He grinned up at me, his eyes at half-mast as if he were deep in his cups. “All so you can kill your father. That’s what you want, right? And I got the diary from a friend of mine.”
I grinned right back at him, ice forming around any emotions I might have left. My name might have been a creature of fire and flame, but the cold of death and killing had served me for a very long time.
“How were Eleanor and Dinah made?”
His eyes fluttered closed. “They are souls ripped from their bodies at the point of death and shoved into the guns. Brikoff made the guns. He was the only one who could. Tricky, and I must say I’ve always been impressed that it was done not once, but twice.”
My guts clenched and I fought not to reach and touch the two girls. Two women trapped inside my guns . . . not just sentience given to them as I’d once thought. For years, I’d assumed their ability to talk and think was a part of the myst that had created the two weapons, even as I’d wondered if there was something more.
I let go of his hair and ripped my own headset off. I needed to speak without having Mancini hear me. And I wanted to pace. I needed to move, and yet in the small confines of the helicopter that was open on one side, there really was no room. My mind and thoughts were on fire. My guns had souls trapped in them. My father had likely known what I was all along and I’d fallen into his trap time and time again which had only served to make me stronger so he could use me. There was not a lot of new information here. Unless we got back to the deal my father made, and the demons he thought I should protect him from.
Killian put a hand on my upper arm but I didn’t look at him, not right away. He put his mouth to my ear. “Lass, what are you thinking?”
I turned to him, doing the same, putting my mouth against his ear, the strands of his hair blowing across my lips. “He doesn’t have much more to tell us. And he is going to cause more grief than help if we don’t get rid of him.” I pulled back and looked at Killian then, and he nodded.
Once more he tucked in close. “Agreed. But he’s a hard one to kill, believe you me. I’ve tried.” He gave me a half grin. From my other side, Tommy shifted so I could see him. He was my brother, but he’d also been one of my tormentors in our early years. I’d been the child of the second wife to Romano, the only one born to the family without any abnormal abilities. (Besides Gabe, but he was dead, so he no longer counted in my mind, even if I had been the one to kill him.) Tommy had his own set of abilities that could tip the balance in our favor.
Tommy stood and approached us, his eyes fogged with worry. He put his hand carefully on my lower back to balance himself in the center of the helicopter. He leaned in close so he could be heard.
“I could steal his memories. We’d know then what he was really thinking,” Tommy said. His face had zero scars from his ordeal with the Shadow, and even his eyes were back to normal. Which was saying something since they’d been gouged out of his skull by his own hands in the throes of the madness the Shadow induced. And I knew what that madness could do; I’d felt the Shadow’s power beat against my own skin. That red paste had healed him back to good as new. Again, I had to give Simon props for that, even if he was dead by my hand.
I shivered and he patted my back as if to soothe me. I fought not to roll my eyes. It was a little late to suddenly play the considerate big brother. “Any backlash for you, though?”
Tommy shook his head. “No. I’ll stuff the memories where I can’t see them.”
I frowned. “You mean you’d have them forever?”
“Yeah, that’s the deal. Myst must have balance. For every action, there is an equal and measurable reaction. The memories aren’t really taken or wiped out, like they say. They stay in the person’s mind, just buried to a point where most don’t find them again, not unless they really go searching. So, after I see them, I have them, and I do all I can not to look at them.” His eyes flickered and I saw the level of fear he was attempting to keep from me. The twitch at the edge of his dark eyes, the tightening at the edge of his jaw. He didn’t want Mancini’s memories. I wouldn’t want them either.
But for Bear . . . for him, I would throw anyone into the fire, including my brother. I grabbed the headset and slid it back on, adjusting the mouthpiece as I turned. “There are better ways to make someone talk. Mancini, why do you really want Luca Romano dead? Or should I have Tommy here take your memories?”
As I finished my turn toward him, Mancini lurched to his feet, toward the open side of the helicopter. I lunged for him, grabbing at his suit coat, snagging the edge of it, but the headset slowed me down. He spun and smiled at me as he fell backward into open air. The coat ripped and I was left standing there with nothing but a piece of deep blue cloth that fluttered in the wind.
Still smiling, his body swept away and behind us, but I felt like his laughter chased me. I stood at the door, my fingers gripped into the edge and stared as he fell from the sky, his shape indiscernible from any other speck. I stepped back and slid the door shut, turned and looked at Killian and Tommy. They both had headsets on.
“Guess he really didn’t want to talk. I’ll catch up to him later,” I said.
Killian laughed and shook his head. Tommy just stared at me. “You don’t think he’s dead?”
I snorted. “No. If he thought he wouldn’t survive, there is no way he’d have tossed himself out. He’s not fucking stupid, and we’d be idiots to believe he would die so easily. Romano isn’t the only one playing a long game, well hidden.”
Tommy turned to Killian and asked where we were headed. I let the words wash over me because my mind was busy elsewhere.
The thing that tugged at me, though, was why would Mancini have gone to all the trouble to get Noah to bring him to me, to give me the diary, to tell me about my abilities and about my guns, only to balk when it came to the big question. Why did he really want Luca Romano dead? Or was it more than that? Or was it just the diary? I slid my fingers over it, feeling the worn edges again. I didn’t even look at it, but I knew it was possible that it could be that important.
The only thing that was obvious to me was that Mancini wanted to use me as his weapon to get rid of my father. But what reason could make him unwilling to speak of it?
I finally let myself slide into a bench seat, the one where Mancini had sat, and actually relax. Though, even that wasn’t the right word. Maybe rest was a better one. I needed to rest after what I’d just walked through, after what I’d just done. There would be no relaxing until Bear was back with me. And the fact that he was alive meant I would not stop until he was at my side once more. Abe let out a long low whine and pushed himself between my knees so his nose was pressed into my belly button. I rubbed his head with one hand, absently.
His breath was hot through my shirt, reminding me he was there, even if he wasn’t vocal like the other men who surrounded me.
I closed my eyes and let myself go over what had happened at the jail-turned-laboratory. For the first time, I’d tapped into my abnormal abilities, all the way to the core, and used them to destroy the Shadow, a guardian of Hell. Not something I would have ever thought I could do, and yet there it was, and I’d survived.
Yet again. Between Mancini, Vivian, and my own experiences, I couldn’t deny the truth of the survivor defenses. I would embrace them as my own.