Sin & Surrender (Demigod of San Francisco #6)(76)

I continued tracing the prongs, trying to learn the construction, but his side of the conversation kept derailing me. What he was saying didn’t make any sense, unless he was the Spirit Walker before Harding?

“I grew up outside of the magical world,” I said. “I didn’t have training until I summoned the last Spirit Walker…before me. The one right before me.”

“There is another?” The zombie stopped walking.

“Harding. As far as I know, he was the last.”

“Harding? Harding was…” His soul pulsed midnight black. “Ah, so that’s why you backed off after feeling my cage. You felt what they had turned me into.” He laughed. “Yes, all my goodness has dried up. The boy who was Harding was trained, tortured, and then hidden away, turned into a killer.”

“Wait…no…” I felt dizzy, like I was falling. Things weren’t making sense. I remembered the first time I’d sought out the last Spirit Walker. I’d felt a wall, and a presence pushing up against it. I remembered the seething anger from that presence. Anger that didn’t feel a whole lot like Harding, I had to admit. “But…the guy who followed me said he was Harding. His name is Harding. The feeling of souls doesn’t change—”

“I don’t know who you found, love, but it wasn’t Harding. It still isn’t Harding. That kid died as soon as I went into training. They christened me Damion in the end, the left hand of the devil. They sent me out, in spirit or in body, to kill. And I did. I had no choice. I killed under their guidance. I killed under their orders. And still I was destroyed for my crimes, locked up in a cage beyond the veil where I could never properly rest. Locked up, and then that old Hades Demigod retired. He hasn’t been to visit. No one has. Except for you.”

“Damion…” I mumbled.

He stopped for a moment, analyzing me.

“Those disgusting Demigods in the trial room were interrogating you, weren’t they?” he finally asked. “They were coming down on you for what you are, right? I saw them. Tell me, who has control of you? I can set you free and then punish them. I’m siphoning energy from a Demigod. The fool left my mother poor and alone, left me, and now he wants to make up for it when all is lost. He says he wants a son, but what he really wants is a weapon, like everyone else. His greed and his quest for power has made him desperate. What he’ll get, though, is vengeance. They’ll all get vengeance.” If I could’ve seen his face through that body, I knew he’d be smiling. “With this spirit link, I will never wilt. With my power and my magic, I can create a semblance of a soul link between us. I can release you, my pretty pet. I can show you how to leave your body and its unwanted connections, and claim another. When that one rots away, we can simply take another, and another, until the end of time.”

“Damion is the name of the reprogrammed Spirit Walker,” Bria called out. “The last Spirit Walker. He was born as Harding.”

“But…” I blinked, still utterly confused.

Jerry pushed to the outskirts of the group. He didn’t like being inactive, I could tell. None of them did. But they couldn’t help me here. If they got close, they’d get their spirits yanked out, no problem. I wouldn’t have time to put them back in before it was too late.

Despite the danger the Spirit Walker posed, plus his extremely gross offer of living my days as a rotting corpse (Jerry would throw up every time he looked at me), one thought kept cycling through my mind: if this was the real Harding…who was the other guy?

In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. This guy needed to be stopped. I could figure out the rest later.

“Do you know how to heal a soul, Damion?” I asked, and magically launched into action, working at the prongs docking his soul into the cadaver.

The Line pumped power, throbbing around us.

He shoved my touch away forcefully. The power disparity between us was going to be a problem.

“We are Soul Stealers. Our job isn’t to heal a soul,” he spat. “Our job is to remove it.”

I worked at that weave, frustrated by how much power had gone into creating it. He must’ve done it after the Necromancers had put him into that body, because the magic was definitely that of a highly experienced Spirit Walker. My efforts were clumsy in comparison, much like my attempts to weasel my way through his prongs.

“We are not just killers, Harding.” A violet cord materialized before him, faster than Lydia had created one.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, rage lacing his words. The cord reached out toward me as a thick magical hand punched into my center.

I gasped, reeling. Primal terror welled up in me at the feeling of foreign fingers digging into my middle, scrabbling at the prongs keeping my spirit in my body, trying to destroy my life. This was how people felt when I used my magic. It wasn’t pretty.

Remembering not-Harding’s teachings, I pushed apart the spirit from Damion’s attack and redirected the power. I forced his touch away, but the violet cord latched on. Energy sucked from me in heavy gulps.

Chaos roared and sprang into action, leaping for the zombie. A red lashing of spirit snaked out from the zombie and raked through Chaos’s middle. Chaos cried out in midair, shaking. He landed on his side and twisted and turned in pain. Havoc roared next, flapping the spirit’s soul within its casing. The zombie didn’t even flinch. Havoc stalked around the Spirit Walker at a distance, probably looking for an in before engaging. She’d always been the smarter of the pair.