lana harvey 05 - death wish Read online

  Warren wasn’t the average tenant at Holly House. In fact, other than him and my lot of misfit roommates, everyone else rooming at the holiest abode in Limbo City was either a deity or high-ranked being associated with one of the subcommittees of the Afterlife Council.

  Where my living situation was a team effort fueled by lucky—and hazardous—promotions, Warren’s stay at Holly House was a result of a shifty business deal. With me. I had agreed to pay his first six months of rent in exchange for the double-headed battle axe I toted to work on not-so-casual Fridays.

  Warren’s new location drew the attention of more prestigious clients, like the Nephilim Guard. These days, he kept his licenses current, as well as his hygiene.

  “You’re gonna love it.” Warren clapped his hands together and all but skipped through the parking garage. His giddiness for weapons and gadgets of war was disturbing, yet well-deserved, considering his talent.

  Warren used both hands to slide open a heavy metal door. The shop lights flickered on, illuminating the shiny tools hanging from the back wall above his work table. A black tarp lay over something in the center of the room.

  Warren circled it and grinned at me. “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He pulled the tarp away with a magician’s flare, revealing a sleek motorbike. The chrome wheels and exhaust pipes sparkled under the shop lights. Everything else was a soft, muted black, except for a shadowy skull painted on top of the gas tank. I walked closer so I could read the thin line of white script above it. Graviora manent.

  “Greater dangers await,” Warren said, translating the quote.

  “I know. Demon defense requires a more advanced understanding of Latin.” I smiled at his embarrassed expression and ran my hand over the bike’s leather seat.

  “Of course,” Warren said. “You’re teaching at the academy. I completely forgot.”

  “I wish I could.” I sighed and gazed down the length of the bike. “This is amazing, Warren.”

  “You have no idea.” He pointed down at the cap on the fuel tank. “It runs on holy water. You could literally fill it up at the fountain out front—but Holly probably wouldn’t care for that,” he quickly added. “There’s a pump along the west wall of the garage. It’s hooked into the plumbing system. I designed it myself.” He beamed.

  I fingered the dials on the handlebars. “I don’t know much about motorcycles…”

  Warren shook his wings out before tucking them in against his back. Then he nudged in closer to me and the bike. “It’s not a traditional model. I’ve added so many enhancements, a previous knowledge probably wouldn’t do you much good anyhow—”

  “I don’t even know how to ride a bicycle,” I said.

  Warren bit his lip and his brows cinched together. “Oh.” He tilted his head from side to side. “Well, it’s never too late to learn, right?”

  I took a deep breath and gave him a pained look.

  A smug grin spread across his face. “Trust me. This bike is totally worth it.” He pointed at one of the dials. “It sprays holy water—and I programmed it to work in conjunction with coin travel.” He fingered a round slot in the dash, just large enough to house a coin. “You can pre-enter your coordinates and get the hell outta Dodge with the press of a button. As long as you’re not in a restricted area,” he said. “The coin dial is also equipped with a backup system, so if the bike happens to break down, you can still transport it.”

  “Nice.” I nodded. “Are you going to make these for the Nephilim Guard too?”

  “No. They can fly. Plus, they rarely leave the city, so the travel feature would be useless.”

  “Thanks, Warren. This was really nice of you.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “It’s the least I could do. I know you’re going through a lot, and I can’t imagine Kevin is much help right now either—”

  “Jesus, does everyone know?” I snapped.

  Warren took a step back. “About Josie? There was a ceremony, Lana.”

  “Not that. Never mind.” I blushed and cleared my throat. My mood swings were getting worse. I really needed to get a handle on them before I choked to death on my own foot.

  I turned away from the bike and looked at Warren. “Seriously, thank you. I’ll give it a go on one of my days off.” If I ever see one of those again.

  Warren gave me a parting nod, and I headed for the garage elevators. The bike was a sweet gesture, but it wasn’t enough to distract my mind from the idea that my apprentice was a junkie. It was just one more thing that I didn’t know how to handle, on a growing list.

  As the elevator neared the tenth floor, my stomach knotted. What if Kevin was in the condo? I didn’t have the first clue how to go about talking to him. This was one of those situations I would have asked for Josie’s advice on. Hell, this was one of those situations I would have probably dumped in her lap. No such luck this time.

  The condo was dark when I entered, and I was ashamed by the rush of euphoric relief I felt. When I passed Kevin’s room, a soft whimper crept out to greet me. I paused and clicked on the bedroom light.

  My hellhound, Saul, lay across the unmade bed, his muzzle between his massive paws. He licked his nose and turned his sad eyes up at me. His sulking had grown worse after Coreen, my other hound, had given birth to a litter of puppies in Olympus. Apollo and his oracle had agreed to keep her until the pups were weened, in exchange for one of the adorable abominations. They weren’t purebred. The puppies’ father was undeniably one of Anubis’ jackals.

  I should have let Saul stay with his sister and her pups at the temple, but we were already shorthanded at work. I had hoped leaving him in Kevin’s care would soothe the kid, but I could at least appreciate the fact that he wasn’t dragging my hound through his hellfire dens.

  Kevin’s room stank of sour clothes and beer. There was a layer of dust growing like mold over every surface, and cobwebs dotted the corners of the ceiling. It had been over a month since Josie’s death, and if not for the untidy state of things, I could have easily pretended she still lived here.

  The closet door had been left open, and her pristine wardrobe hung next to the few casual outfits she’d helped Kevin pick out after his apprenticeship transferred to me. Her favorite book lay on top of her nightstand, a tasseled bookmark still tucked between the pages, and a half empty glass of wine sat next to it, as if maybe she had just gone to the restroom and would be back any moment.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and softly patted my leg. Saul hopped off the bed and followed me down the hall. Kevin was doing hard drugs. Hellhound snuggles clearly weren’t cutting it for him, and I needed comforting too.

  Further down the hall, I noticed Jenni’s cracked bedroom door. It was dark inside, a sign that she was working late. She couldn’t sleep without a light, not since her week as a prisoner of the rebels. She didn’t talk much about it, but I had walked in on one of her nightmares. Waking up in the dark, having to wonder if she was still in that hellhole… I couldn’t even imagine.

  I’d seen my share of horrors since the rebels began plaguing Eternity, and I had the scars to show for it. But still, I considered myself lucky in a lot of ways. Besides, a pity party never did anyone any good.

  And revenge was far sweeter.

  Chapter 4

  “Rank does not confer privilege or give power.

  It imposes responsibility.”

  —Peter Drucker

  At some ungodly hour in the morning, someone seized my shoulders and shook until I was sure I’d been turned into a dashboard bobble-head.

  “Lana,” a course whisper begged. “Lana, please.”

  I peeled my eyes open to find Winston, the backstabbing former soul on the Throne of Eternity, hovering over me. His hair was a disaster, and his eyes were so wide that the whites seemed to glow in the dark.

  The last time I’d seen Winston, I’d made it very clear that I never wanted to again. He had foreseen Josie’s death and failed to warn me, and I didn’t think I could ever forgive him for that.

  “Lana,” he rasped, digging his fingers into my arms.

  I sat up and pushed away from him, bashing my head into the wall.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I said, rubbing the back of my throbbing skull. I glanced around the room, but we were alone. Saul had probably slinked back to Kevin’s bed to mope some more.

  Winston cringed and placed a finger over his mouth, trying to quiet my outburst. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I need your help.”

  “I already told you, I’m done being your gopher. If you need something, go to Maalik.” I rolled onto my side, giving him my back, and jerked the covers around me with a huff.

  Winston circled the bed and knelt down, pushing his face close to mine. His frantic breath grazed my forehead. “Please, Lana. Naledi is missing.”

  “What?” I threw the covers back and shot upright.

  “I think someone took her. The cottage looks like a tornado hit it, and I can’t ask Maalik—he doesn’t even know she exists, remember?”

  I sat there a moment in stunned silence.

  As the throne soul, Naledi literally held the fate of Eternity in the palm of her hand. The Throne of Eternity was Grim’s most fiercely guarded secret, one that he had held on to for over a millennium.

  The soul who sat on the throne preserved the boundaries of the afterlives and contained the excess soul matter every year, until distributing it according to the Afterlife Council’s ruling the night of the Oracle Ball. Of course, up until last year, no one but Grim had known this was the throne soul’s doing.

  Everyone else thought the power was Grim’s alone to wield, and he was just benevolent enough to allow the deities of all faiths to have a say on the Afterlife Council. It was a convenient lie. I despised him for it, but I admired him for it too. While he had most definitely benefited in an undeserved way, he had relinquished just enough power to the others to keep the peace. Until now.

  Grim’s shortcoming had lain in holding on to the secret for far too long. Khadija, the first soul who had sat on the throne, had been worked to exhaustion, to the point that her power slipped and created the needed opening for the rebels—those who craved war and the undue power they thought they could obtain through force.

  Khadija had tasked me with finding her successor. Grim’s secrecy and hesitation left little time to complete the task, and it unfortunately drew the attention of the rebels. Winston had been the first usable soul I stumbled across, though he wasn’t a true, original believer, which the throne required for a reign of any substantial length. After a few months, his power began to wane.

  Grim was prepared to ignore the problem, desperate to keep the throne hidden. But the past life that made Winston’s soul a candidate for the throne happened to be Egyptian, courtesy of Horus, the new Egyptian representative on the council. The sneaky old god blackmailed me into finding Winston’s replacement. Though I hadn’t expected Winston to jump the gun and trade places with the first soul I brought him.

  I hated to admit it, but the fault was partially mine. I was supposed to slap a tracking bracelet on her and go about business as usual. Instead, I’d brought her back to the throne realm to stay with Winston. Stupid.

  That was how Naledi ended up on the throne, and no one knew that but me and dear Winston. He and Naledi had been playing a very dangerous game with Grim, hiding her whenever the boss man visited and convincing him that Winston was still in charge. It was a tightrope act, and they wouldn’t be able to pull it off forever.

  Amidst all the chaos, my one spot of relief had lain in the fact that I’d severed ties with the unruly Egyptian teens. When Grim found out about their guise, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that shit storm. Unfortunately, it looked like the weather had just taken a turn for the worse.

  I glared at Winston. “You had one job. One job. How the hell could you lose her?”

  Winston threw his hands up. “I was only gone for a minute. She needed something in the city.”

  “Shhhh. Let me think.” I pressed a hand over my face and closed my eyes.

  If the rebels had Naledi and knew her worth, it was hard telling what they were capable of. In the blink of an eye, Eternity could be transformed into an endless pit of fire. Every soul, whether in Heaven or Limbo or the sea, could be forsaken, left to their worst nightmares with no promise of redemption—with no promise of returning to the mortal realm. It would be the end of everything. Armageddon.

  I so did not want any part of this nightmare, but Winston was right. I was the only one who knew about Naledi, and I was pretty sure I was the only one who could locate her—well, besides Grim. But there was no coming back after a confession like that.

  My head throbbed as I grasped for a different solution. Then it came to me—Horus’ tracking bracelets. The original objective hadn’t been to deceive Grim by switching the throne souls. It had been to find and tag a few new candidates, so it would be easier to persuade Grim to let Winston go at the end of Horus’ century long term on the council.

  “Lana,” Winston whined, grabbing my arm again. “I’ll do anything. Just please help me find Naledi. Please.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands together, pushing them up under his chin as if he was praying to me.

  “Okay,” I hissed.

  His eyes blinked open suddenly and he threw his arms around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

  “Get. Off,” I said through gritted teeth. Winston jumped back, curling his hands into his chest as if he didn’t know what else to do with them.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said. I sliced my hand through the air, silencing him before he could start chanting his gratitude again.

  “Just go home, Winston. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Isn’t there something I can do?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Stay out of my way.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want my help or not?” I folded my arms.

  Winston nodded. “Okay, I’ll go home. Thank you—”

  “Don’t start that again.” I waved him off. “Just get out of here. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Winston dug a large gray coin out of his pocket—one of the fancy ones that he’d bespelled to work even after coin travel had been deactivated in the city. He hesitated, fingering the token timidly, and then handed it to me. “You’ll need this to get to the throne realm.”

  I took the coin with a grimace. It was the same one I’d all but told him to shove up his ass after Josie’s death. He dug another out of his pocket and flipped it in the air, disappearing back to the throne realm before I could change my mind.

  Chapter 5

  “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.

  And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

  —Dalai Lama

  I spent the rest of the morning digging through my closet, searching for the tracking bracelets. I’d hidden the silver compact that held them beneath the false bottom of a wooden tea crate stuffed with scarves and fancy shoes that I rarely had time to wear anymore.

  The bracelets were old magic, and the unfamiliarity of it made me nervous. I spent half an hour digging through my old text books, until I broke down and snuck into Kevin’s room to scour Josie’s shelves.

  I found what I was looking for in the pages of a retired academy book titled Understanding Soul Cycles. I was sure that my mentor, Saul Avelo, had skipped over this particular subject. He wasn’t fond of the Reaper Academy’s lecture-style teaching and preferred to focus on field exercises.

  After checking the index, I found half a page dedicated to the short-lived tracking bracelets. Their intent had been to allow mentors the ability to track a soul through the course of their apprentice’s training, showing them first-hand the lifecycle of a human, from the point where they reentered the mortal realm, right up to when their soul was harvested.

  A single sentence detailed how the bracelets worked. It was vague and I was ready to panic, until I flipped the page and found a tiny diagram. The compact lid rotated and then folded in half, snapping together as if magnetic. It slid across the bottom half of the compact, locking in place once centered.

  It looked like a sundial, especially when a shadow began dancing over its surface. It hummed and buzzed, before the shadow finally spread out to cover the entire disc. A set of coordinates blinked through the darkness, disappearing after a moment, like a thermometer’s reading.

  I’d failed to scribble down the numbers, but it didn’t matter. I recognized the location. I’d been there too many times to count. Tartarus. My heart crawled up my throat and I had to remind myself to breathe.

  The alarm on my bedside table went off. I groaned, recalling my other responsibilities. It was Monday. Not only did I have a boatload of souls to harvest, but I had the demon defense course at the academy later that evening. On the plus side, if tracking down Naledi got me killed, I wouldn’t have to worry about teaching anymore.

  Chapter 6

  “Perseverance is the hard work you do

  after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

  —Newt Gingrich

  “This sucks.” Kate Evans sighed as she looked over the docket I’d just handed her. Alex Grayson, her girlfriend and fellow posy, held out her list to compare.

  “I know.” I cringed and moved on down the deck of my ship. “No one’s docket looks pretty today. Trust me.”

  Tyler Ives rolled his eyes. “You know what would make them look better? If your apprentice had one of these too.”

  He waved his docket in my face, pulling it back when I narrowed my gaze on him. His lips pressed together in a frustrated line, and his scalp turned pink, visible beneath his buzzed hair.