“Yes,” Sam said, narrowing his eyes. “They buried you. They are mourning you right now. You’re breaking them in half. Don’t do this. Tell them. Tell them and go to the Nightingales instead. Saving your life doesn’t mean she owns you, and we don’t even know who this woman is, do we?”
“If he suddenly starts acting differently,” Cal said, “then whoever did this is going to know I’m not dead. Our family is nothing if not predictable. Please. Just a couple of days. Come with me, track down the Gaters—you know they had to have had something to do with this, and we can get the information we need.”
“Cal,” Samael said, straightening. His head was buzzing with all of this new information, and his chest was on fire with anger. “Who is this woman?”
“I don’t know,” Callum admitted. “She was skilled and she had a nice face. She really seemed to know what she was talking about and she promised it was only temporary until we found the people responsible and Sam, I gave my word. We’ll go to Dad after.”
“Promise?” Sam asked, narrowing his eyes. Callum seemed to be in an almost feverish way about this. That meant one of two things. Either he was besotted by this woman’s looks—and it wouldn’t be the first time Callum had fallen for something like that—or he really believed her. Samael wasn’t sure which option was worse.
“Yes,” Cal said. “I promise as soon as we get what we need we’ll go right to Mom and Dad.”
Sam sucked in a breath for calm and let it out between his teeth with a sharp hissing sound.
“This is, by far, the worst thing you have ever done,” Sam said.
“I’ve done a lot of bad things,” Cal said.
“You’re doing this one to our family,” Sam said. “That’s cold.”
At that, it looked like Cal was backing down a little bit. His eyes dropped to the floor between them.
“It’s necessary,” he said. “I promised, and it’s necessary.”
“So spake a lot of men who did a lot of unnecessary things,” Sam said. He let the words hang in the air between them, and all of their weight, before speaking again. “But fine. We’ll look tomorrow. We’ll give this a try and then afterward, you come clean. If you saw the looks on their faces, if you had to deal with the way the world is in your absence, you wouldn’t even want to delay that much.”
“Come on,” Cal said. “I know Ely’s taking it fine.”
“She’s more upset than you’re giving her credit for,” Sam said. “She loves you.”
“Soon,” Cal said. It sounded like a promise. Sam wanted to hold him to that. He couldn’t bring himself to believe it just yet. “I just need one more favor.”
“God damn it, Callum,” Sam said. They met eyes for a moment and Sam sighed. “What is it?”
“I need you to unlock my window,” Cal said.
“I swear to the Ancients,” Sam said, “if you die trying to climb across the outside of our house just to go to bed I’m going to kill you. Just walk in the hallway.”
“I would if I didn’t think I’d get caught,” Cal said. “I don’t think I’d survive another person’s reaction to this ‘miracle’.”
“Mom and Ely are both in bed,” Sam said. “Dad’s downstairs.”
“I’ll take the hall if you keep him busy,” Cal said.
“You’re kidding,” Sam said, and sighed when he realized Cal wasn’t. “Go. Go quickly, I’ll go downstairs but I hope you realize you’re not only asking me to keep your secret. You’re asking me to look our mourning father in the eyes and lie to him.”
“You’re right,” Cal said, “I should have asked Ely.”
Sam reached up and popped him again in the side of the head with the flat of his hand. Cal had the audacity to laugh as Sam stepped away. They stepped out onto the landing together and suddenly the fourteen stairs between the landing and the first floor seemed impossibly long.
He started down, his stomach in knots, and peeked into the kitchen. Joey’s voice came from the living room instead.
“Sammy,” he said. Sam turned around to face him. He had never seen his father looking so old. He was sitting on the dark green armchair, swirling a glass of brandy on the rocks in his hand. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“How could I sleep, after today?” Sam asked. He didn’t even have to pretend.
Joey’s eyes were marked by the kind of dark circles that only come with grief. His red-black hair had fallen around his face, no longer held back the way it had been earlier that night. He had that drunken sheen of sweat across his face, and took a gulp, draining half the glass.
The brandy glass clinked softly against the coaster as Joey set it down and reached over to pull another from the woven basket they kept the glasses in. The little dish of ice was still sitting in the center with tongs resting against the lip. Joey nodded to the armchair on the other side of the little table and Sam took it without comment.
The amber liquid glittered in the air, melting away at some of the ice as Joey poured it. Sam took the glass from him, pretending he wasn’t trembling as he took a swig and felt the burn at the back of his throat.
“…do you think it was the Gaters?” Sam asked, finally, breaking the silence as he looked up. Joey didn’t look away from his glass for a long moment.
“My gut says they did,” he said. “My gut tells me to come down on them like twelve tons of iron and make sure none of those bastards survives this time. There’s another part that’s telling me to wait and cool off first. I didn’t survive this long charging headlong without all the information.”
Sam couldn’t say that’s what Cal thought. Sam couldn’t say Cal thought anything at all. His father kept his eyes on the glass in his hand and that was a small mercy. Sam was fairly sure, if Joey looked up right now, he wouldn’t have been able to keep this secret.
“So what do we do now?” Sam asked. His throat sounded dry. He took another drink of the brandy to bolster himself.
“We calm down,” Joey said. “We lick our wounds and make sure we’re thinking clearly and then if we still feel like this is what needs done, we do it. Let your mother get a look around, first. She’s always been good at that investigation shit. She used to be in the Hellwatch, you know.”
Joey’s voice was caught somewhere between amusement and grief. It was funny, Sam thought, the things that came to mind in moments where it felt like everything was lost. So much pain, and he could ease it if it weren’t for that promise he’d made to his brother.
“Dad?” Sam asked. This time, Joey did look up. His face was calm, now, swinging away from grief and towards pensive. He was being strong, Sam realized. He was taking the burden so his son didn’t have to. The guilt twisted between his ribs. “When it comes down to it, I want to go.”
Even if they hadn’t really killed Cal, they thought they had. It was what Sam had been thinking up until this point, what he had wanted to say before he knew the truth. It was what he needed to say now, to keep this secret for his brother.
They were in this together, now. Maybe they had been all along.
“We’ll see what it comes down to first,” Joey said. He set his glass down, empty now, and seemed to be considering pouring himself another one before he lowered his hand to his knee and turned to face Sam farther.
For his part, Sam was beginning to feel that numbness around his cheeks and nose that came with intoxication.
“If this is what it looks like, Sammy, I wouldn’t be fool enough to try to keep you from it,” Joey said. “I know I’m not the best person to say it, but don’t let this swallow you, alright? You’re a good kid.”
“I haven’t been a kid in a while,” Sam said. He tugged his lips into a smile and looked at his father sidelong. The bottom of his stomach twisted.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” Joey said, and reached over to pour himself another drink. “You’re a good man, Sam. I’m proud of you. We’re going to have a lot to talk about in the coming days.”
Sam finished his glass
and got to his feet. Joey rose to join him and before Sam could really think it through, he had stepped into his father’s arms and was hugging him tightly, burying his face into Joey’s shoulder. Sam was a little bit taller but not awkwardly so. Joey returned the hug, tightly.
Sam didn’t let go until he was sure his father could cover up the fact that he’d been crying.
Augury was frowning at the second body in the morgue. Barghest leaned against the wall and watched her, the little crease that appeared between her eyebrows as she ran gloved fingers over the man.
He was young, like Callum Trezza. A cambion. But this one was a little overweight with a green pallor to his skin that marked him for a gorgon.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“How can you tell something even is?” she asked, without looking up at him.
“You’re never this focused,” he said. “Always chasing wisps.”
“Something’s not quite right,” she admitted, finally, looking up at him. “Look at this wound.”
“It looks like the last one,” Barghest said.
“Same edges,” Augury said, gesturing to the outside of the wound, “but this one hasn’t tried to knit together at all and this body was older than Callum’s. So something was different. Maybe no one bothered to try to save him, but I’m sure it was the same knife that did it. Rigor’s come and gone. He’s been dead for days.”
“You know we could really use an eye like that in the Hellwatch,” Barghest said.
“And you already have one,” Augury said. “I’m willing to contract with you same as anyone else.”
“You’re still a bit of an unleashed spirit, aren’t you?” Barghest asked. Augury looked up at him and raised an eyebrow and he could see the cambion in her blue eyes in that moment. Then she cracked a smile.
“Yes,” she said, “and you wouldn’t like me half as well if I weren’t. Listen, I think whatever was trying to heal that wound was more to do with Callum than it was to do with the killer, it had to have been someone else.”
“Or there was something different about this one,” Barghest said. “Either way, there’s definitely something off about it. I prefer not to speculate what that might be until we have more information, but…the fact that there have been two of these now doesn’t look good.”
“I don’t know anyone that uses blades but priests, Hellwatch and cultists,” Augury said.
And Ophelia, he thought, bitterly. But she was Hellwatch once. She’d just left. She was allowed to do that.
“So do you see anything I might have missed?” Augury asked. “I mean, I doubt it, you’re so old your eyesight’s starting to go, but it’s worth an ask.”
“If you can stop yourself from running all over the place like a toddler I can squint at a body and pick up what there is to pick up,” Barghest said.
“Like the smell of decay?” Augury asked.
“It’s a miracle you haven’t thrown up yet,” Barghest returned, smirking at her.
“Really though,” Augury said, “we need to take a step back and check the town, if there were more of these we need to know about it. Two male cambion in their young adult years? Doesn’t mean it was a hate crime, but it still could have just been gang related. Shoeshiners attract cambion like shit attracts flies.”
It was a common saying, and one she said quite bitterly.
“This one was half gorgon,” Barghest said. “Not as common as afrite, but enough that I could believe it. Do we know who he was?”
“Not yet,” Augury said, “but you can leave that part to me. You get on with finding out how many of them there have been if you can. It’s going to matter.”
There was a pause, and then she looked up at him.
“Do you have the camera?”
“We usually have a specialist for that,” Barghest said.
“Have someone get photos of the body for me, I’m going to need them if I’m looking for this person’s next of kin,” she said.
The wisp that had just sprung to life in the lamp on the side of the street started to ram itself against the glass as Callum passed. Sam wasn’t far behind. They were on the very edge of Torchlighter territory, getting ready to pass into the no man’s land that was the industrial district. No shiner gang had held that area in years, not since the summoners that powered the machines started flexing the power they really held.
“You’re a piece of shit,” Sam said, meeting Cal at his shoulder. “We had better find something or this is over, I’m not going to keep lying to our parents when you don’t have a good fucking reason.”
“I already told you I do,” Cal said. He wasn’t looking at Sam, but he was listening. His eyes stayed on the alley in front of them; two cyclists swept past and then Cal motioned for Sam to follow him.
He was wearing the mask Martin had made for him. He and Sam were in alleyways, out of the way, but those were the roads shoeshiners took and shoeshiners were the people Cal least wanted to see his face right now. Every one of them in the dock district was in his father’s pocket.
“Not a good enough one,” Sam said. Callum wanted to assume he was sulking, but the pain in his voice was deep and real. There was a narrow alley on the other side of the bicycle path they’d crossed that opened right up into Brimstone Square.
It had been aptly named. The smell of sulfur permeated everything here, and Callum resisted the urge to cough. It was only nearing evening, so the work crowd was beginning to get themselves together to leave.
Through the window, he could see the powerful arms and clawed fingers of rakshasa lifting crates and barrels and packing things up for the evening. The thrum of the machinery wound down for the night.
Through a different window, he could see the brilliant orange-red mane of hair around the ashen face of a full-blooded afrite as it wound down from pouring fire into an engine.
A crowd of singed and filthy workers milled like cattle out from between the two largest factory buildings on the ground while a small cadre of robed summoners emerged from higher landings and headed for the tram station on the roof.
“Your shitty timing,” Sam said.
“My perfect timing,” Cal replied. “Come on, stay close to me.”
He didn’t wait for Sam to respond, he just started moving, keeping his head low. Every so often he glanced behind him to make sure his brother was keeping up; that head of silver hair was hard to miss in a crowd of people this dingy, but none of the factory workers seemed to care.
Wisps in hanging lanterns along the periphery of the square rammed against their enclosures, casting swaying light on the crowds below. The summoners either didn’t notice the pair of boys weaving their way through the crowd or they didn’t care.
The east side of the square opened up to Gate Street. Neither Cal nor Sam were wearing Torchlighter colors, but any Gater worth their salt would be able to recognize Joey Trezza’s boys. Particularly Sam, who had gone without a mask. Most of them, if they had any sense at all, would stay away.
Callum pulled himself up onto a fire escape and moved to offer Sam a hand up, but Sam ignored it and manifested his wings instead. The whole family was fire, but Sam and Ely had inherited their mother’s seraph wings and Callum…well, he could do horns if he was feeling particularly theatrical. The practical application of them was limited. Some people get all the luck.
Instead of stopping on the fire escape, Sam landed on the roof leading Callum scrambling to catch up. He couldn’t get too far, though. Sam didn’t know where the alley Cal was looking for was.
“Show off,” Cal muttered, elbowing Sam as he passed. The pair of them scrambled over roof tops until Cal dropped onto another fire escape and waited.
Sam touched down and leaned on the railing, glancing sidelong at Cal.
A pair of men were shoving each other and stumbling into the alley. A pair of men dressed in Gater yellow. Cal put a finger to his lips and perched on the point where the two steel railings met at a corner.
“I
thought we came here looking for answers,” Samael whispered harshly.
“We are,” Callum whispered back. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he glanced back at Samael. He put a lot of feeling into his gaze, as much as he could manage in that moment, before returning his eyes back to the spectacle.
The two men came closer and Cal dropped on one of them, bringing him to his knees with the force of his fall and dashing the man’s head off of the brick below.
The second fumbled for a moment, reaching for a gun at his belt. Cal straightened, half kneeling on the first man’s back and the second started to turn to him only to be met with a wall of Samael.
Cal had just taken a full on hit from Sam last night; he still had a big sore on the inside of his mouth where his teeth had been driven in and knew exactly how much it hurt when Sam drove his knuckles into the face of the second Gater. He dropped his gun and Sam kicked it far down the alley.
Stopping to watch had been a mistake. Cal felt himself overturned by the man he was perched on and his fist left stars in Cal’s vision. Cal got an arm up to cover his face and swung blindly with the other. He hit the man in the ribs and as his hand was falling he found the hilt of a dagger in a sheath at his opponent’s belt.
His fingers closed around it and the Gater drove his knee down hard on Cal’s wrist. He heard it crack and snarled as the man pulled the dagger free of its sheath. It glittered in the wisp light, but there were no runes etched along it. Not the same one they’d gotten him with before.
Cal caught the man’s forearm with his as he pushed it hard toward Callum’s face. He could see down the point and side of the knife and into the man’s hand. If it came down any farther, it would go into his eye and the fight would be over.
He was just about to call for flame when the knife sprung and Callum wrenched himself to the side. The cut opened along the side of his face and he felt a harsh sting against his temple and his ear. He grabbed the man’s wrist with his free hand, flames licking along his fingertips now as they obeyed his previous command. Cal sat up and bit down hard on the fingers holding the dagger until they let go.
Torchlighters Page 5