“We didn’t touch her, cunt.” Slade spat, throwing fuel on the fire.
The casino’s submarine door lock disengaged, and Faline poked her head out, wrestling the guards trying to drag her back to safety.
“I’m not yours, Colton,” Faline huffed from behind us, her guards dragging her back, slamming the door shut, closing that chapter of her life.
“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of groveling to do, you fucking weasel bitch,” Slade taunted, wrestling the souls pinning him down. “She doesn’t want your useless ass.”
Colton laughed but didn’t take the bait. Smiling sinisterly, he produced a long, sharp dagger marked with writing I didn’t recognize from the sheath beneath his jacket.
Looming over me, he ran the tip of his finger along the blade. “Like it?” Dull gray metal flashed with menace, begging to slice my throat, drip my blood, and claim my life. “It’s eleventh-century iron. Previously owned by a Danelaw warlord in Northumbria.”
Fucking geek sounded like Castor with his antique collection.
“The dead shouldn’t be here on Earth!” I shouted, sounding pathetic and weak as my magick gave into his powers of expiry. I needed to bide time for an antidote to the situation.
Colton smiled, cold, cruel, and triumphant, and I wanted to smack it off his damn face. “Once you are dead, they’ll escort you to your resting place, where I will punish you for an eternity.” His threat splintered through my chest like he pierced me with a blade made of ice.
He lifted the knife back to plunge it through my chest. I lifted my hand to protect myself and the iron carved through my tendons and bone. Agony sliced through my palm. Furious, hot blood trickled along my skin and the blade. Poison on the blade’s tip burned like acid and my flesh bubbled.
“Fuck!” I instinctively jerked my hand back to get away from the substance dissolving my flesh.
My body stalled and choked like a bike engine. Magick electrified as Colton’s influence on me broke. I clamped down on Colton’s wrist with my free hand and jerked the knife from my palm. His icy gaze melted as he realized his advantage over us broke.
Slade grunted and flung the last soul from his body. Free to maneuver without the encumbrance of the dead all over him, he moved with lightning speed to Colton’s side, and punched him in the side of the head. Our enemy rocked backward, losing his footing, tumbling backward, the blade scattering across the pavement. My president whipped a Glock from his holster. Colton smiled and vanished as a bullet fired and went straight through the golden mist outlining his body.
All the souls departed with him. A lone playing card flitted to the ground. Queen of Hearts. Another fucking threat to Aaliyah.
The last of his magical grasp on me evaporated, and my legs kicked from the sudden pulse of blood and energy. Feeling crept back into my body. Bleeding profusely, I paused, panting, sweating, and a little light-headed from shock. My hand throbbed from the wound and whatever toxin Colton lined his blade with. That didn’t stop me from burning the card to ash.
“Where the fuck did he go?” Slade scanned the parking lot with his war senses, the muzzle of his gun jumping from car to car, in the event of another surprise.
I clutched my bleeding hand to my chest and cast out my own gift, searching for him. Hidden beyond the extent of my powers. A-fucking-gain!
“He’s gone.” I clambered to my feet, tearing my shirt off my back and winding it around my bleeding palm.
“Fucking weasel!” Slade moved to the closest car and took out his frustrations on the tire, bending it inward and denting the wheel with one hard kick.
The casino door flung open, and Faline emerged, chest and neck flushed red, eyes burning with rage. “Those are my customers’ cars!”
Slade snatched up the wheel’s hubcap. “Don’t give a fuck, toots?” He flung it at her and she ducked a millisecond before it lodged in the brick exterior of her casino.
One of her guards tossed her over his shoulder and lugged her back to safety inside her illegal operation.
Fuck. I failed my president. Blew my chance at capturing Colton and redeeming myself in the club’s eyes. If I had any hope of regaining the VP position, I needed to find out how Anubis’ avatar went from Protector of the Dead and the god of Mummification to making me lose power over the souls in my domain. How the fuck he managed to hide from us. What so-called ancient and dark power he used to overwhelm mine and Slade’s.
This time, I was lucky to get out of it with a wound to my hand. Next time, he might bring more souls to disable us and send us to our graves.
Slade clasped my wrist, unwinding the bandage to examine my lesion. “Open a portal and take us back home and get Aaliyah to heal this.”
“Colton’s blade was tainted with some sort of poison.” I hissed as Slade secured my compression.
Acid burned my blood as the toxin worked its way deeper into my body. I infused magick into the wound and my blood to kill its effect. Taking us out with a slow and painful death sounded like the kind of torment Colton would inflict on us all.
I slashed open a portal, and Slade herded me through it to our home.
“Aaliyah! You here?” my president called out, trying to mask the concern tainting his voice.
“Coming!” she shouted from several rooms away. “Just let me finish unpacking this box first.”
