Was it possible that this had been a no-win scenario? Was it fate? Was it always doomed to end in bloodshed because I had too little information and too many enemies working against me? Or was the problem me? If I had just given Sloane the Sigilum, would fewer people have been hurt? Could the Sons have stopped him? I’d have lost my chance to help our unborn child, but what kind of person put their own needs ahead of so many others? A monster. That’s what kind. Cooper had told me that I needed to fix this, but the real world had gotten along pretty well without Julian Adler’s help for a few thousand years. If I stayed out of this, could the Sons fix things without my help, or would this be another Cairo? And what of my dozens of years in the Dreamscape? Surely I had more experience with monsters than any five people combined?
The sound of sirens reached my ears, jolting me out of my introspection. Cooper was still staring at me, and my mouth asked a question before I’d made a decision to do so. “Can’t you stop this? Aren’t you stronger than them? I thought you were a master vampire; that their connection came through you. Can’t you just beat them into submission, Gerald?”
Cooper shook his head. “Of course they’re weaker than me. Any three or four vampires, I could rip off their heads and shit down their necks, but there is no way that I can take fifty of them. Hell, if Sloane uses the Sigilum and I’m anywhere near, he can control me. If you have a plan that could stop him, then I’ll help. If it means I get a shot at Sloane, even better, but I’m not sacrificing myself for you.”
Shit.
“You have less than a day to figure out how to rectify this, dumbass. Well…what you can rectify. You know, I’d never fed from a normal human until tonight. If, somehow, you do come up with a way to fix this, here’s my number,” Gerald Cooper added, thrusting a slip of paper into my hand, and then he melted into the night as completely as a sugar cube in water.
“Will one of you freaks help me?” Paula said from behind us, her voice stony. I turned and was forced to face, illuminated in the headlights of the arriving ambulance, the outcome of my scheme to get the Sigilum: Christian was lying on his side in a recovery position from which he would never recover; a pool of blood was already congealing around him, and his broad chest wasn’t moving. The sight hit me like a sack of anvils, driving home what I’d already known. I opened and closed my mouth without saying anything, and my knees went weak.
“Paula, you’re alive?” Mia exclaimed.
“Met-vest,” Paula groaned, referring to the stab-proof vest that was popular with the local constabulary. “Turned the bolt. Took some flesh off my ribs, but I’ll live,” she finished, an accusatory note in her voice as Mia hurried over and clasped the other woman’s unbroken wrist to help her up.
Mia rounded on me, her long chestnut hair swinging in front of her face in ringlets that she brushed away as she spoke, gray eyes shining in the streetlight. “If you would have called us, warned us about what was going on, then he’d still be alive. I’m done with you, Julian. If I see you on or near any of the Sons’ assets, or if I hear that you’re using your powers, then you’ll end up in one of our cells for dangerous attuned.”
She was right that Christian would still be alive, but she was ignoring some of the facts. “If I had called you, Sloane would have been tipped off. I’d have lost any chance to get the Sigilum, and I need it!” I shouted, my natural stubbornness making me refuse to back down even in the face of my own doubts. I felt the weariness from using my abilities returning quickly as Cooper’s spirited slap fest wore off, and I bit the inside of my cheek to help concentrate.
“You always think you know best, but usually when people die because of you, you don’t have to see the consequence. This time, you’ll have to live with them for the rest of your life. Take a good, long look, monster,” Mia sneered, and then walked away to have a word with one of the paramedics, slipping the older of the two men a card and whispering in his ear until he nodded his assent.
Cooper wanted me to fix this, Mia wanted me to walk away. I wanted to help my kid and keep people from getting hurt. This was a gut-check moment. The kind of time where you can visibly see the road fork in front of you, and you know that going left or going right will commit you to a path that you can’t double back from. To one side was an easy path. One without responsibility. I could go back to helping people have sweet dreams, and be Julian Adler, Dreamwatcher again. He’d built a good life once, with a smiling little girl and a happy, loving wife. Maybe he could again. Not with Dana—she’d never forgive me for abandoning her and the kids–but with someone. On the other, I would step into darkness. I’d need to commit to doing whatever, sacrificing whatever it took to fix my mistakes. To make the losses that had already occurred count for something. I began to understand how Senior Auditor Brown had landed a starting spot on team evil, and I wondered if Sloane had similar motivations deep down.
As Mia walked away, exhaustion landed on my shoulders, and I crumpled to the ground. My last sensation before darkness took me was hearing someone clear their throat, and then something wet and sticky hit me on the cheek. “If I had my way, we’d chain you up right now, freak. I wish Brown were still around to do that.” Ahh…good old Agent Paula. I was soooo glad I’d saved her…wait. The lights were going out in my mind, but I’d thought about Brown, then Paula had mentioned him…what was the connection…the Senior Auditor could fix the spell. He might not be around in our world anymore…but…Mia’s plan…other worlds…just maybe…just maybe there was a chance that I could fix this without getting anyone else hurt.
Chapter 20
0700–1600, Wednesday, June 22, 2016
I awoke. The sun shining onto my face scratched at my eyelids like a million tiny demons who hated the idea that I might get to sleep. The memories of the previous night surged back into my conscious mind, and I wished that I was a normal person so that I could try to convince myself that it had all been a nightmare. That I’d wake up, and my friend would be alive, my daughter would be safe, and my wife wouldn’t have a monster in her belly. That way I could put off confronting my failure just a little bit longer—but I couldn’t. I groaned and rolled over, the feel of the bed beneath me conveying the welcome information that I was in my own house.
“Was it bad, baby?” Dana said, standing a few feet away. She hadn’t been able to sleep past about six thirty when she was pregnant with either of our kids. I thought about how to respond to her question. In just one day I had managed to: break a spell that released a horde of ravenous vampires, lose the magical item that my bitch of a mother told me was necessary to help my kid, gotten fired, and managed to get one of the only friends I had killed.
“Just peachy,” I replied, my eyes still closed.
“Oooh, that bad,” she said, stretching the O out with the same tone that you’d use when watching a Funniest Home Videos clip about some guy getting kicked in the nuts.
“Worse,” I riposted, and proceeded to lay out the entire story to Dana while she went about her daily ritual of putting on makeup. When I finished, on the verge of tears, Dana stared at me blankly. “So what you’re saying is we’re not just fucked, we’re proper fucked,” she deadpanned. I snorted out half a laugh and collapsed into her arms. After five minutes of lying there quietly, she spoke again. “You know that we have to try to fix this, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t have any idea how. And there’s part of this that can’t be fixed,” I said, thinking of Christian bleeding out in front of me. I took a deep breath and sighed—“OW!” I yelled, sitting up as Dana grabbed my ear and pulled hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
My wife put her hands on either side of my head and pulled her face nose-to-nose with mine, staring unblinkingly into my eyes. “Y’all’ve spent your whole life slaying nightmares, and in the past couple years you’ve banished a demon, offed an out-of-control sorcerer, and pardoned a king. People died then, and people died today. If you want me to tell you you’re whiter than white, that you’re the good guy an
d nothing you’ve ever done or will do can change that, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. But what I will tell you is that, so far, the world is a better place because you’re in it, and I trust that you’ll keep trying to do what you think is right—even if it isn’t what I think is smart. So put on your big-boy pants, quit your moping, and go kick some ass!” Dana shouted, her Southern accent thick.
It was no Saint Crispin’s Day speech, but Dana was right! I was being a whiny little bitch. I could do this…if only…I felt an electric thrill go up my spine and held my breath as I thought back to my last few moments of wakefulness the night before; the seed of an idea germinated, grew, and burst out of my subconscious in the space of a few seconds. I leaned forward and kissed my muse full on the lips. After a minute, I pulled away smiling.
“I have a plan. It’s a ludicrous, insane plan. This is a plan that crazy plans look at and go, ‘Oh damn, I better cross the street,’” I said, while being utterly convinced that it was the only plan that had a chance in hell of working.
“And this plan will get us the Sigilum so that we can help our baby?” Dana asked.
“Yes,” I said, taking my wife in my arms.
“Then I’m in,” she replied, and sealed the agreement with another long, slow kiss.
◆◆◆
“I know where Sloane is going to be,” I said.
“Ahh…so it wasn’t enough for you to break the spell protecting my colleagues and to hand Sloane the means to enslave me? You’d like to serve me up like a lamb to the slaughter,” Gerald Cooper growled over the phone.
“Damn it, I have a plan. I’ve seen Sloane attempt to enslave you in my dreams. If the dates match up with my visions, he’s going to try tonight, and he’s going to do it in Highgate Cemetery, in the Mausoleum of Julius Beer,” I said, omitting the fact that Cooper hadn’t been doing so hot in my prognostication. I needed his help, and I had been able to locate the location of those dreams once I knew which cemetery it was in. “But I have a plan…” I said, and gave him the bullshit version of my scheme, the one in which I actually intended to use the Sigilum to stop the vampires.
When I finished, there was a short pause and then a bark of laughter. “Good God. People told me that you were a delusional fantasist who refused to accept reality, that you wouldn’t back down, but this…well, if you can prove to me that you’ve successfully retrieved the spell, then I’m in. Who knows, it could work. Even the losers get lucky sometimes,” Gerald Cooper said.
“You know me, runnin’ down a dream,” I replied with a grin that the vampire couldn’t see on the other end of the phone.
“Huh?” he replied.
“Umm…Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? I thought you were going for some referential humor? To lighten the mood?”
“After my time, shit-for-brains.” The vampire hung up the phone.
I turned to James Badger, who was driving an unmarked Mercedes-Benz C-class. It was a lot nicer than the Ford Focus that he’d been using earlier in the year. The bump to Detective Chief Inspector had some perks. “He says he’s in.”
“Excellent news, young man,” he replied.
“That’s great,” Dana replied. She was resting at home, but we had her on speakerphone while we attempted to put my plan into action.
“We’ll be at Windsor Castle again soon…” he added.
Another hour later, we knew that Windsor Castle was a bust, so we headed for Hampton Court Palace. That was a failure as well. The mood in the car deteriorated as Badger and I piled back in.
“Whitehall,” Dana said from back in Ealing. “He designed it, and that’s where he married and lived with Anne. You should give that a try, but it’s getting late,” she said. Badger took the hint and threw on his lights, and the car leapt forward. Dana was right that we had burned a lot of daylight, but we’d gotten going early, and it was nearly the summer solstice, so even though it was nearly one, we still had at least eight hours until sundown.
◆◆◆
Badger dropped me off, with a twitch of his mustache and a call of “good hunting,” at the edge of Trafalgar Square. I was, once again, wearing shorts and a T-shirt to blend in with the masses of tourists and to protect myself from the “blistering” seventy-five-degree day that had the English wiping their brows and blowing from the heat. This was as good as an English summer got. I strolled, randomly gawking at buildings, down Whitehall in the direction of the Houses of Parliament. The palace of Whitehall had burned down in 1698—but that wouldn’t matter to Henry. If I was going to find him, it would be somewhere along the road that ran along the palace’s former footprint. On the theory that it might help me contact the late king, I touched my connection to the Dreamscape and hoped that there wouldn’t be anyone around who could notice.
I’d pushed through the perspiring waves of humanity for nearly three hundred yards when I heard the voice I’d been waiting for. “Can ye not leave me be, Mr. Adler? I’m not going to do a favor for John Brown’s daughter. I couldn’t give a damn for that whoreson’s organization. Let the Sons tear itself apart.”
“So why even talk to me?”
There was a sigh, and then Henry spoke again. “I didn’t want to hurt your little friend. He’ll be fine in a few days. I thought that maybe if I came here, with his borrowed power, then I’d be able to break the curse on me somehow. That I could find some peace,” Henry VIII said. I swung to the side and sat on a nearby bench.
“Did you find your peace, then?” I asked, the answer obvious.
“No…” replied the voice dolorously. “I have the energy to make something big happen if I want to, but I don’t know how to undo what Anne did.”
“Speaking of which, I need your help. I need you to make something royally big happen,” I quipped.
“Why should I help you? I feel bad about your little friend, but if I hold on to his energy, then maybe I will eventually find a way to break the curse,” Henry replied.
“Your Majesty, what I’m doing, I do for your subjects…” I explained my plan to the former monarch. “…and that’s how we can put the vampires back to sleep and stop Sloane’s plan. So can you do it?” I finished. I couldn’t see Henry, so I had to trust that he hadn’t just floated off during the five minutes that I had needed to explain my plan. Also, I had to hope that the old woman who had sat down next to me and then wandered off as I blathered on, seemingly to myself, hadn’t decided to fetch the police. My plan was insane—not me. I hoped. I waited, perspiring from more than the heat, for Henry’s answer.
“You propose that I expend a tremendous amount of extradimensional energy, more than I ever have before, on your scheme?” Henry’s voice sounded suspicious, but he couldn’t disguise a hint of interest.
“It’s for the defense of the realm,” I wheedled, playing on the comments he’d made to me after my confrontation with Cooper in the chapel.
“And you’ll be thwarting the forces of evil and darkness?”
“Yes—can you do it?”
“In that case, if you can get his daughter to agree, then…yes. I think I can do it. I’ll make the attempt,” Henry said. I felt a thrill and had to fight down the urge to whoop and fist-pump in the street. I might just pull this off.
◆◆◆
Mia leaned forward in her Starbucks chair, her normally creamy white skin flushed with anger. “Mr. Adler, I told you that you needed to leave this situation alone. You have immediately violated that imprecation, and I am tremendously angry with you. I had to fight to have you brought into this organization in the first place, and then you acted like a loose cannon, damaging my reputation and the reputation of all of the attuned. You know what I’ve been fighting against, and yet you made my position with the Chapter Master still more precarious.” She paused for a calming breath, relaxing her white-knuckled grip on the arm of her chair. “We are hanging on by a thread, and if you act now, we could all end up taking very long vacations in very small, secure hotel rooms. The only thing keeping us
out of there is the fact that Edward Sloane disappeared with the Sigilum—that was a black eye for the Chapter Master, but it didn’t make him any happier.”
I hadn’t been able to get into the office, but I’d stopped by on the pretense of collecting my belongings, and I’d been able to convince the security guards to call Mia. I had known that she was going to be the most difficult person to get on board. Her anger at me over Christian’s death was both fresh and justified. Also, there was still the little matter of me killing her dad. That’s why I had taken the time to plot this discussion out on one of my old negotiation templates. It had helped me realize that I had more than a little leverage in this situation—I could potentially give her three things that she couldn’t get anywhere else.
“I know that I contributed to Christian’s death. I acknowledge that I should have at least contacted you,” I said, intentionally avoiding mentioning the Sons. “And for that, I’m sorry. I’ve had hammered into me, finally, that I need to lay off the lone hero crap. This won’t happen again. However, dwelling on the past isn’t going to help you solve your problems.”
“And which problems are those, Mr. Adler? Would they also happen to be your problems?” Mia said so precisely that her voice could have doubled as a scalpel.
I shrugged and man-spread my legs. “We have mutual interests. I’ll admit that. For one, we both want the vampires stopped.”
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