Chapter 5 James
James
The queen's got murder in her eyes, and it's the prettiest thing I've seen in days.
Prayer leans against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, still wearing the evidence of what we did on her skin. Midnight-colored cum dried on her thighs. My knife cuts healing pink on her shoulders. She hasn't washed, hasn’t dressed.
Good. I like her wearing only us.
“I know for certain Vincent’s not at his house.” Eddie starts pacing.
That's new. The man he was before stood still and thought loud, all that detective energy contained behind procedure and a badge that meant something to him.
This Eddie moves like he's got an engine running under his skin that he hasn't figured out how to idle yet. The shadows trail from his fingers when he gestures, thin dark wisps that dissolve before they reach the floor.
He's adjusting. I remember the adjustment, the way my body became a house with a new tenant, and he didn't bother to ask before he rearranged the furniture.
"I checked his house on the way here," Eddie says. "It’s dark. He's not stupid enough to stay somewhere we can find him."
"Daddy can find anyone," Prayer says. "He found me when Red Hands took me. He found you, Eddie."
"Aye." I look at the shadow-form hovering near the ceiling, ember eyes dimmed to coals but still watching. "But what if Vincent's not in a building? What if he's running? Can ye still find him?"
Daddy's form ripples. “Hunt,” he growls, and the word rumbles from the house itself.
Aye, that doesnae answer the question.
I’m nae an expert on daddy demons, but he found Sera in the abandoned hangar through their bond. I dinnae ken how he found Eddie. Pure luck maybe, or he’d filled Eddie’s mind with shadows before saving his life.
Eddie stops pacing, plants his hands on the counter, and the shadows under his palms darken the laminate.
"Vincent knows Sera's dangerous and that she’ll come after him.
He knows I'm supposed to be dead, and when I don't stay dead, he'll know something's coming for him that doesn't follow the rules he's used to playing by. "
"So he'll hide," Prayer says. "Where?"
"Somewhere he feels safe,” Eddie answers. “Somewhere he has control."
Smart, this one. The Mind, Sera calls him. She's not wrong. But the mind's got teeth now, and it's learning how to bite.
"Church," I say with a shrug.
They both look at me.
"Why a church?" Prayer moves closer, her bare feet silent on the kitchen floor, and she smells like all of us—sex and shadows and the faint copper of blood from the cuts I gave her. "What makes you think he'd hide there?"
"Because men like Vincent don't think they're guilty," I say. "They think they're righteous. They think the rules don't apply because they're the ones enforcing the rules, and when the world finally catches up to them, they run to the places that taught them that lie in the first place."
I pull out my phone and search for churches in Wichita. Och, there’s a lot of them.
"He's nae hiding. He's seeking sanctuary. And he'll sit in a pew and pray to a god who isnae listening because he thinks he's owed divine protection."
Prayer makes a sound that's half laugh, half snarl. "Fuck his sanctuary."
"Aye. We will."
Eddie pulls out his own phone. "Vincent could've convinced the priest or pastor he needs a place to pray, to mourn his dead wife."
"Or he killed the priest, and he's alone in there," I say. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Eddie looks at me. The shadows in his eyes flicker. "Yeah. Or that."
Sera pushes off the counter, starts moving toward the stairs. "We can search now, find out what church he usually goes to, and start there, before he realizes you're not dead, Eddie."
"Wait." I catch her arm, gentle but firm, and she stops, looks at me with those bruised, furious eyes that could cut glass or strip ye bare, depending on her mood.
"Ye need to understand what we're walking into, aye?
Vincent's a sheriff. He's trained, armed, and he's got nothing left to lose.
He shot Eddie in a public parking lot. He staged his own wife's murder.
The man's crossed every line there is, and the only thing waiting for him now is a cage or a grave.
That makes him the most dangerous kind of animal. "
"I know what he is," she says, and her voice drops to that cold, flat register that means the queen's speaking. "I've always known what he is."
"Aye, but knowing and hunting are different things. Ye've never hunted a man before, Prayer. Not like this. Not with the intent to end him."
Eddie nods slowly. "He's right. We can’t take any chances that fuck this up. If he gets away, if Azhrael can’t find him, we'll spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders waiting for him to come back."
Sera's jaw sets. "Then we don't fuck it up."
"Nae.” I let go of her arm, step back, and look at both of them. "Which is why ye need to let me go find him."
Eddie tilts his head. “Why you?”
“I know some people who owe me favors. These people have cameras in the sky that shouldnae exist but do and can help us spot the bloody wanker.”
Prayer's shadow-filled eyes narrow. "What people? What are you talking about, James?"
This is the part I don't talk about unless I fancy a nice waterboarding. The part that lives in the cupboard under the stairs with my mum's shoes and my da's fists and all the other dark things I’ve done and witnessed.
But if we're doing this—if we're hunting a sheriff with the intent to end him and walk away clean—they need to know what kind of Fist I really am.
"I’m a contractor," I say. "Not the kind that builds houses.
The kind that gets a phone call at three in the morning and a dossier with no return address and a large number at the bottom that goes into my bank account.
The kind that works for agencies with three letters and budgets that don't exist on paper. "
Eddie goes very still. "Black ops."
"Something like that. Off-books. The jobs nobody wants their fingerprints on." I meet his eyes. "High-value targets. The kind of thing that keeps lawyers and politicians and world leaders up at night and hardly ever makes the news."
"You’re a professional killer." Prayer’s voice is quiet, curious, not horrified.
That doesnae surprise me. She's a woman who sold her soul to a demon and fucked the three of us in a pile on her living room floor. My life’s quaint by comparison.
"Aye, and I’m good at it," I say. "I wake up thinking about the next job, the next target, the next time I get to put a man down and watch the light go out. I’m known as The Beast, and The Beast doesnae care who it hurts."
Sera steps forward and kisses me, hard and brief and claiming. "You're my beast now."
I grin. "Aye. I am."
Eddie clears his throat. “How did you get into the business of killing people for a living?”
“A pub in Belfast,” I tell him. “Always some such place, aye? A bloke in a suit came up to me, and I could tell straight away he didnae want to fuck me. He asked me if I wanted to do some good. I told him I’d settle for useful.
Mi5 liked the way I read a room. CIA liked the way I disappeared.
FBI liked my efficiency. I liked the numbers on the transfers and the way my hands stopped shaking when I put men in the ground who’d earned it thrice over. ”
"So you think you can find him?" Eddie asks.
"Aye."
"Good." He looks at me, and there's a respect in his eyes that wasn't there before. "Then let’s get going."
I nod. I’ve got a handful of saints in my contacts, none of them holy. I dial the first and start planning a murder.
* * *
The answer comes back in less than two hours while Sera sleeps on the couch and Daddy watches over her.
I pull up Vincent’s current location on my phone, and I grin, not because I was right that he’s hiding out in a church, but because this is going to be fucking child’s play.
Our Lady of Sorrows is a Gothic Revival cathedral that's been slowly dying for fifty years, the congregation bleeding out one funeral at a time until there's nothing left but stone and stained glass and the god-shaped hole where faith used to live.
The building sits on a corner lot, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that's more rust than iron, with a small cemetery in the back.
I also pull up a shockingly clear photo of Vincent entering the church earlier tonight, Bible under his arm, his face arranged in an expression of such perfect piety it makes my teeth ache.
Eddie moves to look over my shoulder. He nods, and there's no judgment in it, just assessment. The old Eddie might've had opinions about the legalities of my intel. This Eddie just wants to know if the intel's good.
I like this Eddie better.
“I know Our Lady of Sorrows,” he says. “Old building, stone construction, minimal security. The main entrance on Fifth Street, side entrance on the alley, basement access through exterior stairs. Father Nolan lives above the church office.”
"This is the part where I ask if you're sure, Mind.
Because once we're inside, once we've committed, there's nae calling it back.
No arresting him, no reading him his rights, no due process.
We're there to end him, your former boss, a former cop, just like we ended Red Hands, and if ye cannae do that, if you've still got enough cop left in ye to hesitate, tell me now. "
He levels me with a long, weighted look, with embers and shadows flickering over the blue in his eyes.
"He shot me twice and left me to bleed out in a parking lot.
He raped Sera and destroyed her life and wore his badge like it gave him the right.
He killed his own wife to cover his tracks. So yeah, I'm sure."
The voice saying it isn't the detective's voice. It's the voice from the dark, and it's cold.
"Aye," I say. "I’ll go wake Prayer."
I gently kiss her awake, and those beautiful eyes find mine.
“Time to go. I’ve got his location. Ye stay behind me unless I say,” I tell her. “You nae invincible because Daddy loves ye. You’re precious. I like precious things. I keep them.”
She leans up, teeth grazing my lower lip, a benediction in bite form. “Keep me, then.”
I kiss her back like a vow I intend to kill for.
Four o’clock in the morning finds us standing outside of Our Lady of Sorrows, dressed in black, armed, and about to commit the kind of sin that gets ye a special seat in whatever hell's waiting.