The Debt Collector (Season Two) Read online

  “Let’s just say I’m willing to do what it takes.” The truth is I want to quickly get through whatever tests he has lined up for me—Zachariel seems to think there will be several—so I can convince Moloch to let me in on his plans. All the damage I’m doing, with my own hands and with my testimony before the Subcommittee on Collection, will only be justified if I can find a way to stop him. And the wreckage is already piling up back in LA.

  “An enthusiasm I find refreshing,” he says with a smirk, “even if rather difficult to believe.”

  I scowl at him. “I have an enthusiasm for staying alive. And a rather fervent desire to find the collector who killed my father.”

  “Well, now.” Moloch’s smirk grows into a more genuine smile. “That I do believe. But I must say, your willingness to do ‘whatever it takes,’ as you say, gives me hope that Zachariel might actually be right about you. And that we might yet convince you of the importance of Gehenna’s work.”

  “I do want to know more about that,” I say, and the truth of that seems to ring through.

  Moloch nods his approval. “Are you quite finished with that rather poor breakfast of yours?”

  I shove away the bowl. “Yes. More collections on the agenda for today?”

  “Not today,” Moloch says with a cryptic smile that I don’t like at all. “Although I do have something special lined up for you tomorrow. Unfortunately, my schedule isn’t entirely my own. Sometimes we have to wait for just the proper moment for things, don’t you think?”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Sure.”

  “In the meantime, if you would accompany me, I have something that will… occupy you until we can proceed with our other plans.”

  “Whatever you say.” I rise up from the table and gesture to my pajamas. “How should I dress for this ‘occupation’?”

  “Oh, I think your night clothes will be just fine. We’re only going upstairs.”

  My eyebrows lift, which draws a smirk out of him. I follow him out of the kitchen and toward the stairs, my stomach drawing tighter with each step. I’m struggling to come up with something to say that isn’t an outright, No thanks on the sexual favors.

  I settle for, “What are we doing exactly?”

  His glance is filled with mirth. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  Shit. “I’m not really fond of surprises.” We reach the top. “I’m really much better with knowing what I’m in for.”

  He’s chuckling by the time we reach Ishtar’s bedroom door.

  I’m trying not to panic. Zachariel said he had to take a turn with Ishtar. I swallow and seriously hope that’s not what this is. “You know, maybe I’ll just take a pass on—”

  Moloch’s humor disappears. He turns to face me without opening Ishtar’s door. I resist the urge to glance down the hall, searching for Zachariel and hoping he’ll extricate me out of this situation. There’s no one in the hall. Besides, I haven’t even seen him since last night. He could be gone, for all I know.

  Moloch trains a cold blue-eyed stare on me. “Birthing a new future is not a painless process. Are you truly willing to do what it takes? I must say, I have my doubts.”

  My shoulders hunch up. “Hard to say when you’re tremendously vague about what’s involved.”

  “There are some things that have to be experienced to be fully understood,” he says, but his voice is warming a little. “It may be difficult for you to see, Wraith, but I’m trying to prepare you for what lies ahead. So that you and I both can truly know if you have what it takes to join us.” A hint of humor returns to his eyes. “That’s the purpose behind these little tests, my dear.”

  So this is a test. Which means it’s really not optional. My heart rate picks up a little. “Do you put all your new collectors through this on-the-job training?”

  The full smirk is back. “Definitely not. Everyone has a different role to play in the future that is coming. Some of it will be pleasant. Very pleasant. And some of it will be much less so. Most collectors are not capable of understanding all that must be done. Some may glimpse a part of it, and some may even understand it on an intuitive level. Many will simply follow our lead, even if they don’t grasp the entirety of what the future holds. But you, Ms. Sterling…” His eyes narrow. “I can see why Zachariel insists we give you the chance to prove yourself. Why Ishtar says you could join us at the highest level. I can tell you have the capability of understanding. What I don’t yet know is if you are strong enough to embrace all of it, so that you can do what needs to be done.”

  This is it. This is my way in. I have no idea what’s on the other side of the door, but Moloch wants me to agree sight-unseen. It’s a cult thing… a willingness to follow.

  He intertwines his fingers and taps his lips with two of them. Patient. Waiting for me to decide. He’s not going to force me, and yet I know the alternative is likely a lot worse. Not to mention possibly resulting in my death. I tell myself that if I come out of this still breathing, I win. And eventually, I’ll make sure Moloch loses.

  I suck in a breath. “All right, then. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Moloch’s smile is broad, and the gleam in his eye makes my stomach wrench. He raps lightly on the door, and a moment later, it slides open to reveal Ishtar. She’s dressed entirely in black, of course, but this time, it’s more of a cat suit that hugs her every curve. She smiles like finding me at her door is the best present she could hope for. Moloch gives her a quick kiss on the cheek as he strides into her bedroom, but her eyes never leave my face.

  I grit my teeth and follow after him.

  I stand awkwardly in the middle of the room, keeping a good distance from her midnight-black bed, while Ishtar punches the button to close the door. Moloch stands next to the bed, waiting for her. Or both of us, I guess. Ishtar glides over to stand directly in front of me. Her eyes are slightly wide, like she’s entirely too delighted to have me in her bedroom once again.

  She reaches up to touch my hair. “You’re going to be so beautiful.”

  I resist moving away from her and opt to just frown. “Going to be? You sure know how to sweet talk a girl.”

  She grins, and it strangely makes her look younger, somehow more vulnerable. She turns to Moloch. “Where should we start?”

  “Anywhere you like.” He slowly eases down to sitting on the edge of the bed. “Probably best if she’s somewhere comfortable, though.”

  I turn my frown on him, but before I can say anything, Ishtar takes me by the elbow and steers me toward the bed. “You know,” I say, trying not to drag my feet too much, “right about now would be a good time to tell me what we’re doing.”

  Moloch pats the bed next to him. I slowly, very slowly, take a seat next to him. My hands are fists, clenched and pressed down on my knees to keep them from jumping. Ishtar quickly finds a place next to me, so that the three of us are perched along the edge of the bed, close enough to touch, but we’re not. Until Ishtar runs her fingers down my pajama sleeve, trailing so lightly I don’t notice at first… then she reaches the bare skin of my hand. I jerk a little but don’t pull away. She wraps her hand over my closed fist.

  Then she starts to trickle in life energy.

  No sooner do I suck in a breath in response, than Moloch’s cooler fingers stroke the top of my other fist. He picks up my hand in both of his, turns it over, gently pries open my fist, then flattens his palm to mine.The gush of his life energy is faster, and it hitches my breathing.

  It feels good. Of course it feels good, but the intensity of it ramps up quickly as they both step up the pace. My brain is awash in it, and it takes a moment for me to realize: I should probably be cycling this life energy back to them.

  I turn to face Moloch, because Ishtar is petting my hair, and her face is entirely too close. “Should I, um, return some of this to you?” I ask Moloch.

  His grin is indulgent, and he’s mostly watching Ishtar, but he turns his gaze to me and says, “No, Ms. Sterling. That wo
uld entirely defeat the purpose.”

  “We’re giving you a taste of what it will be like, my lovely.” Ishtar’s voice is practically right in my ear. She’s whispering just loud enough for Moloch to hear as well.

  “What exactly is it?” My voice is breathy with the high. I have no idea how much they’re pumping into me, but it’s quickly ramping up my heart as well.

  “Do you know, Ms. Sterling, what happens when the body is immersed in life energy?” Moloch adjusts his hold on my hand, matching his fingers up to mine and gaining even more contact. He steps up the rate of flow.

  I can’t help taking a shuddering gasp. “I’m vaguely familiar with the process.”

  Ishtar giggles in my ear. She shifts her touch as well, so that now her hand is wrapped around my wrist. My fist relaxes.

  Moloch edges closer to me and says softly, “Aging stops. Cellular degeneration reverses. The elixir of life bathes every part of your being.” He reaches behind me, and if I wasn’t flying high, I might be a little concerned that this is the part where the clothes start coming off. But I am that high. I’m so high, my body is floating above the ink-black coverings of Ishtar’s bed, not even causing a rumple in its satiny, sparkling surface.

  But Moloch doesn’t touch me. My head drifts to the side, slowly, floating with the lack of urgency that comes from being thoroughly buzzed. I see Moloch and Ishtar holding hands behind my back. I blink a couple of times. I think maybe they’re cycling life energy between themselves.

  Moloch’s voice drifts past my ear. “This idea that our world has stumbled upon—that people should pay their debts—this is a very good idea, Wraith.” Even his voice is turning a little breathy now, making him sound like a preacher. Or possibly a lover. “It fosters a certain, shall we say, willingness to do what they can for the greater good.”

  “You mean dying so others can live.” I’m too high to have any kind of verbal filter. I recognize this, but I can’t change it. It’s like the vast life energy infusion they’re giving me is a massive dose of truth serum. This troubles me in an absent way, like a problem I should worry about but don’t. The flood of energy to my brain prevents me from caring too much about it.

  “Yes, they must give what they can,” Moloch says. He’s close enough to whisper in my ear, just like Ishtar. “They must give what they have, so that we may use it in ways they would never be capable of.”

  His words sound wrong in my ears, but there’s something hypnotic about the way he’s saying them. Or maybe it’s the buzz. I can’t even count the years they’re pumping into me. My body starts to tremble.

  “Shhhh.” Ishtar’s hand is on my shoulder, massaging it. It calms my body a little, but neither one of them slows their transfers in the slightest. If anything, the floodgates are opened further.

  Moloch keeps preaching. “A society that believes some are more equal than others is a society that deserves to serve its betters. And we will be better, Wraith. We already are. But the longer we live, the more we will accumulate all that humanity has to offer. Knowledge. Wisdom. The art of living life to its fullest.”

  Moloch shifts his grip on me again, now holding my wrist like Ishtar. The new position sends a fresh surge of dizziness through my head. I think I’m rocking back and forth on the bed, but I can’t be sure. It might be the room that’s moving.

  “Think of it, Ms. Sterling,” Moloch continues in that breathy voice. “There is only one wise man in a hundred. One truly brilliant woman in the thousand. Those high potentials are only beginning to tap their true ability to save mankind. But it’s not mankind that needs saving. It’s the high potentials themselves… and debt collectors are the highest potentials of all.”

  Ishtar brushes my hair back from my ear, where her lips are almost touching. “Because we will live forever, my lovely.”

  “We will usher in a new age,” Moloch says. “And our chosen few will revolutionize everything: medicine, science, business. Think of what you could do with a two-hundred year lifespan. Three hundred. Think of the possibilities with a thousand.”

  A tiny frown reaches up from the depths of my body and somehow creases my forehead. “People will suffer.”

  “People have always suffered,” Ishtar whispers. “And they always will.”

  “Better that their suffering serve a purpose,” Moloch says. “A high and mighty purpose. What greater thing could they serve than the betterment of all humanity?”

  It’s a lover’s tone, but the words are filled with death. My eyes are crossing with the wash of energy. The paintings on Ishtar’s wall seem to move. The disembodied heads and writhing bodies sway in agreement with Moloch’s words. Their tangled limbs and enlivened faces make sense to me now. Death and life have forever been twisted together in an ecstatic dance. It has always been this way: one, long, continuous struggle of life, sex, and death, constantly renewing, constantly winning and losing and starting again.

  This moment of clarity seems to stretch eternally in front of me.

  “I can see it.” I’m not sure if I say this aloud or just in my mind, but I can see the endless life they’re talking about. I can feel it. It’s as if the universe has cracked wide open and taken me up into its eternal arms. There is no death here, no real death. It is truly conquered, banished to the depths of the world of lesser beings, not here in the heavens where I’m floating on a high so vast I can count the stars.

  Then the universe breaks.

  It takes me a moment to realize why. They’re both releasing me—not in a fast, jerking away, but in a slow, lingering lover’s caress. The life energy rush dims, their fingers trace along my skin, and then they finally… leave. I miss their touch instantly. It cuts me off from the enormity of the universe and stuffs me back into my body. Alone. Small. Tiny compared to the magnitude of eternity I was swimming in before.

  I just now notice how hard my chest is heaving. My heart is beating so fast, I wonder if it might actually explode, right in this moment, as I sit on Ishtar’s bed. Instead, I leap to my feet, the vast life energy inside enervating me like an electric wire buzzing with a million volts, twitching and curling and seeking a way to discharge.

  Moloch and Ishtar appear by my side and grab hold of me, but over my pajamas. No skin-to-skin contact. I cry out an audible complaint that they would deny me that, refuse to give me what they were lavishing before. They ignore me, simply holding me up and marching me toward the bedroom door.

  I don’t know where they’re taking me, but part of me—a very large part, practically the entirety of my existence—wants nothing more than to return to that black-sheeted nirvana where I was so infused with energy that there was no room for anything wrong in the world. No evil could touch me. No horrible abyss could ever reach me. I was so filled with life that death couldn’t even get in the door. I had conquered it, was immune from it, was finally and completely free of the death that has surrounded me from the moment I was born.

  And now it’s over.

  Tears stream down my cheeks as Ishtar and Moloch haul me out of the room.

  Moloch and Ishtar’s grip is the only thing keeping me from floating right off the ground. The life energy inside me is a force of its own. Right at this moment, I actually believe I could levitate, if I tried. I’m definitely trying to work my way out of their grasp and return to Ishtar’s room, even though that doesn’t make any sense: I know they’re done with whatever life energy deluge they intended to give me. My body simply isn’t done raging against that fact.

  They haul me to one of the rooms down the hall. Ishtar punches the button, and it slides open. Zachariel is inside, pacing. He turns. I vaguely notice that he’s wearing pajama bottoms but no shirt, like we’ve awoken him. But that doesn’t make any sense, because he’s already awake. Ishtar and Moloch drag me inside, then release me. I’m not so much shaking, as much as doing a high-frequency quiver… but I manage to stay upright.

  Zachariel steels his face, like he’s holding back whatever was making him pace, then
gives Moloch a nod. When Moloch and Ishtar turn to leave, my body reflexively lurches after them, but Zachariel catches me from behind. The door slides shut after them.

  I turn and slam my fists against his bare chest. “Let me go!”

  I’m surprised how strong I feel. Like I could actually hurt him. I intuitively know it’s the energy super-charging me. His chest caves a little, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he just holds me closer, trapping my squirming arms against his chest.

  “It’s over, Wraith,” he says. “You can’t go after them. They’re not going to give you any more.”

  His words snap through the mania in my brain. I stop struggling. He peers down at me, then slowly releases his hold. I move away, wrapping my arms around myself, suddenly chilled in spite of the incredible high that’s making me burn heat like the sun.

  My mind fights through the haze to reason out what’s happened. Moloch and Ishtar infused me with an ungodly amount of life energy. They whispered promises in my ear about living forever. And I willingly soared along with it all, finally reaching a place I never wanted to leave.

  Even now, my body is craving it. The tears I shed when they stopped are still wet on my cheeks. I cried like a lover torn from her beloved. Or an addict ripped from her hit. Self-loathing tries to well up inside me, but the buzz is too strong—I can’t really feel it, but I can see it haunting me.

  Am I really so easy to corrupt?

  A full-body shudder seizes me. I sense Zachariel at my back. Then his hands are on my shoulders, gentle this time. I turn. His face is tight with concern, and he wipes the tears from my face. My cheeks heat up. That’s the second time he’s seen me cry, but this time, the tears feel shameful.

  His face pinches in even more. “I was afraid they might… I wasn’t sure you would come out of there.”

  “Why did they bring me here?” I ask. I really want to ask, Why did they stop? Why wouldn’t they let me stay in that place? But that feels weak, like the addict inside me speaking. Only I know it’s far more than that: Ishtar and Moloch found the one thing I really want and dangled it in front of me only to snatch it away.