by Tricia Owens
"He killed them," I said when Vale finally looked up. "Dearborn murdered them because I went to them."
"You don't know that, Moody. He was already aware that they'd plotted against him once before. Maybe this was revenge for sending Jeremiah."
"Or punishment for trying to send me."
I wrapped my arms around myself. I was freezing. How could I be freezing in Vegas in July?
Vale approached me slowly, as if sensing that I was on edge. When he wrapped his arms around me I resisted at first. I didn't deserve this comfort either. I didn't deserve him. But he said, "Stop it," in a firm and gentle way, and wouldn't let me pull away.
So I collapsed against him, and to my relief he didn't fall beneath the weight of my sins.
He cupped the back of my head. "It'll be alright."
"I could have saved them."
He groaned. "Moody, what are you talking about?"
I had to shut my eyes as I admitted the horrible truth. "Celestina asked me if I wanted to see the future, in case there was something I could do to keep everyone safe...I told her no." My face blazed, not with embarrassment but with shame. My eyes stung as if burned with acid. "I was a coward. I was afraid of what I might learn and what I'd be required to do. Vale, I let Zach and Rob die!"
"No, you did not," Vale ground out, his arms tightening around me momentarily as if he couldn't help himself. "You were right to turn Celestina down. Knowing the future won't make it better, only more unpredictable."
"I could have done something—"
"And you might have done the wrong thing," he cut in. "Any decision you made would have been a gamble. You could have set events in motion that would have saved Rob and Zach but killed the rest of us, or yourself. Tampering with Fate is a bad bet, Moody. I will never, ever condone it. You did the right thing by saying no, and if anyone argues that then you can send them to me."
The band of pressure squeezing my heart eased just a notch.
"The only person responsible for this is Dearborn, if it is indeed his work."
"It is," I said dully against his chest. "He's evil."
It wasn't a throwaway line from someone who was angry. I said it from a place of knowledge. Vale must have caught something from my tone for he began to rub slow circles against my back with his palms. His chin rested on the top of my head as he murmured, "Tell me what you know of evil, Moody."
Only one other person knew the story, and it wasn't Uncle James. I hadn't wanted to tell him. He'd instilled in me since I was young that using my magick wasn't supposed to be the second or even third option. It was supposed to be an action used only to preserve my life. Had he learned the truth about all that I'd done since he told me that, he would have been deeply disappointed with me. No...devastated.
"In my junior year of high school my class went on a field trip to Utah," I began reluctantly. "It was to see the annual Shakespeare Festival in St. George. I wasn't a big fan of Shakespeare, but I was looking forward to the trip itself since we were scheduled to stop at a ghost town just over the border. At a place called Agatha."
"A mining town?"
"A failed one. The mine went dry after a year. After that, Agatha was only populated because of its two largest buildings: a saloon and a brothel."
I felt Vale smile against my hair. "I'm sure Utah appreciates that legacy."
"I'm pretty sure those bastions of 'offensiveness' have since been bulldozed into the ground."
"What happened while you were at this ghost town?"
I took a deep breath as I sank into the memory. "Both the saloon and the brothel were alleged to be haunted. That's all I cared about, not that the place was still awesomely preserved, which it was at the time. I'd read that the brothel was the site of something truly awful. The brothel owner had chained one of the prostitutes, a fourteen year-old girl named Angelique, in one of the rooms and left her there without food or water. No one came looking for her. She died like that, chained alone in that room. It was her ghost that reportedly lingered in the brothel over a century later."
I swallowed, feeling again what I'd felt that day as I'd explored the dusty hallways of the dimly-lit brothel. "Can you imagine dying that way? It had to have been from dehydration, which meant she'd suffered. It had taken time. Knowing that really bothered me, and I got it into my head that maybe I would be able to make contact with her ghost and somehow, I don't know, make her feel better. I had this idea that I could be some kind of spiritualist and free her."
"Because you're a good person, Moody."
I pretended that I hadn't heard.
"I slipped away from my friends and the chaperones and crept downstairs into the basement. I'd read from a blog that it was supposed to be the heart of the brothel. It turned out to be a black heart. I found sigils, candles, words in blood written on the wall...The reason the brothel owner had done what he had to Angelique was because he'd become unhinged. Twisted. He'd been dabbling in black magick and performing rituals for demons beneath the brothel. He'd summoned Liliana."
Vale lifted his head in surprise. "The succubus from the strip club?"
"The same. It would have been okay had it only been her. But she wasn't alone." I buried my face against Vale's chest, trying to shield myself from the memory. "There was something trapped down there with her that the brothel owner had summoned. He had to have done it by mistake. It was something from the deep, something so terrible that it tortured even demons."
Vale rested his palm on the back of my head. "Was it torturing her?"
"Every hour it flayed all of the skin from her body with a whip made of fire, leaving her completely bloody. She can't die, Vale. Her skin would regenerate and then it would happen all over again. Every day since the mid-1800s. Her screams were what led me to them."
"I'm sorry you found that."
I just nodded. My mouth was as dry as Death Valley.
I would never tell anyone what else I glimpsed in that basement, or what I heard. It wasn't that I was trying to protect Liliana's dignity. She was a demon; she didn't have any. I was trying to protect my sanity. To recall what I'd seen was to look into the abyss, and the more often I did that, the closer I came to falling into it forever.
"I'd never used Lucky for anything major before then," I told Vale. "Uncle James had taught me not to because of the Oddsmakers. They didn't rule over the town of Agatha, however, because it was in Utah. But even if they had, that wouldn't have mattered to me at that point. I was so sickened..." I released a long, quivery breath of tension. "I blasted everything with fire. I attacked that thing with every ounce of my being. For at least an entire minute, Vale, I was a dragon. Nothing human remained in me. Nothing."
I felt my pulse racing beneath my skin at the memory. "The only reason I came back to myself was because of Liliana, though she doesn't know what she did for me that day. She pulled me out of my form, just like she did it to you, so she could thank me for saving her. To this day, she still acts like she owes me. But the truth is, if she hadn't done that...I'd be a dragon right now, imprisoned by the Oddsmakers. The Anne Moody you know would be dead."
"You would have found yourself again, Moody. I know you would."
His confidence in me was unfounded. He hadn't been there to see how I'd completely lost it. He hadn't seen the side of me that gave up when it realized it was too weak.
I pulled out of his embrace. I placed my hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat beneath my palm. It was steady, solid. He wasn't disgusted by me, but that was only because he hadn't seen me that day.
"I promised myself that if a human became warped by dark magick then I would stop them from becoming another brothel owner. I would stop there from being another Angelique. Another Liliana. That doesn't mean I'm not terrified. Vagasso scares the crap out of me. Dearborn is no different. And—I'm just as afraid of losing myself again. But it doesn't matter. Dearborn surrendered his human membership card by murdering my friends. That means he's fair game and he needs to be taken down."<
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Vale nodded, as somber as the grave. "Then we're doing more than retrieving the necromancy artifact."
"That's right," I said, holding his gaze, "we're putting an end to him."
Vale didn't flinch before my dragon. "I'll help you do it."
My knees shook. There was so much I wanted to say to him. But I settled with, "Thank you," and I could see from his face that it was enough.
~~~~~
During my research, I had failed to determine if Dearborn ever left his condo in the North Nirvana Tower. These days you could have Vons deliver all your food to you and Amazon delivered the rest. Dearborn didn't have a car registered to him and he had no other relatives in town. I assumed that if he'd ever dated, he'd probably sacrificed the poor women during the creation of a curse. He seemed like that kind of guy.
Ambushing him looked to be out of the question. We'd have to pry him out of his spider hole. But I didn't like it. Not at all. I might not be Napoleon, but I knew better than to head directly into the fortress of the enemy.
"So we lure him out," Vale said as he studied a map of Las Vegas on my computer.
"Or simply call him out. If I sound like I'm mad with grief and want a confrontation that may appeal to the bully in him. He'll come running, figuring I’m too distraught to be much of a threat."
"But if he's smart, he'll remain where he is," Vale pointed out. "He knows that eventually you'll break and go to him. He has what you want."
"He sure does," I sighed. I ran a hand over my face and then nudged him with my shoulder to make him move over. I looked over the map. "The only way I think we can pry him out is if we make him feel safe. That means nowhere with people. A place in the open, so he can see that no one is waiting to jump on him."
"The desert, naturally." Vale turned from the map to face me. "Being out in the open means you'll both be vulnerable with no place to take cover."
"I won't be vulnerable. I'll have Lucky. And you."
"What will Dearborn have?"
Good question. An army of golems? Doubtful. I didn't see how he would be able to transport them out there without drawing some kind of notice. A pickup truck full of mud guys would be pretty obvious.
"Doesn't matter what he has," I declared firmly and with a fool's confidence. "We have to take him down, so we'll do it in the desert. Then afterward, we'll raid his condo and hope that his defenses have died along with him."
I could see that Vale thought the plan was pretty much us flying by the seat of our pants and he was right. But I didn't care. It was time I saw Dearborn in the flesh no matter what the circumstances had to be to make it possible.
"How do you think I should contact him?" I asked Vale. "Let it leak out in the community that I’m pissed and I want to face him? Put it on Facebook?"
He gave me a look that said he wasn't amused.
"Hell," I blurted. "I'll just call him. I've got his number."
I dialed the number on his LinkedIn profile. That right there told me he was evil.
The phone rang twice while Vale stared holes through me before someone picked up. I sucked in my breath, suddenly nervous the way I hadn't been since first seeing Vagasso at Christian's house.
"Hello, Anne."
His voice was unexpectedly high, and it nearly made me giggle nervously. I quickly clamped down on that urge. Dearborn was no laughing matter.
"Professor Dearborn," I said evenly. "Do you know why I'm calling?"
"You'd like to yell at me? Accuse me of terrible things?"
"I'm calling to tell you that I'd like to kill you. Preferably some time tonight."
Vale rolled his eyes.
Dearborn breathed heavily on the other end of the line. Either he was fat and had just climbed stairs to answer the phone or he had his hand down his pants.
"Anne, are you asking me out on a date?"
I was so wigged out I actually moved the phone away from my ear and stared at it like it had turned into a starfish. Vale growled impatiently. I put up a hand to quiet him, which I'd probably hear about later. Assuming there was a later.
"Sure, creepazoid," I said into the phone. "If that's what you want to call it. I'll even bring roses. I'll be wearing my ass-kicking boots, just FYI. So don't wear plaid or we'll clash."
Dearborn was turning into a full-fledge asthmatic on the line. "You have no idea how badly I'm looking forward to seeing you, Anne." The way he said my name made me feel like he'd just licked the palm of my hand. "I've been dreaming of you."
Gross.
"You don't even know me," I said, "so why the crush?"
"Because you're special. Oh, so special."
Rubbing my face against a guy's sweaty, hairy back wouldn't have made me shudder any harder with revulsion. "Sounds like you've got an obsession, Dearborn. Care to tell me why?"
Vale, visibly agitated, began to pace. I watched him. Mostly I watched how the denim of his jeans pulled taut over his—
"I don't want to spoil the surprise, Anne. I'll tell you everything when we meet. Will it be just you? Or will you bring friends who will need to be blown up like I blew up the Magnificent Rob and his leprechaun boytoy?"
It took all of my willpower not to chuck my phone through the front window of my shop.
"So you admit it," I gritted out. Vale stopped pacing, his expression turning dark.
"I take credit for it. There's a difference."
My fingers tightened around the phone. "And my parents?"
"Your parents... Iris..." I hated Dearborn's wistful sigh. It was the sigh of a jilted lover. "We should talk about her. But not over the phone. This is far too personal. I need to see your face."
To gloat over my reaction to hearing how he'd killed her and my dad, no doubt. Dearborn made me sick.
"You'll see my face soon enough," I promised. "It'll be the last thing you see, as a matter of fact."
"And you'll come all by your lonesome?"
"Just me," I said softly, though what I was feeling in that moment could have decapitated someone. "You and me. It's my turn to teach you a lesson, Professor."
Cheesy, but I really did want to give this guy a lesson in pain.
"I accept."
I glanced quickly at the map. I gave Dearborn directions to an area near Mount Charleston that looked empty enough. We'd have to go off-road to reach it.
"No," he said immediately, his voice hardening. "That's too close to the city."
He gave me another location in the opposite direction, far south of Boulder City and about twenty-five miles south of Vegas. I studied it on the map. It was right next to Nelson, one of the abandoned mining towns I'd considered when trying to understand my mom's "dark city" reference. The place where all the killings had taken place.
It figured Dearborn would be attracted to a place with such a grim history. Still, the privacy afforded by the area sounded great to me. Population of Nelson was 37. Not many eyes there to witness as Lucky and I blasted the hell out of Dearborn.
I hoped the Oddsmakers were chilling with Netflix tonight; otherwise they were going to have a field day tallying up all the offenses I planned to commit.
"Two hours," I told him, and then I hung up so I wouldn't have to hear him give me some sleazy villain's goodbye.
I sank against the counter, realizing only then that my heart was pounding. I felt sweat on my forehead and wiped it away with a grimace.
"He's a freak show," I told Vale. "I feel sorry for any student who had to sit through even ten minutes of him. I would have flunked out gladly."
"I don't care about his personality," Vale retorted. "What kind of a threat does he present?"
"He's super cocky. That could bite him in the ass. If he were a James Bond villain he'd be the type to spend ten minutes bragging about all the crimes he's committed and how clever he is while Bond escaped and drove off in a Maserati. Also, he sounds like he's got a thing for me. Or maybe he had a thing for my mom and it's carried over to me. I might be able to work that somehow."
Though the thought of trying to seduce Dearborn, even in the most tangential of ways, made me want to hurl. I didn't know how some women managed to spend their lives with sugar daddies. I was no good at faking affection, or maybe it was more accurate to say I was no good at hiding when I was disgusted.
"He thinks I'll be there alone," I went on.
"Does he?" Vale didn't look convinced. He stood at the window and looked out at the night dark street. "He won't be alone." He glanced back over his shoulder at me. "So neither will you."
"If somehow he manages to bring an army of golems, Vale, I don't want you to get involved."
"You're joking."
"I'm not. If he's got an army then I'm going supernova, and I probably won't be able to control who I fry. If I hurt you..." I was still too raw to complete the sentence. The scenario would be all my nightmares combined. "Just no, Vale. I couldn't handle that."
He stared at me. I knew he wanted to argue. I suspected he had no intention of obeying me. But at least he didn't say as much. He'd take that stress from me.
"Alright, enough of this," I said when he remained stonily silent. "I need to prep." I considered what I'd need, but really, it wasn't much.
"Oh, damn, I need to call Melanie." And say goodbye.
I'm glad I caught myself from saying that last part aloud. Vale was worked up enough as it was, vibrating like a live electrical wire. As he moved to my computer and studied the location Dearborn had chosen, I called Melanie and slipped back into my studio for some privacy.
"What's up, monkey?" I said cheerfully as soon as she answered.
"Aaaaaannnne!" she yelled. "Where are you? What are you doing?"
She sounded upbeat, which meant she hadn't heard about or hadn't associated the gas explosion with Zach and Rob. Good. Better that she not spaz out before I had to leave.
"Just hanging out in the shop. As promised, I'm giving you a ring to tell you I’m taking down the baddie tonight," I said lightly. "You, me, and Vale will grab pancakes when I get back. Maybe you want to invite Christian?"