Paris and the Reaper (Soul to Find #2)

Chapter 7

SEVEN

Paris wasn’t lost this time.

He’d been here before. Would never forget sitting in the back seat of his father’s SUV and crying over a future he’d never have. In retrospect, he’d probably been brought as a sacrifice that day, but it didn’t make the day any less of a milestone in his past of painful losses.

Today looked much the same. The giant oval lawn full of people—a couple sharing a picnic, a group of friends tossing a frisbee, classmates chatting over books. The plaster and glass buildings with their echoes of mission-style architecture, the farthest north the trend had reached before magic and greed had chased the religious fanatics back south. Bright sun overhead, making the veneer of normalcy shimmer bright.

Portola University.

Paris would’ve liked to attend college, but erased persons, like Vincent had paid for him to be, couldn’t enroll in school. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have survived four years here. He would’ve been killed by a rival dealer or kidnapped by a tech oligarch to leverage against his father, but at least he would have been out from under Vincent’s fist. Instead, Atlas had arranged for private tutors, all of them excellent and paid enough to get over their fear of working for the Cirillos. But that was as far as their connection had gone, none of them becoming friends. Paris only had Kai and Jason for that, and Icarus, whose company he’d paid for.

As a young man crossed in front of him on the oval, the glide of his steps too measured, the shift of his blue eyes too fast, the rise and fall of his chest nonexistent, Paris thought he must be a vampire like Icarus.

One with access to Daylight. Out here in the violet midday.

Violet .

Paris looked the direction the vampire had come just as the vamp glanced over his shoulder, both of them spying the small, bearded man on the oval’s stone wall. Dressed in overalls, he sat munching on an apple, taking a break outside in the sun like everyone else.

But as the vampire moved to take another step and couldn’t, Paris knew that wasn’t what the man was doing at all. The vampire’s claws extended, and he slashed at the monster’s invisible hold. No one noticed his struggle except Paris. No one noticed the small man’s red eyes or the snakes that slithered out from under his pant legs and sped through the grass in the vampire’s direction.

No one noticed the world turn a deep, dark violet, or the oval lawn narrow into a deserted alley, or the vampire lying on the wet, grimy pavers with deep cuts in his arms and legs. No one heard him scream “Help me!” into the night.

No one except Paris.

“How, Paris? Tell me how to help you!”

Paris jolted awake, the dark, violet night resolving into a pair of dark, violet eyes. “Mac?” The raven’s strained voice had echoed around the alley walls, pulling Paris out of Portola and back to...?

A place that smelled of wildflowers, wood, and fresh-baked bread—as far away from home as Portola had been.

Tearing his gaze from Mac’s, he planted a hand in the cushions and levered up to look around. A quilt-covered bed on the far wall, a half-eaten loaf on the kitchen table, a corner hearth blazing bright, a dusky green hue outside the windows. “We’re still in Calera?” he asked, swinging his gaze back to Mac. “At the cabin?”

Mac nodded. “About ten hours later, but yeah, still here.” He rocked onto his haunches beside the couch. “Where were you?”

“Portola.” Paris hauled himself the rest of the way up and raked a hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. “I can’t believe I passed out like that. I’m sorry.”

He gently patted his biceps, bandaged beneath the hoodie’s sleeves. “You’re still recovering.”

Paris had removed the bandages on his forearms last night. Those wounds had mostly healed, but the deeper cuts in his biceps and thighs, the witches had warned, would take longer.

“And you got some big news this morning,” Mac added.

“That you delivered, after I don’t even want to know how long a night.”

“It’s not a competition, Paris.” He stood and made his way to the kitchen. Out of the jeans and sweater and dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, barefoot and with his sleeves rolled up, he looked a hundred times more comfortable than he had in more casual clothes. “Coffee or tea?”

“Tea,” Paris answered. “The olallieberry one, please.” Mac threw a dark-eyed glare over his shoulder, and it took everything in Paris not to flip him the bird. Bird, heh. He settled for sass instead. “Don’t judge. And you offered it.”

“Only to be polite.” One corner of his mouth twitched, fighting a smile, before he turned back to the kettle. “I’ll let it slide since you make good bread.”

Paris’s insides warmed at the compliment, at the idea he’d been able to give Mac some comfort too. But it wasn’t all his doing. “The starter for it was the witches’, and your brother kneaded it, then babysat it while I slept,” Paris said, as he pushed off the couch and headed toward the bathroom. “They deserve some of the credit.”

A quick leak and bandage check later, Paris reemerged to two steaming mugs, bread and butter, and Mac waiting for him at the table. Also on the table was a stack of file folders Paris didn’t remember from that morning. And come to think of it, those slacks and shirt Mac was wearing had not been in the stack Liam had put in the bin outside. “Did you go out when I was asleep?”

“Briefly. I met an associate at the motel down by the coast. She had some wheels and other supplies for us and the coven.”

Paris peeked out the front window, to check out said wheels—a nondescript sedan—and to hide his grin that threatened, more of that earlier warmth intensifying and spreading out to his limbs. Mac had trusted him not to run.

“Where were you in Portola, in your dream?”

His grin died as he turned back to the table and slid into the other chair. “You don’t need to worry about those.” The last thing he wanted was to burden Mac with more concerns—he had enough on his plate already—and especially for what would amount to nothing. “Like I said before, it’s just me processing.”

“I’m not sure it is.” Coffee in hand, Mac leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, and repeated his earlier question. “Where were you in Portola?”

“The university.”

And straightened in his seat.

“That’s relevant?” Paris asked.

“Maybe. The monster from last week was there?”

Paris fought off his shiver with another sip of hot tea. “He was after a vampire.”

“Icarus?”

Paris shook his head. “It wasn’t him or any of my other clients. I didn’t recognize him.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

Knowing Mac was a cop, Paris recognized the interrogation for what it was, but if he hadn’t known, he might not have made the connection, Mac gently drawing the answers out of him. More like a conversation between friends, but the raven never let a question go, circling back for the answer he needed. Paris would bet he was good with suspects and also with families of missing victims.

“He’d been turned at about my age. Midtwenties. Average height, slimmer build, dark brown skin, short, clipped hair, blue eyes, freckles over the bridge of his nose.” Paris’s gaze drifted out the window, summoning up the dream for anything else he’d noticed. “He knew he was being watched. And he didn’t care. He was more concerned with getting out of there.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He wasn’t hiding what he was as he crossed the oval. It was full of people, and he was gliding too smoothly and not breathing.”

“This was in broad daylight?”

Paris nodded. “As if he’d taken Daylight. I can paint him for you.” His fingers itched to get to work, the walls of the cabin a blank canvas calling to him.

“And if you were to paint the giant, what would he look like this time?”

“Giant,” Paris said with a harsh chuckle. “He looks nothing like that in his human form.” He held his mug in both hands, close to his chest, guarding against the threatening chill. “In my dreams, he looks like he did when Dad handed me over to him. Incredibly average. You wouldn’t notice him on the street. Short, skinny, frail almost, like his arms would shatter in a strong enough wind. Brown hair and beard, blue eyes that turned red when he froze the vampire, like he did to me when I tried to run. He’s so small, the opposite of the giant he becomes.”

“He was wearing a grocery apron when you painted him before. Was he wearing the same apron when he took you?”

“Not the same one, and he wasn’t wearing any apron in this dream. He had on generic overalls, like a janitor or professional painter would wear.” He lowered his mug and cupped his warm hands over his nape, head bowed. “The exact opposite of my father’s suits. It’s my brain, swapping one monster for another, one victim for another, but they’re all me.” Abused, chased, denied the bright, promising future he wanted and damned to dark, hopeless alleyways instead. “The scene changed,” he told Mac. “From the oval to a dark alley where the vamp was cut open.” He pushed his sleeves up and turned over his arms, the scars on his forearms fading but still visible. “Exactly like I was. He asked me to help him. It was just?—”

“He’s still alive, Paris.”

His gaze shot up, along with his heart rate. “What?”

“The giant. He disappeared in that ball of magic he conjured.” Mac pulled the top file off the stack, opened it, and pushed it in front of Paris.

The blond-haired, brown-eyed woman from the Portola parking lot stared up at him from a graduation photo. “Who is she?”

“Lola Duvall. She graduated Portola University, then went to work there as a systems engineer. She’s from my stack.”

“Your stack?”

“Of cold cases. She’s been missing for over three years.”

Paris’s pulse galloped as his mind likewise raced, tying the pieces of his dreams to the pieces of the new reality around him.

To the raven sitting across from him.

“She’s one of the souls you still have to deliver.”

“Among others.” Mac’s gaze cut to the remaining folders beside him; Paris didn’t think that was even close to the entirety of his stack. “You mentioned hearing other voices when you were on the altar. You painted them carving into you and swirling around your head.”

“They were souls,” he said, recalling more from that awful night, realizing now that that was how he’d thought of the voices then too.

Mac nodded. “I don’t think you were the first being that giant sacrificed on his altar to Chaos. I want to know who he is and how many more souls he’s taken. How many more humans like you and Lola he used to channel those souls through. I want to stop him from taking more. There’s not much I can control in this war, but this— this —I can do. I need to do it. Will you help me, Paris? Will you help them?”

Help me , the vampire had begged him in that alleyway. Help me , Lola had pleaded in the parking lot. Help me , all those voices—souls—had screamed with him on that altar.

And now he had an opportunity to do just that. To make some good out of what had been the worst night of his life. To help those lost souls and to save others from being taken.

To help ease the burden of the man who’d saved him.

“Yes,” Paris answered.