Burned, p.30
Burned, page 30
Don’t ask me how that all works. I have my own special brand of how-the-fuck-did-that-happen, so I can’t act like weird shit doesn’t go down in Void City.
John shook everyone’s hand except for Talbot’s. Talbot, he hugged.
“You guys know each other?” I asked.
“Hey.” Talbot winked. “I get around.”
“I don’t,” Magbidion put in.
“I know you’ve got the whole demon thing hanging over your head, Mags,” I told him, “but don’t worry. As soon as this is all done, we’ll take care of it. You’ll be fine. No worries.”
“Okay.” Magbidion nodded slowly, crossing his arms. “Okay. No worries. You do realize he’s a full Nefario?”
“Big demon thing,” I said. “Got it. Talbot, you eat the demon.”
“If you can get it all the way here, then I’ll do my best,” Talbot agreed. “But Nefario can be almost as bad as Infernatti about not spending a lot of time in the mortal world. Now that Scrytha has the bump, she might be a problem, too.”
“Bump?” John asked.
“Promotion,” Winter clarified, the change so fast it made me blink. “A travesty for which the universe has you to thank.”
“Father Ike.” Talbot coughed. “Pot meet kettle.”
“I recant my complaint,” Winter said with a bow. “What is the name of the demon with whom you dealt, Magbidion?”
“Diaxicrotioush’nar.”
“Shit,” Talbot breathed, sucking in air through his teeth.
“The Prince of Shadow and Ash.” Winter sounded impressed, going so far as to look Magbidion up and down as if reevaluating him. “You don’t do things by half measures, do you?”
“I already had magic and didn’t know it,” Magbidion said. “It was the wrong kind, though.”
“What were you?” Talbot asked.
“Zaomancer,” he said softly.
“Those the guys who raise the dead?” I asked.
“Resurrect them,” Winter clarified. “You’d have been quite sought after.”
“And rich,” Talbot said.
“And died very old at a very young age if I hadn’t been enslaved, entrapped, or murdered first,” Magbidion said. “And I would never have shaped fire with my own magic, or made lightning dance in the sky, or seen—”
“We get it,” I said. “You dig your new powers better. So what are we going to do about my shit?”
“You shook her hand to seal the deal?” It felt weird to see Magbidion take the lead, but as far as I knew, he was the only one of us who’d ever sold his soul.
“Yep.”
“And you never signed anything?”
“She asked me to when she showed up with Marilyn,” I said as Mags sat down in a folding chair we’d hastily dragged into the room, “but we’d already talked, so I told her to go fuck herself.”
“Good.” Magbidion smiled, and it reminded me of the look Talbot gets when he sees a demon he’s going to eat, or a mouse. “That means the deal is bound by exactly what you said.”
“I don’t remember exactly—”
“Yes, you do,” Magbidion cut in. “You shook a devil’s hand. You can never forget what you said. It’s impossible. A law of magic. If you were brain-dead, you’d repeat the words you said until the day your body died or until someone gagged you or knocked you out, so you couldn’t say them anymore, and you’d do it in tongues so that anyone in any language knew what you’d done.”
“Shit.” I looked at Talbot, and he nodded.
“The serious kind,” Talbot said.
“Repeat the words,” Winter ordered.
“Try not to think about it,” John said. “Just say the first thing that comes to mind, and that will be it.”
“‘I’ll do it,’” I repeated. “‘Whatever it is. I’ll do it.’”
“And she accepted that?” Magbidion asked.
“Yep.”
“Then you have a shot,” Magbidion said. “What she should have done was call in Fair Standards and Equitability, and they would have insisted that the contract be clarified. You didn’t sign anything, and this is pitifully unclear. She’ll wait at least six months to try to get you to do anything.”
“Why six months?” I asked.
“Because if she can fly under the FS and E’s radar for that long, the deal can’t be nullified. Then it would be seen as unfair to her, because you enjoyed the fruits of the deal for six months, and for that, she’d have to be compensated.” He chuckled. “And FS and E never want to do the compensating.”
“Did anything else happen?” Magbidion asked. “Any other demons?”
“A couple of dudes in robes showed up and asked if I’d made a deal with Scrytha of my own free will, and I said that I had and they could screw off, because I wasn’t making any deals with them.”
“What color were the robes?”
“Blue,” I said.
“They were FS and E, then,” Magbidion said. “Probably Evaluators checking in on the validity of her claim to Infernatti status. Did they ask you about the deal?”
“I was uncooperative.”
“Which was a good thing for once,” Magbidion said. “They can’t force you to answer questions unless they decide the deal is invalid, and Scrytha must have been calling in every favor she had to get her status confirmed.”
“So what are we going to do to get me out of this?” I asked. “How does any of this help?”
“We aren’t,” Winter said. “Scrytha is going to tell you that her ‘it’ is going to be that you become her eternal slave.”
I looked at Magbidion.
“But she can’t do that,” Magbidion said. “Eternal slavery has to be spelled out now. Too many deals have been overturned by vaguely defined terms. You have human lawyers to thank for that. She’ll probably send someone she thinks you’d really like to work with, but Scrytha was never human, so she’ll send someone you want to sleep with. She used to be a madame over a succubi den, so her thoughts are probably a little hardwired in that regard.”
“She’ll send Rachel,” Winter said.
“How do you know?” Talbot and I asked together.
“You had the Eye of Scrythax that can grant eternal life or transfer power,” Winter said. “I have the one that sees the future.”
“But Courtneys can change prophecy and—” Talbot began.
“Oh,” Winter crowed. “It hasn’t been right about a damn thing yet where our Eric is concerned, but I can read him like a book. What the Eye does is give me enough of what might happen for me to deduce the rest.”
“You’re a creepy bastard,” I said.
He took it as a compliment and unlimbered another bow. When he came back up, he was John again.
“He so totally is,” said John.
“So why are you willing to help?” I asked John/Winter.
“Isn’t it perfectly obvious?” Winter said, looking away, and bared his fangs like some wack-job version of a vampire coquette.
“Not to me.”
“Then you didn’t read the epilogue of the last book,” Talbot said.
“What the fuck are you talking about, cat?” I asked.
Talbot batted his eyes at us all, the perfect picture of innocence. “Winter killed a whole lot of vampires?” He waited to see if that rang a bell. It didn’t.
“Why?”
“I hate them,” Winter said with a golden laugh. “I only worked with them because I needed you in place to kill Phillip.”
“I’m a vampire,” I said. “Why work with me?”
“You hate vampires.” Winter laughed again. “And you’re you, Eric.” His tone indicated that was all the explanation I was going to get.
“Right.” I looked at Talbot again, and he shrugged as if to say: “He’s got you there, boss.”
An hour later, we were still talking and working things through. Just before dawn, Magbidion excused himself and came back with two blood bags and chalk, then excused himself to the bathroom and started drawing a magic circle on the floor.
“What’s this?” Winter asked.
“You mean Mr. Know-It-All doesn’t already know?” I asked. “Magbidion, it looks like your enchantment is working better than we thought.”
“What enchantment?” Winter asked again. When dawn came, Mags and I let Talbot and Winter watch me make the change from ever-living to undead, from true immortal with a pulse and a reflection to a bloodsucker with neither. I like to think it was at least half as unpleasant for them as it was for me. Just after sunrise, I walked out of the shower, drying my hair and sucking on a blood bag.
“So . . .”
It was awesome to see Winter at a loss for words.
“So?” I asked.
Magbidion took his turn in the shower, and I kept an ear out. I had to remember to watch him right after. Each time seemed to hit him a little harder, and I didn’t want him to slip and break his neck or anything.
“So, during the day?” Winter asked.
“Yup.” I flashed him my fangs.
“But at night?”
I shook my head, finished off the first bag, and started on the second. “It’s not a problem, but if I’m going to take over control of the vampire population . . .” I let my sentence hang.
“Then they can’t know,” he said, “not until you are already so entrenched that removing you would be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“And,” I said, lowering the blood bag for a moment, “whatever I do can’t mess shit up with Marilyn. I want The Plan to help me win her back, not push her further away.”
“That could be problematic,” Winter said, “but I’m a sucker for long shots and making them into sure things. Give me a week, and let me involve Melvin. I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, I want you to start reaching out to some allies I know you have. Tell them you want to kill an Infernatti. Have that one”—he indicated Magbidion with a tilt of the head—“make sure no one overhears the calls who shouldn’t. I’ll get you an approximate date by tomorrow night.”
“And there’s my memory thing,” I added. “Whatever we come up with and agree to, I won’t be able to remember it. Not for as long as this plan is going to take. I’m pretty sure it really is Alzheimer’s. Otherwise, the true immortal mojo should have cleared it up.”
“We’ll get you a workaround,” John said. “Do you have a smartphone?”
“Um . . .” I felt like an idiot. “How smart does it have to be?”
“I’ll handle that,” Talbot offered.
Over the next three weeks, we worked out The Plan. A month later, John and Melvin delivered the app. After that, all conversation about The Plan was restricted to my bathroom, when I was wearing the Blind Eye of Scrythax, or via The Plan’s app.
In one of those last face-to-faces, Winter/John, Magbidion, and I were all crammed into the bathroom at the Pollux. I was sitting in the shower, shirtless in my boxers, wearing the Blind Eye of Scrythax and waiting for my sunset transformation.
“I’m not happy about the thrall thing,” I said.
Winter sat on the edge of the bathroom counter, which made it doubly strange when he shifted back and forth to John, since John had a reflection and Winter didn’t. Magbidion, as usual, sat on the toilet, lid down, and looked tired.
“Eric,” John said. He’d let Winter wear his rock-star clothes, so he seemed self-conscious in leather pants, high-heeled boots, a lacy blue shirt, and funky Goth eye makeup. “Think of it this way. You’ll be giving most of these guys a shot at revenge. It’s payback big-time for the guys who were on the force with you. And for the new guys, you’re saving them a bout with Alzheimer’s and a sad lonely end in a damn retirement home where they have nightmares about what sick, twisted vampire freaks made them do and/or cover up, then wiped from their superficial memories. And with you in charge, if they want to quit one day and lead a normal life, you’ll let them.”
Magbidion tapped the shower-stall glass. “Being your thrall is not a hardship, boss.”
“Do it during the day—” Winter instructed.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“—around noon,” Winter continued. “I’ll warn Melvin, and he’ll keep the area clear of thralls.” He tapped the Blind Eye of Scrythax. “Wear that.”
“What about the Ike thing?”
“I don’t like the Ike thing, either, Winter,” John put in.
“She’s going to order Eric to kill him.” Winter rubbed at his temple and frowned when his fingertips came away black. “I’m not picking the target, I’m just telling you whom she’s going to pick. By having her first command be something so objectionable to Eric, she will believe he won’t even second-guess other commands. She thinks he’ll be broken and tractable, and he might be, except he has us. How’s the CPR certification coming?”
“Greta was curious about why I had her go drop three thousand dollars on a CPR training doll, but when I let her learn with me, she just took it as a weird father/daughter activity and let it go,” I said. “It’s fine. Suzie lives every time now.”
“Good,” John said. “Strangle him, revive him, and get him to my place.”
“He’ll be wearing that”—Winter tapped the Blind Eye of Scrythax—“before you start CPR. And you won’t see it again until he makes the call for us and reveals he’s alive—unless Magbidion needs it.”
“The Blind Eye will hide the wearer from any demon?” I asked. “Even Scrytha?”
“Any demon,” Winter agreed. “Scrythax. His daughter. Even the demons from Fair Standards and Equitability.”
“And you think that when everyone knows Father Ike is alive and that I cheated, it will bring Scrytha running?” I asked.
“It will enrage her,” Magbidion said. “An Infernatti cannot afford to be embarrassed like that without reacting immediately. By not acting, she’d risk being bumped down to Nefario status, and the FS and E will be watching her like a hawk, waiting for her to screw up so they can demote her.”
“That’s where the . . . What did you call it?”
“Artificial locus point,” Mags and Winter both answered.
“Yeah, that.” I nodded, feeling the beginning of my change coming on. “That’s where that comes in?”
“Yes,” Winter agreed. “You’ll need Fang parked directly over it and ready to destroy it.”
I flashed out of the memory and smiled, looking at all of the demons around me on the street. It felt good to know The Plan had mostly worked. Greta being here may have screwed up the Marilyn part, but I didn’t like manipulating Marilyn with some kind of plan anyway. If I had to win her back without Winter playing Cyrano to my Christian, that was fine.
“Breaking an artificial locus point,” I said to myself while I could still remember it, “blows all the natural ones for most of a day.” I looked out at Scrytha and her horde of demons, at Fair Standards and Equitability, and realized that they were all trapped in the mortal world. Even a powerful Infernatti like Scrytha couldn’t go back and forth, not until the effect wore off or she traveled to a natural locus point far enough away.
I laughed out loud. I was trapped in their trap, and they, in turn, were trapped in mine. But even better than that . . .
“And for my next trick,” I said to the demons holding me prisoner, “I will remember the fucking code phrase. I can’t believe it didn’t come out before now, when I was talking about pig latin. I think I must have almost remembered it.” We’d picked something I wasn’t likely to forget to say, then put it into pig latin so I wouldn’t say it accidentally.
“Hey, Scrytha,” I shouted. “Uck-fay ou-yay!”
As soon as the words left my mouth, the world went wild. Sirens pealed as the VCPD SWAT team rolled into action. Spotlights flashed from helicopters overhead; the magic that had been muting the baffle of their rotors surrendered to the noise. From one of them—a large military-style transport with two sets of chopper blades—a giant fucking werewolf the size of a horse plummeted to the sidewalk, forcing the concrete to crack and buckle upon impact.
“Bonjour,” said La Bête du Gévaudan, code name Garnier (I think I’ll still call him Megawolf). “Took you long enough.” Back in Paris on my honeymoon, things got really screwed up, and part of it was indirectly his fault, so when I called in a favor and asked him to make a little road trip, he’d been very quick with the “oui.”
“I was being all dramatic and shit,” I said. “It was a caesura.”
“Oh, please.” Megawolf turned to fight part of the demonic horde. “Your language is far from poetry, and if that was any sort of a purposeful pause, it was Shatnerian at best.” He took one long stride away from me before I realized he was really going to leave me imprisoned by my buggy captors.
“A little help here, dude?” I shouted.
“Let him go,” Megawolf growled, looking back over one fur-covered shoulder. “That he may go forth and never again refer to me as ‘dude.’”
They let me go.
And I never called him “dude” again.
Well . . . not that I recall.
47
EVELYN
LOVE IS KIND
Diaxicrotioush’nar bellowed and collapsed, releasing his grip on Magbidion and on me. Coughing and wiping the soot from my eyes, I was trying to find some explanation for what had happened when I heard sirens and a helicopter.
“What the hell?” I asked.
Magbidion’s ghost spoke softly. “Eric just destroyed the artificial locus point. Diaxicrotioush’nar didn’t come through to the mortal realm himself; he projected his power. When the gates between worlds slammed shut—”
“He lost control,” I said.
“Yes,” Magbidion agreed. “Now could you please try to resuscitate me? It might not work, but I’d appreciate the effort.”
Sparks and wisps of white popped at the edge of his being. Peering into his soul, I didn’t see a monster. I saw a person who could face the woman who murdered him and be hopeful, ask for help with a smile and a kind word. There was no reproach.
