He walked for a while, east to the Pike Place Market, disappearing into the crowds of tourists there and making it hard for me to follow. I managed to keep the tail, flowing through the traffic and leaving an eye on his back. Watching him, I could tell by the way he maneuvered that he wasn’t just hiding his clawed hands. He was holding something in them, and I wanted to know what.

  He kept going, weaving through the foot traffic and jaywalking whenever he could. I stayed a few dozen feet behind, in the shadows when possible, and always with a few people between him and me. I stalked him like a cat, focused and intent, all the way to an alley between two old buildings.

  I started running, eager to catch up before he could vanish.

  I was too late.

  The alley was empty - nothing but trash bins and leaky pipes. There were no doors he could have gone into, and no fire escapes he could have climbed. He had vanished into thin air. How?

  I was trying to work out how he’d worked his Houdini magic when I felt a presence behind me. It wasn’t the changeling, but the smell gave him away.

  “Elyse.”

  I turned around.

  “Father.”

  He was in a long overcoat and a fedora, the bulges beneath the coat unmistakeable. He was armed for both conventional and Divine warfare. Two more of the Nicht Creidim fanned out behind him. Elyse’s sister Rae, and an uncle, Paul.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  He laughed. “That’s the funny thing. I wasn’t even looking for you. I was following the changeling. Now that I have you though… Messy business back in New York.”

  “You followed Ulnyx?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t easy, but they weren’t expecting we would know where to find them. I heard about what happened at the house. You attacked your own family? Really, Elle… I know you’re stubborn, but don’t you think you took it a little too far.”

  “Ken was going to kill me to get the Box. You would too, except you can see I don’t have it.”

  “I also know you were traveling with the diuscrucis’ boy toy, the marine. I’m assuming you left the Box with him, somewhere in the city.”

  There was no point in denying it, it was a big city. “True. Which leaves you with a decision. Do you try to kill me and find Obi on your own? Or do you try to capture me and get me to tell you where it is? Or do you let me walk away and tail me back to the Box?” Or do I let go of Elyse and take control of your meat? I wasn’t sure I could.

  “Considering you’re out here unarmed, I’m leaning towards making you talk. Yet, I’m curious. Why were you tailing the changeling?”

  “He intrigued me.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said. “Do you know what he was carrying?”

  I shook my head.

  “An artifact. A scrying stone. I was going to use it to find you, which is why I’m also considering letting you go. I don’t want to harm you, daughter, despite your treacherous indiscretion. You’re willing to do what it takes to hold to your beliefs, and considering I taught you that, I can’t really blame you for it.”

  A scrying stone? I hadn’t known something like that even existed. I could understand why Joe would want it. I also knew it could come in handy.

  “Who is he bringing it to?” I asked.

  “A seraph,” he replied.

  “An angel hanging out in an alley?”

  “Not an angel. A seraph.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  He shrugged. “There is to me. This one hasn’t died yet. He’s a changeling. The first seraph I’ve heard of. It turns out he’s been able to use his new situation to rally a lot of the other changelings in the city here, though I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he’s rich.”

  Was the world really that small? “His name isn’t Brian Rutherford, is it?”

  “Bingo. How’d you know?”

  I took a deep breath. So I was suppose to seduce a mortal seraph who was already at the top of Joe’s hit-list, and who was about to have an artifact that could tell him the future? I needed to stop the chit-chat and find the were changeling.

  I wasn’t about to clue him in that I knew anything about the Deceiver. The question was, did he know? “I’ve heard he’s been collecting a lot of artifacts. I wanted to find out exactly what, to see if he had anything that might help me deal with the Box.”

  “I can help you deal with the Box, Elle.”

  “No, father, you can’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, he’s getting away.” The only trouble was, I didn’t know where to.

  “Look around, sweetie. I think he’s already gotten away.” He unbuttoned his coat and spread it wide. He had a shotgun on one hip and a sword on the other. “Are you going to come quietly? I know your hand-to-hand has gotten better, but you’re outnumbered three to one.”

  I started reaching for my pocket, to the stone nestled there against my leg. Was I being foolish? I wasn’t sure.

  Rae drew a pistol from a holster on her thigh. “Elyse, don’t.” She was older than Elyse, someone the girl had always looked up to. A beauty in her own right, with dark skin and almond eyes.

  My hand stopped. I counted my heartbeats. One…two… I was calm, despite the situation. I dropped my hands to the side. “Okay,” I said. I couldn’t beat them like this. It was better to let them take me and then catch them by surprise.

  “That’s my girl,” Joe said.

  He started walking forward when I saw a dark shape falling towards him from the rooftop above.

  “Joe!” I tried to warn him. I don’t know why, because under different circumstances he would have killed me already.

  He heard the vamp coming, and he twisted and raised the shotgun, falling on his back and firing up into it. The changeling cried out, thrown off-target by the force of the blast. He landed at Joe’s prone feet. He wasn’t alone.

  The alley filled with changelings, jumping off the rooftops to land with us in the dark corridor. Weres and vamps mostly, but one of them was a nightstalker. He came down next to Uncle Paul and slammed him with a fist that sent him crashing into the wall, bouncing off and landing with a groan.

  Rae started shooting, silver bullets tearing into the false demons and creating a din of pained cries. They hurt them, but they didn’t stop them, and three of the changelings charged towards her.

  I found the stone in my pocket, pulled it out and summoned the spatha. A vampire came at me, claws leading fangs, and lost his hand and then his head to the blade. I ducked under a swat from a were, pivoted on the balls of my feet, and shoved the sword backwards into his gut, ripping it forward and using the flat to block a second attack. Behind me, Joe tried to get to his feet, but the nightstalker had reached him, and he picked him up by the neck.

  “Son of a…” he thew punches into the creature’s chest, but it didn’t seem to notice. He howled in Joe’s face and squeezed tighter.

  I looked back down the alley. There was nowhere the changeling could have gone. There was no way he could have escaped. Yet these altered mortals were here, and they had to have come from somewhere.

  It was the Deceiver, I realized. A glamour. It had to be. Max had said I could see through it, but that clearly wasn’t the case. At least, not like this.

  Another were pounced at me, and I jerked to the left and punched him hard in the kidney. He landed and turned, twisted in pain and opening his mouth to huff for breath. I loosened my control of Elyse, holding onto her soul but letting her take her body back.

  “Rebecca, what the f-“

  I saw it, as nothing more than a suggestion in the simplicity of my raw spiritual consciousness. The building to the right had a door. I could see it as though it too were an apparition, a transparent overlay to the visible lie.

  “To the right. There’s a door.”

  “I can’t see it,” Elyse said.

  “Just go.”

  She ran towards the wall.

  “Two feet to your left, the handle is in line with your ribs.”

  She reached out towards the wall, moving her hand until she found the knob that she couldn’t see. She pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  “Close it,” I said. “We don’t want Joe to follow.”

  She pulled the door closed, and then we looked around. I could see the truth over the glamour - the dirty, cracked mortar of the walls, and the set of old steps that led down, overlaid with a small storage room filled with boxes.

  “There are stairs in the middle of the room. Old stone stairs. Climb down them.”

  Elyse walked forward more slowly, unsure of my instructions. “There’s nothing there. Just boxes.”

  “There are stairs. Do it.”

  She put her hand up to her head. “Rebecca.”

  “Do it!” I screamed at her soul and she cried out in pain.

  “I can’t see it.”

  “You have to trust me, Elyse. If Rutherford gets the scrying stone we’ll have no chance at getting close to him.”

  She growled and stepped forward into the boxes that should have prevented her forward motion. When they didn’t stop her she started moving more confidently.

  “Down the stairs, right in front of you.”

  The first step was timid, but then she ran the rest of the way down. We dove about twenty feet underground and spilled out into a long corridor of dirt and wooden planks. The glamour didn’t extend down here.

  “That was-“

  I didn’t let her finish. I took hold of her again, forcing her eyes to become my eyes, and her body to become my body. I continued the run down the tunnel.

  It fed into an abandoned city, an underground world of wooden structures that would have been commonplace in the eighteen hundreds, but surprised me with their existence. They had been cleaned up, painted and patched, glassed and lit. I stumbled into it unseen, but now I could hear the voices of this secret world in hushed murmurs around me. What was this place?

  I was on a wide street that looked recently swept. It continued a few hundred feet ahead, and I could see two more streets stretching off to either side. A neon sign over one of the larger structures read ‘Brian’s’ next to a flashing beard and mustache. I could hear eighties rock music pumping from inside.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I was here to get the Deceiver, and I had a feeling the sword was waiting for me in the old-time bar.

  At least it looked like I might be able to skip the seduction after all.

  Chapter 24

  My first thought was to walk right in, head held high and nothing but confidence oozing out of every one of Elyse’s pores. It was a part I knew how to play, having perfected it as the laughing stock daughter of Merov Solen, the weirdo who didn’t think vampires needed to drink human blood. I had poured millions of Merov’s money into the research, and all the while it had been a front, a way to distance myself from my father, and a means to get the diuscrucis to trust me. The Beast had told me that was what I had to do, and I had done it. I had played that part well, and it had worked to convince Landon I wasn’t like the others. It was heaped in with all of my other regrets.

  The idea of making a grand entrance as Reyka Solen fell to the curb when one of the patrons made their way through the open doorway of the bar and hurried past my makeshift hiding place in the deeper shadows. She had a look of concern on her face, and tears in her eyes, and I could only guess she was going to find out what had happened to the group that had jumped us. I watched her back disappear down the tunnel, and tried to decide what to do. In two minutes she would discover their ambush party was dead, because I was sure Joe and family was too much for a bunch of new demons with zero fighting skill. She would come running back with the news, and then what?

  At the same time, I had to assume Brian Rutherford was in there, and that he had the scrying stone. If I gave him enough time to use it, would he be able to know what I was going to do even before I did?

  Whatever I did, I needed to do it fast. I left my place in the shadows and dashed across the lit areas of the underground village, keeping my eyes out for anyone on the streets. I could hear things happening in the other buildings - clattering plates, laughter, conversation. It was as though the changelings had come down here to find the normalcy that the Beast’s power had stolen from them. And maybe they had. Maybe that’s what they had gone out into the alley to defend.

  I reached the side of the bar and crouched beneath the flashing facial hair. I had an idea, and a violent and simplistic backup plan.

  “Wait here,” I said to Elyse, letting go of her and propelling my spirit form out of her body and into the void. I passed right through the wall of the structure, fighting to keep my energy focused on the motion. I needed to be fast to make it in time.

  The place wasn’t crowded. Eight changelings sat around a single old wooden table, directly in front of a bar where a nouveau-were poured drinks. The eighties hits were blasting out of an old jukebox hunched in the corner, and on the table sat a simple rough stone, covered in demonic runes.

  My mark was there, sitting to the left of a young, bald man with a thick, trimmed beard and mustache and wearing blue jeans and a brown sweater. He had to be Brian Rutherford. There was nothing about him that would give him away as a seraph, but then again his back was covered.

  “I don’t like it,” the mark said, digging his elongated claws into the table. “Whoever she was, she was good. I wouldn’t have even noticed, except she smelled so sweet.”

  I’d underestimated him, thinking he wouldn’t have picked up my scent. I pushed harder, feeling myself floating along the stale air, directly towards Brian.

  “The question, Alex, is how did she know you were carrying the stone? I thought you said you picked it up at the terminal locker and nobody saw you.”

  “I didn’t see or smell anybody,” Alex replied. “I tucked it under my coat first thing and got the hell out of there. I brought it straight to you.”

  “What is it?” The question came from a young woman on his right, a cute little thing in a jean jacket and linen skirt.

  “I bought it from a dealer in China,” Brian said. “It’s supposed to have belonged to Jacob, or Isaac, or one of those biblical guys. You recite the Hebrew on the face and it will glow red whenever someone nearby means you harm. Well, means me harm, anyway. It only works for one person at a time, but at least while I’m down here I’ll know you guys are all safe.”

  Not a scrying stone? What was Joe trying to pull? I kept moving towards Brian, closing the distance as fast as I could. It was still taking too long for my comfort.

  “I don’t think you need a stone to know we’re in danger, Brian,” the girl said. “The others should have been back by now. It was what, twenty against one?”

  I was only a few feet away from him now. I could feel the other people around me, their eyes all on or near the spot where I was floating, but I was invisible. I was taking a chance trying to possess a changeling. I didn’t know if I could even do it, but my hope was that since they were still some kind of human, my grip would hold.

  “I know. I’m worried about them too, but the entrances are hidden. There’s no way anybody is going to be able to get in here.”

  Nobody, except me. It was my last thought as I plunged into his body, drawn to the warm throbbing of his soul. I reached out for it and wrapped myself around it.

  Taking control normally meant pain, as the energy of a person’s lifetime flowed through me, teaching me who they were in only seconds, and offering me the hooks I needed to latch on and become the driver of the mortal shell. I expected that when I joined with the false seraph I would either be met with this pain or cast out entirely, to find myself back in the emptiness of the strange space between all of God’s places.

  Neither of those things happened.

  Instead, I found myself in an open field, laying on the grass, with way too much sunshine beaming down overhead. I squinted my eyes to ward it off and tried to bring myself up to my elbows to look around. A hand entered my field of view - large, strong, and young.

  “Are you okay?”

  That was the question from whoever owned the hand. I reached forward and took it, and was pulled to my feet.

  “My name is Brian. How did you get here? Actually… how did I get here?” He let go of my hand and rotated all the way around. “Where am I?”

  I knew where, but I didn’t quite believe it. I mimicked his rotation, taking note of the lush grass, the strands of evergreens, and the mountains off in the distance. “This is your Source,” I said. Except, he was a human. He shouldn’t even have a Source.

  “My Source? I don’t understand. Two seconds ago I was in the Underground with my friends. Now I’m here with you, which I’m not ready to believe is a bad thing, because you’re amazingly beautiful.” He took a breath and calmed himself. “I’ve learned not to trust anything I see.”

  I didn’t understand either, but I was sure that I didn’t want to be here. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself away from him.

  “Hello? Hey. Do you have a name?”

  I opened my eyes. We were still in the field. I was stuck.

  “Rebecca,” I said.

  “Rebecca. Your name is as pretty as you are. I would remember your face, if I had seen you before. You aren’t a figment of my imagination. My father used to tell me there were demons who could possess souls… but you aren’t possessing me either. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were lost.”

  Did I look lost? I sure felt it. “I shouldn’t be here. Neither should you. I’m not a demon. I’m not lost. I’m trapped.”

  “Trapped?”

  “Here, with you. I want to leave, but I can’t. I’m a spirit, a ghost. You can’t see me, back in the real world. I don’t always have control, and I… fell… into you. Anyway, this is your Source. It’s a place in your soul where your power comes from.”

  Brian laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just a strange way to meet someone, that’s all.”

  I smiled. “God has a way of bringing people together.”

  “I guess He does.”

  I stared at him, trying to decide what to say. I needed to get out of his body and back to Elyse before things got any worse. “If you have a Source, that means you’re Divine. You can push me out.”