A block away, a cab sighted Rhi and turned its blinker on. She stepped back onto the curb. “An alliance?”
I nodded. “With the Necrolines.”
She shook her head. “They’ll never agree to that.”
I smirked. “Oh, but they will.” I turned my phone to show them both the message Ares Necroline had sent:In over our heads. Please come.
CHAPTER 15
ARES
As Av roundedthe narrow city corner, it was apparent the safe house was already compromised. This was what the humans considered a bad neighborhood. Tall brownstones, covered in ivy, lined the tight, poorly lit streets. Curtains were drawn against the night. There were no flourishing gardens, just lush trees and ivy. Not a clue given that these houses were occupied by parapsychs with talents that could aid plants in their growth, or who could get a message to a dead loved one.
It was the perfect place to hide a teenage girl with burgeoning power. I had safe houses all over the city, in neighborhoods just like this one. None had ever been breached before now. My muscles coiled as Av slowed the car.
My best team of fighters lay dead, lined up against the wrought iron garden gate like trophy kills—a message to the entire neighborhood. Unbridled rage boiled in my gut as my attention narrowed onto the figure I could just make out from three blocks away. Mike Fairchild sat on the front stoop, casually smoking a cigarette. The front door to the house was open, giving me a full on view of the man inside the brownstone, beating the ever-loving shit out of the girl.
Eryx’s hand shot into the backseat of the car. He shoved me,hard, back into my seat. “Don’t,” he hissed. “It’s what he wants.”
I gritted my teeth, feeling for a moment, like Ember. Like leashed lightning, about to strike. I wanted to tear into that house and stop what was happening. Eryx’s grip on me tightened. He felt the same as I did. He was holding himself back, as much as he was me.
Av turned off the headlights as she pulled into an alley, cutting off my view of the safe house. She shook her head at Eryx, but he didn’t let me go, so she tried to diffuse the situation by talking. “How’d he kill the Phoenixes? They’re the best.”
“Were,” Eryx muttered as he released his hold on me. “Theywerethe best.”
Av gulped, covering her tiny face with her hands. Her eyes shone with glassy disbelief above her short, manicured nails. “Mike Fairchild is a nobody… I looked into him. Sorted him up and down. There was nothing suggesting he, or any team he is a part of, are capable of this.”
Eryx placed a hand on her arm. It was shaking. She let him touch her, let him grip her arm for a long moment before she nodded, giving him a small half-smile.
My brother reassured her. “If anyone could have known who he truly was, or how resourced he was, it would’ve been you, Av.” To me, he said. “Fairchild isn’t who he appears to be. We need to start from the beginning and sort out what’s going on.”
I gritted my teeth, but nodded. “Nothing going on right now is what it appears to be. We’re in over our heads.”
I already had my phone out when Av said, “Maybe we should call Ember Verona.”
“On it,” I said as I typed out a second request for help.
Whatever Mike Fairchild was capable of, I couldn’t afford to just rush in. Not with my best team dead. My organization was large. Orphium was the City of the Dead, after all—and there were still more necromancers here than any other parapsychs.Even with all that, in times like these, the pool of people I could trust always shrank to the three of us.
I hated having to ask for help—and worse—having to wait for it. The image of that child, strapped to a chair, being beaten by a grown adult, was more than I could live with. Fire lashed through my veins.
Eryx turned again, shaking his head, his gaze darkening. “I know what you’re thinking, big brother… You can’t rush in there.”
My jaw clenched tighter, my neck aching with the effort of it. “If Roman Necroline hadn’t risked himself in just the same way, we wouldn’t be here now.”
I could hear the sound of my brother’s jaw clicking. Watched as he shut his eyes against the memory. Fury rose up in me. I was the one who took the beating. I was the one some Authority bastard with too little oversight and too much audacity had nearly killed, just for the fun of it.
Our adoptive father had rushed in with a team, like a legion of avenging angels, and everything changed. I swore to myself, on that very day, that I’d never let that debt go unpaid. The child on the metro’s accusation ricocheted through me. I’d let my people down too many times. Maybe Iwasa traitor. Too comfortable in my seat of power for my own good.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right,” I agreed. “We’ll wait for the Maere.”
Eryx sighed with relief. He was just doing what he did best, protecting me from myself. From the terrible temper that lurked beneath my typically stoic exterior. “Thank you.”
I nodded, solemn. “Of course.”
As soon as he turned back around, I was out of the car. I strode towards the safe house, the power of the nether-realms crackling at my fingertips, and called every spirit in a six-block radius to me. Fairchild had fucked with the wrong Necroline. There were at least a dozen Poltergeists in the vicinity, which was some real luck, and a handful of Shades.
The Poltergeists went in first, screaming as they swept through the garden gate so hard it hung off its black hinges. Mike Fairchild was knocked aside by their passing, and I was up the steps and had him by the collar before I saw what became of the spirits. They still screamed, but this time, their auras were pulled apart. Exterminated. Not sent back to the netherworld, but eliminated.
