Burned, p.26
Burned, page 26
Leaving that process running, I locked the desktop and walked out into the hall. I’d seen Eric head over to the club, even said hello to him, but he wasn’t suspicious enough to ask me what I was doing at the Pollux. I was his daughter’s deputy, and he took that at face value in a naive way that would have made me feel guilty for sneaking around if he hadn’t been the guy who’d torn off my head and thrown it down a manhole.
Padding down the hallway to Eric’s bedroom, I heard Erin and Cheryl talking downstairs but couldn’t make out what they were saying. To add an extra layer of quiet to my creeping, I let myself drift away from the ground, floating down the hall. His bedroom door stood open, but inside, there wasn’t much of interest: clothes, a new television, a refrigerator.
“I wonder how much blood an Emperor keeps on hand,” I asked myself as I opened the fridge. The six bags surprised me, but not as much as the leftover steak from Outback, the half-six-pack of Coke in glass bottles, and the Tatsu 7 Go Gurt. And I opened the styrene container and balked: a piece of birthday cake?
Something else weird ran up the side of the fridge interior. Because it was empty, I needed a few moments to identify it, but it was either a very strange beer-bong attachment or a scabbard.
I took a picture with my phone’s camera and moved on to the bathroom. Kneeling close to the floor revealed some sort of powdery residue. My senses are better with my head detached, but I went mundane tech first. I pulled a UV penlight out of my bag and, after I flipped off the bathroom lights, let it play across the floor.
The magic circle it revealed got photographed, too. That had to be Magbidion’s doing. I didn’t know enough about magic to tell what it meant or implied. Like a good reporter, though, I knew who did.
A couple hours later, I was pulling off I-65 in Pelham, Alabama, with huge white natural-gas tanks looming large to my right. I turned right again before Highway 31 and wended my way along the heavily forested back roads so common in Alabama. Five more minutes, and I pulled up to a small square building behind a high chain-link fence. I parked my Harley on the grass next to the fence, not wanting to drive it on the gravel, and flew up and over the fence.
Unlike other vampires, nukekubi show up on camera unless our heads are detached (or that’s how it works for me), so when the large metal garage-style door rolled up and the men with guns, crossbows, and crosses stepped out, I wasn’t surprised.
“I want to talk to Pythagoras.”
Wood, a heavyset man with long stringy unwashed hair, headed up the pack. As I settled to the ground, he spat. Wood has never liked or trusted me. “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you, leech.”
“And maybe he does.” Pythagoras rolled out of the shadowy recesses of the building, stopping at the concrete edge of the Golden Triangle’s safe house. “It all depends on what you have to tell me.”
“Call off the ghostbusters here, and I’ll be happy to tell you a lot of things.”
“Very well.” Pythagoras tipped the control of his electric wheelchair back, and I walked in after him.
Pythagoras isn’t a magician himself, but he’s used mages from time to time to hunt vampires, to level the playing field. When I stepped into the warehouse, for example, I obviously tripped some sort of ward or barrier, because the symbols on my neck lit up, my fangs came out, and my eyes began to glow. Wood and his boys got spooked, but Pythagoras rolled on without comment.
Holy symbols bedecked the interior walls, but aside from that, it looked like I’d walked into a low-tech Batman’s version of a weapons locker. Weapons ranging from swords and crossbows to AK-47s and bazookas lined the walls. At the center of the back wall, a Mac and a PC sat side by side. At the back left, on a mat, a one-armed man was demonstrating staking techniques on a high-tech dummy while a real (and totally staked) vampire lay next to it on the mat.
Wood and his buddies rejoined the class as I followed Pythagoras over to the computers.
“How are you getting along with the Courtney family?” he asked.
“It’s weird.” I set my thumb drive on the computer hutch. “I haven’t seen the father make a live kill since I got there—like he’s trying to quit—but the daughter kills easy as breathing.”
“Breathing is easier for some than it is for others.” Pythagoras took the thumb drive and plugged it in. “What am I looking at?”
“Courtney’s e-mail archive and some pictures I took while snooping around.”
His PC screen filled with thumbnails. He clicked on the black-light mystical symbols, and I caught a twitch at the corner of his mouth. The hint of a smile. “Where did you find this?”
“His bathroom floor.”
“I’ll send the images to Iso, but this is a multipurpose construction of some kind. It’s related to concealment with the power created in the circle but focused through something else—I’d guess the caster, him- or herself—but Iso will know for sure.”
“Iso?”
“Isosceles,” he said. “He’s my contact in the Mages Guild. And that’s all you need to know about her.”
It’s always bugged me, the way Pythagoras swaps gender pronouns when discussing a resource he’d like to keep under wraps, but I let it go.
“What are these?” He clicked on the scanned images of the cops from Marilyn’s scrapbooks.
“The sheriff—” Pythagoras started violently when I said the word. “The daughter,” I corrected, “has her new chupacabra thralls looking into that.”
“Why?”
“One of the clues we followed led us to a home for retired Void City police officers. Courtney had trashed the records, and there was a residual scent of what the daughter seemed certain was Courtney’s blood.”
“Interesting.” He twitched the joystick on the arm of his chair, rotating back for a better view of my face. “What else?”
“Some of the cops we’ve seen around town.” I tapped the screen over one of the faces. “They’re these men, and they have quick healing, but—”
“But aren’t detectable as thralls?”
“Yes.”
“They’re thralls,” Pythagoras said, “which is curious.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I have it on good authority that Eric Courtney is no longer as he appears to be.”
“What is he?”
“There’s one way to find out.” Pythagoras waved a hand at one of his troops. “Get her the katana I was prepping for her.”
Wood walked over to a sealed case and typed numbers into a keypad. “We only have one more of these, Pyth.”
“Thank you for the reminder, Woodroe.” He directed the next bit directly to me. “We gave the other one to John Hawkes, and it wound up in Ebon Winter’s hands.”
A sapphire nimbus clung to the edge of the blade when Wood drew it. The cloud of magic was slight but obvious.
“What does it do?”
“It’s a sword,” Wood snapped. “It cuts things.” He sheathed it again and handed the sword and scabbard over to me.
“Okay, so how am I going to use it to determine what Eric Courtney is or isn’t?”
“You aren’t,” Pythagoras said. His software ejected my thumb drive. “I just wanted you to have it.”
“Unh.” I coughed, exasperated. “Then how do I do that?”
He clicked back to the image of the magic circle. “Simple. Courtney is working with a mage. A soulless one, yes?”
I nodded.
“He’s the one powering the magic, whatever it is. Kill him.” He made an “easy as that” gesture. “Kill him and the spells will drop, then whatever he’s hiding will be out in the open. Can you do that?”
“I’ve never killed a human like that, just murdered—”
“The man sold his soul to a devil, Evelyn.” Pythagoras touched my hand. “He doesn’t count as human anymore. He abandoned us and sided with the monsters of his own free will.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, trying to convince myself. “I guess so.”
“Know so,” Pythagoras said, “and choose your time wisely. Courtney is planning something. Wait until he’s at his most exposed, and then kill the mage.”
36
ERIC
OLD FRIENDS WITH NEW CAUSES
A week after the fight with the weregecko assassins that Winter sent me as an I-still-publicly-hate-you present, I was still in the habit of checking the ceiling when I entered a room. Magbidion lay on my bed again, his face so white, I was afraid things might already have gone too far. My special invisibility-to-demons necklace, the Blind Eye of Scrythax (which I’d gotten back only a week or two before), moved up and down with each ragged breath. Talbot stood over him like one of those cats in old wives’ tales who steal the breath of babies.
“How bad?”
“You can’t wait any longer,” Talbot said.
My cell vibrated.
DAYTIME SUPPORT: not yet—the plan app was displayed on the touch screen.
“Give me a timetable,” I ordered, as if Talbot had a magic chart of how long Magbidion could continue to maintain all the spells and enchantments I had him running before he finally died of exhaustion. To his credit, Talbot’s eyes changed from normal to glowing star emeralds without comment or objection. Maybe he’d become fond of my mage. Or maybe such abject loyalty fascinated him.
“He might make it to morning.” Talbot touched Magbidion’s forehead, his hand coming away wet with sweat. “He might not. It’s a close thing.”
“Mags?” I asked. He didn’t answer. His lips were moving too soft, slow, and slurred for me to have a chance of reading them. His hands twitched occasionally as if completing portions of a mystic gesture in his semiconscious state . . . still maintaining the spells.
How much longer? I typed into my cell.
DAYTIME SUPPORT: Rockstar says at least three more days.
Too long, I typed back. Get everyone into position. I’m calling a friend.
DAYTIME SUPPORT: Eric, if you do it this early, the Marilyn portion of the plan may fail completely.
C’est la vie, I typed back. I had hope. Hope would have to be enough.
I closed the app, sent one text, and then walked down to the street. Fang’s radio blared 100.6 FM (WVCT—Void City Talk Radio). Sly Imp was interviewing a local demon who claimed to be upset about the exclusivity of Orchard Lake and Sable Oaks, the local werewolf- and vampire-only neighborhoods just outside of Void City proper.
“Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I don’t like to fish and swim or drive a pontoon boat around a lake, but the parasites and the monthlies have all the best lake property sewed up tight.”
“Now,” Sly Imp cut in, “all that’s true, Diaxicrotioush’nar, but can you honestly tell me that part of this, even if it’s only a little bit, is not about property rights but about the contract you have on Eric Courtney’s thrall Magbidion?”
“I’ll admit the little greaser is overdue for collection, but that’s a separate topic. I—”
“I hate to cut you off, but Gyre just handed me a note that—well, if it’s true, then I expect our fearless fucktard of a vampiric lord and master”—he switched into a Ricky Ricardo impression—“has some ’splaining to do. Caller?”
“Hello, Sly.” The lingering trace of hoarseness wasn’t enough to obscure the words or disguise him at all. Talbot nodded to me on the way to his motorcycle.
“You certainly sound like the man, but that doesn’t mean you’re him.”
“Some in my place might quote Mark Twain, but I find that cliché.” The warmth in Father Ike’s voice was a narcotic to some, a balm to others. Hell, even I was glad to hear him speak. “Others might quote Scripture. I can think of several passages that would be easily misused. John 11:25 might be misappropriated to claim biblical power and authority or intervention: ‘Jesus said unto to her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’ First Corinthians 15:22. ‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.’”
“That definitely sounds like you, Father, but even I can quote Scripture.”
“Of course you can, Sly. James 2:19,” Ike cited. “‘For it is written that demons believe and shudder.’ But your listeners don’t really want to hear me preach, do they? If so, I have several sermons . . .”
I laughed, and so did Sly Imp. “No, thank you, Father, but if you could do me a favor and pass the Jude test?”
“Come now, Sly,” the voice said, so softly that the roar of Talbot’s bike almost drowned him out as my favorite mouser shot by on his way to the VCU campus. “‘Thou shall not test the Lord thy God.’ Faith is not a parlor trick—while I’m afraid my survival very much is. Well, that and a testament to the usefulness of CPR training.”
“C’mon, Father. If you’re really who I think you are, you can bind a demon like me with one specific quote.”
“I know the passage of which you speak, Sly.” Ike took a long breath, and I wondered what was going through his mind. This kind of up-front showy thing is something Ike has always disliked. He’s more comfortable working with people on a personal level, but with what I offered him to help me after I strangled and resuscitated him . . . let’s just say I understand why he was willing to comply. “You want me to bind you, but I think that’s foolish. Why would any Christian want to bind a demon on earth?”
“Waitwaitwait—” Sly cut in. I guess he saw what was coming next. You see, vampires tend to steer clear of Ike because merely touching him can set us on fire, but when confronted with demons, if he wants to, if he feels it’s the right time, Father Ike can—
“In the name of Christ Jesus, I cast you out.”
I guess I’d expected a scream or kaboom, but the silence spoke volumes.
Gyre, Sly’s sound tech, came over the air next.
“Thanks for the call, Father Ike,” he said, “and I hope you don’t mind me ending your call, but I don’t have any desire to join Sly in the Pit just now.” He cleared his throat and stepped up to the plate with a passable imitation of his former boss’s jaunty style. “So . . . what do you think, Void City? Father Ike is revealed to be not only among the living but actively casting demonic shock jocks into hell? Who knew priests could pull that shit via telephone? Can all priests do it, or just badass soldiers for the Big Sky Bully, like Father Ike? Call in and speak your piece on the Widening Gyre.”
I was tempted to call in myself and take Gyre to task for stealing the name of his show from the title of a Kevin Smith Batman limited series, but there was no time after the moment Father Ike’s voice came over Fang’s car speakers. The opening volley was out and fired across Scrytha’s bow. Father Ike was alive, and boy, was Scrytha going to be pissed. The Plan was in full swing, and the only two people who could make it succeed or fail were the women I loved most.
For once in my life, there was nothing I could do to save myself. The fight was coming, and there was no way on earth I could win it alone.
37
MARILYN
OLD DOG NEW TRICKS
Void City University abuts the northwest side of the city, its high brick walls drawing a demarcation that says clearly to all: Void City Ends Here. The last time I’d set foot on campus had been for the graduation ceremony of one of Eric’s former strippers. Bethany, I think her name was. I can’t even remember what degree she was working on, only that she graduated magna cum laude and Eric was so proud that he bought her a car.
I pulled up to the gate on my Harley and waited while the guard walked out. A middle-aged man with balding hair and a paunchy waist, the guard didn’t look that threatening unless you happened to see his supernatural side: an anthropomorphized rat clad in black armor dotted with cruel-looking spikes that glimmered with a hint of magic. Maybe it’s that I’ve never liked rats. His security badge said NIMH, and despite my nerves, it gave me a slight chuckle.
“Nimh?” I handed him my student ID.
“S’ironic.” He took my badge and gave it a sniff. The accent was one of the British ones, but I didn’t know them well enough to tell which.
“Yeah.”
On the other side of the iron gates, students went about their business, heading to class or their dorms or wherever. I wasn’t sure I belonged with them, but Eric had been right about one thing. There were all kinds of things in this world I wished I knew more about, and wasting the time I had now would be crazy. I’d decided to start with a business degree, because in the back of my head, there was a little dream Eric and I had talked about back when we were engaged: a bar I wanted to open. Not a strip club or a bowling alley but a real . . . joint. No dancing or loud music, just a few pool tables and—
“Mind’s a terrible thing,” he said, handing me back the ID.
“To waste?” I looked at him.
“That, too.” He waved, and the gates opened to let me in.
“How long before I get to use the automated gate?” All the supernatural students had to come in the front gate, past the wererats, but I hoped that wasn’t a permanent thing.
“After the appropriate, miss.”
“Appropriate what?” I slid my ID back in my leather jacket. “Amount of time?”
“Could be, miss.”
Finding a place to park took less time than I’d thought and gave me a chance to wander about campus. The army-surplus duffel on my shoulder weighed me down enough that I decided to carry it up to my dorm room. Dorm room. I sniffed. The very idea of a dorm room still cracked me up, but the Iversonian had insisted. “It will help you remember how young you look on the outside, to remind yourself that you are forever changed.”
“‘Besides,’” I quoted him under my breath, “‘everyone needs a college experience, to be on one’s own amongst strangers. Of course, I had mine when we were just inventing the concept. If yours involves a healthy fraction of the sex and vomiting mine did, I shall be impressed . . . and appalled.’”
