His footsteps pounded down the steps behind me. I kept my gun aimed for the body just in case Dionysus or someone else came barreling out of a hiding space.
“That sick fuck,” Morales said.
The body of a man who I assumed was Mr. Daniels hung from the rafters by a length of chain wrapped around his neck. The center of his chest was a gaping hole. That certainly explained the mess in the kitchen. But the gory wound wasn’t what had bile crawling up the back of my throat and Morales cussing.
The man’s penis and testicles hung from a length of rope around his neck. I’m no forensics expert, but judging from the copious blood and the visible clots where the penis used to be attached, the wound probably occurred before Daniels was shot.
“You think this was Dionysus or the wife?” I asked, recalling Mrs. Daniels’s shotgun.
Before Morales could answer, my eyes caught movement in the shadows. I swiveled my gun that direction, blowing out air to dispel the surge of adrenaline. A silhouette emerged from the dark corner and into the pool of light.
“Freeze!” Morales and I shouted in stereo.
His head was down at first and his hands were clasped submissively behind his neck. He wore a white tank top spattered red with blood, old-fashioned suspenders attached to frayed jeans. Cuffs rolled up at the ankles to expose combat boots smeared in more of Daniels’s blood. Two full sleeves of tattoos covering sinewy muscles.
He raised his head and hit me with the force of two fevered green eyes. The violence in that stare took my breath away even as it made cold sweat crawl over my skin.
The magic detector amulet on my vest went apeshit.
“Prospero? Morales?” Mez’s panicked voice came through the earpiece. His breath came out in loud bursts, like he was running. “What the fuck’s going on?”
I lifted my free hand to my vest to respond. A blast of magical energy shook the house. The sickening stench of ozone rolled through the air. I ducked, looking up at the dust flying down from the rafters.
“What the fuck was that?” Morales shouted.
“Your team found my little booby traps.”
My stomach did a death roll in my gut. I hit the button. “Mez?”
Silence.
“Shadi? Gardner? You guys, okay?”
Static was the only response.
“Fuck!” Morales gritted out.
I squeezed the gun so hard, my knuckles went white. “What did you do?”
“Relax, Kate,” he said. Hearing my name on his lips made me feel dizzy. “They’re alive. They’re just… sleeping.”
Morales took an aggressive step forward. “Do. Not. Move.”
Something around the eyes changed. A tightening.
“Now!” I projected, deepening my voice.
His whole body undulated, and his eyes fluttered. I realized he didn’t loathe being bossed around. He got off on it. I didn’t have time to be unsettled, so I used it to my advantage. This time I lowered my voice to give the order extra punch. “Do not disobey me, Scott.”
He sucked a deep breath, making his nostrils flare. His tongue darted out from his mouth. The shocking red of it contrasted against his beard in a way that reminded me of sex.
“I feel it, too,” he whispered.
Something in my stomach pitched. My hand tightened on the gun. “ON. YOUR. KNEES.”
This time he obeyed. His hands were still behind his head, but a smile hovered on his lips. With my right hand, I removed a set of lead cuffs from my back pocket. The weight was cold and heavy in my palms. The lead wouldn’t offer me much protection if he had a magical trick up his sleeve, but they’d hold his hands through almost anything.
“She’s going to cuff you now,” Morales said behind me. “You so much as breathe on her and I’ll make you bleed. Got it?”
The corner of McQueen’s mouth twisted up in anticipation. His eyes stayed on me, daring me to be nervous. He shouldn’t have looked so cocksure. I wasn’t nervous, I was pissed off.
I reached out to grab his hand. But before I saw it coming, he struck like a snake. With one hand he grabbed my wrist, pivoted, and with his other hand slammed a weapon against my jugular.
At first I thought it was a Mundane gun. That bullet with my name engraved. Time slowed and my life flared behind my eyes like a stop-motion montage.
Click. Baby Danny gumming my pinkie.
Click. Volos whispering that he loved me right before he took my virginity.
Click. Mom’s dead body laid out in a coffin.
Click. The day I earned my badge.
Click. The day I joined the task force.
Click. Morales screaming my name.
Boom!
I’d expected bigger pain. Total annihilation. Instead the pain was a sharp stab above my jugular.
My vision wavered.
Another loud snap. Morales grunted.
My knees buckled.
The world was a blur of red and sounds. I fell in slow motion. From the corner of my eye, I saw the dart gun in Dionysus’s hand. I tried to open my mouth, but no sound emerged. Pain exploded on my right side. My face smacked into the concrete. I gasped in a lungful of air but it wasn’t enough. My ribs felt too small, constricting my lungs. I opened my eyes and saw the puddle of blood from Daniels’s body a few inches from my face.
If the attack had happened on a random day my protection amulet would have absorbed the excess magical energy. But the moon’s erratic energy must have put the thing on the fritz. Besides, a potion delivered in the vein was twice as potent as one splashed on the skin.
My body twitched, helpless, on the floor. A shadow loomed over me. The warped sound of mad laughter. My limbs twitched and my left eyelid convulsed. I tried to work my lips to say… something, but it was no use. Whatever he’d hit me with left me totally short-circuited.
Dionysus knelt down. I saw his hand on my skin but couldn’t feel it. “Shh now,” he whispered. Up close his eyes were otherworldly and menacing. “Surrender, Kate.”
Somewhere in my panicked mind, I realized I couldn’t see Morales. A whimper reached my ears, and I recognized that it had come from my throat.
Dionysus grabbed my chin and jerked my head toward the base of the stairs. Morales’s body lay in an unmoving heap. Before I could register that my partner might be dead, a hand rose above me and came down hard.
I couldn’t even flinch in a vain attempt to avoid the hit. I didn’t feel the pain, but a split second later the watery image of Dionysus’s face wavered and dimmed. And then, there was nothing but black.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
October 31