind whatever macho reason he had was a bunch of bullshit. He knew I was right, but he was too alpha to admit it.
Nodding decisively, I gave my jacket another sharp yank until I was free.
“Alright, then we’re in agreement—we’ll split up.
And hey, we finally have an excuse to use these walkies I bought!
” I opened the glove box and pulled out the two walkie-talkies, fresh out of the package.
I tossed one at him, and when his hands were busy catching it, I shoved the door open a second time and hopped down onto the pavement.
I could tell he still wanted to argue with me, so I held my radio up to my mouth and pressed the button to talk. “Testing, testing… Ruadan sucks at I Spy.”
He rolled his eyes, so I took that as permission and closed the door, practically skipping down the sidewalk as I gratefully stretched my cramped muscles, breathing in fresh air that hadn’t been recycled through our lungs for the past four hours.
As I passed a red mailbox on the corner, I was about to call him over the radio to play one last round of I Spy, but before I could push the button, his voice erupted from the device.
“The mailbox,” he said. Anything else he might’ve said was cut off as he took his finger off the button, but when I whipped around to glare at him again, I could see his head tipped back in laughter. How did he do that?!
“Yuck it up, buddy,” I muttered to myself as I rounded the corner and headed to the next block. “Just wait until I solve this mystery first.”
For the next two hours, I wandered the downtown streets of Valleywood.
My feet ached, my stomach growled, and I was now bored and tired.
The restaurants closed, then the bars, until the only things open were the 24-hour gym and the Q Cup convenience store, both of which were nearly empty.
The temperature dropped until I had to hunch into my jacket, hands tucked in the pockets, breath escaping my lips in little silver puffs of steam.
I tried to pay attention to every odor that wafted my way, but it was hard to stay focused, because…
surprise, surprise, this was just as uneventful as sitting inside the truck.
And now I didn’t even have Ruadan’s monosyllabic conversation to keep the boredom at bay.
He made me check in every 15 minutes, but other than that, the city was quiet.
As much as I hated to admit when I was wrong, maybe this whole stakeout thing was a stupid idea.
I didn’t know why I thought I could help.
I wasn’t smart enough to play this game with gods, and I certainly wasn’t powerful enough.
So I could suck sins out of a corpse, so what.
It was like a party trick compared to what Rue could do.
It was in this state of half-wallowing that I stepped off the curb to cross the street, and that silence that had settled around the city suddenly grew teeth.
It bit down around me, all sound muffling strangely, until all I could hear was the pulse rushing in my ears, my own unsteady breath.
Lights dimmed or flickered out entirely, enveloping the street in shadows.
I could feel the air around me like a swath of silk being dragged across my skin, but when I looked down at my hand, I saw nothing there.
I turned in place, looking back the way I’d come, but there was no evidence of having crossed over a barrier, no line to mark the change.
To test it, I slowly stepped back up onto the curb, and the earlier quiet slammed back into me, louder than I remembered it, a rush of tiny sounds I’d taken for granted just a moment ago—the distant hush of traffic on the interstate, quiet music spilling from someone’s apartment window, a low buzz of electricity from the streetlight overhead.
Back off the curb, I once again stepped through a curtain of invisible fog.
“What the actual fuck,” I said, my voice eaten up by the silence until only a murmur remained.
Against all better judgment, I continued forward, eyes peeled for whatever was causing this.
I knew I should probably call Ruadan, but what would I say, it’s quiet?
No, he would probably think I was being stupid, like when I suggested the van and the pointless stakeout in the first place.
I would wait until I had some kind of evidence to report.
Whatever this weight was, this pressure to the air, it must have muffled more than just sound, because it wasn’t until I was 50 feet away from the woman that I caught the first tendrils of tar on the stagnant air.
She stood inside the vestibule of a bank, the glass shattered on the floor beneath her feet.
An alarm should’ve been blaring, the wail of approaching sirens missing from too-thick air, but it seemed everything was suspended in this bubble.
The woman was so unassuming; just over five feet tall, brown hair streaked with gray pulled back in a ponytail, wearing high-waisted jeans and a hoodie with the logo of a local high school on it, visible pride for her children.
Someone’s wife and mother. And before my very eyes, she punched both her hands deep into the ATM, tearing off the entire face of the machine.
I knew such a violent action must’ve shattered the bones of her hands, but she didn’t even flinch.
It was like watching Samuel Lear get stabbed all over again.
She didn’t even seem to notice the blood tracking down her forearms, dripping onto the gray tiled floor.
Breath coming in sharp pants I couldn’t hear, only the misty vapor proof I was still breathing, I crept back slowly until I was out of view and pulled the radio from my pocket to make the call.
“Rue? I’ve found something. A woman who smells like that oily tar.
On Seventh, halfway down from Waller. Over.
” I waited for his calm and steady presence, that soft Irish lilt reassuring me he was on his way.
There was no answer. “Rue? Hello?” I tried again, my voice compressed and dull.
Could he even hear me? Or was the air pressure cutting off radio waves too?
“Shit.” I should go back up the block to where the barrier began, make the call from there.
I peeked back around the corner, the soccer mom now shoving handfuls of cash, smeared with her blood, into a gym bag.
I didn’t have time. Someone needed to stop her.
Hell, I guess that meant I needed to stop her.
Rue probably wasn’t coming, and this was what we’d been waiting for, someone still in the throes of possession, the chance to connect it back to whoever was behind this unhinged crime spree.
I swallowed hard, heart racing, sweating dripping down my spine.
I balled my fists and stepped toward the woman.
She hadn’t seen me yet, distracted by the bills that had escaped across the floor.
I should’ve been terrified, limbs shaking, sweat dripping, as my brain did whatever mental math it could to talk me out of this plan.
I wouldn’t have listened, though. This was my chance to prove to Rue that I could be useful, that for all my years, I wasn’t some child playing a game of spy versus spy.
My powers might’ve been little more than a party trick, but I wasn’t completely helpless. I could defend myself.
As I approached the bank, my shoe came down on a shard of laminated glass, and even muffled, the sound had her head snapping around.
Her eyes pinned me in place, steam rising off her body like a boiling pot on the stove.
Oh gods, now what? I didn’t have handcuffs or even rope, nothing to knock her out.
Was I just supposed to ask her to stop robbing the bank and pretty please come with me?
She smiled, so friendly. “Well, hello there. And who might you be?” she drawled in a sweet voice, designed for soothing children’s fears and greeting her neighbors with a tinkling “Howdy” or a “Toodle-oo.”
I didn’t know how to answer that question, but at the very least, I needed to stall. “Uly,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.
She tilted her head to the side, like a curious bird.
“Hmm, not human,” she stated. I didn’t confirm or deny.
“You would have to be something more to just stroll through my barrier like that.” When she failed to get a reaction from me, she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and stepped out onto the sidewalk, just 20 feet from me now.
I shifted to the side to cut her off. The stench of her grew stronger, and I shuddered as it threatened to choke me, the toxic miasma burning in my nose, my throat, reaching down into my lungs and poisoning every breath I took.
“Get out of my way,” she said, the sweetness in her voice melting away, leaving a gravelly rasp as she let her disguise slip.
Looking beyond the clothes, the hair, the sensible sneakers, there was something seriously wrong with the figure standing before me.
Her eyes filled with ink until they were fully black, two bottomless pits that seemed to suck in all ambient light like black holes.
Even looking into them, I felt this dangerous tug to draw closer, closer to my own demise.
Whatever this creature was, it was certainly no sweet housewife.
It was something ancient, something wrong, wearing her like a meat suit.
Possession, I heard Rue saying. Demon. “Hurting you is not part of the plan, but I will if I have to.”
“You mean, hurting me isn’t part of the bargain,” I said, hazarding a guess, and from the flicker of awareness that crossed the creature’s face, it seemed I’d hit the target.
“Well, aren’t you a clever little thing,” it rasped, its apparent amusement doing nothing to soften its bearing. “Did you figure that out all on your own?”
“Let her go,” I demanded—or tried to, anyway, but it sounded more like a polite suggestion the way my voice tapered off at the end. At least I hadn’t said please. Gods, why couldn’t I channel a little of Rue’s burly alpha machismo when I needed it?
It almost looked like she was considering it for a second, lips pursed, but then her grin turned wicked. “No, I don’t think I will.” It made to step around me again, and again, I moved to intercept.
My heart was pounding, palms slick with sweat, bowels turning watery. “Tell me what you want with her—with any of them. What are you getting from this deal?”
Its upper lip curled back, revealing straight white teeth that said the woman cared for her dental hygiene, a complete contrast to the evil staring out at me.
Not a monster, I reminded myself. Not really.
And once this creature squatting inside her body vacated the premises, she would be human once again, which meant killing it was not an option. Maybe it never was.
“Isn’t it obvious?” it sneered. “I get chaos.” And then it took a decisive step toward me.
The grin it gave me had me retreating a step involuntarily, a sickening chill crawling over my skin as the demon advanced on me. It didn’t stop coming, and I pedaled backward, split between fleeing for my life and stalling long enough that Rue could get here as backup.
Did he hear my message? Was he on his way right now, about to come to the rescue at any second? Or was I making a stand on my own. Either way, I had officially run out of time.
Determination flared inside me. Misplaced? Absolutely. “Fuck it,” I cursed, squaring my stance. I’d been looking forward to retirement. Looked like this might just be a little more permanent than I’d been hoping for. “Bring it on, bitch.”