Druid Bond

by Brad Magnarella

  “Who?”

  “Blade.”

  “The murder victim?”

  “She came to me in a dream. That happens sometimes.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t just a dream?”

  The truth was, I didn’t. But I’d had prophetic dreams in the past, especially after combining a high volume of casting with a lack of sleep. The first part of the dream—me, Vega, and our daughter in the apartment—felt like a warning now. Everything I stood to lose if I didn’t take Blade’s words seriously.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” I said, more sternly than I meant to. “You need to…” I took a deep breath. “Look, just trust me on this.”

  “What about the power of the interfaith house?”

  “The pendant you’re wearing will absorb it, sure, but the second you leave the house, that power starts to deplete. There’ll be a point where it won’t repel Arnaud. And, frankly, I don’t know what that point is, especially with Arnaud gaining strength. I’m not willing to take that risk with you and…”

  For a second, my mind scrambled irrationally for our baby’s name.

  “It?” Vega finished for me.

  “Yeah, but the baby’s a she.”

  “Do you have intel I don’t?”

  “Just something else you need to trust me on.”

  “Okay…” Vega turned serious again. “I can work remotely this morning, but at some point I’m going to have to go in.”

  “I understand, just give me time. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Casting a spell to track a demon’s name. After that, I want to see if anything’s come back on Arnaud.” When I said his name, it returned to me in an echo, but in someone else’s voice. Another part of last night’s dream?

  “Do you mean your ghosts and ghouls?” Vega asked.

  “Ghosts and golems, but yeah,” I said, the recollected voice fading from my thoughts. “I’ll try to stop in later.” Remembering Carlos’s visit last night, I said, “Hey, have you told anyone about our sweet pea?”

  “Not yet.”

  “No one in your family?”

  “Not yet covers them too.”

  So apparently Carlos had tried to visit me for other reasons.

  “Have you decided when you’re going to tell Tony?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand the urgency.”

  “Well, once he finds out, he’s going to have questions.”

  “You mean about us?”

  That damned pulling-in again.

  “I think you and I should have that conversation first,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  “I think we’re dealing with enough right now. I’d rather wait.”

  “Does this have to do with Tony’s dad?”

  I hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but there it was.

  “What?”

  “I heard what Tony said when I was leaving yesterday, about his dad breaking promises—present tense. I was under the impression he was no longer in your lives.” Though I was trying to sound like a concerned boyfriend, the odd angle in my voice suggested something else.

  “I said he was no longer in my life.”

  I didn’t have a transcript of the conversation that had taken place more than a year ago, but I was pretty sure she’d said our. Instead of forcing that argument, though, I said, “But if he’s in Tony’s life, he’d have to be in both of yours, right?”

  When Vega answered, I could tell her patience was thinning. “He calls on the last Sunday of the month to talk to Tony. Tony,” she repeated for emphasis. “Sometimes the call gets pushed to the next month. That’s what Tony meant by what he said yesterday. I’m not hiding anything from you.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  But there was still the part about him being a felon. She’d never mentioned that.

  “Why just calls?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Why doesn’t he visit?”

  “I’m done talking about him, Everson. You have a spell to cast, and I have work to do.”

  I swore at myself for pressing the issue and at such a terrible time. “I’ll drop in later,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too,” she said, a little warmth returning to her voice.

  I ended the call, then checked my voicemail. Three messages. The first two were from Jordan, brusque inquiries into my progress. The final message was from the youngest of Vega’s brothers, Carlos.

  “Everson,” he said in a formal voice. “I need to talk to you, preferably in person. Call me. My number is—”

  “Sure, buddy,” I muttered, snapping the phone closed.

  Vega was right. I had a spell to cast.

  12

  I pulled down a leather-bound book from my library and placed it on a wire stand in one of three casting circles I’d created, opening the book so exactly half of the pages rested on one side of the stand and half on the other. The book depicted the known planes of existence, its two-page center featuring the largest of the ink-drawn maps. Our Stranger could be hiding in just about any one of them after all.

  Just hope we won’t have to hunt the demon on foreign turf.

  Hunting it on home turf was going to be challenging enough.

  With a steadying breath, I lowered myself into a circle opposite the one that held the book. Between us, joined by casting lines, sat a third, much smaller circle. My magic hummed around the molecule-like arrangement, turning the circles and their various sigils from dull copper to the color of smoldering coals. Leaning toward the smallest circle, I uttered the guttural syllables that formed the Stranger’s true name.

  I felt the syllables hump along the casting lines and gather in the small center circle where they became tendrils of mist. “Seguire,” I whispered. Like an airplane toilet being flushed, the mist dropped from the circle with a sudden whoosh. The pages of the map book fluttered before settling back into place.

  The hunt was on, but it would take time. Time I could use.

  Sealing my circle off from the other two, I turned inward and focused on my four golems. Unlike with our Stranger, I had nothing with which to track Arnaud’s current signature—no true name, no cellular material. Instead, the golems were operating off an image I’d instilled in their creation, a memory of my brief encounter with Arnaud in Container City the week before. I could only hope it was current enough.

  I’d tagged the golems with names I could remember before setting them loose in the city. I found Golem 1, Archie, in the Hudson Heights neighborhood, near the northern end of Manhattan. Other than a few bullet holes, he seemed no worse for the wear. No matches to Arnaud’s image, though.

  “Keep at it,” I told him, steering him south.

  Next, I tuned in to Golem 2. “Well look at you, you little go-getter.” Starting out in Battery Park, Veronica had already made her way up to the Lower East side, the flats I’d crammed her clay feet inside beating a fast rhythm along the sidewalks.

  I left her to her search and aligned my mind with Betty, who I’d put in charge of the west side. I found her pacing up Amsterdam Ave, the enchanted amulet that maintained her animation shifting beneath her blouse. A scan of Golem 3’s memory revealed that she’d gotten into a couple of scrapes with cat-callers—her bruising fists had straightened them right out—but nothing matched to Arnaud.

  Man. I’d known the golems were a long shot, but this sucked eggs. There was still my small network of ghost informants, but I couldn’t consult them before nightfall. And given what I now knew about Arnaud’s scepter, that felt like too long. Forcing my discouragement down, I tuned in to the final golem.

  “C’mon, buddy,” I whispered. “Tell me you’ve got something.”

  With more concentration than it had taken to access the others, I finally found Golem 4. He was sitting on a park bench, legs apart, arms stretched along the back, staring vacantly at a building across the busy street from Central Park. Judging
from the bird droppings across his lap, he’d been there a while.

  Oh, for the love of…

  I tried to access his memory, but it was like wading through sludge. Had the energy in his amulet dropped out? No, I could still feel it pulsing away, feeding the animating magic. So, what in the hell was going on?

  I spoke the words to reboot him.

  “Vivere … pulsare … respirare … levarsi!”

  When he didn’t stir, I shouted his name. “Jughead!”

  A group of pigeons milling around his feet scattered, but the golem’s gaze remained on the building across the street. The animated being was a composite of clay, black ash, grated mandrake root, and two splashes of my own blood. It was the blood ingredient that bonded us, and I concentrated into it now. If I wanted to get him moving and processing again, I’d have to go all the way in.

  The floor beneath me lurched, and I started into a nauseating up-down, round-and-round motion. Seconds later, the journey was complete, and I was sitting on a park bench with bird shit across my thighs. I strained to move, but it was like being in a full-body cast. He had been sitting here a long time. Since last night, at least.

  I finally managed to flex my shoulders and elbows, dry clay spilling from the joints. More clay broke from my knees as I stood. I was stooped over awkwardly, my back at a right angle to my hips. Pedestrians gave me a wide berth as I tottered toward a nearby trash can, braced my blocky hands against the rim, and forced myself up straight. A series of deep cracks sounded. Beneath my clothes, a small avalanche of dry clay cascaded down my back, forming a sizable load in the seat of my pants.

  Oh, that’s gonna look nice.

  I shook as much of the debris from my pant legs as I could, then loosened up the rest of my rudimentary joints, finishing by grinding my neck back and forth. There. Jughead was free to continue his search.

  I withdrew from him partway as a test, enough for his crude mentation to take hold. He plodded back to the bench and sat in the same position.

  Dammit.

  Even the most skilled magic-users ended up with duds in their golem batches—or so I’d read—and it looked like Jughead was mine. I was getting ready to recall the magic from him and have one of the other golems retrieve the amulet and kick his remains into the gutter when a realization struck me. The building he was staring at was the Ludwick, the premier hotel in the Upper East Side, if not the entire city.

  A coincidence?

  I took another wade through Jughead’s memory, looking for—there!

  The night before, he had seen someone leave the hotel. The diminutive figure was bundled in a trench coat, his head hidden by a fedora and scarf, but the way he moved—stooped and furtive—looked a lot like the creature I’d encountered in Container City. Jughead had sent me a signal as instructed, but it was during our pitched battle with the mercreatures. The signal hadn’t penetrated my explosions of magic.

  Jughead watched the figure climb into the backseat of a limo. The golem tried to pursue him in a taxi—I had given each golem several twenties and instructions on hailing and tipping—but the aging driver hadn’t been game for a chase. Having lost his target, Jughead dutifully took up a surveillance position on the park bench. He tried to signal me twice more, but that was after I’d returned home and fallen into a deep sleep.

  Dud? Jughead was a damned prodigy.

  I went back to the start of the memory. The figure stepping through the lights at the front of the hotel was a little taller than Arnaud had been, a little more upright, but that was to be expected. He was gaining strength.

  Which means he’s fed since your last encounter, a voice whispered in my head. He’s killed.

  I blocked out the macabre scene in Blade’s apartment. Instead, I focused on the way the figure moved toward the idling vehicle. Everything was blurry in the golem’s memory, but Jughead had discerned a quality in the figure’s motion that suggested a match. I was inclined to agree. And what was he carrying in his left hand? A cane? No, too short.

  It was a scepter.

  “Stay there,” I told Jughead. “I’m coming to you.”

  He had found Arnaud.

  The golem was sitting in the same spot when I emerged from a cab twenty minutes later, his dull face aimed across the street. Pigeons scattered, several from his body, as I hustled up to the park bench.

  “Has he returned?” I asked.

  Jughead was bundled in Salvation Army attire, complete with a thick scarf and wool hat, so that only the gray skin around his sunken eyes showed. When he shook his head, I sized up the hotel’s fortress-like facade. Arnaud had always appeared his most formidable when looking down on the city from his high redoubt, an expensive glass of scotch in hand. Something told me he hungered for that station again.

  I searched the large windows on the penthouse level, half expecting to find a sallow face staring back at me. But I didn’t. Neither did I experience the electric sensation of being watched by a vampire. That Jughead hadn’t seen him return meant that Arnaud had either slipped in through another entrance or he was still away, maybe even rotating locations to keep people like me guessing.

  Only one way to know whether he’s in or out.

  “Keep watch,” I told Jughead. “Send a signal if he returns.”

  “Yes, master,” he said in a deep, muffled voice through his scarf. I could have done without the “master” part, but the particular spell animating him was an old one, and it hadn’t dated well.

  With the first break in traffic, I dashed across the street and tuned into my ring. Beneath the power of the Brasov Pact, that of the interfaith community registered as a low hum. It had been almost twenty-four hours since my last visit to the safe house, and the ring was running at about three-quarters charge.

  Enough for Arnaud?

  With my dream about a scepter that negated bonds still haunting me, I had considered stopping over in Brooklyn on the way here to recharge the ring. But that was the problem. The safe house wasn’t on the way here, and I didn’t want to risk losing Arnaud’s trail again. Plus, I wanted to keep this from Vega for now.

  Though she maintained a good poker face, she was as afraid for me as I was for her. She would have insisted I have backup, preferably the supernatural variety, but who was there? The Order was in the Harkless Rift, the thought inducing a claustrophobic feeling for reasons that felt just out of reach. Gretchen was literally in faerie land. Mae and the goblin Bree-yark had volunteered their future help, but I had no plans to involve them against a being as powerful and sadistic as Arnaud. That left the Upholders, but I couldn’t call them into this, not yet. The deal was Strangers first. Indeed, Jordan would have a shit fit if he knew I was chasing Arnaud and not hunched over the hunting spell back home.

  That left my lookout man, Jughead.

  A small force of armed guards manned the front of the hotel. They stood in pairs on either side of the doors in body armor, rifles aimed groundward. A fifth guard checked the credentials of those going in. It reminded me a lot of the scene at the old Financial District when the vampires ran the show.

  Another reason to think Arnaud might be staying here.

  I joined the back of the small line and scanned the guards in my wizard’s senses to ensure they were fully human. When my turn came, I handed the guard my official NYPD ID and said, “I’m here on police business.”

  Two years ago I would have feared a rebuff, even rough treatment, but I was more powerful now. With my wizard’s voice massaging his mind, the large guard nodded and returned my ID. I stepped between the two armed guards, entered the hotel’s lobby, and headed to the reception desk. There, I repeated the same ceremony for an enthusiastic man in an expensive suit who introduced himself as Kyle.

  “What sort of business?” he asked.

  “There’s a person of interest staying here, a man. Would have checked in within the last week. He goes by several names, so it’s impossible to know which one he’s registered under. He’s about this tall.�
�� I held a hand to the top of my chest. “He walks quickly but a little stooped over. He left the hotel last night after midnight wearing a trench coat, scarf, and fedora hat. His voice might also stand out, sort of raspy.”

  Kyle had been frowning in concentration as I spoke, and now he shook his head slowly. “No… I can’t say any of our recent guests match that description. Do you know when he checked in?” He watched me expectantly, slender fingers poised over the keyboard of his sleek computer.

  As doubt crept in, I consulted Jughead’s memory again. The slinking figure, the fortress-like hotel, the armed guards, the short staff the figure had been carrying. I felt my magic nodding its head.

  It was him. Had to be.

  “Sir?” Kyle prompted.

  “Are you sure none of your guests match the description?”

  I pushed more power into the question until I felt it butt up against something: a fog of vampiric persuasion. My lips tightened into a bitter smile. As an additional layer of security, Arnaud had ordered the hotel staff to deny his presence.

  Reacting to the collision of influences, the receptionist winced and brought his thumb and middle finger to his temples. Wizard and vampire juju didn’t play well together.

  “No, sir,” he managed.

  I probed deeper. He wasn’t possessed, which was good, but it was going to be hard to purge him of Arnaud’s influence without creating a scene. I slid my gaze to either side. The three other receptionists were occupied at the far end of the long marble desk. The rest of the lobby wasn’t particularly active.

  Fuck it, I thought.

  Lifting my cane above desk level, I indicated the opal at its end. “See this stone?”

  Kyle glanced at it. “Yes?”

  “Take a closer look.”

  He leaned in stiffly. I had considered using my ring on him, but I didn’t want to draw from the reserve of interfaith power. Instead, I whispered a Word. As the opal swelled with holy light, I watched Kyle’s face begin to wrinkle. Before he could draw back, I whispered, “Liberare!”

  The sudden flash collided into the vampiric energy and knocked the man into a backward stumble. I blocked him with an invocation before he could crash into the mirror behind him. Rebounding forward, he steadied himself against the desk. A thin curtain of steam—the vampire essence—rose from Kyle’s parted hair. The other receptionists looked over briefly before resuming their work.