Chapter Fourteen
“THERE IS NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT THE HERALDS. THEY WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO HELP US PROSPER, TO SHOWER US WITH RICHES; WE ARE THEIR CHILDREN. BUT THESE BLESSINGS CANNOT COME WITHOUT SACRIFICE.”
Before either Dani or Orion can react, I phase across the room, reappearing by the Gold Towner just as he starts to blink open his eyes.
He’s still groggy, barely awake, which gives me the leeway I need to grab him by the front of his shirt with both hands, haul him partially upright, and roughly slam him against the wall to prop him up.
He grunts in pain, but I ignore it, crouching in front of him, balancing Wrath point-down on his thigh. “Wake up, lunkhead.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Orion hurries over, holstering his pistol as he goes. “Let’s not get too carried away here.”
The Gold Towner’s head lolls a little as he fully comes to, his eyes slowly focusing in on me. I bare my teeth at him. Trinity’s song screams, wild and fierce. It thrums in my throat, in my ears. It’s all I can hear, like the rest of the room has gone silent.
“You’re going to tell me where the Bruinn sisters are.”
He swallows hard, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“Wrong answer.” My blade flashes, and he cries out as a gash opens up along the top of his thigh. “You’ve got a lot of skin to work with here, and I just sharpened this one recently.”
Blue-white light haloes the edges of my vision.
It’s the same shade and intensity as those flares, out in the Copper Plains.
My vision swims, and the Old Clock Tower dissolves around me, replaced by green plants, dripping with water, spiraling out of the ceiling and wrapping around my face, my neck, my chest—
“Stop!” Orion’s voice cuts through the melody, and I feel his hand on my arm, pulling me to my feet and then drawing me backward, out of earshot. Dani stands nearby, watching everything with shrewd eyes.
“I’m fine.” I shake my head to clear the vision from my eyes. The halos are gone. Trinity’s song has slipped away again, nothing more than a murmur, hardly audible over my pounding heart. “I’m getting answers.”
Orion frowns. “No, you’re not. You’re getting whatever nonsense he can spit out just to keep you from hurting him. Do you want to find your sisters? Or do you want to chase ghosts until it’s too late?”
I drag Wrath across the sleeve of my forearm, wiping the blood off both sides. “Fine. You think you can do better? Go ahead.”
Orion motions me to step back, and then he kneels down next to the Gold Towner, grabbing a scrap of cloth from his pocket to press against the cut. “Hey, I’m so sorry about that. You got a name?”
The man eyes me, wary, and then finally says, “Clint.”
“Clint, that’s a nice name. I’m Orion. That’s Dani.
” He nods over his shoulder at Dani, who has her pistol back out and is spinning it in her hand, occasionally and abruptly stopping it so that the barrel points right at Clint’s face.
“And this is the Butcher. You’ll recognize them by all the knives and blood.
” He gestures at me, and I stare back, flint-eyed.
“You guys took something from them. You know about that, right, Clint? You seem like a smart, high-up kind of guy.”
Clint swallows hard, his whole throat bobbing as he tries to strain backward, away from the wild trajectory of Dani’s gun. “I heard—I heard about it.”
“Good, good.” Orion follows his terrified gaze, clocks what Dani’s doing with the gun, and rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna make him pee his pants doing that, Morales.”
Dani suddenly stops moving the pistol, looking like she’s just noticed that it’s making Clint nervous. “Oh, god, is this making you uncomfortable? I’m so sorry. You don’t have to be afraid of us, Clint. We’re all friends here.”
“Best friends,” Orion adds enthusiastically.
I grumble a little, in the back of my throat. “Can we stay on track please?”
Orion pats Clint heavily on the shoulder, drawing the man’s attention back to himself. “Since we’re such good friends, you can tell me. Where are the Bruinn sisters?”
“I—I haven’t seen them. But”—he adds quickly when he sees me start to step toward him with Reason—“there were rumors that some of Kilpatrick’s inner circle had bait that they were gonna use to draw out the Butcher. In case they survived the grenade at their lodgings.”
Made sense. They were looking for revenge for taking out their boss. Well, if they wanted to stand between me and my sisters, they could all die the same. Didn’t make any difference to me. “Draw me out where exactly?”
“I don’t know. But some people have mentioned South Parish.”
I sheathe Reason, spinning on my heel toward the door. “That’s where I’m going, then.”
“Hold up. Just wait for one second.” Orion darts in front of me, blocking my path.
“You’re going to go running off to the other side of Covenant, and you don’t even know if he’s right?
Or telling the truth?” I pause just long enough, and he seizes on my hesitation.
“You brought me in on this and asked me to help. So let me help. Let me reach out to my connections and double-check that South Parish is even where we need to be going.”
I shift on my feet, already chafing at the idea of having to wait longer instead of just storming a parish and ripping it to shreds with my teeth until it gives up all its secrets. “I don’t want to waste even more time.”
“Hey, Clint buddy,” Orion calls over his shoulder without looking away from me. “How long you figure before your folks decide to do something reckless with those sisters?”
Clint hesitates, but Dani crosses her arms so her pistol lies across her biceps, pointed at his head. “Two more days at most. After that they’ll probably figure no one is coming and sell them off with the other indentureds for some cash.”
“There you have it.” Orion spreads his hands wide. “You can stay put for a few hours and let me do a little legwork. Or you can waste half a day—or longer—running around the whole city. It’s your choice.”
Well, I guess when he puts it that way …
“Fine. We play it your way. But I’m not waiting for very long.”
“Fair,” Orion says, nodding. “Now we just need to figure out what to do with Clint here—”
Dani fires off a round from her pulse pistol before he’s even finished speaking, the high-pitched blast cutting through the room and causing both Orion and me to flinch. Clint slumps over sideways onto the floor, eyes closed.
Orion gapes at Clint’s perfectly still body, face ashen. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that?!”
Dani sniffs, unaffected, as she goes back to the desk and starts loading record tablets into her rucksack. “Dead men can’t talk. Come on. Someone probably heard that and will be headed up here to check it out.”
A deep hurt settles into the creases of Orion’s face, and he turns his gaze on me.
Like he’s waiting for me to react, to say something, to prove myself better somehow by objecting to what Dani just did.
But I’ve never been as good as he’s always believed me to be, and if Dani hadn’t done it, I probably would’ve.
Because she’s right. Dead men can’t talk, and they can’t give up any information about where you’ve been and what you’re planning to do next.
“Leave it,” I tell him softly. “We can’t do anything for him now.”
I don’t miss the disappointment that washes over his expression, but when I give him a nudge, he turns reluctantly around and heads for the door. I follow right behind, and as I’m walking, I hear Dani hurriedly throw the last few tablets into her rucksack and hustle up behind me.
It takes half a second to spin around and pin her against the doorframe with my hand gripped around her throat. “Sorry, where do you think you’re going?”
Dani frowns, looking genuinely confused. Maybe even a little hurt. “With you. To help get your sisters back. I told you, I’m not in the business of letting innocent people get hurt.”
I laugh, but there’s no mirth to it. “And what makes you think I would want your help?”
She sucks in a sharp breath as my fingers tighten, digging into her skin. “Because if the Gold Towners are laying a trap for the Butcher, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
I stare at her familiar-unfamiliar face, picking out the pieces I know—the sloping shape of her eyes, the little wrinkle between her brows, the bow of her mouth—and the pieces I don’t—the glint of rage and revenge deep inside that she’s kept buried all this time.
“We’ll manage,” I say, finally taking my hand off her neck and stepping back. She shudders with relief, touching her fingers softly to her throat. “I never want to see you again. Ever. The day I lay eyes on you again is the day I send you to the Depths.”
Turning my back on her, I shoulder past Orion and out into the hall.
The floor is empty and quiet. My feet stumble a little beneath me as I head for the stairwell, and I have to grab the wall to steady myself and stay upright.
My skin feels flushed and sweaty, and the dull ache in my old stab wounds explodes into a hot, throbbing pain that radiates up my chest and neck and into the back of my skull.
Orion pauses next to me, his mouth twisting with concern. “What’s going on with you? You don’t look so hot.”
“Neither do you,” I snap, and he rolls his eyes. “I just need a little water, that’s all.”
I’m suddenly shivering hard underneath all my layers, sweat plastering my short hair to my forehead. The scene around me swims in and out of focus, from stairwell to plant life, dry cracked air to curtains of rain. Orion steps up close, ducking his head to see my face.
“Val? Val, are you okay?”
I lick dry lips. Everything around me seems to soften and shift like liquid. “I don’t feel so good…”
He says something, but his voice is muffled and his words sound foreign. I can’t understand what he’s saying. Why is he even still talking?
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Stop…”
My grip on the wall loosens, and suddenly I’m tipping sideways as the floor rushes up to meet me.