by Butcher, Jim
Then Thomas said, “I don’t think we learned much.”
“The hell we didn’t,” I said.
“Like what?”
“We know that there are more than five Denarians in town. And we know that they’re signatories of the Accords—who apparently object to Marcone’s recent elevation.”
Thomas grunted acknowledgment. “What now?”
I shook my head wearily. That last spell had been a doozy. “Now? I think…” I turned my head and studied the unconscious Gard. “I think I’d better call the Council.”
Chapter Fourteen
Now that I had not one, but two supernatural hit squads with a good reason to come after me, my options had grown sort of limited. In the end there was really only one place I could take Gard and Hendricks without endangering innocent lives: St. Mary of the Angels Church.
Which was why I told Thomas to drive us to the Carpenter house.
“I still think this is a bad idea,” Thomas said quietly. The plow trucks were working hard, but so far they’d barely been keeping even with the snow, ensuring that the routes to the hospitals were clear. The streets in some places looked like World War I trenches, snow piled up head-high on either side.
“The Denarians know that we use the church as a safehouse,” I said. “They’ll be watching it.”
Thomas grunted and checked the rearview mirror. Gard was still unconscious, but breathing. Hendricks’s eyes were shut, his mouth slightly open. I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t been standing watch over a wounded comrade all night, and I felt like I could have taken a nap, too.
“What were those things?” Thomas asked.
“The Knights of the Blackened Denarius,” I replied. “You remember Michael’s sword? The nail worked into the hilt?”
“Sure,” Thomas said.
“There are two others like it,” I said. “Three swords. Three nails.”
Thomas’s eyes widened for a moment. “Wait. Those nails? From the Crucifixion?”
I nodded. “Pretty sure.”
“And those things were what? Michael’s opposite number?”
“Yeah. Each of those Denarian bozos has a silver coin.”
“Three silver coins,” Thomas said. “I’m drawing a blank.”
“Thirty,” I corrected him.
Thomas made a choking sound. “Thirty?”
“Potentially. But Michael and the others have several of them hidden away at the moment.”
“Thirty pieces of silver,” Thomas said, understanding.
I nodded. “Each coin has the spirit of one of the Fallen trapped inside. Whoever possesses one of the coins can draw upon the Fallen angel’s power. They use it to shapeshift into those forms you saw, heal wounds, all kinds of fun stuff.”
“They tough?”
“Certifiable nightmares,” I said. “A lot of them have been alive long enough to develop some serious talent for magic, too.”
“Huh,” Thomas said. “The one who came through the door didn’t seem like such a badass. Ugly, sure, but he wasn’t Superman.”
“Maybe you got lucky,” I said. “As long as they have the coins, ‘hard to kill’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“Ah,” Thomas said. “That explains it, then.”
“What?” I asked.
Thomas reached into his pants pocket and drew out a silver coin a little larger than a nickel, blackened with age, except for the shape of a single sigil, shining cleanly through the tarnish. “When I gutted Captain Ugly, this went flying out.”
“Hell’s bells!” I spat, and flinched away from the coin.
Thomas twitched in surprise, and the Hummer went into a slow slide on the snow. He turned into it and regained control of the vehicle without ever taking his eyes off me. “Whoa, Harry. What?”
I pressed my side up against the door of the Hummer, getting as far as I physically could from the thing. “Look, just…just don’t move, all right?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Ooookay. Why not?”
“Because if that thing touches your skin, you’re screwed,” I said. “Shut up a second and let me think.”
The gloves. Thomas had been wearing gloves earlier, when fingering Justine’s scarf. He hadn’t touched the coin with his skin, or he’d already know how much trouble he was in. Good. But the coin was a menace, and I strongly suspected that the entity trapped inside it might be able to influence the physical world around it in subtle ways—enough to go rolling away from its former owner, for example, or to somehow manipulate Thomas into dropping or misplacing it.
Containment. It had to be contained. I fumbled at my pockets. The only container I was carrying was an old Crown Royal whiskey bag, the one that held my little set of gaming dice. I dumped them out into my pocket and opened the bag.
I already had a glove on my left hand. My paw had recovered significantly from the horrible burns it had gotten several years before, but it still wasn’t what you’d call pretty. I kept it covered out of courtesy to everyone who might glance at it. I held the little bag open with two fingers of my left hand and said, “Put it in here. And for God’s sake, don’t drop it or touch me with it.”
Thomas’s eyes widened further. He bit his lower lip and moved his hand very carefully, until he could drop the inoffensive little disk into the Crown Royal bag.
I jerked the drawstrings tight the second the coin was in, and tied the bag shut. Then I slapped open the Hummer’s ashtray, stuffed the bag inside, and slammed it closed again.
Only then did I draw a slow breath and sag back down into my seat.
“Jesus,” Thomas said quietly. He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Harry…is it really that bad?”
“It’s worse,” I said. “But I can’t think of any other precautions to take yet.”
“What would have happened if I’d touched it?”
“The Fallen inside the coin would have invaded your consciousness,” I said. “It would offer you power. Temptation. Once you gave in enough, it would own you.”
“I’ve resisted temptation before, Harry.”
“Not like this.” I turned a frank gaze to him. “It’s a Fallen angel, man. Thousands and thousands of years old. It knows how people think. It knows how to exploit them.”
His voice sharpened a little. “I come from a family where everyone’s an incubus or a succubus. I think I know a little something about temptation.”
“Then you should know how they’d get you.” I lowered my voice and said gently, “It could give Justine back to you, Thomas. Let you touch her again.”
He stared at me for a second, a flicker of wild longing somewhere far back in his eyes. Then he turned his head slowly back to the road, his expression slipping into a neutral mask. “Oh,” he said quietly. After a moment he said, “We should probably get rid of the thing.”
“We will,” I said. “The Church has been up against the Denarians for a couple of thousand years. There are measures they can take.”
Thomas glanced down at the ashtray for a second, then dragged his eyes away and glowered at the dented hood of his Hummer. “They couldn’t have shown up six months ago. When I was driving a Buick.”
I snorted. “As long as you’ve got your priorities in order.”
“I just met them, but already I hate these guys,” Thomas said. “But why are they here? Why now?”
“Offhand? I’d say that they were out to wax Marcone and prove to the other members of the Accords that vanilla mortals have no place among us weirdos—I mean, superhumans.”
“They’re members of the Accords?”
“I’d have to look it up,” I said. “I doubt they’re signed on as the ‘Order of Demon-possessed Psychotics.’ But from the way Mantis Girl was talking, yeah.”
Thomas shook his head. “So what do they get out of it? What does taking Marcone prove?”
I shrugged. I had already asked myself the same questions and hadn’t been able to come up with any answers. “No clue,” I said. “But they’ve
got what it takes to have torn that building apart, and to get around or go through the kind of muscle Marcone keeps around him.”
“And what the hell are the Faerie Queens doing getting involved?” Thomas asked.
I shrugged again. I’d already asked myself that, too. I hate it when I have to answer my own questions like that.
We went the rest of the way to Michael’s place in grey-and-white silence.
His street was on one of the routes being kept plowed, and we had no trouble rolling right up into his driveway. Michael himself was there with his two tallest sons, each of them wielding a snow shovel as they labored to clear the driveway and the sidewalk and the porch of the ongoing snow.
Michael regarded the Hummer with pursed lips as Thomas pulled in. He said something to his sons that made them trade a look with each other, then hurry inside. Michael walked down the driveway to my side of the truck and looked at my brother, then at the passengers in the backseat.
I rolled down the window. “Hey,” I said.
“Harry,” he said calmly. “What are you doing here?”
“I just had a conversation with Preying Mantis Girl,” I said. I held up a notebook, where I’d scribbled down the angelic sigil while it was still fresh in my memory.
Michael took a deep breath and grimaced. Then he nodded. “I had a feeling they might be in town.”
“Oh?” I asked.
The front door of the house opened, and a large, dark-skinned man appeared, dressed in blue jeans and a dark leather jacket. He wore a gym bag over one broad shoulder, and had one hand resting casually inside it. He paced out into the cold and the snow as if he’d been wearing full winter-weather gear, rather than casual traveling clothes, and stalked over toward us.
Once he got close enough to make out the details his face split into a broad, brief grin, and he hurried to stand beside Michael. “Harry!” he said, his voice deep, rich, and thick with a Russian accent. “We meet again.”
I answered his grin. “Sanya,” I replied, offering my hand. He shook it with enough force to crack bones. “What are you doing here?”
“Passing through,” Sanya said, and hooked a thumb up at the snow. “I was on the last flight in before they closed the airport. Looks like I am staying for a few days.” His eyes went from my face to the notebook, and the pleasant expression on his dark face turned to a brief snarl.
“Somebody you know?” I asked.
“Tessa,” he said. “And Imariel.”
“You’ve met, huh?”
His jaw clenched again. “Tessa’s second…recruited me. Tessa is here?”
“With friends.” I sketched the sigil I’d seen on the blackened denarius a few moments before and held it up to them.
Sanya shook his head and glanced at Michael.
“Akariel,” Michael said at once.
I nodded. “He’s in a Crown Royal bag in the ashtray.”
Michael blinked. Sanya too.
“I hope you have one of those holy hankies. I’d have taken it to Padre Forthill, but I figured they’d have him under observation. I need someplace quiet to hole up.”
Sanya and Michael traded a long, silent look.
Sanya frowned, examining my brother. “Who is the vampire?”
I felt Thomas stiffen in surprise. As a rule, even members of the supernatural world can’t detect what a vampire of the White Court truly is, unless he’s actually in the middle of doing something vampity. It’s a natural camouflage for his kind, and they rely upon it every bit as much as a leopard does its spots.
But it can be tough to hide things from a Knight of the Cross. Maybe it’s a part of the power they’re given, or maybe it’s just a part of the personality of the men chosen for the job—don’t ask me which. I’m fuzzy on the whole issue of faith and the Almighty, and I swim those waters with extreme caution and as much brevity as possible. I just know that the bad guys rarely get to sneak up on a Knight of the Cross, and that the Knights have a propensity for bringing the truth to light.
I met Sanya’s gaze for a moment and said, “He’s with me. He’s also the reason Akariel has a date with the inside of a vault.”
Sanya seemed to consider that for a moment. He glanced at Michael, who gave a grudging nod.
The younger Knight pursed his lips thoughtfully at that, his gaze moving to the backseat.
Hendricks had woken up, but he hadn’t moved. He watched Sanya with steady, beady eyes.
“The woman,” Sanya said, frowning. “What is she?”
“Hurt,” I said.
Something like chagrin flickered over his features. “Da, of course. You would not bring her here if you thought her a danger.”
“Not to you or me,” I said. “Tessa might have a different opinion.”
Sanya’s eyebrows went up. “Is that how she was wounded?”
“That was after she was wounded.”
“Really.” Sanya peered a little more closely at Gard.
“Back off,” Hendricks rumbled. “Comrade.”
Sanya flashed that swift smile again and displayed open palms to Hendricks.
Michael nodded to Thomas. “Pull the truck around to the back of the house. With all this snow piled up it should be hidden from the street.”
“Thank you, Michael,” I said.
He shook his head. “There’s a heater in the workshop, and a couple of folding cots. I’m not exposing the children to this.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” Michael asked gently. He thumped the truck’s dented hood once, lightly, and waved Thomas toward the back of the house.
Twenty minutes later we were all warm, if a bit crowded in Michael’s workshop.
Gard lay on a couch, sleeping, her color improving almost visibly. Hendricks sat down with his back to the wall beside Gard’s cot, presumably to stand watch, but he’d started snoring within a few minutes. Sanya, with the help of Molly and her siblings, was off rounding up food.
I watched as Michael wrapped Akariel up in a clean white hankie embroidered with a silver cross, muttering a prayer under his breath the whole while. Then he slipped the hankie into a plain wooden box, also adorned with a silver cross. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to secure this.”
“Where do they keep those things?” Thomas asked, after Michael had departed.
I shrugged. “Some big warehouse with a gazillion identical boxes, probably.”
Thomas snorted.
“Don’t even think it,” I said. “It isn’t worth it.”
Thomas ran his gloved fingers over the white scarf. “Isn’t it?”
“You saw how these things operate. They’ll manipulate your emotions and self-control, and something bad would happen to Justine. Or they’d wait until they had you hook, line, and sinker and you were their meat puppet. And something bad would happen to Justine.”
Thomas shrugged. “I’ve got one demon in my head already. What’s one more?”
I studied his profile. “You’ve got one monster in your head already,” I countered. “She barely survived it.”
He was still for a moment. Then he slammed his elbow back against the workshop wall, a gesture of pure frustration. Wood splintered, and a little cold air whooshed in.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said in a dull voice.
“Holy crap,” I said. An idea crystallized in my head, and a chill went down my spine.
Thomas rubbed his elbow lightly. “What?”
“I just had a really unpleasant thought.” I gestured at Marcone’s exhausted retainers. “I don’t think the Denarians took Marcone so that they could erase him and make an example of him.”
My brother shrugged. “Why else would they do it?”
I bit my lip, my stomach turning in uncomfortable flips.
“Because,” I said, “maybe they want to recruit him.”
Chapter Fifteen
Thomas stood watch over our sleeping beauties while I went inside to talk with Michael and Sanya at the Carpenter kit
chen table.
I laid all the cards down. See above regarding the general futility of lying to Knights of the Cross—and besides, they’d both more than earned my trust. It didn’t take me very long.
“So,” I said, “I think we’ve got to move fast, and get Marcone away from them before he’s forced to join up.”
Michael frowned and folded his broad, work-scarred hands on the table before him. “What makes you think he’s going to tell them no?”
“Marcone’s scum,” I said. “But he’s his own scum. He doesn’t work for anyone.”
“You are sure?” Sanya asked, frowning thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s why they wanted to grab Hendricks and Gard instead of killing them. So they could force him to take the coin or they’d kill his people.”
Michael grunted. “It’s a frequently used tactic.”
“Not for Tessa,” Sanya said, his voice absolutely certain. “She prefers to find those already well motivated to accept a coin. She regards their potential talents as a secondary factor to raw desire.”
Michael acceded the point with a nod. “Which would mean that Tessa isn’t giving the orders.”
Sanya showed his teeth in a sudden, fierce grin. “Nicodemus is here.”
“Fu—” I started to swear, but I glanced at Michael and changed it to, “Fudgesicles. Nicodemus nearly killed us all last time he was in town. And he did kill Shiro.”
Both of the Knights nodded. Michael bowed his head and murmured a brief prayer.
“Guys,” I said, “I know that your first instincts tend to be to stand watch against the night, turning the other cheek, and so on. But he’s here with maybe twice the demon-power he had on his last visit. If we wait for him to come to us, he’ll tear us apart.”
“Agreed,” Sanya said firmly. “Take the initiative. Find him and hit the snake before he can coil to strike.”
Michael shook his head. “Brother, you forget our purpose. We are not given our power so that we can strike down our enemies, no matter how much they might deserve it. Our purpose is to rescue the poor souls trapped by the Fallen.”
“Nicodemus doesn’t want to be rescued,” I said. “He’s in full collaboration with his demon.”