by Kit Jennings
The Baron claimed the pouch with a long fingered hand, brought it to his prominent nose and inhaled with deep satisfaction. “Irish tobacco. Haven’t had the pleasure in some time.” He secreted the gift inside his jacket, stubbing out his cigar. “Suppose you tell the old Baron what brings you to his fair city.”
“A woman.” Their unlikely visitor shot a furtive expression about, swallowing. “A dead woman, to be precise. And it’s going to piss the almighty hell out of a friend of mine when she finds out.”
“And you are?” Liam wanted to know, eyebrow raised.
“Donal. Demon hunter.”
Liam tried not to look skeptical. “You’re a demon hunter.”
Donal cocked his head, rocking his hand to and fro. “Not as such. But my friend’s gotta knack for it, and I help her with the reconnaissance. When she finds this particular demon, she’s going to rip it limb from limb.”
“It’s a big demon.”
“Yes, and it’s killed a member of her family.” Donal turned to the Baron. “She’ll need your permission to enter the city. She’ll be arriving by… Call it ‘unusual transport’.”
The Baron took the request as his due. “Your friend serves a different Loa.”
Donal canted a furtive glance at the avid Liam. “Brighid.”
The Baron nodded magnanimous understanding. Liam was glad someone did. “The Celtic Loa are closer than one would think.” He grinned. “Kissing cousins, if you will. It isn’t unknown for them to have an emissary in our territory.”
Donal breathed a sigh of relief. “So it is allowed?”
“Well,” the Baron drawled, lighting a fresh cigar. “It should certainly make things interesting.”
Callie’s phone rang with the shrill insistence of an emergency broadcast, and then launched into a particularly obnoxious rendition of Parting Glass. Her hand shot out in self-defense, capsizing a perfectly fresh mug of coffee. And so the best part of the morning was wasted.
Swearing, she shook the piping liquid from her hand and made a second grab for her phone. “Donny? Where the hell are you?”
“New Orleans.” Long Irish vowels cracked and popped over the line.
“Where?” She sat up, dislodging the unraveling afghan covering her. “This is no time for women, drink and song.”
“If only.” His voice dipped into undertone murmurs and static. “Listen, there’s someone here you should talk to.”
“So put them on.” Her whole body came alive with adrenaline. Something was seriously wrong. The more Donal knew, the more furtive he got, like a rat hoarding a secret passage to a cheese shop. She was wide awake now, even without precious coffee.
“The city and technology don’t get on very well. We had to drive beyond city limits to get this much connection, and it’s going to go any moment. You really need to be here.
Soonest’s best.”
“Give me half an hour.” She hung up and took her half-empty mug to the kitchenette, bare feet silent on the wood floor. The old-fashioned coil heater still worked, but smelled of burnt bread. She suspected Chase still made grilled cheese sandwiches on it.
She set the mug on the counter, ignoring the residual drips pooling around the base.
“How’s the leg?”
“It’ll do. Better than if you hadn’t made the place a sanctuary.” Chase paused in his diligent attendance of a full pack of bacon turning his cast iron skillet into an oil reservoir. His dirty blond hair was sleep-mussed, Lone-Star Militia T-shirt worn almost beyond legibility. “Where’s he at?”
“New Orleans, of all places.” Her mouth watered. She reached over and snagged a still sizzling strip of bacon straight from the pan with the speed of a striking cobra. She could only get away with it once, but it was worth it.
Chase flipped the remaining bacon with a practiced hand. “You kickin’ his ass again, or does he actually have the scent of something?”
“Both, in all likelihood. Where’re the keys to the van?” She turned to retrieve her duffle, abandoned on the floor by the couch when she’d crashed and burned the night before.
“If we’re goin’ between I’ll do the driving.”
“Not on that leg. You need at least another two days in sanctuary to fully heal.” She unzipped the bag and rooted around in a vain search for fresh clothing.
Chase grunted, halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Not an option. You’re a woman of many and varied talents, Callie—none of which are quite as varied as your driving.”
“Fine. Just hurry.” It was true she was an erratic driver at the best of times, so she didn’t argue. Driving a propelling hunk of metal from Chicago to New Orleans via the valley where space and time came together was a sure-fire route to unmitigated disaster.
It was all a matter of physics.
Chase retrieved a casserole dish from a cupboard and began loading it with eggs and biscuits. “Not without breakfast. Never could abide New Orleans food.”
Callie retreated into the bathroom for a shower, shaking her head. Who in their right mind didn’t enjoy New Orleans cuisine? Gumbo. Oysters. Beignets.
The trick lay in resisting the temptation to ask what the ingredients were in what you were eating. Crescent City cookery tended to be, well, creative. In more ways than one.
2
Liam and Donal stood side by side in an empty intersection outside the city, watching the haze of humidity stretch its lazy reach over the skyline. Old, unmaintained asphalt glittered dully in the mellow moonlight, while the gleam of broken glass spoke to the frequent occupation of transients. A forlorn bit of plastic bumped and scraped its way across the lot. Expectancy filled the air, adding to the already overwhelming humidity.
Donal pushed his spine from a crumbling cement wall, which was covered in a chaotic patchwork of graffiti. “It must be close to time by now. We’ll need a focal point.”
Liam’s eyebrows lifted. “Focal point?”
Donal held out an expectant hand. “Something small will do. I don’t have anything that will work, not here.”
Curious, Liam pulled the ring off his finger and passed it over.
Donal hefted it experimentally. “That should do’er.” He struck out into the empty intersection, gauging by some secret set of criteria only he was privy to. Liam followed.
Donal flung Liam’s ring high into the air. It stuck at its highest apex with a ping, a small earthbound star. Its light expanded and brightened, followed by a deafening roar.
Liam shielded his eyes.
Donal tackled him to the ground as a beat up blue van screamed out of nowhere. It screeched to a halt, back end swinging. It rocked on its axles and gently steamed as the metal cooled. After a moment, the passenger side door creaked open. From his prone position, Liam watched boots land on the pavement.
“You always overshoot it,” a drawling male voice observed, as a matter of interest.
The driver reached through the open window to unlatch the door from the outside.
“It’s not an exact science,” his passenger pointed out, slamming her door.
Liam leveraged himself upright. His left arm throbbed where he’d landed. After a moment spent recapturing his breath, Liam circled the front of the van.
What he saw was Donal being embraced by a woman taller than the mid-sized Irishman, with a mass of wild raspberry and russet hair more or less anchored to the back of her head and a figure appropriate for the ranks of the valkyrie. The skin on Liam’s arms and the back of his neck tingled, something at his core resonating with an eerie sense recognition.
Donal stepped back from the woman, hands on her arms. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we lost a Keeper.”
She stilled. “Tell me it isn’t—
“Eva. I’m so sorry.”
She pulled away, voice shaking. “She was one of the oldest.”
“There’s someone who can help us figure out what happened.” Donal beckoned Liam forward. “This is Liam. Liam, Callie.”
; “Donny says we should talk.” Callie had the eyes of a lioness, tawny hazel and brimming with predatory curiosity.
It was a little off-putting, those eyes, but in a way that turned his insides to warm honey. The feeling of recognition increased, déjà vu coming to fruition.
Liam cleared his throat and proffered his hand. “I’m sorry about Eva. She was a colleague, of sorts.”
When he slid his hand into hers, a strange thing happened. His throbbing arm turned to wildfire, exquisite hot pain raging from hand to shoulder. In that moment, he would have gladly cut it off.
He hit the ground. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He could only hurt.
Solid weight landed next to him. He shied away from the warm hand reaching for his neck.
“Settle down, darlin’.” Callie pressed her palm against his jugular, and some of the pain dissipated. He sucked in a lung full of precious air…and immediately started coughing.
She ripped apart the buttons on his tailored shirt, damaging it beyond repair. Her spicy sweet scent of ginger tempered by clean wind and rain washed over him. “He’s Marked.” Her eyes flickered up to meet his, the corner of her mouth quirking upward in bemusement. “Well, well.”
“Marked?” Donal cocked his head at Liam, thoroughly unfazed by his new contact’s current predicament.
“It seems so, though these are unlike any Marks I’ve ever seen.” She laid her hand over the geometric maze pattern on his chest, partially covered by his undershirt. “Now.
Look at me with those gorgeous dark eyes of yours and breathe with me.”
He felt as though his heart were beating for the first time, his lungs filling with precious, sweet air. The pain crawled away. As it did, Liam sunk by inches into a deep well. His last conscious sight was her moonlit face and glittering eyes, framed by wild hair.
He awakened to the sounds of soft discussion and the soothing touch of cool air across his face. Muted lamp light turned the ceiling a mellow gold before bleeding into shadow, concealing the damage done by water and fire over the centuries. He’d never had it painted over or repaired—he regarded those stains as badges of honor, marks of a city’s survival.
All things considered, coming to prone on an antique fainting couch with his bare feet overhanging the edge by a good six inches rather ruined the mood.
“Welcome back.” Callie perched on the edge of the couch, cradling her ample curves in the plush cushion. She folded her hands in her lap, waiting.
Liam carefully pushed himself up and back so his feet no longer dangled. “How long was I out?”
“Not long. Here, this will set you right.” She handed him a glass of whiskey, amber liquid the exact color of her eyes. Warm spiciness overtook the distant rank smell of the river drifting through the open window. “Do you often faint at a woman’s touch, or is it just me?”
He took the heavy glass from her, careful not to touch her fingertips. “Just you,” he said without thinking, and immediately wanted to sear the tongue from his mouth at her Jack O’Lantern grin. “I mean, no.” He drank deep.
“Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.” She wriggled her fingers at him, lioness eyes glittering. “I’ve cast my enchantments over you.”
He almost choked. “What?”
Her laugh was like mulled wine, going right to his blood. “Really, it’s all right now.
See?” She pressed her index finger to the middle of his forehead and pushed him back as he struggled to get up. “Now hush and have your whiskey.” She removed her lovely posterior from his sofa and went to the massive oak table dominating the center of his second story study.
He could see Callie and her crew had wasted no time making themselves at home, up to and including serving him his own liquor. The table was strewn with maps and notes, the paraphernalia of intense research, not to mention what appeared to be an impromptu breakfast involving his good china.
Part of him wanted them out, out, out as their presence threatened to upset the peace of his sanctuary.
But then there was Callie, who’d somehow known. His Marks had reacted to her as though she were Loa.
“Speaking of enchantments.” He managed to get his bare feet to the floor this time.
“How did you get me in here?”
“We brought you in Chase’s van and carried you in when we got here,” Callie answered absently as she turned her attention to her friends’ activities. “Donal got us through the door.”
Liam believed her. Donal was the small one of the lot. The other one—Chase, he assumed—bore himself like a high school football star turned dedicated soldier and Callie strode about like a valkyrie without the wingspan, all height and muscular curves with a certain wild, windblown aura about her. He patted his pockets. “I still have my keys.”
“Who needs keys?” Donal smirked, but didn’t look up from the map he was examining. “Try this, Callie.” He leaned across the table to hand her a small black rock dangling from a silver chain. Liam’s ring clinked against the rock.
No need to ask which of them wasn’t human. At least one of them couldn’t be, to get past the Loa’s wards on his home. Besides, he could detect a certain something surrounding Callie’s smooth movements and autumnal spice.
Callie shifted the large map toward her, pulling it around like a tablecloth so it overlapped the edge of the table. She braced her right hand on its surface and stretched her long torso across, the strange pendulum dangling from the fingers of her left. Chase and Donal watched with silent intent, eyes riveted to the innocuous little pendant. Liam joined them, the drink in his hand forgotten.
For a seeming eternity they waited, focused like a pack of cats upon a swaying curtain chord. Callie ignored them. Her eyes drifted closed, head cocked in deep concentration.
Finally, she pushed herself upright, shaking her head. “Nothing. Either it’s not working or it’s not time yet.” She turned the little rock between her fingers.
“And Eva?” Donal asked quietly, without hope. Chase merely waited, keeping his silence behind his clenched jaw.
“Gone. That I felt.” Now she clenched the pendulum until her knuckles turned white.
For a worrisome moment, Liam feared for his windows. “What the hell is going on?” she snarled.
Chase slammed his fist on the table. Even in the heat of his fury, the antique monstrosity barely rattled. “Donal said you can help,” he demanded of Liam. “How?”
Callie shot her partner a quelling look. “What he means is we’re not familiar with the protocol here. A pissed off Loa is not a helpful one, I’m thinking.”
“The Baron said it wasn’t him who sent me that dream. He also said the first order of business would be to find out who did.” Liam finished his drink and set his empty glass on a nearby hutch, ice tinkling. He opened one of the doors and extracted a fresh bottle of spiced rum. “This should do it.”
The lower Ninth Ward had flooded a seventh and final time in the Christmas Day floods of 2015, which lasted—not at all ironically—forty days and forty nights. Now its streets were an unfettered maze of fetid canals stretching between the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchatrain.
The water taxi trundled past a homemade sign that read “Steamboat Alley” in the oily glow of the boat’s swinging lantern. What houses were left hunkered strangely moored in the black waters of the mighty Mississippi to the brim their second story balconies, like floating hats.
Callie leaned back against the side of the boat, hands in the pockets of her black leather jacket. The jacket matched her knee-high boots, but made an incongruous pairing with her halter dress, patterned with bright florals. Her hair was, of course, a complete mess.
Liam’s dark eyes were black in the night. His open, intent curiosity sizzled over her skin. He didn’t look away, and neither did she.
“This person we’re going to see,” Chase spoke up. “She can tell us what killed Eva?”
“Voudon priestess, and doubtful,” Liam answered.
&nb
sp; “So what’s the point?”
Callie quelled him with an arched eyebrow. “What’s the plan?” she asked Liam.
“Sulie can contact other Loa, ones who can open the path to knowledge. When the Baron tells you to consult a Hoodoo, you consult a Hoodoo.” Liam shrugged and smiled.
“If we’re lucky, we might even get dinner.”
Chase snorted.
Liam ignored him, focusing on Callie. “How did you know about my Marks?”
“Because I’m Marked too.” She peeled her jacket from her arm, showing him her bare shoulder blade. A tree of life grew from a flame-shaped knot work pattern, bound in more knot work. The whole thing encompassed the size of a badge. “I woke up with it when I became a Keeper.”
“Keeper?”
Donal took over again. “A thousand or so years ago, Brighid—in her incarnation as Saint Brigit—had a small chapel where a fire was lit, and stayed lit, pretty much uninterrupted through the centuries.”
“I know. I’ve been there.”
“Ah. Right. So, back then there were nineteen protectors who took turns tending the Flame. No one with evil or harmful intent could ever cross its boundaries. It was a sanctuary.”
Callie pulled her sleeve back up. “Keepers of the Flame.”
“And you kill demons?”
“Among other things. But mainly we fight.” Her hands went back into her pockets, and she stretched her long legs, crossing her ankles with a casualness she didn’t feel.
“The apocalypse is coming, and soon. And while the forces of good and evil duke it out, someone has to look after humanity.”
“That’s you.”
She nodded. “Nineteen Keepers, leading fifty-four contingents in the biggest battle of them all, for the highest possible stakes.” She gave him another of her patented lion-contemplating-lunch looks. “Of course, that doesn’t explain how you got Marked.”
Liam shrugged. “Like you, I woke up with them. In the middle of a cemetery, of all places. They’re my link to the Loa.”