by C. C. Mahon
“Are you gonna let me take you to the ER this time?” asked Nate.
I let out a groan worthy of a grizzly. “And what if Goldilocks comes back while I’m gone?” I asked.
“And what if she finds the boss at the hospital?” asked Matteo.
“And what if someone told me what’s going on here?” asked King,
The cop was winded and visibly angry. With one look at my condition, she took out her cellphone to call an ambulance.
“Detective,” I said, “there’s no need for that. I can take it out.” I placed my hand on the knife sticking out of my thigh, and three voices ordered me to stop in perfect harmony.
“St. Gilles,” said King in an authoritarian tone, “you’re gonna quit messing around and let the professionals do their job. The ambulance is on its way. You can explain what’s going on to me on the way. Who’s this girl, and why were you fighting?”
It would’ve been simpler to explain everything to the cop. After all, crazy people with homicidal tendencies were part of her job, not mine.
But the crazy lady in question was visibly more than a simple human, and if I started telling King that, I was probably the one who was going to end up in a padded room.
The pain that pulsated in my shoulder and my thigh kept me from thinking straight, and I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head. “She’s a magician,” I said.
“A what?” asked the cop incredulously.
“A pres.ti.di.gi.ta.tor,” I said, separating each syllable so as not to stumble. (I hate that word.) “She’s been bugging me to hire her at the club for several days now. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her we don’t do those kinds of things here, she won’t listen. This morning, it’s like she just blew a fuse.”
“And so she just came to assault you with a machete, knives and…doves?”
“People are crazy.”
“What’s her name?”
“She didn’t leave me her business card.”
I could tell that she didn’t believe me, but the ambulance arrived with brake squeals and blaring sirens, and the detective had to keep her questions to herself and let the paramedics work.
Matteo leaned towards me and whispered, “Do you want me to take the sword?” His breath was cool against my neck, and I shivered.
In a few seconds, they were going to put me on a stretcher and take me to a hospital where they might have to cut my jacket to take it off. Logic dictated that I should give my weapon to Matteo like he was suggesting. But the idea of being separated from the sword made me nauseous. I shook my head.
Two paramedics loaded me onto a stretcher, and Nate straightened up.
“I’m coming with you,” he declared.
“Me too,” said Matteo.
King looked them over—her eyes might have wandered below their faces, especially for Matteo, still shirtless.
“You,” she said to Nate, “you can follow the ambulance in your own vehicle. You,” she said to Matteo, “you can go with him, under the condition that you get dressed. This is not the beach.”
King joined me in the back of the ambulance, and we took off, sirens wailing at top volume.
“It’s a good thing I came to see you this morning,” said the cop. “Your magician seemed determined to cut you in half.”
“You were coming to see me? Why?”
She looked me over for a long time before answering. “A rumor around town. A certain Erica St. Gilles was looking for information on Callum Carver.”
Shit.
King stared at me, like she expected an answer. Technically, she hadn’t asked a question, and so I kept quiet.
“What’s your relationship to Carver?” she asked.
I closed my eyes to hide from her stare. “From what I can tell, he’s a rich collector,” I said. “And the club needs investors.”
“So you don’t know him?”
“No. Why, could you introduce us?”
I heard the rustling of paper and opened my eyes. King had just unfolded a piece of paper that she was shoving in my face. It was a copy of an old newspaper clipping, with a picture. In the snapshot, you could make out Callum in a smoking jacket, on a red carpet. On his arm, a young lady with a tight smile, too thin in her high-priced evening gown.
“You should put your hair up more often,” said King. “The updo shows off your neck, Rebecca.”
I closed my eyes again and bit my lip. To no avail: I felt the tears well up in my eyes. Stupid emotions! I wasn’t this weak little girl anymore who cried as soon as someone raised their voice and who let herself be manipulated by the first dirtbag that came along. I wasn’t Rebecca anymore, who starved herself, did her hair and her make-up to meet the expectations of some bastard. I’d left this false life behind.
And yet the tears escaped from behind my closed eyelids and rolled down my cheeks.
“He beat you?” asked King in a softer voice.
I pulled up my shirt and pushed down the waistband of my jeans to uncover the bottom of my stomach. I didn’t have to look to find the spot. There, on delicate white skin, the burn mark was etched into my mind, with its red swollen lines despite the time that had passed.
“Did he do that to you?” breathed King.
I pulled my shirt back down. “He brands all his women.”
“Branded,” said King. “He was found dead three weeks ago.”
Britannicus had already told me, but hearing the confirmation from the mouth of a police officer felt like a kick to the gut. An uncomfortable sensation spread from my stomach to the rest of my body. Was it fear? It felt like it. Yet, with Callum dead, I could finally stop hiding. Go back to my family, maybe. My sister must be in university, and my dad was getting close to retirement.
“Carver’s body was incinerated the same way as Agatha’s,” said King. “Carver was most likely tortured before that if the evidence found at his place is anything to go by. And unfortunately, he’s not the only victim before your waitress.”
“His bodyguards?” I guessed.
“Them,” confirmed the cop, “and three other people. A couple in their fifties and their daughter…”
My voice caught in my throat. “Who?” I breathed.
“Your parents and your sister. I’m sorry.”
A long wail echoed in the ambulance, and the paramedics rushed to pin me to the stretcher. The sword hidden in the lining of my jacket dug into my spine, and I felt it pulsing against my back. If I wasn’t careful, it was going to catch fire due to my own emotions. And I didn’t even care.
The sedative coursed through my veins, and the world plunged into darkness.
I regained consciousness, and the nausea washed over me. I thought it more prudent to keep my eyes closed. The air smelled of disinfectant, and a machine beeped quietly.
Hospital.
The smell of pine alerted me to Nate’s presence.
“Where’s my sword?” I asked.
I was handed my leather jacket, and my fingers found the hilt of my weapon. The nausea subsided instantly, and I opened my eyes.
“I have no idea how the nurses missed a sword,” grumbled Nate, “but no one noticed it.”
“The weapon has its own glamour,” said Matteo. “It knows how to hide from human eyes.”
He was wearing a pine green plaid shirt two sizes too big for him. One of the emergency shirts Nate kept in his truck, I guessed. Matteo should’ve looked like a kid playing dress-up in the shirt. Instead, he looked like a model on the cover of Hipster Magazine.
The hipster in question was looking at me with a concerned expression. “What happened in the ambulance?” he asked. “What did that cop tell you?”
Always the same problem with psychic vampires: impossible to lie to them.
“The person who killed Callum,” I said, “also murdered…my family. My parents and my little sister.”
Matteo immediately kneeled at my bedside. His long hands held mine, but I shook my head. “Let me…let me fee
l this,” I breathed. “This is something I should not avoid.”
I already tried running, and it hadn’t helped anyone.
This time, I had to face it. First my grief, and then my enemy.
I let the pain hit me, knowing that a few hours later, I’d hit Goldilocks with even more fury.
27
Nate and Matteo spent the next hours in the hospital hallways, outside the door to my room. With the uniformed police officer that King had placed there, that was three bodyguards dedicated to the protection of little old me. Three meddlers I was going to have to shake.
And that was not to mention the doctor assigned to my case, who categorically refused to discharge me.
Have I ever told you how much I hate when a man tries to stop me from coming and going as I please?
In the end, as I wasn’t accused of anything, I got rid of the doctor by signing discharge papers and the cop by leaving the hospital. My two employees proved a little clingier.
They insisted on accompanying me back to the club, and I graciously accepted. My bike was parked over there, and I needed a shower and food of some kind. I’d spent all day at the hospital, and once I’d gotten rid of the nausea caused by the sedative, I’d rediscovered my ogre’s appetite. The nurse had forbade me from eating anything solid, and my employees were apparently more scared of this nurse’s anger than mine: they’d refused to bring me anything from the cafeteria.
As a result when I’d finally been allowed to leave the hospital, it was after six o’clock, my stomach was growling at me, and I was cranky.
Barb and Gertrude had spent the day holed up in the club: the place shined from top to bottom, the air reeked of Barb’s cigarettes, and Gertrude was now able to recite the cocktail menu, with price, ingredients and possible substitutions for each drink.
Needless to say they were both happy that we were back.
Barb pulled me into a suffocating hug worthy of Nate. “Boss, is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I squeaked, trying to protect my wounded shoulder.
As soon as Barb let me go, Gertrude ran over to take her place. Luckily for me, she settled for taking my hands in hers and shaking them up and down. My shoulder protested, but not as much as if I’d had to suffer through a troll hug.
“We didn’t know what to do,” explained Gertrude, “so we stayed here. We were kinda scared. Can we go home now?”
“Soon,” I promised. “I’m going to deal with this girl, and everything will go back to normal.”
Gertrude nodded. Barb shot me a tired smile before leading the young troll towards the bar to have her recite a cocktail recipe.
I could hear my shower and fridge calling to me and turned towards the exit. Nate and Matteo weren’t having it.
“What are you going to do exactly?” grumbled my grizzly.
“A shower and an omelet,” I said.
“Don’t try to lie to us,” said Matteo. “We heard you. You want to ‘deal with this girl?’ Even though she almost killed you this morning?”
I crossed my arms and sized them up, which was a double mistake on my part. Firstly because the movement reignited the pain in my shoulder and my back, secondly because the two guys were a head taller than me. Sizing up someone from below was a delicate task that should have only been faced after advanced training. So I switched tactics.
“Listen, I’m tired,” I said. “I just found out that my family is dead. I need a shower and a hot meal. We’ll talk about all of this tomorrow.”
Nate’s expression softened. “You shouldn’t have left the hospital,” he said. “Your wounds could still get infected.”
I moved aside the collar of my shirt to reveal the bandage on my shoulder. It wasn’t hard, seeing as the shirt was a triple XL that Nate had given me after the nurses had cut my clothes.
I undid the bandage. A scab had formed, and the edges of the wound were barely red.
“Is that a normal rate of healing for a human?” asked Nate.
Matteo shook his head. “That’s too quick. It’s another effect of this magical sword.”
Nate let out a reprimanding growl. “I don’t like this magical sword business. It can’t be good.”
“As compared to your magical claws?” I retorted. “Admit you’re jealous because your nails don’t catch fire at will.”
Nate grumbled, and Matteo burst out laughing. I took advantage of it to slip between them and reach the exit. In the doorway, I turned around one last time.
“The club is closed until further notice, but I want you to stay here tonight,” I said. “Take the curtains from the back room to use as blankets, and set up the booths to sleep. I’m going to contact the Guild and see about a protection upgrade. The wizards should know how to get rid of this crazy person.”
I went back to my apartment, closed the door behind me, and let out a long sigh.
I had a lot of work ahead of me, but before that, I wanted to rid myself of the smell of the hospital and fill my stomach.
A shower, new bandages, and an omelet later, I picked up my phone.
“Watson,” announced Britannicus in his British accent.
“Hey, it’s Erica. We need to talk.”
The advantage of living in constant paranoia was that you anticipated all sorts of unlikely scenarios. When I’d had the club built, for example, I’d anticipated an attack by human and magical assailants and had protections put in place accordingly. I’d also anticipated the failure of these protections and had created myself a secret exit door. The time had come to use it.
Why would I want to slip out of my own club like a thief in the middle of the night?
Did I really think Nate had bought my story and he’d joined the others in the basement to play poker? Obviously not. I didn’t have to look through one of the three peepholes (one on the door and two on the floor) to know that one story below, my grizzly was standing guard by my bike, determined to stop me from leaving to confront my enemy. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t have to go back through that door to leave my apartment.
In a corner of the loft, a small trap door was hidden behind the TV stand. This trap door was just as reinforced as the door to the apartment, and only my hand print could unlock it—from the inside only.
Once opened, the trap door gave me just enough room to get through. The TV stand hid within it a climbing harness, sixty-five feet of rope, and a grappling hook. The rest was just an issue of precision.
I rappelled down, like a shadow in the middle of the night. A hard tug on the rope activated the winding mechanism, and the harness quietly rose back to its original position. The trap door closed on its own without making a noise.
I readjusted my sword’s sheath under my sweatshirt and listened to the night around me for a few moments. Everything seemed calm, but just to be safe, I conjured a glamour to camouflage myself into the concrete walls of the surrounding buildings. Then I left, on foot, through the streets of Vegas.
Britannicus was waiting for me at the fancy bar where we’d met before.
“I went ahead and ordered us some wine,” he said, sliding a stemmed glass towards me. “That sweater is quite quaint,” he said. “New look?”
“The nurses had to cut my leather jacket.” I ignored the glass and stuck my hand down my bra. I pulled out a stack of bills that I placed on the table. “What do you know about the blonde?”
The wizard pocketed the cash before answering. “There’s a rumor, going back a few years already. They spoke of one of Odin’s maidens who fell for the charms of a mortal. Alas, the man was not pure of heart; the first chance he got, he stole his conquest’s weapon and disappeared without a trace. Furious against his maiden, Odin renounced her, stripping her of most of her powers. Since then, they say she’s been scouring the Earth in search of the man who betrayed her and the weapon that was rightfully hers.”
“And in the end, they lived happily ever after and had lots of kids?”
“And in the end, dear friend, she
found him and viciously murdered him. But not before he revealed to her what had happened to the item.”
“Do I need to pay extra for you to speak plainly?” I asked. “Who’s this blonde and how do I get rid of her?”
“This blonde, my dear, is a Valkyrie. And I have absolutely no idea how to get rid of her.”
28
“Let’s start from the beginning,” I said. “What exactly is a Valkyrie? A Viking priestess?”
“More like a Nordic goddess—Minor compared to Odin and a few others, but from divine origin.”
I let loose a string of curses, and Britannicus acquiesced with intense seriousness.
“Is that why you didn’t intervene when she attacked the club? Not to piss off a goddess?”
“I told you: it’s the policy of the local guild. I can’t go against the institution lightly. If we have a contract, that changes things.”
“Yet, in the end, you’re the one who made the doves appear, right? What changed?”
“Our Valkyrie friend went after a human who knows nothing of the supernatural. That goes against most treaties. As a representative of the Guild, I had to protect the human and the secrets surrounding the existence of magic.
“Hey!” I cried. “I’m human too. No one is protecting me.”
“Really?”
“Really what?”
“Are you really human?” Britannicus asked. “I ask because I saw you wield the Valkyrie’s sword against her, and I find it strange that a sacred weapon would choose a simple human.”
“Because my sword chose me now?”
“It catches fire in response to your emotional state, and from what I’ve seen, it allows you to be faster than a regular human. So, you’re either not human…”
“I’m one hundred percent human,” I said.
“…or your sword chose you…”
“That would mean it has a conscience of its own? Isn’t that a little…odd?”
“Not much stranger than the alternative,” he said.
“Which is?”