Crave

CHAPTER 25

Back in Caldwell, inside the funeral home, Jim was an old pro at the McCready floor plan and he worked his way down to the basement on quick feet. When he got to the embalming room, he walked through the closed doors . . . and all but skidded to a halt when he came out on the other side.

He hadn’t realized until now that he never expected to see his old boss again face-to-face.

And yet there Matthias was, across the way at the refrigerator units, looking at the nameplates on the latched doors just as Jim had done night before last. Shit, the guy was frail, that once tall, robust body now angled over his cane, the previously black hair showing gray at the temples. The eye patch was still where it had been after the initial round of surgeries—there had been hope that the damage wasn’t permanent, but clearly that had not been the case.

Matthias stopped, leaned in as if to double-check, and then unlatched a door, braced himself against his cane, and pulled a slab out of the wall.

Jim knew it was the right body: From under the thin sheet, the summoning spell was at work, the pale phosphorescent glow bleeding through and glowing like his corpse was radioactive.

As Jim walked over to stand on the other side of his remains, he wasn’t fooled by the fact that Matthias seemed to have wilted around his skeleton and was relying on the cane even as he stood without moving: The man was still a formidable, unpredictable opponent. After all, his mind and his soul had been the drivers of all those bad deeds, and until you were in your grave, they were with you wherever you went.

Lifting a hand, Matthias pulled the sheet back from Jim’s face and laid the hem with curious care on his chest. Then, with a wince, the guy gripped his left arm and massaged as if something hurt.

“Look at you, Jim.” As Jim stared at the guy,he reveled in the instability he was about to create. Who knew being dead would be so useful?

On a shimmer, he revealed himself. “Surprise.”

Matthias’s head jerked up—and to give him credit, he didn’t even flinch. There was no jump back, no flap of hands, not even a change in breathing. But then again, he probably would have been more surprised if Jim hadn’t made an appearance: The currency of trade in XOps was the impossible and unexplained.

“How did you manage this.” Matthias smiled a little as he nodded down at the body. “The match is uncanny.”

“It’s a miracle,” Jim drawled.

“So you were just waiting for me to show up? Wanted a reunion?”

“I want to talk about Isaac.”

“Rothe?” Matthias’s one eyebrow lifted. “You’re past your deadline. You were supposed to kill him yesterday—which means tonight we don’t have anything to say to each other about that. We do have business, however.”

So not a surprise that Matthias outed an autoloader and pointed it squarely at Jim’s chest.

Jim smiled coldly. And it so wasn’t hard to imagine that Devina had taken this man over and was using him as a walking, talking weapon in her bid to get Isaac. The question was how to disarm her nasty little puppet, and the answer was easy.

The mind . . . as Matthias had always said, the mind was the most powerful force for and against someone.

Jim leaned forward over his corpse until the muzzle was all but kissing his sternum. “So pull the trigger.”

“You’re wearing a vest, are you?” Matthias twisted his wrist so that the weapon pivoted and made a little knot out of Jim’s black T-shirt. “Helluva lot of faith you’re putting in it.”

“Why are you still talking.” Jim braced his palms on the cold steel table. “Pull the trigger. Do it. Pull it.”

He was well aware he was creating a problem for himself: If Matthias popped him, and he didn’t pull the standard-issue drop-and-flop that humans did, there was going to be hell to pay on the holy-shit front. But it was worth it just to see—

The gun went off, the bullet shot out . . . and the wall behind Jim ate the lead. As the ringing sound echoed around the tiled room, rank confusion flickered over the cruel mask of Matthias’s face . . . and Jim felt a fuckload of pure triumph.

“I want you to leave Isaac alone,” Jim said. “He’s mine.”

The sense that he was bartering with Devina over the guy’s soul was so strong it was like he’d been destined to have this moment with his former boss . . . as if the sole reason he’d dragged the bastard out of that sandy hellhole and risked his own life to get him to a clinic had been for this conversation, this negotiation, this exchange.

And the feeling got even sharper as Matthias balanced on his cane and eased forward to put the business end of that gun right back against Jim’s chest.

“The definition of insanity,” Jim murmured, “is doing the same thing over again and expecting a—”

The second shot went off exactly as the first had: loud sound, slug in the wall, Jim still standing.

“—different result,” he finished.

Matthias’s hand shot out and grabbed onto Jim’s leather jacket. As the cane dropped on the floor and bounced, Jim smiled, thinking this shit was better than Christmas.

“You want to shoot me again?” he asked. “Or are we going to talk about Isaac?”

“What are you.”

Jim grinned like a crazy motherfucker. “I’m your worst nightmare. Someone you can’t touch and you can’t control and you can’t kill.”

Matthias slowly shook his head back and forth. “This isn’t right.”

“Isaac Rothe. You’re going to let him go.”

“This doesn’t . . .” Matthias used Jim’s jacket as a counterbalance while he shifted to the side and looked at the wall that had been cosmetically wounded. “It isn’t right.”

Jim gripped that fist and squeezed hard, feeling the bones compress. “Do you remember what you always tell people?”

Matthias’s eye flipped back to Jim’s face. “What. Are. You.”

Jim jerked the two of them together so their noses were an inch apart. “You always tell people there’s no one you can’t take, nowhere you can’t find them, nothing you won’t do to them. Well, that would be a right-back- at-you. Let Isaac go and I won’t make your life a living hell.”

Matthias stared hard into his eyes, probing, seeking information. God, this was a head trip in a good way. For once, the man who had all the answers was off his game and floundering.

Christ, if Jim was still alive, he’d take a picture of that puss and make a calendar of the damn thing.

Matthias rubbed the eye that was visible, like he was hoping what vision he had left would clear and he’d find himself alone—or at least the only person standing in the embalming room.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“I’m an angel sent from Heaven, buddy.” Jim laughed low and hard. “Or maybe I’m the conscience you were born without. Or maybe I’m a hallucination from all the prescription meds you need to control your pain. Or maybe this is just a dream. But whatever the case, there is only one truth you need to know—I’m not letting you take Isaac. That’s not going to happen.”

The two held eyes and stayed that way as Matthias’s brain clearly churned.

After a long moment, the man apparently decided to go with what was in front of him. After all, what was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Therefore, he clearly concluded that Jim was some flavor of alive: “Why is Isaac Rothe so important to you?”

Jim released the grip on his old boss. “Because he is me.”

“Just how many more of ‘you’ are out there? We’ve got this thing on the slab—”