Читать книгу Soul Screamers Collection - Rachel Vincent - Страница 54

“REGAN …” ADDISON MOANED, staring into her sister’s featureless eyes, slowly shaking her head. Her own eerie, fake-blue eyes filled with tears and her hands began to tremble.

“You made the right choice,” Dekker told Regan, flashing that famous, million-dollar smile. The caps that launched a thousand amusement park rides. His grandfather would have been proud. “You’ll be rich and famous for the rest of your life.”

Sudden anger flamed behind the icy blue rings of Addy’s contact lenses, blazing through her weaker emotions like kindling. She ripped her arm from Dekker’s grasp and pulled Regan away from the reaper. “Is the hellion still there?” she demanded, her focus shifting between me and Nash as she held her sister’s thin arm with a granite grip. “If we destroy her contract, will that kill the deal?”

“No!” Regan tried to twist away, and Dekker followed Addison’s gaze to me and Nash, standing at the edge of the room like freshmen at the prom.

“Who are they?” he asked calmly, clearly speaking to his female colleague, though he looked at us.

The reaper sneered but looked like she really wanted to hiss. “Bean sidhes,” she spat.

“Friends,” Addison said. “I … invited them.”

Dekker dismissed us at a glance and turned back to Addy, flipping open his folder so we could all see that it was empty. Because, as Tod had discovered, demon paperwork was kept in the Netherworld. “It doesn’t work like that, Addison.” Dekker shot her a smug, patient smile. “Hellion contracts are indestructible by human means. Like fireproof, Kevlar paperwork. And if Regan invokes her out-clause before she has a pedestal to fall from, her willpower and decorum will corrode until she wouldn’t recognize a good decision if it ran her over on the street. You’ll likely be an aunt in a couple of years, and I’m sure the brat’s father will be a convict, or a dealer, or something equally prestigious.”

“Regan’s flaws will be exploited and magnified, and because her sister’s famous, her every stumble will be front-page news.” He paused, and his eager brown eyes seemed to spark with a little extra oomph. “Oh, and any tendencies toward addiction—something she might have inherited, for example?” His raised eyebrows said Dekker was more than familiar with Ms. Page’s fondness for prescription drugs. “Well, let’s just say they’ll be awfully hard for a new, disgraced teen mother to resist….”

Regan stared at Dekker in growing horror, and rage flushed Addy’s cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted, while her sister’s head whipped back and forth in denial. “She’s not taking the out-clause.”

“Why not?” Regan demanded, but Addy turned to me without answering her.

“Is the demon still there? I want to talk to him.”

“He’s gone,” I said, remembering the largest of the three dark figures I’d seen in the Netherworld. The one who’d walked away as I let my wail fade.

“Take us,” Addy demanded softly. “We’ll find him.”

“No.” Nash shook his head firmly. “You can’t go there, and neither can Kaylee. It’s not safe.”

“Neither is this!” Addison shoved her sister forward, and Nash flinched as his gaze found Regan’s newly empty eyes.

“What’s happening?” Regan shouted, tears filling her eyes. “Who’re they?” She waved one arm at me and Nash, then her bewildered gaze slid back to Dekker. “Why is he threatening to wreck my life?”

Dekker crossed his arms over his chest, the empty folder flat against his side. “I’m not threatening you. I’m simply stating facts. You’ve signed a contract, and you’ll be expected to stand by your word.”

“She had no idea what she was signing,” Addy said. “You didn’t tell her the truth.”

“I never lied,” Dekker insisted calmly.

“What are you guys talking about?” Regan demanded, more bewildered than truly scared.

“We’re talking about this!” Addison whirled her sister around until she faced a mirror hanging on the wall above a beige couch. “Look!”

Regan looked, and her eyes went anime-wide. But though her cheeks flushed bright red, no color returned to her eyes. That beautiful blue was gone, along with her soul.

“What …?” Regan started to step closer to the mirror for a better look, then changed her mind and stepped back instead, shaking her head slowly in denial. Then she whirled on John Dekker and his reaper with a rage and confusion almost equal to her sister’s. “What’s wrong with my eyes? How can I see if I don’t have eyes? You didn’t say anything about this.”

“It was in the fine print.” The reaper crossed her arms over a gaunt, black-clad chest, contempt glittering in her normal gray eyes. “You are old enough to read, aren’t you?”

Dekker laid one hand on her forearm, and the reaper seemed to fold into herself, as if he’d just jabbed her off button. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” His voice was calm and smooth, but it had nothing on Nash. “It’s a side effect of the process. And we have an easy fix for this, don’t we, Addison?”

Dekker glanced at the older Page sister, but she only glared at him, jaw clenched in vicious anger as he handed two small white boxes to her sister. “These are your prescription, I believe, and a virtual match to your own eye color. I’ll have new boxes hand-delivered every six months. These should last until then, but please be careful with them.” He winked his own nondescript brown eyes. “They aren’t exactly cheap.”

Regan’s empty eyes filled with tears again, and I couldn’t remember ever being scared of a crying eighth-grader before. But I was scared then. The incongruity of her very human tears with those distinctly inhuman eyes gave me chills in places I didn’t even know I could get cold. “Will they stay like this?” She turned hesitantly toward the mirror again, then away before she could possibly have really seen herself. “Why do they look so … empty?”

“Because they’re empty,” Tod said, and we all spun around at the sound of his voice. Tod stood near the kitchen doorway, next to a small redheaded boy who barely came up to the reaper’s shoulders. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and without your soul, there’s nothing for them to reflect.”

Dekker’s pet reaper went stiff on the edge of the room. Was Tod really that scary?

“Do you have another brother?” I whispered, standing on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “And did your dad have red hair?”

“That’s Levi,” he whispered back, and the little boy nodded politely at me, shrugging with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of khakis.

“Levi-the-reaper?” I asked, a little embarrassed when my voice went high with surprise. After all the truly weird stuff I’d seen since discovering I was a bean sidhe, a freckle-faced little-boy reaper shouldn’t have fazed me in the least. But it did. “Tod’s boss, Levi-the-reaper?”

“The one and only.” Levi shot me a disarmingly sweet smile. One his eyes didn’t match. Then he turned a ferocious glare on the rogue reaper. “Bana.”

She froze with that one syllable—her own name, spoken in a child’s high, soft voice—and her fingers twitched nervously at her sides. She looked like she wanted to run, but couldn’t.

“I wasn’t sure who to expect, but I must admit your name never occurred to me.” Levi strolled forward like a kid in the park, and I had the absurd thought that he should have been carrying a baseball bat on his shoulder, or a skateboard under one arm. He stopped several feet from Bana and her boss, and gave John Dekker only a fleeting glance, as if he didn’t recognize one of the most famous faces in the world.

Which struck me as especially ironic, considering the reaper’s apparent age.

“Who is this?” Dekker asked, but before Bana could answer—and I seriously doubt she would have—the boy pulled his freckled right hand from his pocket.

“Levi Van Zant. Senior reaper in this district. I’ve come to relieve Bana of her duties. And her soul.”

Bana’s arms went stiff in anticipation, and I realized she was trying to blink out of Addy’s house, and out of Levi’s reach. My breath caught in my throat. We were going to lose her. But did it even matter? We were too late to stop her from ferrying Regan to the Netherworld.

But despite her obvious effort to disappear, she remained fully corporeal.

And before I could release my breath—before Bana could even suck one in—Levi’s small hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. His fingers barely met on the back of her arm, but any doubt I had about the strength of his grip was put to rest with one look at her face, twisted in agony, as if his very touch burned.

“Bana, look at me.”

She tried to refuse. Her free hand clawed uselessly at the wall behind her, scratching the Sheetrock, resistance etched into the terrified, angry lines of her jaw and forehead. But she couldn’t resist. Nor could she blink out. Somehow, Levi was blocking her abilities. Guaranteeing her cooperation.

Would Tod ever have that power?

“Look at me, Bana.”

Her eyes flew open, and a cry leaked from her mouth. She looked straight into Levi’s green eyes, which seemed to … shine. To glow with a bright, cold light.

We watched, every one of us fascinated. Including Dekker, but especially Regan Page, who was getting her first terrifying glimpse of the world she’d just entered. The world she’d sold herself to.

Bana’s shoulders slumped and her eyelids fluttered, as if they’d close. Levi’s grip on her arm tightened visibly. Dekker stepped back and the reaper went suddenly stiff. Her eyes opened again, but began to dull immediately. To simply … go dark.

And that’s when the panic hit. My heart pounded, bruising the inside of my chest. Sweat formed between Nash’s hand and mine. The cry rose in my throat, clawing me from the inside out, demanding an exit. An audience. Bana’s soul song wanted to be heard.

I clenched my jaw against the wail, my mind whirring with questions.

A soul song for a reaper? It made sense—she did have a soul—yet somehow I’d never expected to actually wail for a reaper. Did that mean that Nash and I could save her if we wanted to? But why would we want to? And if we did, would someone else be taken in her place? Did doomed reaper souls require an exchange?

Surely not. Tod had said reaper souls were much rarer than human souls, so if we were to save Bana, would another reaper have to die? Because one human soul wouldn’t be enough, would it?

The kernel of an idea I’d had earlier exploded in my head so violently it felt like my skull would split wide open. Because it wasn’t just an idea. It was an idea. The kind of idea that could change lives.

Or save souls.

My hand clutched Nash’s, and he tore his gaze from Bana to look at me in surprise, at almost the exact moment the scream leaked from my sealed lips. Just a sliver of sound at first, sharp and painful, but controlled. For the moment.

“Bana?” he whispered, hazel eyes wide, forehead crinkled.

I nodded and let another slice of sound slide from me.

Tod noticed then, and shot a questioning glance at Nash, who could only shrug. “You can make it stop, Kaylee,” he said finally, his lips brushing my ear, his peaceful Influence brushing my heart. “I’ve seen you do it. Bring it back. Hold it in.”

But I twisted away from him, shaking my head adamantly. I didn’t want to hold it in. I wanted to let it go. Let my shriek pierce every skull in the room and rattle the windows. And let it capture Bana’s filthy soul.

The rogue reaper was about to pay for her part in Dekker’s soul-trafficking ring, and I was going to personally wring the recompense from her.

Addy and Regan watched me now, rather than Bana and Levi, and their stares made me nervous. Broke my concentration.

I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them along with my mouth. Sharp spikes of sound burst from me, washing over the room like a wave of glass shards. Addy, Regan, and Dekker flinched as one, as their brains were pierced by the evidence of my intent. Their hands flew to their ears. Their eyes squeezed shut. Their noses wrinkled in displeasure bordering on pain.

Levi shuddered, but his concentration never faltered. Bana was in too much pain from the brutal removal of her soul to even notice what I was doing. But Nash and Tod each wore odd smiles, their faces almost slack in pleasure. They heard my wail as a beautiful, eerie song, a melody without equivalent in the human world. A gift from the female bean sidhe, which only the males of our species could experience.

Even the undead males, apparently.

The panic ebbed inside me, riding the sliver of sound out of my core and into the room. With that pressure released, I was able to focus on my part in the plan I was forming. And to somehow communicate Tod’s part to him.

An instant later, the last ember of light died in Bana’s eyes, and her soul rose from her body. It looked exactly like a human soul—pale and formless. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. Shouldn’t a reaper’s soul be different, somehow? And if it wasn’t, would my plan even work?

Only one way to find out …

I sang for her soul. Called to it, suspending it in the air like a thick fog as Levi let go of the dead reaper’s arm. He stepped back, and she collapsed on Addy’s plush living-room carpet, a tangle of bent arms and awkwardly twisted legs.

Dekker jumped away from his dead employee so fast he tripped over his own feet and would have gone down if not for the chair he grabbed for balance. If I hadn’t been screaming loud enough to rouse the dead, I’d have laughed. I wouldn’t have thought someone who dealt so closely with reapers and hellions would be spooked by a little death.

But despite my fleeting amusement, my plan was not funny. It was born of desperation and inspiration, and it would never work if Tod didn’t get on board. Fast.

Unable to take my eyes from Bana’s soul, I felt around on my left, reaching blindly for Tod’s arm. I found it, and pulled him forward just as Nash bent to whisper into my ear. That was the only way I could hear him over my own wail, and I probably wouldn’t have heard a human voice. “What are you doing? She’s dead. Let her go. I’m not bringing her back.”

I shook my head vehemently, frustrated by my inability to communicate. When Tod’s head came into my field of vision, I shoved him toward Bana, pointing at her hovering soul with my free hand then at Tod. Specifically, at his mouth. I needed him to suck up her soul, like Libby had sucked up the Demon’s Breath.

To hold it, just for a little while.

And finally, he seemed to get it. “You want me to take her soul?” he asked, and I nodded, relief washing through me so quickly the edges of my vision went black.

I grabbed Nash for balance and concentrated on maintaining my song.

“Why?” Tod asked, shrugging when Levi shot him a questioning glance.

But I couldn’t explain until he took the soul so I could stop screeching. I made more frantic gestures with my arms, and he finally nodded in concession. Then he opened his mouth and sucked in Bana’s soul. In seconds, it was gone.

I closed my mouth and the room went silent, but for the awful ringing in my ears, which I knew from experience wouldn’t fade completely for a couple of hours.

Tod wiped nonexistent soul crumbs from his mouth, and I shuddered.

“That was … surreal,” I said, my voice as scratchy as an old record player. I stumbled, weak from exertion, and Nash caught me. He half carried me to the couch along the far wall, which was when I realized John Dekker was gone. He’d slipped from the room while everyone else watched me scream, and the front door still stood open.

Outside, tires squealed on the street and headlights faded from the front window. The limo we’d seen out front was gone. As was Regan’s soul.

I whirled on the Page sisters, my eyes wide. “Did you catch the hellion’s name?”

Addy shook her head slowly, angrily. “They never said it.” Her features darkened with tortured disappointment and she glanced at her sister. “Do you know his name?”

Regan shook her head silently, offering no excuses.

“Great. So, what was all that?” Addison asked me, wrapping one arm around her sister’s shoulders. Regan only stared, too shocked to form a coherent question.

I knew exactly how she felt.

“Could they see any of that?” I asked, rubbing my throat.

Nash shook his head. “Tod, explain what you can. Kaylee’s losing her voice. I’m gonna get her something to drink.” With that, he kicked the front door closed and headed into Addy’s kitchen, face flushed in barely controlled anger.

Addy didn’t seem to notice.

“Bana was a grim reaper,” Tod began, guiding both stunned sisters to the empty couch opposite the one I sat on. “Like me and Levi.” He nodded toward the boy still standing in the corner, small hands once again hidden in his pockets, evidently content to watch and listen for the moment. “Only she was … bad. So Levi fired her.”

“You mean he killed her,” Addison said, obviously struggling not to stare at the corpse on her carpet.

“Well, technically she was already dead.” Tod shrugged. “So he really just finished the job. And Kaylee was singing her soul song.”

“That wasn’t singing.” Regan’s nose wrinkled like she smelled something awful. “That was a vocal slaughter.”

If my throat didn’t feel like I’d just swallowed barbed wire, I would have laughed. I totally agreed.

“It wasn’t a song like you think of music.” Nash emerged from the kitchen with a glass of ice water. “It was a call to Bana’s soul. Kaylee suspended it long enough for Tod to … take it.”

“Speaking of which …” Tod sat on the other couch, as close as he could get to Addison, their legs touching from thigh to knee while Levi watched with an odd expression I couldn’t interpret. “Why did I take her soul? Does this have anything to do with all your reaper questions in the car?”

“In fact, it does,” I said, after one long sip of the water. My throat still hurt, but my voice had decent volume, considering what I’d just put it through. “We’re going to barter with Bana’s soul.”

Nash’s brows arched like he was impressed, and the sudden light in Tod’s eyes said he understood at least part of what I was getting at. “You said a reaper’s soul is rarer than a human’s.” I shifted my focus from Tod to his boss. “Am I correct in assuming that makes it more valuable?”

Levi nodded, and now his smile showed a line of small white teeth. They were all there, fortunately. If any had been missing, he would have been too creepy to look at.

“As valuable as, say, two human souls?” I glanced at the Page sisters, then back at Levi, whose brows arched in surprise.

“She’s smart, this one,” he said. “Of course, I can’t officially condone what you’re thinking, so I’ll take my leave now….”

“But I’m on the right path?” I asked as he knelt next to the dead reaper.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Levi winked at me, still grinning. Then he picked up Bana in both arms as if she weighed nothing, though she had more than a foot on him, and they both disappeared.

“What is going on?” Regan finally demanded, impotent fists clenched at her sides.

I smiled gently, trying to set her at ease, though those eerie, empty eyes creeped me out. “We’re going to trade Bana’s soul to the hellion. For both of yours.”