Sin & Salvation (Demigod of San Francisco #3)(76)

“You’re a Necromancer?”

“No. I’m a novice Spirit Walker.” His brow furrowed in confusion. I sighed. “A Soul Stealer.” Mistrust warred with the anger in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You work for…”

“Kieran. Valens’s son. Who is going to try and kill Valens.” I knew this was a huge jolt to the guy, but he really needed to get with the program. Time was ticking.

“You want to put me in a body…without controlling me?”

I made an irritated sound. “I could rip you back out in one second, no problem. I can send you beyond the Line again just as fast. It’s not the stressful situation your tone suggests. Just get in the body, figure out how it works, and hang out until the fight. First one that gets Valens wins.” I checked my watchless wrist and grabbed my phone. “I need to get going. I still have a body. It gets hungry and tired. I have to move.”

Utter confusion screwed up his expression, and humor, of all things, bled into his gaze. “The Drusus child was newly born when Valens destroyed my family. I wondered how it would play out with the mother.”

“Badly. He basically tortured her until less than a year ago when she finally died.”

He nodded slowly. “Sounds like Valens. And now the father will have to answer to the son.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, is his son a good man?”

“Oh my God, seriously? Yes, he’s a good man. I mean, I’m doing this for the guy”—I spread my arms to indicate the yard littered with bodies—“instead of taking him up on his offer to get safely away. Dealing with half decomposed bodies isn’t awesome, in case you were curious.” I was doing a bad job of selling his new home.

A wry grin twisted his lips. “You wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s easy to see.” He stuck out a hand. “Chad.”

“No.” I pulled back and waggled my finger at him. “No touching. You’re a spirit now. If you touch me, you can siphon my energy. And it feels weird.”

He pulled his hand back. “Show me to the body.”

It turned out, he didn’t much like the one he was supposed to fill. Rather than argue, or give Bria another reason to yell at me, I just let him pick another and then shoved him on in.

Once he blinked the body’s dry eyes open, I paused. If Valens had a good Necromancer, he or she could just rip Chad out again. We’d lose a valuable fighter. But if I anchored his soul…

“Hold tight. This might feel weird.” I lowered to a squat beside his borrowed body and built a prong from the spirit crowding the air. It wasn’t great, but it would work. “If you don’t mess too much with the body, that prong will hold, and so will you.”

The mouth moved, but nothing came out. That was the problem with this setup—communication was lost. It was the only way they could fight, though.

“Okay.” I moved to pat him, seeing the mouth move again, but held back. That would’ve been gross. “Head out of the line-up so we don’t accidentally try to shove someone in on top of you. We’re messing with Bria’s system.”

“You’ve totally fucked it up, and now I have to start over,” she grumbled, a machine when it came to putting spirits into bodies. “You had better control that S.O.B. He’s powerful, even as a spirit. He could inflict some serious damage.”

It wasn’t a great time to break it to her that I didn’t intend to control him at all.

Back at the table, I grabbed the next cluster of trinkets, and set about calling the spirit attached to them.





32





Kieran





Kieran checked his watch as he exited his car, parked in his driveway. Nearly nine. It wouldn’t be long now. The last eight months were winding down to a handful of hours.

He’d gotten word that his father was amassing his forces. Either he already greatly suspected Kieran was the snake in the grass, or he knew outright.

Nervousness churned Kieran’s stomach. He’d accepted his father’s invitation to join him in San Francisco with one thing in mind—revenge. Besides freeing his mother’s spirit, that was all that had mattered to him. Now, however, he had found a reason to wake up every morning that didn’t entail the destruction of another person.

“Sir, we’re ready.” Jack jogged up with damp clothes sticking to his body. “He doesn’t have anyone waiting off the coast. The army he’s amassing is all land-based, from what I can see.”

Valens was confident that he could dominate in the water. As well he should be.

But he doesn’t have a team like I’ve put together, Kieran thought, steeling himself. His people don’t trust him, and they only respect him because they fear him. He has more power, but he does not have better leadership. That is what will win the day.

“Henry can’t get back, and Donovan is tying up some loose ends,” Kieran said as he crossed the street to Alexis’s house. A male spirit with a manic grin and tattered clothes stood in the middle of the street, eagerly waiting for something. A car to run him over, perhaps? “Besides him, you’re the last in. I’m about to go check on the girls.”

Kieran let himself into Alexis’s backyard through the side gate and had to immediately control his expression. The strong cloud of incense did little to mask the odor of dead bodies in various stages of rot. The animated corpses jerked and staggered through the backyard, bumping into each other and occasionally swiping in aggression. Bria stood behind the Necromancy table with her head bowed amid swirls of colorful smoke. Wax dribbled from candles and bells lay on their sides.