Sin & Surrender (Demigods of San Francisco Book 6) Read online

  “Maybe Zorn pierced his lungs or something?” I asked, hovering my hand in front of his mouth to feel for breath. “Why else wouldn’t he be breathing? Maybe he doesn’t have a blood oath.”

  “Zorn knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have pierced anything vital,” Bria said.

  “It’s not his body that’s the problem.” Harding tsked. “Poor Zeus. He thinks he’s so mighty, and yet he’s so easily knocked off his high horse. Egos, you know. When they get too big, they are highly unstable.” He ran his hand down my arm, and it felt, for all the world, like a real hand. I shivered beneath his warm caress.

  “What—”

  “Shh,” he said softly, wrapping his strong fingers around my wrist to prevent me from pulling away. “Watch. Feel. This is advanced magic. This is the kind of good you can do.”

  He guided my hand over the chest of the prone man, our touch warm on his unnaturally cool skin.

  “You have literally scared the life out of him.” Harding chuckled.

  “Not funny.” My voice was barely louder than my heavy breathing.

  “This is what happens when the will to live leaves a person. The soul goes…soggy, for lack of a better term. The body is intact, but the soul has no interest in residing. The good news is you can heal his soul. That is a powerful thing. Do you see how amazing our magic is? You can actually will a person to keep living. You are life and death, all in one.”

  With his guidance, I pulled power from the line, twining it with spirit.

  “You are a favorite. This magic is a favorite. It will protect you, Alexis, for all eternity, with or without a body.”

  He sounded so sweet, so reverent, that I didn’t remind him that he hadn’t been protected in life and still wasn’t safe in death, his presence at this Summit being a prime example. We weren’t favorites—just like Dylan wasn’t a favorite. We were coveted. That fact made us vulnerable.

  My hair tingled as a violet strand crawled into existence, connecting my palm with the man’s chest, burrowing deeper until it reached his soul. It was the same sort of string that Lydia had used to siphon energy from spirits, only I would be using it to pump energy in.

  “Close your eyes,” Harding whispered, his voice both around and within me, folding over itself like cake batter and sliding across my skin like a ghostly touch. “Surrender yourself to the magic.”

  The power of the Line fizzed through my blood, and a substance like quicksilver glinted along the velvet string. It carried something pure and light from me to the dead man—my will for him to live. My will, not his. But as it wrapped around the violet string, strengthening it, bolstering it, the feeling manifested into a desire. Then into an action.

  Live! Live!

  It coated the soul box, strengthening it, keeping the soul from slipping out, and then filtered inside.

  Live! Live!

  “Yes, Alexis. A little bit longer. Just a little more… I couldn’t do this when I was alive. I couldn’t use this part of the magic, because I couldn’t open myself to it. I didn’t desire people to live, not after what they’d done to me. But you are pure. You can love. You have the full spectrum at your disposal.”

  The soul shied away from my quicksilver touch at first, but then it started to drink in my offer. It regenerated, stronger and stronger until it filled the casing once again, like a flower blooming in the sun, more vibrant and alive than I’d found it.

  “There you go. Now you must pull back gently. Very gently.” Harding’s touch coaxed me, his magic tracing mine and showing me what to do. “That’s right. Here we go—you must pull back without scaring him again, the silly little Zeus boy. So fragile after you get past all the hotheaded blustering.”

  My magic retreated, ever so slowly, and I opened my eyes as I dissolved the remnants of the violet thread. The man blinked his eyes open, looking at me for one long beat before he sat up slowly and rubbed his head.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “Ta-da. Good job.” Harding patted me on the head, of all things. “Okay, gotta go. I shouldn’t be here. I do not want to get noticed, as you know. And don’t learn how to scare away my watchers. I like to know your progress.”

  He stood and stepped back through the window into the other plane, disappearing into the swirling gray mists. Once he was through, reality pulled back down. He hadn’t even turned to wave goodbye.

  I stared at the man I’d helped, trying to process everything. He stared back at me.

  “Okay. Well.” Bria clapped the man on the back. “You’re alive.”

  “What…” The man reached his hand up, probably to run it down his face, and then flinched. He touched the blood oozing down his chest. “What happened?”

  “You got stabbed, but you’re good. You’re okay now.” I stood and braced my hands on my back, seeing a couple of the others rouse, lying in pools of their own blood. No spirits had popped out, though, and I could feel their souls bright and happy in their casings. “You would’ve died had I not intervened, so save me from the effort of having to knock you out, would ya? Take the loss. That was strangely taxing, even though I had help.”

  He blinked at me a few more times, and I figured that was probably a yes. He was too confused to use his magic.

  “Okay. That was anticlimactic for me.” Bria bounded up. “But that certain someone should not be here, Lexi. You can’t risk someone finding out.”

  “I know, but…well, he offered, and I didn’t have any other choice. He’s the one who’s been watching—”

  A muted thunderclap rang through the hall. I belatedly felt the enemy souls doing battle with our guys. “Dang it. Today is going to be a long day.”

  11

  Alexis

  By midafternoon we had four hall battles behind us. The Hades people Boman and the others had engaged after our battle with Zander’s team had been an easy win. They’d used a bunch of stuff that probably worked on other people but didn’t faze my crew, not when they’d trained with me and I could literally scare someone to death. The third had been a nice reprieve. Jerry had turned to stone and handled the flares of sunlight and zips of light magic (Apollo magic, clearly) without effort. He’d then flattened everyone with rocks. That guy had been worth the hassle to get him.

  The fourth had been a little hairy. The magic was more diverse, with some Hades, a Zeus, and a few others I didn’t recognize. They rattled our cages, so to speak, one reaching me with an invisible blade that opened a thick gash down my arm. Another got to Dylan with mind control, making him punch himself in the face three times before bashing his head against the wall. Jerry couldn’t walk forward because of a very precise windstorm. He bore it in stubborn silence.

  While we were indisposed, Boman sliced through their line with his light and Donovan picked a couple of people up and slammed them against the wall. Henry stepped in front of Dylan, got the blast of mind-control magic, and reflected it while Daisy and Zorn and the cats sprinted down the hall after the enemy.

  Daisy leapt at someone as if on springs. The girl was like a little jungle cat. She landed on him legs first, wrapped her thighs around his middle, and stabbed his breastplate, both hands gripping the hilt of the knife. The guy dropped like one of Jerry’s stones. Zorn disappeared, then reappeared, stabbing someone. Chaos clawed someone’s leg, and then let loose a roar that had everyone scattering from him like their asses were on fire.

  He clearly had the ability to roar fear, one of Hades’s traits. That had been a nice surprise.

  Havoc followed that up with her roar, moving spirit and flapping souls.

  The battle hadn’t lasted much longer. Thane had watched the whole thing from ten feet behind us, leaning against the wall with this arms crossed over his chest.

  Patched up with Boman’s help, we limped and trudged down the hall, looking for more trouble.

  “When do we get to go home?” I asked, wiping my forearm against my forehead.

  “When we have to be carried.” Donovan rolled his neck
. “Have you noticed the majority of these teams only have magic from one god?”

  “Wow. Look at you, professor. Good work.” Thane clapped Donovan on the back.

  “Shut up, dead weight.”

  “Dead weight? No, I prefer the term audience. Better yet, peanut gallery.”

  “That’s always been the way.” Dylan rubbed a large lump on his head. If he didn’t have accelerated healing, he’d be in a hospital with a concussion. “Demigods—actually, most of the leaders—tend to look for talent like their own. That seemed perfectly natural to me before I met you guys. I felt like a traitor for not choosing Zeus over Poseidon. But we are ten times stronger with a mixed crew. Maybe more. We have something for everyone. The team we just battled was the hardest yet, and it wasn’t because of their magic or ability. It was because they had a bunch of different types of magic, too. Mark my words, people will take notice. Other Demigods—the smarter Demigods—will start to break tradition after this. They’ll look for the diversity Kieran—sorry, Demigod Kieran has.”

  “Ew, really? You can’t just call him Kieran at this point?” Daisy rolled her eyes, her silken complexion marred with a streak of blood.

  “We have a teenage Chester taking down experienced magical people.” Dylan laughed, and a lot of us stopped and gaped for a moment. The guy didn’t laugh often. “What a circus. Yes, we’ll be noticed. Zander doesn’t like to lose. I bet he’ll be the first to make changes. He almost lost someone today, though he probably won’t hear about that.”

  “He won’t have to. He’ll see it.” Henry’s mouth formed a grim line. “Daisy was right about the cameras. They’re all over this place. New tech—tiny, well-hidden cameras, and a firewall that is hard to crack. They have an excellent team behind that firewall, too. The second Amber is in, they kick her out.”

  “Well, boy genius?” Boman held his hands out in a what the hell gesture. “What are you waiting for? You don’t need her to figure this out.”

  Henry gave him a scowl.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling a soul blip onto my radar, stealing my focus from the conversation. It made me a bit blunter than usual. “You aren’t as useful magically as you are doing your infiltrating thing—”

  “Sure felt useful when I was banging my head against the wall,” Dylan muttered.

  “Go find a way to get some intel, or mess with them, or whatever it is you do,” I told Henry.

  “She’s got a point, brother,” Donovan said as that one soul turned into a group.

  I sighed. “We got another one, just about to turn the corner.”

  “Okay. Good luck!” Henry gave me a thumbs-up and took off in the other direction.

  “Well, he didn’t need much convincing,” Jerry murmured.

  “Not Zeus,” Dylan said, straightening his shirt for some reason.

  The first person came around the bend, a woman with a grim expression and strange hat with a little tassel on it. She stopped and held up her hands. “We have heavily wounded. We are on our way out, but we would offer you our Necromancers, if you’d like to duel them.”

  “Lexi, don’t you dare.” Bria dropped the handle of her cart and marched up to the front. “This is mine, do you hear me? I’ve got some new tricks up my sleeve I want to try out.”

  “She said Necromancerzzz, plural,” I said.

  “Yeah, I heard. Bring me the bodies, Jerry. Just carry them on up here, one by one. Hold them really close while you do.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind, woman,” Jerry said.

  “You disappoint me, Jerry.” Bria grinned and motioned for Donovan and Thane, who obliged with smirks and long glances at Jerry.

  “I accept the challenge,” Bria called, unslinging her backpack and dropping it to the ground. She hovered over it. “You call it out.”

  “What does that—”

  “Shh!” She waved her hand at me.

  I felt Boman’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me back. “It’s a Necromancer thing. They don’t usually get as much fighting time as Bria does. She’s a bit crazy for her faction. Just let her work.”

  “Okay, but…I’m here if you need me,” I said to Bria. “Because they have more than one.”

  She waved me away again.

  Two men came forward, one pulling a cart like Bria’s. The woman fell back around the corner with the other souls, most of them lowering to the ground, probably sitting or lying down. After the men had laid the bodies out, they set up little trays for their supplies.

  “Really, guys? Mobile stations?” Bria called down.

  They didn’t respond, organizing their bells and whistles and stinky incense with quick, practiced movements. Bria took that opportunity to pull out her similar supplies, placing them in loose clusters that lacked the organization of the setup across the hall.

  “This is how they do it?” Dylan leaned against the wall. “A chat as they set up to battle with dead bodies?”

  “Didn’t the Demigod you served come here?” I asked him. “Why don’t you know more about how this place works?”

  He gave me a tight-eyed glance. “She didn’t bring me to the Summit.”

  “The belle of the ball had to stay home in bed,” Jerry murmured.

  Everyone turned to him wide-eyed and jaws slacked. A grin spread across Donovan’s face and his shoulders started to shake with suppressed laughter. Thane covered his mouth and turned away, his eyes tearing up. Boman guffawed, his face pointed at the ceiling, unabashed. Even Zorn allowed himself a smirk.

  Dylan’s face turned beet red, but some of the tension left his shoulders. For someone who didn’t joke around often, Jerry sure knew how to make one land.

  “Five,” said one of the other Necromancers, a man with a grisly gray beard and a ring of chub around his middle. “Four…”

  Bria braced herself, her hands out, ready. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall as the countdown continued, happy for the break.

  “Go!”

  Bria burst into action, moving faster than her opponents as she grabbed up black stones that looked like onyx before backing up behind the bodies, shooing us back as she did so. She dotted the carpet from wall to wall with the stones, then hopped over the line to grab a set of purple rocks. Those got lined up behind the black stones, the two rows staggered.

  “I’ve never seen you do that before,” I said.

  “When I was researching how to trap a spirit because of a certain…guy who has been training you, I found all sorts of interesting things. There are some lesser-known texts full of old-school Necromancy teachings. It’s almost like witchcraft. Given you’ve stolen my thunder and made life boring, I’ve been playing with this stuff. We’ll see if it works.”

  “The Soul Stealer can’t help you,” Gray Beard called down, lighting a candle. The other guy had a tchotchke in hand, and I knew he was about to stuff a spirit into one of their very fresh-looking bodies.

  “The Soul Stealer can too help me,” Bria yelled back, fashioning a semicircle of candles in front of the stone and rock line. She grabbed incense next, arranging them in a diamond shape within the semicircle. “She is a type of Necromancer, she is just way better at it.”

  “This is a Necromancer duel, not a type of Necromancer duel.”

  “And you have two against one, you feeble-minded, goat-milk-drinking whore of a dingleberry.” She sprinkled some ash across the entire setup before jumping out in front and sprinkling ash there as well. “But don’t worry the hairs on your ass; I told her not to help. I’ll beat you fair and square. Underdog always wins.”

  “Only in movies,” Gray Beard replied.

  “Welcome to the movie of my life, sweat pea. Get ready to lose.”

  The other Necromancer huffed out a laugh, smiled, and shook his head. “I forgot how distracting you can be in these things,” he said.

  “Yeah. It’s not just about working the cadavers.” She paused for a long moment, looking over her setup. “Oh shit.” She snatched up her backpack and rooted ar
ound in an outside pocket. “That would’ve been a disaster.”

  A man drifted through the hall, his brow furrowed and his fists balled. He joined the Necromancers at the other end of the hall, but he was not happy to be there. I said as much.

  “I’m sure they use the same spirits repeatedly.” Bria pulled out a little silver marble and placed it in the center of the diamond. “It’s easier to control spirits when you’re familiar with the ways they try to revolt. Easier to call them, too, actually. It’s a common practice.” She pulled out a handful of items from the front pocket of her backpack, and I saw that they belonged to the spirits we always had hanging around. “It’s even easier when you trust the spirits, they aren’t pissed at you, and you don’t actually need to control them to get the job done. Thanks for that.”

  A woman drifted through this time, pulled faster than the last, her face as calm as a quiet spring day but tension making her body rigid. Hate fueled her, I could tell, kept on a tight leash until she could exercise it properly.

  These spirits were as trapped as those in Lydia’s house. As trapped as those in Valens’s air and spirit cages.

  Trapped for the last time.

  Although I’d promised not to intervene in the fight, I hadn’t said anything about what happened afterward. This crew would have to find some new spirits. Good luck calling this bunch back after I sent them to the farthest reaches of beyond.

  Jack drifted in like the others, not appearing as quickly as he would’ve if I had called him.

  “Hey, guys,” he said when he stopped moving. I relayed what he’d said.

  “Hey, Jack.” Donovan nodded, looking at the wrong pocket of space. “You’re more help in death than Thane is in life.”

  “But is he more encouraging and supportive of your wins? That’s the real question,” Thane said, crossing his arms over his chest. His large biceps flared.

  John flew in next, right behind another pissed-off spirit heading to the other side. John looked at me, annoyed.

  “That wasn’t as pleasant of a ride,” he grumbled.