by Jim Butcher
Fontaine’s brow furrowed. “I thought that outfit got busted up out in Nevada.” He glanced to Rache. “Self-styled ‘freedom fighters,’ looking to overthrow the courts of hell and earn a little of that old-time salvation.”
Irving shook his head. “Intel says their old leader died and most of the membership walked out, but a few hard-core followers are still in play, and they’re getting ready for something big. Their new head honcho calls himself the Madrigal. Word is, his top agents are all in town tonight. Malphas wants the whole set, and he wants them collected by sunrise.”
“How many targets are we talkin’, here?” Fontaine asked.
Irving produced a slim sandalwood box. He turned it in his palm, flicking brass clasps to open it wide. Inside, on a bed of crushed maroon velvet, nestled four vials of forged black iron. Spidery glyphs covered their curving faces, words in a forgotten and dead language, glittering like silver.
“Four targets. Sunrise is at 7:02 a.m., which gives you just a little over eight hours to get the job done. All four souls, delivered by the deadline, or the contract is canceled and we don’t get a dime. This is an all-or-nothing deal.”
Rache cocked her head to one side. “So even if we catch three of them, we don’t get paid? At all? That’s bullshit.”
“Malphas is a prince of hell,” Irving said. “His bounty, his rules. Oh, and I figure this Madrigal guy probably skipped town already, but there’s a bonus if you can snatch him, too. Like, a huge bonus. A ‘down payment on my new house’ bonus. He’s worth more than the other four put together. Considering taking him out would pretty much destroy what’s left of the Redemption Choir, it’d be a huge boost to your professional reputation. So maybe keep your ears open?”
“I’ll get right on that,” Fontaine said, buttoning his shirt. “Remind ’em, I need the bounty money on this side of the universe. Uncut gems, gold bullion, American cash if they can swing it on short notice. Let’s talk about gear. I hope you brought your entire goodie basket; something tells me I’m gonna need it tonight. Oh, and do me one favor?”
“Name it, boss.”
“Once we start huntin’, run out and buy me a hat. I can’t—” He gestured at his hairline helplessly. “I just can’t work with this.”
11:17 p.m.
September rain cloaked the streets of Detroit in an icy mist. Dismal gray fog clung to lonely streetlights, wreathing pale yellow bulbs like the remnants of lost souls. Dead spirits with nowhere to go. Broken pavement crunched under Fontaine’s shoes. He balled his hands into fists, shoving them deep into his overcoat pockets. Rache hustled along at his side, lugging a fat aluminum-sided briefcase, her short legs pumping to match his long, smooth strides. He’d sent her out of the morgue just long enough to make a quick phone call in private. That, and to reiterate his request for a hat. Irving said he’d see what he could do.
“So you wanna do what I do for a living,” Fontaine said. “Why?”
“Heard I could get paid for hurting people. I told the recruiter she had me at ‘hello.’ ”
“Little more to the job than that.” Fontaine paused at a corner, squinting in both directions, then led the way down a quiet side street. “What we do is important. The Chainmen are the first and last line of defense against the enemies of hell. We don’t just enforce infernal law, we embody it.”
“Oh, shit,” Rache muttered, “an idealist. Bet you’re fun at parties.”
“Not an idealist, darlin’, just practical. Nobody ever teach you history? We tried rule by chance and anarchy, way back when, and those were dark days indeed. Lucky we survived at all. The law keeps everybody in line.”
“Keeps the princes in power, you mean.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Fontaine paused beside a parked car, an old Buick speckled with rust spots like a bad case of the measles. “And they’re our best-paying clients. Everything circles around again.”
“What are we doing here, anyway?”
“Stealing this car.” The side window shattered under Fontaine’s elbow, shards of broken glass glittering as they clung to the gray wool of his overcoat. He wrenched the door open and brushed more chunks of glass from the vinyl seat down onto the pavement at his feet. “Hell’s law is sacred. Human law? Break as necessary. Just don’t get caught, and never get exposed. Nothing worse than a nosy human who figures out that demons are real. Once they do that, they start figuring out how to hurt us. C’mon, hop in.”
“Where to? And why’d you take this bounty, anyway? The terms suck.”
Fontaine crouched down. He pried open the plastic panel under the steering wheel, giving the exposed wiring an appraising eye.
“I called an informant of mine. She’s got the scoop for us. As to the second question, I need a lot of money and I need it fast. ‘Fast’ as in ‘before the sun comes up.’ Got the kind of debts that won’t wait.”
“Gambling?” Rache asked.
“Something like that.”
They didn’t have to drive far. A rusty bell jangled over the front door of an all-night diner. The place had been built from a pair of old train cars, vintage steel, with electric lights buzzing behind art deco sconces. Fontaine wiped his shoes on the mud-caked mat. Outside, the drizzling mist slowly turned to a cold shower.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured to Rache. Rache followed his gaze to the woman, midtwenties, sitting in the back booth. Her hands were cupped around a mug of steaming black coffee. Her mascara was a raccoon mask, black puddles around her eyes, face shadowed under the peak of a gray flannel hoodie. Rache sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose.
“A human? I thought nothing was worse than—”
“An informant. And a damn good one, too. Rule number one in this job: intel is the coin of the realm. Let’s say hello.”
The woman rose as Fontaine approached, giving Rache an uncertain eye. She raised her open palm. Fontaine did the same. Their hands brushed, fleeting, and they stood close.
“I used to be able to surprise you,” he said.
“How many bodies have I seen you in?” She put a finger to her face, tapping one eyebrow. “Your eyes never change. You . . . didn’t come alone.”
“Right, right. This is Rache. New apprentice. Rache, meet Ada.”
“Thrilled,” Rache said.
They sat. Ada kept her hood pulled low, leaning over her coffee like she was trying to read the future in the steam.
“So does this—” she started to say.
“Changes nothing.” Fontaine reached across the table. He put his hand over hers, just for a second, before she pulled away from him. “I will get you what you need, Ada. I promised.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Word is, the Redemption Choir is going through a schism. The Madrigal’s top agents decided to pull a mutiny and hive off into their own thing. He’s in town trying to convince them to come back to the fold.”
“So we’ve still got a shot,” Rache said. “We can catch all four targets, plus the bonus.”
Ada nodded, just a little. “You can, but you’ll have to be fast. Foster, the Choir’s money launderer, is the first name on your list. He’s holed up at this shithole of a bar on Gilbert Street, and according to the bartender, who gets paid to notice things for me, the Madrigal’s already come and gone twenty minutes ago. He’ll probably pay a call on the Russo twins next.”
Rache rapped her tiny knuckles on the Formica table. “There we go. Let’s hit the twins and set a trap.”
“You could,” Ada said, “but Foster’s on his way out of town. If you don’t get him in the next hour or two, you won’t get him at all.”
“And bye-bye bounty,” Fontaine murmured. “All-or-nothing deal. Got a fix on this guy?”
Ada slid a folded scrap of paper across the table. Fontaine cupped it in his hand, gave it a look, and nodded before slipping it into his pocket. He glanced sidelong at Rache.
“We’re burning moonlight. Let’s ramble.”
They rose. Fontaine held out his open palm. Ada pause
d, curling her bottom lip, then their hands brushed once more. Just for a heartbeat.
“I will take care of this, Ada.”
She stared at her coffee. “I’m running out of time.”
“I know. We all are. I’ll keep my promise. Don’t worry.”
11:36 p.m.
Rain battered down on the stolen Buick’s windshield, a staccato drumbeat punctuated by distant, rolling thunder. Across the street, under the curl of a green plastic awning, punks in greasy denim passed a forty around. A steel door swung open. A skinhead staggered out into the cold. He bent over, puking into the gutter as the rain pounded his back.
“It’s for her, isn’t it?” Rache said.
Sitting behind the wheel, Fontaine stared at the graffiti-coated wall, squinting, reading the gang signs like tribal markings. “Hmm?”
“The bounty. You told Irving you wanted human money, not Order scrip. She’s the one with the debt, not you.”
Fontaine drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
“We go way back, Ada and me. Lady found herself in a jam. I’m just trying to dig her out.”
“Aww.” Rache cupped her hands to the bosom of her frilled smock. “A knight in shining armor. That’s adorable.”
The rain pulsed through the broken driver’s-side window, turning Fontaine’s overcoat black and damp at the shoulder. He shoved open the door and got out.
“C’mon. Bring the briefcase and follow my lead. You might just learn something.”
Past the front door, the club—Fontaine wasn’t sure if it even had a name, and doubted it had a license—was a whirlwind blast of screaming guitars. The music shrieked and groaned, a carousel of the damned, off-key and spinning like the room after three beers too many. A potbellied bouncer stepped up, holding up a beefy hand and glaring at Fontaine.
“Whoa, whoa, what the fuck, man? You can’t bring a little kid in here!”
Rache looked up at him, batting her eyelashes. “But it’s my favorite band.”
The bouncer squinted at her. “Rancid Brains is your favorite band. Seriously?”
Fontaine sighed, digging in his pocket, tugging out a couple of rumpled twenties.
“She’s an aficionado of the musical arts. Think you can look the other way for fifteen minutes?”
The bouncer made the twenties disappear, then turned his back to them.
The venue floor was a seething mass of bodies, jumping, slamming, sweating under white-hot lights. A screaming circus, stinking of body odor and cheap spilled beer, packing every inch of the dance floor. The linoleum felt sticky under Fontaine’s shoes. Standing with his back to the wall at the far edge of the crowd, he leaned in as Rache shouted over the music.
“Gotta be two hundred people in here. What now?”
“Irving hooked us up,” he shouted back, and showed her a slim, round disk, like a makeup compact. He cupped it in his palm and popped it open.
Inside, where a mirror would have been, a sheen of turquoise water sloshed inside the compact’s shallow bowl. He tapped it, sparking the enchantment to life, and the waters rose to follow his fingertip. They sculpted themselves, taking on three dimensions, becoming a luminous blue head. It had caveman features, with a monobrow and a cauliflower nose. The compact tugged in Fontaine’s grip like an eager puppy on a leash, pointing the way to the target.
They spotted him across the room. Foster, the spitting image of the water sculpture, pounding back beer from a red Solo cup. Fontaine snapped the compact shut, banishing the spell.
“Wait for it,” he told Rache, sensing her juvenile eagerness.
Finally, Foster shoved his way through the crowd. He made for the bathroom, stumbling like he was three sheets to the wind. They shadowed him.
The men’s room stank like a Porta-Potty on a sweltering summer day. A single fluorescent light buzzed and popped over a grimy sink, the others busted out or dead. For the moment, as their target swaggered his way to the urinal and fumbled with his belt, they had the room to themselves.
Fontaine nodded to Rache. She put her back to the bathroom door, leaning into it, keeping it shut.
A length of chain dropped from Fontaine’s sleeve. Links of cold iron, inscribed with glyphs of banishing and breaking. It swung, idle in his grip, as he came up behind Foster. In a tidy, practiced motion, he threw it over the man’s head. Just as quickly, he hauled the man down.
Foster hit the filthy linoleum hard, emptying his bowels onto the floor as the chain bit into his neck. Fontaine dug a knee into the small of his back, yanking hard. Gritting his teeth, he squeezed the chain garrote like a rodeo rider on the back of a bucking bull. Blood seeped between the chain links, skin tearing, glyphs flaring as Foster spat and snarled and choked. Then his last breath rattled loose and his forehead hit the floor.
Fontaine waved a hand at Rache. “The box, quick!”
Rache lugged her briefcase over, slapping it up onto one of the sinks. Spying Irving’s sandalwood box along with the rest of their gear, she tossed it over to Fontaine, who caught it with one hand. With the other, he whipped the bloodied chain back under his overcoat sleeve. Then he tugged down the collar of the dead man’s shirt.
“Tools of the trade,” Fontaine said. He showed Rache a rounded scoop on a handle, like a melon baller with razor-edged teeth, glinting with dormant magic. “Soul stays in the body for sixty-six seconds after the moment of death, give or take. That’s your harvest window. After that, it flies free.”
The dead man’s spine cracked. Fontaine put his back into it, jamming the scoop into the base of the man’s neck, tearing flesh and fracturing the vertebrae, digging down to the marrow. He flicked the lump of bloody tissue away, snatched up one of the iron vials, and uncorked it with his teeth. He spoke around it, whispering a garbled incantation. A charm of calling and binding and imprisonment. A silver, luminous mist rose from the ruin of the dead man’s neck. Then it streaked toward the open lip of the vial, streaming inside. On the last syllable of his chant, Fontaine raised the vial to his lips and sealed it with the cork.
“And there you have it,” he said, already rising to his feet. “The immortal soul of one fugitive from hell’s law, bound and ready for delivery.”
“What do you think they’ll do to him?”
“Not our concern. We do capture and retrieval, not punishment.” He led the way to the door, walking fast. “Once you’ve got the target secure, never linger a second longer than you have to. A clean getaway means a clean payday.”
1:01 a.m.
“Are you in love with her?”
The windshield wipers slapped back and forth, pushing away the rain, which was back to a slow and icy drizzle. It kissed the city streets, whispering of an early winter. A dangling traffic light glowed a faded red, like the last dying ember in a fireplace.
“Why?” Fontaine glanced right. “Fixing to mock me for it?”
Rache folded her arms. “Just making conversation, partner.”
“We aren’t partners yet.”
“Are you in love with her?”
The light flickered green. He stepped on the gas, cruising through the empty intersection.
“I’m a man given to romantic notions,” Fontaine drawled, “and unwise sentimentality.”
“Not sure what that means.”
“I frequently find myself in love with the idea of being in love. And Ada, she’s a dreamer, an idealist. Two folks like that, well, they don’t belong together, but they can lie themselves into the idea.”
“Are you? Together?”
“No.” Fontaine looked at one of his hands, flexing the pallid fingers. “In this world, I’m a parasite nestled inside a walking corpse. Bit of a deal-breaker when it comes to romance. She can barely stand to touch me.”
“So hijack a living human. You can, can’t you?”
He nodded, turning the wheel. “She wouldn’t take to that any better. Not a big fan of innocent humans being body-jacked by our kind. Not fond of our kind in general.”
/> “But she’s an informant for hell.”
“For me,” Fontaine said, braking a little aggressively. “She’s an informant for me. And here’s our stop. Next up is a two-for-one deal. No slipups. If either one of them gets away, we don’t get paid.”
“There’ll be other contracts.”
“If I don’t get that money,” Fontaine said, “Ada will be dead by tomorrow night. No slipups.”
1:24 a.m.
Pans crashed to the floor as Fontaine slammed back against an industrial oven. The handle of a butcher knife jutted from his left shoulder. Luca Russo came at him with teeth bared and a second knife in his fist, slashing fast and wild. Luca’s twin sister was on the ceiling. She clung to the alabaster tiles with nails turned to iron claws, skittering like a roach.
Luca’s knife carved into Fontaine’s belly, digging deep, leaving a streak of searing pain in its wake. The knife flashed again, a cherry-stained killing arc. The bite of the blade shredded the sleeve of his overcoat and ripped him open from wrist to elbow. Fontaine shoved him back, hard, sweeping Luca’s leg out from under him and knocking him to the floor.
He’d bought himself two seconds, maybe three. Fontaine spun, breathless, raising his good arm. His sleeve slid back to reveal the weapon beneath, a miniature crossbow strapped to his forearm with a trigger cord looped around his middle finger. He flexed his wrist, and a whirling loop of enchanted steel chain lashed out like a bola. The chain hit Luca’s sister dead center, wrapping itself around her waist like a belt, and exploded in electric, arcane fire. She fell from the ceiling, her smoking, twitching body thumping to the floor with wide, dead eyes.
“Rache!” Fontaine shouted. “Harvest her! Sixty-six seconds!”
She bolted across the kitchen, clutching the sandalwood box. Luca was already getting up on his feet, going for the knife. Fontaine met him halfway, grabbing his wrist and twisting it, driving the blade into Luca’s heart. They froze there, nose to nose and staring into each other’s eyes.
“Why?” Luca croaked.