Chapter 7 Ares #2
I was spread too thin. The Trinity’s power had been waning for years.
Especially the last twenty. Inwardly, I swore.
If this all came back to the Maere, back to Lara Achilles and what we’d done, I’d never forgive myself.
The pattern here pulled in too many of the wrong directions. I fucking hated this shit.
“Av,” Eryx said softly, bringing me back to the moment. “The kid.”
Av backed off.
“Where is the girl?” I asked.
Fairchild hesitated. The kill order formed in my head. Not now, not this week or this month. Six months from now, he was going to meet a bad end, after experiencing a tragic run of bad luck. Fucking with me when I wanted something was poor decision making at its finest, and I liked a long game.
“The girl,” I insisted, my voice taking on a menacing tone.
“Apartment 44,” Fairchild finally answered.
“No!” the stepmother screamed.
“Building cleared otherwise?” I asked Av, ignoring the stepmother’s wails.
She nodded, her angular eyes narrowed dangerously as she stared at the kid’s stepmother.
“Don’t let that one get spirited away,” I remarked as I walked away from the SUV. “I want her investigated.”
“Of course,” Av answered.
I gripped Eryx’s elbow. “No one goes in until I get this done.”
My brother nodded. “Got it. Call if you need me—if it goes bad, don’t let her die in pain.”
I squeezed Eryx’s arm. “I won’t need you, and she’ll be fine.”
He looked into my eyes, his expression never changing. “Good luck.”
The tiny apartment was dark when I entered, all the shades drawn.
But it didn’t hide the blood spattered everywhere, or the fact that while the furniture had been nice at some point, it hadn’t been well taken care of.
The place was the kind of mess that didn’t happen overnight.
My chest ached. Much as I resented the woman outside for the way she was clearly targeting her stepdaughter, everyone had a story.
A shaking form huddled in a corner of the kitchen, near the ancient refrigerator, snarling.
That was the story I cared about most. The one that got a teenager into this mess.
And frankly, the one that got her out of it.
I needed to help this child find another ending than the one that waited for her outside, or in whatever cracked facility the Authority would disappear her into.
“Hi,” I said, keeping my voice gentle as I crouched down, reaching towards her. “This is going to hurt real bad for a second, but don’t fight it, okay?”
The girl looked up, and even in the dim light I could see her red-rimmed eyes, and the opalescent cast to her irises that told me she was possessed. She snarled at me again and then lunged. Calmly, I stood, pushing back at the spirit’s aura as the girl moved towards me with supernatural speed.
The spirit within her stopped, sensing my authority.
“I am not going to banish you,” I said. “Come out right away and I’ll let you go.”
The girl let out an otherworldly howl of rage. I closed my fist, catching hold of the aura as it projected just enough to grip onto. “I will pull you out of there, if necessary, but let’s do this the easy way.”
The girl hissed at me, the spirit, really, but at this point the difference didn’t much matter.
“The stepmother locked me in,” the girl growled, sending chills down my spine.
I’d done this for centuries, and the voice of a Rider coming from a medium’s throat still shot fear through me.
It was pure instinct. Proof that despite the parapsychism and relative immortality, I was still human.
“Yank all you want, Necroline King.” The spirit knew who I was, who Roman had been to this city.
“Use violence and you’ll only hurt the child. ”
This was exactly what the stepmother wanted—why she didn’t want me to perform the exorcism.
She’d doomed the child to death with another exorcist. She meant to kill her stepdaughter.
All my empathy went out the window, rage replacing it.
I added her to my list, right after Fairchild.
Child-killers would find no mercy with me.
I didn’t have any salt, or anything else I needed to make this easier, and we didn’t have much time. Fairchild would, no doubt, send the Authority’s team of “experts” up as soon as they got here. Even my name wouldn’t stop them.
We would have to do this the hard way. It was going to hurt the kid, but there wasn’t much use in warning her again. “Hold on a minute—I’ll get you free.”
I fished my phone out of my pocket and texted Eryx with one hand.
We needed my best team on this. The girl was going to need help after this, and only the Phoenixes would do.
Each of them had gone through something similar as kids, and now they were the team I called for anything remotely sensitive.
Eryx typically handled their business these days.
When my brother responded that he’d be up in five, I put my phone back in my pocket.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said, pulling at the spirit’s aura.
“I have no desire to,” the spirit wailed from within the girl. She was probably fifteen or sixteen, and a tiny slip of a thing. Looked like she didn’t get enough to eat.
“Why did you kill the man?” I asked as I picked apart the knot in the spirit’s aura. Now that I knew what had happened, it was more apparent. The spirit was cooperating; apparently it had some respect for my power, and the fact that it didn’t want to hurt the girl helped.
“The woman. The stepmother,” the spirit within the girl ground out.
It was having trouble communicating. The stepmother had known what to do to lock the spirit inside the girl, but she hadn’t done it well.
The girl wasn’t screaming, and showed no signs of distress.
I thanked Saint Tanith profusely—the spirit had her locked down tight.
It was keeping her from feeling me pull her aura from the spirit’s.
Now I saw it. The way the knot had been tied told me all I needed to know, confirmed every one of my suspicions. I pulled it free, and the girl screamed, no longer protected by the spirit’s aura. I rushed forward to keep her from falling when the spirit released her.
Eryx burst through the door.
“Take her,” I said, passing the child off to him. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Have Elias look her over when the Phoenixes get her. She’ll need medical attention.”
Eryx hugged the frail child to his chest, nodding.
Elias was the medtech of the Phoenixes—had made it all the way through school and everything, though the Authority had denied him his degree.
He’d take care of the kid’s injuries, and the rest of the team would get her shored up and safe until we could figure out what to do with her.
Eryx’s eyes closed as he took in whatever the spirit wanted him to know. I could speak to spirits, but what Eryx did was a more complicated, deeper form of communication. “She’s in no danger. She was weak to begin with—the spirit tried to help her. Tried to get her more food.”
The shadow in the corner nodded. I tried my best.
A vision, from the girl’s perspective, of her stealing food from the local grocery filled my second sight. The spirit wanted me to see this moment and had the strength to project it through my brother. We would both be exhausted tonight.
“Go,” I said to Eryx. “I’ll take care of this. Fairchild doesn’t come near her.”
“Got it,” my brother agreed as he passed through the door.
I sat down on the arm of the ratty couch that wasn’t covered in blood and stared at the diaphanous form of the Rider. “Tell me what happened here. Every bit of it, and I’ll let you go.”