As I watched her drift through the onlookers as if she had a target, something occurred to me. I couldn’t be sure the little old lady in the park had seen me earlier. She’d looked my way, but then I’d felt that coldness.
I stepped around people until I reached the edge of the onlookers. The ghost was only a few feet in front of me when her form began to flicker rapidly. I opened my mouth, fully prepared to look like I was talking to myself.
The ghost woman jerked, her wispy arms flailing, back bowing as if an invisible string attached to her waist had been yanked hard. A second later, she blinked out of existence.
I drew up short. Ghosts and spirits both had an annoying habit of randomly disappearing. That wasn’t breaking news, but the way her body had jerked, as if she’d been caught—
Something dark and large moved along the corners of my vision, snagging my attention. I turned but saw nothing but a brick wall. I stared, seconds passing without anything happening.
I had no idea if I’d seen something. It could have been a person, or a weird trick of light from a passing car, or the outcome of my mind trying to compensate for the gaps in my side vision. It could’ve even been a ghost or a spirit. Maybe that guy who’d followed me to Zayne’s apartment. Or absolutely nothing. With my eyes, who knew?
But the icy awareness pressing on the nape of my neck had vanished, which made for a very strange...coincidence.
“Trin.”
I whirled around. Zayne had shifted back into human form, which I knew he’d done beyond the prying eyes of humans. My gaze flickered over him. There were dark smudges splattered along the tattered remains of his shirt.
Blood. Warden’s blood.
“Who was it?” I asked, shoving what had just happened aside.
His jaw was hard as he said, “Morgan. He transferred to our clan a year ago.” His hand clenched something he was holding as he let out a low rumble of a growl that I really hoped no one around us heard. “New to the area, but well trained and more than capable of handling himself. Dez is taking him back to the compound.”
A huge, terrible part of me was relieved to learn that it hadn’t been Dez up there, but the relief was short-lived. I knew nothing of Morgan. He could have a family—a significant other and children. Even if he didn’t, I knew there were others who would miss him, mourn him.
“I’m sorry.” I swallowed hard as I lifted my gaze to Zayne’s. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded and then stepped closer, lifting his hand. “This was what was used to impale him to the church.”
Zayne opened his hand. Resting against his palm were two long, narrow spikes, definitely not of the normal garden variety. These glowed a faint luminous gold. I wasn’t aware of any type of metal or stone that glowed like that.
“What are they?” I started to reach for them, but Zayne closed his hand around them.
“I have no idea,” he answered, chest rising with a deep breath. “I’ve never seen anything like them before in my life.”
* * *
I stood in one corner of Nicolai’s office, trying to stay out of the way of the Wardens filing in and out. Several sent curious or suspicious glances in my direction once they realized I was there, tucked away like someone who didn’t belong. Seeing a virtual stranger in the heart of the DC compound while they dealt with the loss of yet another Warden had to be disconcerting.
I’d learned from Jasmine, Dez’s wife, that the Warden Morgan had been mated but had lost his wife in childbirth shortly before his transfer to the DC compound.
My gaze trailed to the spikes, resting in the center of Nicolai’s desk, glowing softly. Now that was not something you saw every day.
“Whatever this metal is, it was able to kill Morgan with one puncture to the back of the head,” Zayne was saying. “When we pulled it out, we could tell that it severed the brain stem internally.”
I cringed. That had to have been...messy, and it was definitely shocking. Other than the claws and teeth of demons and Hellfire, I wasn’t aware of any weapons that could easily puncture a Warden’s skull.
“It has some kind of writing on it. I have no idea what language it is,” Gideon said as he knelt eye level with the desk.
I’d seen Gideon briefly the night we’d returned here from the senator’s house, but we’d never been officially introduced. I did know that he was the Wardens’ resident tech and security specialist. Apparently he was also a scholar of sorts, because Zayne and Nicolai were staring at Gideon as if he’d admitted to collecting creepy porcelain dolls.
“What?” Gideon demanded, lifting the thicker end of the spike with a set of kitchen tongs. “I don’t know every language in the world.”
“That’s a shocker,” Zayne replied dryly. “I thought you knew everything.”
“Well, this will be one for the record books.” Gideon shook his head as he stared at the spike. “It seems similar to ancient Aramaic, but it’s not the same.”
My brows lifted. Ancient Aramaic? That was from one of the earliest known periods of written language and wasn’t something one heard referenced often.
Nicolai, who was the youngest clan leader I’d ever heard about, dragged his thumb over the growth of russet-colored hair at his chin. For the first time since we’d showed up, he looked at me. Unlike the other Wardens, there was no suspicion in his gaze, but there was a wariness.
“I’m assuming you haven’t seen a weapon like this?” Nicolai asked.
I shook my head. “Never.”
He refocused on Gideon, finger still at his chin. “You think you can figure out what it says and where it possibly came from?”
Gideon nodded his dark head as he placed the spike back on the white cloth. “Might take a couple of days, but I should be able to.”
“Good.” Nicolai dropped his hand and crossed his arms. “Because I would sure like to know what kind of metal glows.”
“Same,” Zayne murmured. He cleared his throat. “I’m thinking Morgan was killed elsewhere and then transported to the church to be displayed. Just like Greene.”
“None of the people on the streets saw what happened.” I chimed in with useful information instead of being about as helpful as a houseplant. “I asked a few who were standing around, and they said he appeared on the church in the blink of an eye.”
Gideon was staring at me curiously, probably wondering why I’d been out there on the streets alongside Zayne. Since he had no idea what I was, I wasn’t surprised by his interest.
“No demon is that fast,” Nicolai said. “Not even the most powerful Upper Level demons. Not even Roth.”
At the mention of the Crown Prince of Hell, I stiffened. God, for the last hour or so, I had actually forgotten about what Roth and I had done. Man, that now felt like a week ago, but how terrible did that make me? Weight settled on my shoulders.
“We’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that whatever this Harbinger is, it isn’t a demon.” Zayne glanced toward me. “We have no idea what could be behind this.”
“Meaning we have no idea what we’re hunting for,” I added, inching out of my corner. “Greene was...left in an area where we’d just been, and the same tonight. I think the locations were chosen on purpose.”
“What do you think?” Nicolai asked of Zayne while Gideon frowned.
“I think the same as Trinity.” Zayne crossed his arms. “It’s like it’s taunting us.”
“And neither of you saw anything?” Nicolai asked.
“We were having dinner at the restaurant across from the church, and then we were patrolling. We’d made it one block when we heard the screams.”
Nicolai frowned. “Dinner?”
“That’s what I said,” replied Zayne.
Nicolai’s jaw worked. “Was there anything either of you noticed that was abnormal?”
Zayne shook his head, but I thought about the sensation I’d felt and the ghost I’d seen. I had no idea if it was related to the Harbinger, but it was something.
I glanced at Gideon, unsure what I could say in front of him, and decided to go with the least amount of information as possible. “Well, I did see a ghost.”
Gideon’s head whipped toward me. “A ghost?”
Nodding, I found myself staring at Zayne. “It probably has nothing to do with the Harbinger, but the ghost was behaving weirdly.”
“You see ghosts?” Gideon asked, speaking slowly.
“And spirits,” Zayne answered, his arms unfolding as he angled his body toward me. “You didn’t say anything about this earlier.”
The tone of his voice pricked at my skin. “Well, we were kind of busy with getting back to the compound because there was a dead Warden to deal with.”
“Hold up.” Gideon stared at me. “You can see ghosts and spirits?”
“Yeah, it’s not a big deal—”
“Not a big deal?” Gideon huffed out a dry laugh. “You do realize that means you have an angel perched on a limb of your family tree somewhere.”
Yeah, there was one perched right on top of my family tree. He was an archangel, and his name was Michael, as in the Michael.
Somehow I managed to keep my face blank. It took an impressive effort, because usually my face didn’t know how to not show what I was thinking. “So I’ve heard.”