Bloodbath

  My breath stops in my throat.

  “…The Arbiter. Holy shitting-shit-fucking Hell. They’re planning to kill the Arbiter.”

  Bautista’s hand shoots out like a lightning bolt and grabs hold of my ear. I yelp, doubling over and batting at her arm—and she plucks my ear off. Out of the corner of my eye I see her stick two fingers into the hollow cavity of my head and pull out… a rolled-up piece of paper? She tosses my ear back to me and hobbles away. I fumble to catch it, then stare down at the fragile folds of skin and cartilage.

  “Spit on it, it’ll go back on easier,” Bautista calls.

  I spit on my ear, rub it for good luck, and stick it back onto the side of my head.

  I jog to join Bautista near the glass table and armchairs, where she’s stuffing the paper into a glass bottle, then easing the bottle into the table’s surface; it sinks like a brick. A moment later, it bobs back up to the surface. Bautista uncorks it and reads the new message, then nods solemnly.

  “I just handed what knowledge we have to my aides. They are taking it to the Arbiter as we speak.”

  I start. “Wait, you mean in the real world? You’re awake out there?”

  “Yes. I can function simultaneously in this pocket dream and the physical plane at once.”

  “Am I awake too?”

  “No, you are not. You don’t have any of the training I do, which is why I told you to sit or lie down before opening the box.”

  I remember tumbling to the floor as the world went black. If I strain, I think I can feel an echo of my physical body twitching on the floor.

  Bautista faces me directly. “The Arbiter is coming to New York tomorrow, at noon. There is high chance that the killer will try to prevent her arrival altogether, which means we have very, very limited time.”

  “This spell has killed people in the most secure homes, labs, and temples in this country. Squirreling the Arbiter away in a nuclear bunker won’t save her.”

  “Yes. Which means we need to find and stop the spell at its source—or, failing that, we have to make sure the Arbiter survives its effects.”

  I snap my fingers. “Luce is our fallback. She saved Sifri, so she knows better than anyone how to counteract this shit.”

  Bautista nods. A fountain pen appears in her hand. She turns the message from the bottle around and starts writing on the other side of the paper. “This does not change the fact that our first priority is prevention. Sifri may have survived the attack, but she was maimed beyond recognition; if the same happens to the Arbiter, she may live, but she will be put out of commission indefinitely. The international community would fall into chaos.”

  “And the killer would get away with whatever power play they’re attempting.”

  “Correct. We need to follow every lead we have.”

  “What about the company that was running the clinic? Ecsed Enterprises?”

  “A shell corporation that folded the instant the clinic was discovered.”

  “At least we know they have money. How were the henchmen, Jax and Lisa, hired?”

  “The mercenary isn’t tied to any guild, or we would have known of him. The vampire is a complete mystery, which is understandable, given that she is unregistered and must have been in deep hiding to avoid Council attention.”

  “Fine then, the spell. What do we know about the spell that was used to kill these people?”

  “We have established by now that the attack on the Council was a blood magic spell fueled by human sacrifice. Where does such a spell usually originate?”

  I perch myself on the arm of my linen chair, chewing the inside of my cheek. “Demon. Probably the old-fashioned kind. Maybe if I get their name, I can find the summoner.”

  Bautista finishes writing the message, and she sinks into her own chair as she drops the bottle back into the table surface. “I would suggest a few demon experts, but they are mostly affiliated with the Council. It would be foolish to risk exposure of our collaboration by going to one of them.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got my own expert. His name is Samael. Fuck, seeing him’s going to be a pain in the ass—but I can handle him.”

  Bautista looks at me curiously, picking her mug back up. “I’ve never heard of a ‘Samael’ in all my life. Where do you find these people?”

  I click my tongue and aim finger guns at her.

  “Perks of being excommunicated, my dude.” Then I blink, and remember who I’m talking to. “Er, Bautista. Ma’am. Sorry.”

  Bautista raises her eyebrows at me from behind her mug.

  I hastily change the topic. “What’s the deal with Joy and David? They’re both mages that the killer took extra special effort to kidnap, and Joy was only taken two days ago, more recently than anyone else. And my friend, Isabella, Jax tried to get her for her magic too. The sacrifices have been mostly civilians, but there must be something about mages that the killer urgently needs.”

  “None of the mages have turned up dead yet. Perhaps they aren’t being used for their blood.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Sure there’s a dead mage. She’s right here.” I hold out my hand, and the metal table holding the Wiccan college girl’s corpse hovers across the floor to meet me.

  Bautista waves the table away. “Religion, even Wicca, doesn’t necessarily entail a desire or capability to perform magic. Or perhaps she was just a coincidence, a budding witch in the wrong place at the wrong time, taken and killed with the rest of the civilians in a moment of haste. I admire your attention to detail, child, but sometimes you need to dismiss certain ones to see the bigger picture.”

  I pout a little. “Well, if the mages aren’t being taken for their blood, what are they being taken for?”

  “They could be facilitating the spell in some other way. They could be being forced to perform it.”

  My heart skips. “Then… Joy is still alive. And so is David.”

  Bautista nods. “And we must find them.”

  A tangential thought snaps me into alertness. I perk up, and the linen chair wobbles underneath me. “Hang on, I think I know why we haven’t found Aden’s body yet.”

  “Who is Aden?”

  “The kid I promised to find. The night he was kidnapped, he was on drugs. Well, just weed, but that shit stays in your bloodstream a while. They might not have been able to sacrifice him right then because of it—but they could have kept him in reserve, to wait until the drug was purged to collect his blood.”

  Bautista looks at me with naked pity in her eyes. “It could be so. Or his body might have been incinerated before you arrived at the mortuary. You’re reaching, Lee.”

  I shake my head. “Let me be a stubborn bitch about this one thing, alright? I promised his mother I’d find him, and Schrödinger’s dead kid isn’t good enough. As long as I don’t know for sure he’s dead, he’s alive.” I push off from my precarious perch on the chair arm, standing with my knuckles on the glass table. “Isn’t that the attitude you’re keeping for Joy?”

  Bautista is quiet. Her head is bowed, and I can’t read her eyes.

  “Bautista?” I try, unnerved.

  “…Do you know why it is important to me that I apologize to Joy?”

  I swallow. I back off, standing upright. “Honestly, I have no clue. I’ve never heard Joy say a bad word about you, only that you and she don’t talk anymore. But you were her first teacher, right? Before the Council started passing her around like some superpowered foster kid. It always sounded dumb to me, trusting a bunch of power-hungry, rich idiots to teach the psychic over an experienced telepath.”

  “I let them bully me into giving her to them. They said there was only so much I, a wizened old woman, could teach her. They said I was holding her back from her full potential. And gods, I believed them. I believed them, and when I told her goodbye, I convinced her to believe them, too.”

  Bautista’s voice cracks and creaks. The lights of the dream-room flicker, raising the hair on my arms. The liquid walls seem to condense, harden, bec
ome brittle enough to shatter.

  “Her teachers tortured her, Lee. They locked her in a white room and starved her until she hallucinated day-in and day-out, had microphones on every surface so they could take notes on her broken whispering. When I found her again, her fingertips were chewed to bloody shreds—if you ever wondered why she doesn’t have fingerprints, that’s the reason.”

  I flash back to Joy’s gaudy, sparkling nails, the bottles and bottles of nail polish littering her floor. The gauntness in her cheeks that never goes away, even when I’m sure she must be eating enough for two people her size. My stomach turns at the thought. Something tickles at the back of my brain.

  “Her…her last teacher was a Meresti, wasn’t he? Cain Meresti, he was found curled up in the corner of a public bathroom with all his fingers bitten off.”

  Bautista bobs her head. “There is a popular urban legend that claims it’s as easy to bite through a finger as through a raw carrot. It simply isn’t true—at least, not if you’re trying to gnaw through the bones themselves. I had to stay in that bathroom for half a day, coaching Cain on how to bite through the joints. He was… grateful for the help.”

  My fingers curl with a phantom ache, my heartbeat rabbit-thumping. “Jesus.”

  Bautista finally looks up. Her eyes bore into mine. “Find the mage who took my apprentice, Lee. Dead or alive, I don’t care—the priority is to rescue Joy. But if you bring that pinche cobarde in alive… let me know.”

  The lights go out completely. The darkness swallows me whole, and I’m falling again.

  ***

  I wake up, blinking groggily, my entire field of vision dominated by hardwood floor and some carpet. I grunt, pulling up my stiff limbs—a trail of drool follows my lips from the floor. Gods, that’s disgusting. Good thing no one’s around to see my shame.

  Someone clears their throat behind me. I twist back and see the Enforcer in the baseball cap and bomber jacket leaning casually against my doorframe, her eyes shadowed and unreadable.

  “Bautista sent me,” she says. She’s got a smooth British accent that throws my American-educated brain for a loop. “I can briefly lower the barrier for you without letting the others know, and I can keep them from finding out you’re gone after the fact.”

  I wipe my mouth on my sleeve as I pick myself up off the floor. “Thanks. Um. How long was I out?”

  She lifts her chin to check the clock on the wall, her ponytail swinging behind her. “A little over forty-six minutes. I was given express orders not to disturb you once you were out, in case it killed the connection.” The corner of her lip twitches up. “Also, it was funny.”

  I dust off my coat and my pants as I get up. “Well then, um. Did Bautista tell you where I’m going?”

  “Mm-hmm. To see some demon expert or another. Let me get the barrier for you.” She turns around.

  “Oh, no worries, it’s alright,” I say, strolling toward the door. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but ever since the demon blood I haven’t met a barrier I couldn’t—”

  I smell my clothes singe as my chest convulses, and I don’t register that I’m moving until I land on my back halfway across the room. I stare up at the ceiling, wheezing to get air back into my lungs. A baseball cap comes into view.

  “Sorry, what were you saying about the demon blood…?”

  My face burns. “My—wheeze—corruption usually gets me through generalized barriers. But I guess that doesn’t apply me-specific ones.”

  “I guess not.” She whistles a little ditty as she goes back to the barrier. A yellowish veil materializes in her hands, and she carefully folds it to the side, exposing the doorway. “There. Now you can make your grand exit.”

  I scramble up, still red-faced, and hurry toward the door. My hand is just barely on the doorknob when she catches my arm; I stumble, then look at her quizzically. The loose set of her lips betrays no urgency.

  “Hey, you know where those bramble crowns come from, right?” She says it like a secret code phrase; conspiratorially, with a hint of scandal.

  I raise an eyebrow. “Some kind of rose bush, right? The Council grows them in the prisons.”

  “Mm-hmm. We clip off the roses before making them into crowns. But sometimes, while someone’s wearing the crown, the roses grow back.”

  I recall the other two Enforcers huddled over the brambles they took from my head, discussing the red-brown smudge I mistook for blood.

  “Is that what happened earlier? My crown grew a rose?”

  “More like a rosebud. It happened when you got up to attack Nádasdy; it’s a product of the crown feeding on its host’s magic. The roses don’t usually develop until the crown’s been worn for, say, three or four days. Takes shorter if the mage is powerful and keeps resisting. Some of our worst convicts look like Disney princesses by the time we get them processed.”

  “Okay, so I resisted, and the crown tried to bloom. What does that mean?”

  “At first I figured you were more powerful than you realized.”

  My heart skips. “Yeah?”

  “...Except then the bud died. Pretty much instantaneously. Screamed a little, too. It was bloody disturbing to watch.”

  “Oh.” I scuff my heel against the floor, quietly swallowing my disappointment. “So… my magic is fucked up. That’s chill, I already knew that. I made out with a succubus a week ago and got her sick.”

  “Figures. Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Might have practical applications down the line.” I still can’t see the Enforcer’s eyes, but Betty Boop winks at me from her cap. I tilt my head, trying to gauge whether that’s a flirtatious smirk on her lips.

  “Say, when are you off-duty? Maybe after all this is over, you and I could…”

  The smirk widens. “Mmmm, nope. I have a boyfriend.”

  I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “Ah, tragic.”

  She laughs wholeheartedly, then shoves me out the door with too much strength for such a tiny human. “Get that tight arse out of here before my coworkers get back.” She starts to close the door, but pokes her head back out at the last second. “Oh, and do you have any booze in your fridge?”

  “Not anymore, no.”

  “Bollocks.”

  And then she locks me out of my own damn apartment.

  “Fuckin’ wizard cops,” I mutter, shaking my head down the hallway.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Go, Fight, Win

  Nobody knows more about demons than Samael does.

  It’s a total mystery how he learned all this shit. There’s a quiet consensus among the lower magical community that he’s a lot older than he looks, but there’s also an agreement that he’s human. Some say he’s just an avid researcher. Some say he’s got a direct pipeline to Hell. Some say he’s actually been to Hell and back.

  That’s horseshit, of course. No human comes back from Hell.

  He’s agreed to meet me at midnight in a dive bar called The River Sticks. The front door is stuck; I have to shove it to get it open, yet the little bell attached to the doorframe doesn’t make a sound. Upon closer inspection, I find its clapper is hotglued to the inside of the bell, either by the proprietor or by an annoyed patron. As I enter fully, I see exactly four people in the bar: two loners each with a table to themselves, an expressionless bartender, and a figure in a ratty brown leather jacket and salt-and-pepper hair sitting hunched at the bar. As I approach, neither the bartender nor the figure on the stool turn to look at me. When I’m about two feet away, the figure speaks up.

  “Coat. Off,” Samael says.

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” I peel off my coat and toss it in Samael’s direction. He doesn’t move but suddenly the bartender is there, catching it in midair and expertly tucking it away behind the bar.

  “Nothing in your pockets?”

  I turn my pant pockets inside out, revealing nothing but a few stray bits of lint. Again, Samael doesn’t turn to look; the bartender simply gives him a nod,
and Samael finally waves a lazy hand at me.

  “Sit down, have a drink.”

  I sit next to him. The wooden stool seems to warp under my weight, like it’s been made soggy by the saturation of violence in the air. “Maybe later.”

  He finally looks at me. Samael is a weathered sort of ageless. You’re sure he’s not young, he’s got way too many wrinkles for that, but there’s a hungry sharpness in his stare. Not like a predator, more like a scavenger. A hyena or a jackal.

  “So, what do you need from me today?” He twirls a surprisingly clean, delicate martini glass in front of him. The smile he shoots me makes me queasy, like when a stranger on the bus asks you where you live.

  “Need a demon identified.”

  “Got a sigil?”

  “Nope. Got details about a spell though, and a timeline of activity.”

  “I can work with that. I am the best. But first: formalities.”

  An enormous hand closes around my bicep and drags me off my barstool.

  I twist sideways as I fall, and the kick that was aimed at my gut glances off my hip instead. I land with an oof and a steel-toed boot inches from my face; I conjure a shard and slam it through the worn leather. A pained roar—I roll away from the screaming man, plant my hands on the sticky hardwood, and scramble to my feet.

  Another thug announces his presence by punching me in the face. It’s a good punch, I’ll give him that—it snaps my head to one side and sends me careening into the bar counter, world tilting and sliding like I’m on a spinning teacup ride. The instant explosion of white light, the rubbery burning of my cheek and something that tastes like blood trickles from a split lip. I can’t afford to get my brain muddy, not right now—so I shape and reform the pain, send it stabbing out through my eyes and ears and nose.

  Through my heightened awareness I hear the approaching stomps of heavy, booted feet: three pairs in total, closing in quickly. The guy I stabbed is on the ground screaming, “She has a knife!” I smell the sharp tang of blood and alcohol, some mildew—mostly blood. I see the guy who just punched me in agonizing detail: white, burly, plaid flannel, close-cropped beard, swinging his fist at my face again.