They were still a few hundred yards down the road from the imaginatively named West Harbor Motel, but there was no doubt that it was the right place.
Five or six short, stout forms milled around out front, and it looked like there were a few more at the side, as well. There were no regular cars in the lot. Instead, three large trucks and vans were parked there.
From what he could recall, the shorter dwarves had trouble operating human vehicles. As a result, they preferred to travel in groups with the taller, longer-legged ones playing bus driver.
A few construction signs and barricades were posted around—fakes, he guessed—to discourage too much traffic from creeping past.
“Keep going,” he instructed Conrad, “and keep your heads down. Don’t make eye contact with them.”
“Yes, sir,” the werewolf replied, “I know. I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“Right, of course you have. Now, turn left up here.”
The deviation away from the motel saved them from getting close enough for the dwarves to examine them. Once they were confident that they weren’t being followed, Conrad found a parking space a good half-mile from the water in a generic commercial area where they would not attract attention.
Remy got out first. “Okay, usual drill. Riley, magic the car so it’s protected while we’re away and do the same for us when we get close to the motel, only make us…uh, less noisy. You can do that, right?”
“Yes,” the fairy confirmed, “more or less. But don’t do anything too loud.”
The men nodded and both set off toward the motel and the harbor beyond. She floated over their heads all the while.
Halfway there, she initiated the spell when no one was too close and seemed to encase them in a bubble of silvery light, which then faded and gave the sounds around them a faintly muffled quality.
A low concrete wall, perhaps three feet high, and a line of trees partially blocked the motel from the sight of the rest of the city unless a motorist came right up to it, as they had a few minutes before. Ducking low, they scampered forward and hid at the wall’s base.
Riley followed, now between them at about knee height.
“Okay,” said Remy, “we spend a short while waiting, watching, and listening. See, Conrad? Merely stealth and reconnaissance. Nothing too crazy.”
“That sounds excellent, sir.” The werewolf didn’t seem entirely confident that this would be a nonviolent operation, though, since he unbuttoned the top half of his coat and rolled his sleeves away from his wrists.
Over the next ten minutes, they counted at least twenty dwarves. A few came in and out of the front office as well as some of the individual rooms in addition to those already gathered outside.
Remy couldn’t hear much, but Conrad whispered to him that they mostly simply talked about beer. Interspersed with this, though, were comments that were more useful. A few mentioned how someone named Wurdegast obviously screwed up. They sounded grim on the subject. Others asked in complaining tones when “he” would address them.
“Interesting,” the investigator whispered. “I say we creep closer and try to look in through the windows or maybe see what’s around the back.”
His bodyguard frowned. “That will be dangerous.”
“Everything is dangerous,” he pointed out. “Do you know how many traffic fatalities there are in this city per year? I don’t, but it’s probably a considerable number. Riley, create a distraction. Nothing too dramatic, merely something that will draw most of them that way—to the right—for a minute or two.”
“Okay,” the fairy agreed. “Right now?”
“In a minute.” He turned to the lycanthrope. “Conrad, when the dwarves rush to investigate, we haul ass to the left and get between the sign and the tree over there along the side of the building.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nodding, he gave Riley the go-ahead. She began to move her arms to cast the spell and it occurred to him that maybe he should have been more specific, rather than leave the nature of the distraction up to her own judgment.
Marching footsteps off to the right was accompanied by the swelling music of a full brass band that played a rousing tune he vaguely recalled from his school days. Somewhere within the din was the unmistakable sound of someone blowing a kazoo.
He gawked at the fairy.
“I like parades,” she stated and smiled.
“Okay,” he responded, a little bemused. “Whatever.”
The dwarves snapped to attention and most of them hurried away in the direction of the racket as they looked around and conferred with each other.
“Who forgot to check Google Maps?” One of them grunted. “They usually say when there’s going to be a fucking parade.”
To Remy’s annoyance, Conrad was the one who gestured for them to move out about a second before he could himself. Nonetheless, he followed the werewolf and moved as fast as he could while keeping low to the ground. A few dwarves had remained out front, but they weren’t looking in their direction.
The trio ducked behind the sign and a large pine tree loomed behind them. From there, they had a better view through a side window from which the curtains had been removed and could almost see into the back lot.
On the other side of the motel, the phantom sounds dwindled and faded as though the parade had come close but turned a corner and moved away from them. Muttering, irritated dwarves returned slowly to their posts.
The investigator peered through the window. Another five or six occupants in that room alone added to an already significant total.
“Sir,” said Conrad, “between the visual scan, the sounds and smells I pick up, and an estimate of the motel’s occupancy, I would estimate there is a bare minimum of forty dwarves here. Maybe more like fifty or sixty.”
He groaned. “Sadly, I think you’re right.”
The cartel must have rented the place the normal, legal way and used one of their magical sleep scrolls to knock the staff out and thereby ensure total privacy for their gathering. Or perhaps they owned the place, to begin with, and had closed it to the general public for the day.
More importantly, if the cartel was this large and powerful, he wondered if even Taylor could fight them all. Their prospects against these pricks and Moswen at the same time did not seem good.
Remy glanced at both his companions. “All right, let’s sneak around back. It seems like there’s someone there.”
“Yes,” Conrad confirmed, “there is a conversation between at least two, although I haven’t been able to make out the words due to interference.”
Another distraction would be suspicious so they simply waited for a lapse in the nearby dwarves’ attention before they darted to a lamppost whose base was surrounded by bushes. Fortunately, there was no snow on the ground to crunch underfoot since most had been plowed or shoveled and the temperature had risen to a few degrees above freezing besides.
They reached the post at the same time that a general chatter went up amongst the dwarves, whose boots suddenly pounded the earth.
“Shit!” Remy cursed and almost winded himself as he dove behind a bush. He noticed the tension in Conrad as well.
The dwarves did not run toward them, however. Instead, they all converged on the back lot itself, having apparently been summoned by a verbal message passed through their ranks.
Remy peeked through an opening in the shrub and shook his head in disbelief.
In the center of the lot stood a hulking figure so large that he at first doubted it was even a dwarf. A fine charcoal-hued suit covered the broad, ungainly form and a huge black carrying-case rested at his feet.
Aside from the height, though, he could be nothing else but a dwarf. The stocky build and heavy facial features, not to mention the salt-and-pepper hair and beard, were dead giveaways.
His huge hands were wrapped around the throat of none other than the blond home invader Remy had seen last night.
“You fool!” the massive dwarf raged, hi
s voice thunderous. The corded muscles in his arms stood out as he squeezed. “One drunken human wastrel and he spilled your blood. How dare you even show your face here again? At least your comrade took the honorable way out. Coward.”
All the other dwarves present, save a few cursory sentries out front, had gathered in a ring to watch the execution. With horror, they watched as the would-be assassin’s face turned an ugly purple and his eyes bulged. Meanwhile, the apparent leader towered over him and all the others.
“You had your chance, Wurdegast. Runt. Imbecile!” The giant’s whole body trembled and finally, something crunched within his victim’s neck. He spat blood and his injured leg, already buckling, went limp. The leader released him and his corpse sagged into a heap.
Remy tried not to cringe at the bestial wrath on the enormous face. The guy was pissed. As he retracted his hands, the pale winter sunlight reflected on four colorful rings arrayed on his fingers.
“The rest of you,” he boomed, “listen closely. I need not remind you that failure of this magnitude”—he gestured at the late Wurdegast—“will not be tolerated. Therefore, focus on your responsibilities. We have most of our shipment. It must be prepared for distribution and nothing must interfere.”
It occurred to the investigator that Surrly was nowhere to be seen. And somehow, he suspected that this man’s authority trumped the lender’s anyway.
“Back to work, all of you,” he commanded. “I must place a call to our benefactors.”
With nods and grunts, the dwarves dispersed. A couple shot nervous glances at their dead comrade, but Remy suspected that most simply reassured themselves that they were not so incompetent as to share his fate.
The two watchers ducked low again and tried not to even breathe as a couple of dwarves passed the bushes. Thankfully, they kept walking, speaking in their own language now, and moved on.
When it was clear, Remy looked through the gap in the bushes again. The towering, well-dressed boss had taken a cell phone out and reclined in a large, steel-reinforced beach chair.
He pointed at the dwarf. “We need to get closer. I want to know what he’s talking about.”
“I can hear him,” Conrad whispered sharply and made a chopping motion with his hand to indicate that he ought to shut up.
Bristling, he said no more. He was willing to make some sacrifices for the sake of the objective, after all, although he didn’t like it.
Relative silence set in. The dwarf spoke in a much lower tone now, although Remy could still make out a few words—“Europe” and “profits,” notably. Still, he waited, itching with impatience, for his bodyguard’s report.
After two or three minutes, the leader ended the call and slipped his phone into his pocket. He relaxed in the chair to soak up the minimal rays. Cold obviously didn’t bother him much.
Conrad turned to the investigator. “Bad news, sir. He was talking to…” He seemed almost nervous for a second. “To someone from the Vampiric Order in Europe. That means this is serious business. He assured them that even with the recent losses—probably the drugs you pushed into the river—they could expect record profits now that they were expanding their customer base to include humans.”
Riley looked surprised, to the point that she might even have forgotten about her nascent modeling career.
“And,” the lycanthrope added, “he seems to have referred to himself as ‘Grayhammer.’ I believe I’ve heard the name. It’s an old, powerful dwarven family.”
Remy rubbed his chin and weighed the new information.
“So,” he remarked, “this whole drug operation goes beyond the cartel. However, I don’t think the cartel goes beyond that guy.” He pointed a thumb at the colossus in the chair.
Conrad nodded. “I’ll agree with that.”
Encouraged, he continued. “He’s clearly the one who makes the big decisions and keeps the others in line, probably through fear. Without him around, they might collapse into infighting, at which point, Taylor could divide and conquer them into oblivion.”
The fairy was silent and the werewolf narrowed his eyes. “Sir, what are you proposing?”
“That we should probably kill him,” he responded cheerfully. “Now, I mean. While he’s alone.”
The other man looked at something beyond the clouds. “Ah…I would advise against that. To begin with, he’s enormous.”
Remy shrugged. “Yeah, he’s big, okay. By the standards of their physiognomy, he is practically a giant. But still, it’s only one dwarf. One. Conrad”—he extended a finger—“I’ve seen you fight three or four of the bastards at once and end up without even a scratch. We faced that entire shipping container a couple of nights ago, and…” He sighed. “Admittedly, you essentially handled those two last night all by yourself.”
Conrad’s eyes grew a bit distant and he seemed to be thinking it over.
“I can handle a few of them, yes,” he conceded, “although, in fact, I did take several wounds. I simply regenerated them fairly quickly. Massive trauma can kill us even without silver being involved, but mild to moderately severe injuries are generally survivable.”
The investigator waved his hand in a circle. “Yes, right. Survival is the goal.” He turned to the fairy.
“Riley, point number two,” he went on and added a second outstretched finger to the first. “You have magic. Considerable magic, in fact. I’ve seen you deflect bullets, put men to sleep with a wave of your hand, absorb most of the impact of car crashes, make large objects invisible, and probably a couple of other things I can’t remember offhand. That all counts significantly, trust me. It’s…uh, the other reason I keep you around besides, you know, that I like you.”
“Aww,” the fairy chirped and her face brightened, “thank you.”
“And finally,” he concluded and extended finger number three, “I have, in fact, worked hard at my martial arts training, even if I had to miss a class this week due to the investigation.”
Noticing Conrad’s vague look of disapproval, he immediately followed his third point with a sub-point.
“Last night doesn’t count, by the way, because I was impaired. Today, I’m sober again, which always helps with the whole ‘being good at things’ thing. I totally know what I’m doing now that my reflexes are working the way they’re supposed to.”
A look of resignation settled over his bodyguard’s overly handsome, goateed face.
“You do make several valid points, sir. But if we can’t eliminate him right away, there’s an excellent chance that the other dwarves will hear the racket and converge on us. We can’t fight four dozen of them at once. Perhaps if we were up in a tower with a heavy machine gun and a couple of rocket-propelled grenades, but we don’t have any of those things, not to mention using them would attract police attention very quickly.”
Remy nodded impatiently. “Yes, I know. It’s not like I plan to walk up to the bastard with you guys as my ‘posse’ and make a succession of weird circular arm motions while I insult his mother’s sexual proclivities for five minutes before we fight. Quite simply, we’ll assassinate this fucker.”
Saying that, part of him liked how kickass it sounded. At the same time, another part recalled his past experiences with lethal violence and the nightmares it had given him. What he proposed was ruthless as well as dangerous.
But then again, the cartel had already tried to murder them.
Conrad closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “So be it…sir.”
Chapter Seventeen
West Harbor Motel, West Harbor, New York
Remy crouched behind an empty crate the dwarves had left near the perimeter of the back lot. He glanced up first and then to his left.
Above him, Riley had camouflaged herself against the clouds and was now perched in a tree almost directly above the cartel leader’s head. It would be easy to rain sleep or paralysis spells on him.
To his left, Conrad had snuck around to the edge of the harbor itself and began to strip his clothes of
f in preparation to enter wolf-mode. A quick sprint would bring him within killing distance of the dwarf from behind.
Remington hesitated a moment. Grayhammer gave no indication that he’d noticed them, but even in relaxation, there was a kind of savage alertness to him that was not encouraging.
He also had no idea what was in the massive black case next to the beach chair.
One dwarf, he reminded himself. Only one. Riley and Conrad will have him out of the game in a matter of seconds. I simply have to distract him for a heartbeat or two.
The boss’s eyes began to drift half-closed. He adjusted his position in the chair and a shaft of light glinted across the rings on his hand. All four were made of gold and each was set with a different type of stone—amber, opal, pearl, and jade, from the looks of it. The preternatural drug business must have been highly lucrative.
And now, it seemed, the dwarf paid no attention to his surroundings at all.
Remy raised a thumbs-up toward Riley. He darted out from behind the crate.
“Whoops!” he said loudly enough to be obvious to anyone in the back lot but hopefully not loud enough for the dwarves out front to hear. “I seem to be lost.”
To his shock, the dwarf—whose size made him look like he’d be slow—had somehow already sprung to his feet and now stood half-crouched in a battle stance. His dark eyes blazed.
“Who—”
Riley cast the spells.
One after the other, two waves of magic surged from her elevated position. The first encased the back lot in another soundproof cocoon. The second targeted Grayhammer himself.
The huge dwarf looked up as a shaft of silver light struck him like a moonbeam falling from a suddenly cloudless night sky. He growled but almost immediately, his face broke into a hideous smile.
What the hell?
On the plus side, Conrad had shapeshifted and was already halfway across the beach.
The four rings on Grayhammer’s hand flared with different colors of light and for a moment, it seemed the blazing glow of them struggled against the silvery emanations cast by the fairy. All the lights winked out at once, although the stones in the rings continued to pulsate.
A Girl’s Best Friend (Moonlight Detective Agency Book 3) Page 17