Chapter 29 Stop the Whispers
Stop the Whispers
One moment she was looking forward to peeing in a filthy gas station restroom, maybe being able to write a note on some toilet paper—though she might not, the police probably couldn’t help her if nightmare creatures and superhuman monster hunters were in the mix—and the next, Liv was blinking, her hair hanging in her face and the oneiros tapping at her chin.
It was hanging that way because she was upside down. Smoke filled her throat and scorched her nose; she tried to make some sense of what was happening.
Dream. It was all a dream, maybe? Her hands hung, fingers twitching as her brain tried to coordinate them. Her eyes ran with shimmering hot water, the back of the driver’s seat only indistinctly visible.
A crash and tinkle of falling glass, a hungry roaring. Hands on her, warm and iron-hard. Liv struggled, a drugged kitten batting at a threat too big for comprehension.
Someone was dragging her out of an upside-down car.
What the hell? This wasn’t the long-ago accident in Mika’s sporty little orange coupe—for one thing, this hulk of crumpled metal and crumbling safety glass was a lot bigger.
Not to mention she and her bestie hadn’t ended upside down, just bruised and shaken with the front end folded around a concrete pole.
Also, it was snowing instead of dry and crystal-clear icy, and Liv hadn’t dreamed this accident ahead of time.
For once.
“Give it to usss,” something hissed.
The voice was wrong, scraping and burrowing through her head without going through her ears. She convulsed, a weak little whisper-scream sliding past her chapped lips.
Something popped, and whatever had spoken gave a thin glassy howl. It sounded like it hurt, and she was dozily glad even if its pain tore at her as well.
“Go fuck yourself,” another voice snarled, but the words were blessedly human, male, and totally pissed off. For a moment, she thought it was Erik and her heart gave a weird leap, almost lodging in her smoke-jammed throat.
She was dragged the rest of the way through the window, shattered safety glass grinding against her jeans. Her sneakers dangled as he lifted her, and the necklace settled in its accepted place, a warm, comforting weight.
“It’s all right,” he said, softly. “Almost dawn, Livvie. Just hang in there.”
Don’t call me that, asshole. Darkness swallowed her, and just before she passed out, she heard a massive, grinding noise.
The SUV had exploded.
* * *
It wasn’t Erik. It was Jake, and when she opened her burning eyes he was looming over her, blue gaze oddly empty and the ivory plastic bedside phone clamped to his ear.
He dropped the receiver into the cradle as she inhaled, scrambling away—her neck ached, her back was a solid bar of pain, and both her legs felt like wet noodles.
Whiplash was a bitch, and she was in yet another hotel room.
Her shoulders hit the headboard of a cheap motel bed. He was right after her, his knees sinking into pillows on either side of her hips, and his big, warm, callused hand clapped over her mouth.
“Don’t scream,” he said, pleasant and low. “Please. It’s… distracting.”
OhGod, ohChrist someone, anyone, please… She stared at him, her shoulders pressed against the headboard—who knows what had been wiped off thin, pale-pink vinyl?
This room wasn’t quite seedy but it wasn’t entirely nice either, and the mirror on the far wall showed Jake’s shoulders, his wild snow-frosted hair, but not his bruised face or the bloody grime on his hands. He looked, quite frankly, like he’d been put through the wringer.
“Good,” he said, still in that deceptively quiet, mild tone. It clashed uneasily with the glittering rage in blue eyes and the flush in what few parts of his face remained uninjured. “That’s better. Now, I’m gonna take my hand away and you’re gonna play nice, or I will gag you. Clear?”
Her chin dropped, rose again; her eyes were welling with smoke-induced tears. They both reeked of gasoline and the terrible, stomach-churning miasma of monsters. A scorching drop tracked hot down her cheek, touched his fingers.
Jake peeled his palm away from her mouth, ready to clamp down again at any moment. “I’m gonna clean the ichor off both of us. Can you hold still while I do that?”
Liv swallowed, hard. Nodded again.
“Good girl.” The soft edge of approval was terrifying, a thin veneer over a deep well of fury.
It was very much like being locked in a cage with a hungry tiger—not that she ever had been, but Liv could goddamn well extrapolate.
“After that, I suggest a change of clothes. We’re gonna move when the sun’s high enough. All right?”
Move where? It was a silly question, she decided. She pushed her shoulders back into the headboard. “Okay.” Her voice shook, but she managed to produce an almost normal tone.
“Very good girl.” Jake’s right hand dropped to her shoulder, cupping gently. He exhaled, eyes narrowing, and the sensation was odd—tiny bubbles sliding over her skin, steam-ribbons of monster blood lifting and shredding into nonexistence. A powerful, almost musky smell folded over both of them.
Who knew magic had a scent? Liv certainly hadn’t until now. As Lou often intoned while telling stories about his husband’s antics, you did indeed learn something new every day on this blessed earth.
“You hurt anywhere?” Jake studied her face. “Bruises, cuts? You’ve got to tell me. Even a papercut, Livvie. Anywhere at all?”
How the hell should I know? “Whiplash,” she managed between dry cracked lips. “My neck, my back. Other than that, I think I’m—”
“Got it. Hold still.” His hand tensed against her torn, smoke-stained jacket. A flood of warmth slid down her back, reaching insubstantial fingers to stroke her nape. Liv’s muscles went liquid and she sagged, gasping. “Be easier if you were sealed up, but—”
“When will you tell me what that is?” she rasped.
“I suppose I should.” He retreated inch by inch, but the warmth remained, bathing her from top to toes. It even combed through her hair, and she could have sworn she felt every individual strand trying to twitch and grow some more. “But not if it’s going to freak you out.”
“Honestly, how much more could… no, wait.” A nervous toss of her head, her shoulders sliding against pink vinyl. “Don’t answer that.”
“Smart lady.” He retreated further, again very slowly, slithering off the bed. The way he moved, catlike and supple, was both comforting and deeply disturbing. “Go on into the bathroom and change. There’s a backpack in there.”
“Let me get this straight.” If she could just find some sort of handle on the situation, any handle, she’d feel a lot better. “You pulled me out of a burning car with monsters attacking and somehow stopped to get a change of clothes?”
“For you.” He slithered off the end of the bed and rose to his full height, dried blood and monster-goo cracking on his skin and clothing.
“It’s the training, cupcake. Every single thing living on this rock owes the lirai everything.
Debt’s never paid, and gets deeper all the time.
So we make it easy on you. But there’s something you can give us, when we’ve been very good boys. ”
Since there aren’t any daughters, only Sons. Ignatius had explained that, at least—lirai were any gender, but the Sons were all male. The mark wouldn’t stay on a woman; it just burned through the skin and kept eating. The end result apparently wasn’t pretty in any way, shape, or form.
Looked like their mad god did not believe in equal-opportunity hiring. Which fucking figured.
“What’s that?” Her eyes still smarted, yes, but the terrible burning was gone, and the deep smoky pain in her lungs had receded. All things considered, she felt all right.
Except for the shaking. Not to mention the urge to howl and bolt for the door, just run flat-out until her heart burst and she saved all the monsters the trouble of killing her.
“You can stop the whispers.” He spread his hands and shuddered.
Liv watched, fascinated, as the monster blood slid off him in little steam-threads.
The fresh crop of bruising on his face went back to yellow-green, looking weeks instead of bare hours old, and a fluid feline shiver went through him again.
He rolled his big shoulders, muscle settling almost audibly, and when his eyes snapped open again she was almost surprised to find them still blue, and very human.
No funny sparks or diseased glow, just… normal.
“They tell you, before you start even basic training.” For the first time, Jake didn’t sound sarcastic or arrogant.
Instead, his tone was soft, reflective, and he turned his hands palm-up, studying his fingers like they held a secret.
“Then they keep telling you over and over, but it’s like the first time you get shot.
You really don’t know until you get there. ”
“You’ve been shot?” Liv didn’t mean to sound so horrified. Why that should bother her with all the rest of this going on, she couldn’t quite say.
“Few times, yeah. He has human servants, too. Just because we turned doesn’t mean anything else would.
” Another shiver passed through Jake. “Anyway, you get the mark, the lirai cauterize it, and if it doesn’t kill you the whispers start.
The mark makes you stronger, faster, probably smarter too—Erik and I argue about that sometimes.
” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, dryly.
“But when you can see the shadows, they can see you. And so can he.”
Liv’s throat ached, but not with smoke damage. A sarcastic, domineering douchebag she could handle—she could outright fight. But Jake now looked lost, a little hopeless, and incredibly…
Well, he looked lonely.
“The nightmares aren’t so bad,” he continued, still staring at his now-clean hands. His tone dropped even further, confidential and soft. “It’s the fucking whispers. You can’t be sure if it’s your own thoughts, or… his. That’s why we watch each other, all the time.”
“It sounds exhausting.” And terrifying. She didn’t want to add that, though—men reacted awfully to any intimation that they might be, of all things, scared.
Maybe it was the right thing to say, because he dropped his hands and gazed fixedly at her.
“Yeah, well. A potential mutes them, and a lirai can stop the whispers, permanently. It’s a kind of intense process.
It, uh…” Was he blushing? It mixed uneasily with the bruising all over his face.
“Well, you know, it kind of requires a…”
Liv waited, but he seemed to have vapor-locked. “What, it requires a virgin sacrifice or something?”
“Not virgin.” His eyebrows rose meaningfully, and she got the message.
“Oh. Wow. Uh.” Oh, my God, how awkward. We just almost got killed by monsters and now this. “No wonder Ignatius didn’t want to explain.”
“Usually the older lirai explain to new ones, once they’re safe.
It’s not even really sex, it’s just… Anyway, Father didn’t want to travel with you while the nights were still getting longer.
” Jake stiffened; his head tilted. He looked a little like a dog hearing a familiar footstep, and his face changed a few millimeters.
The cocky, self-assured mask slipped back on and his hands blurred, one reaching for the gun low on his left hip and the other suddenly holding the hilt of a short, wickedly curved knife with a strange, crystalline blade.
All three guys carried a set of those, and they were definitely not Ginsu. “Get in the bathroom.”
“What?” But she was already moving, sliding off the now soot-stained bed. Her sneakers were oddly pristine—of course, this was the first time she’d worn them outside, and Jake had hauled her away from the wreck, carrying her like luggage.
That was happening a lot lately. Where was Erik, and the older man? The SUV had blown up, but—
Oh, God. I’m not handling this very well at all. “Is it the monsters?” she whispered, edging for the bathroom door.
“Don’t know,” Jake answered just as softly, a sharp half-turn making his sliced jacket flutter.
Now he faced the door, and there was no sign of indecision or insecurity.
He looked, all things considered, fairly relaxed.
“If it is, I’ll kill them, but I need you safe so get in the bathroom, please. If I can bottleneck them—”
A fast, light series of taps on the room door echoed, and Liv jumped, her hand flying to her mouth to catch a tiny, wounded sound. There was a pause, then three distinct, deliberate knocks. Another pause, then two more.
“Great,” Jake muttered. He was suddenly at the door, the knife disappearing and the gun held low. He unlocked it and stepped back; the knob turned, and Liv’s knees were gelatin. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, well.” The answer was a harsh growl. “Where is she?”