by E. A. Copen
“And how many have you killed, Haru?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line and said nothing.
I put a hand to my chest. “Our job’s not just to punish the guilty. It’s about balance. I fucked that up when I killed the last Famine and his Namer. That’s why we’re all here. Granted, I was backed into a corner. I didn’t have a choice. This time I do.”
“Punishment is exactly our job. If not us, then who?” He shook his head. “No, she dies.”
“There seems to be disagreement on how to proceed,” Loki said. “How she’s dealt with will be up to you ultimately, but I would consider all options were I you, Mr. Nakamata. Famine hasn’t been so easy to replace. The amount of time it’s taken to pull this tournament together should be a testament to that. A second would take even longer. All the decent fighters are already dead or Horsemen already!” He laughed a hearty laugh and slapped his desk. “Now, about this evidence of yours. Let’s go and speak to this ghost.”
***
I performed the ritual with the body bag closed. It didn’t matter since magic and shades could pass through any surface that wasn’t primarily iron, but it would be easier for me if I could see the body. Part of the ritual involved forming a link with the dead. Visual links were easiest and so that’s what I relied on whenever I could. Considering he’d destroyed his face, it wouldn’t have been useful anyway.
Standing over the body, I saw it all happen again in my mind’s eye. I kicked myself again over leaving so soon. I should’ve stayed. Just a few more minutes and I might’ve been there to stop her. Maybe she wouldn’t have come at all. All the self-pity in the world wasn’t going to bring him back, so I forced myself to focus on the magic.
“Will we be able to see the shade?” Loki asked from behind me. He was the only one they’d allowed in without putting on one of those ugly yellow suits. Apparently, he was immune to nearly every disease. I had a feeling it wouldn’t matter if Pestilence shoved her hand in his chest. He’d break out in blisters and boils just like everyone else. The one thing no god was immune to was a Horseman.
I bent to light the last candle. “I’ll put enough magic into it that it’ll be faint, but visible. It’s important that you don’t cross the circle and that you don’t try to communicate directly. One question at a time and please limit distractions. It takes concentration to hold them here.”
Haru crossed his arms. “How many times have you done this?”
“Lost count.”
“And this is what you did for…” He rolled his hand as if trying to find the right word. “…employment before you became a Horseman?”
The plastic suit crinkled as I stood. “I still do it when the right people ask.”
“For money?”
I stopped what I was doing and turned around to face Haru, trying to decide if he was trying to pick at me or genuinely trying to understand. “I have to buy diapers somehow, don’t I?”
He shrugged, palms up and cringed when it pulled at his side. “I’m just trying to understand how this works. I’ll probably sound like an entitled asshole saying this, but I’ve never had to worry about money.”
“You’re an entitled asshole.”
Loki grunted in agreement. “You two both have it easy.”
I rolled my eyes in unison with Haru. “You’re an Asgardian prince and a god. Since when did you ever come up short on cash?”
“Oh, never. I’m loaded. But you’ve never been tied up in a cave using your dead son’s intestines.”
“Jesus,” Haru muttered and paled.
“Also got off easy. I was bound for the better part of two millennia. I’d take three days of crucifixion over that any day. I mean no disrespect. I understand he was a good man, but I maintain that Romans are not nearly as inventive with their punishments as the Norse. Ever hear of a blood eagle? You don’t want to.”
Haru cringed. “How’d you get free?”
A dark shadow passed over Loki’s face and his left eye twitched. “A story for another time. Perhaps I’ll tell you before the end.”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” I clapped my hands together. Suddenly looking at the destroyed face of the doctor’s shade was the least creepy thing in the room.
I closed my eyes and pulled the magic to me. To find death, I didn’t have to look far. There were three more bodies nearby in decontamination, and at least a dozen ghosts within reach. I felt more than one of them take notice when I began.
The world plunged out of sight, replaced by a gray, decaying world. The After. In the After, my protective suit was made of cobwebbed and rotten plastic. Haru stood before me made of putrid green and black flesh. His wound glowed a dull red. Staring at it, I got the impression it would be easy to push my hand inside him and destroy what was left. It was a weakness plainly obvious in my Sight, a potentially deadly place to strike.
Loki didn’t change in the least except to gain a curious golden glow.
Black miasma surrounded the doctor’s body creating a void where even magic couldn’t exist. Death. It called to me like a lullaby, emitting the promise of an end to all the discomfort. My body ached. Exhaustion weighed me down. It would be so easy to go, but I had to resist the call. Death was supposed to come to me, not the other way around.
I raised my hands, fingers spread. “I summon forth the dead. I command you to commune with me in the realm of the living.”
The mangled shade of the doctor slowly rose from the body bag. Spiderweb thin threads coalesced into existence, connecting each of my fingers to a part of his body. A twitch of my finger, and I could make him do as I willed. I fed more magic into the shade via the strands, lending the shade enough power to become substantial. His form brightened.
Haru let out a barely audible gasp.
Loki uncrossed his arms and stood on alert.
“State your name and your profession,” I commanded.
“Arlo Giles. Doctor of internal medicine,” replied the shade.
I turned to Loki. “Can you hear him?”
Loki nodded slowly.
“Doctor Giles, relate to us in detail the last five minutes of your life up to your death.”
“I went to my office,” said the shade without any hint of emotion. “You and War were arguing. I was angry that you had both refused my help.”
“Skip to the part where the Babylonians came in. You were interrupted during treatment.”
“There was no treatment. She was nearly dead when she arrived. I lied to the team and told them I would try, but there was nothing I could do. I administered fentanyl to ease her passing. There was an argument between two women behind me, but I didn’t look at who it was. The next thing I knew, there was another woman in the room. She attacked the two male teammates at the same time, thrusting each of her hands into their chests. I was afraid and tried to run away but tripped. When I looked up, the men were screaming, their faces and arms covered in boils and pustules. She seemed to eat something invisible and then reached into them again. I was afraid she would come for me next so I threw a chair at her. There was a flash. It felt like lightning struck me. My skin erupted in the same pustules. Black buboes appeared in my armpits, groin and on my neck in the classic pattern associated with Yersinia pestis. She fled while this was happening. I knew I was dying and I was in a lot of pain so I got my gun. You came in. We spoke. I put the gun in my mouth. Then…”
He stopped talking. We’d reached the moment of death. At least it’d been fast.
“Yersinia pestis?” Haru questioned. “What’s that?”
“No idea.” I relayed the question to the doctor.
“It is commonly called the bubonic plague, or Black Death.”
“Ask what else he has.” Loki’s tone was curious.
Haru started scratching his face. “Please don’t. I’m going to be itching for the rest of my natural life.”
It was fine with me. We had more important questions that needed to be answered. “Doctor Giles, do you kno
w the name of the woman who attacked you?”
“I do.”
“Please tell us her name.”
“Felicia Bradly.”
War turned to Loki. “If you cross-check that name against your list of attendees, I think you’ll find Felicia Bradly is also known as Pestilence.”
Loki rubbed his chin and nodded. “But why? Pestilence gains nothing from these attacks.”
Khaleda knows, I thought. She’d offered to help with the investigation in exchange for the chance to take out Morningstar. That wasn’t something I wanted to divulge in front of Loki though, so I kept my trap shut.
“Does it matter?” Haru asked. “We know the identity of the attacker. We’ve confirmed it with the victim and you were here to witness. With your blessing, I’d like to confront her.”
“Go back to rest.” I directed the shade back into his body and withdrew my magic. Sudden exhaustion made me sink to my knees with a grunt. “You can’t.”
Loki sighed. “I can’t trust this to my Valkyries. They are formidable, but they are no match for a Horseman. If I attempt to arrest and hold her, she’ll escape custody with ease and flee. Whatever it is you’re going to do, make sure it works the first time. I don’t want my game affected any further.”
Haru bowed before shooting me a warning glance and leaving the room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I caught up with Haru only thanks to the decontamination procedure the Valkyries insisted we go through. I had previously assumed decontamination meant a quick hand wash and tossing our potentially contaminated suits into an incinerator or something. No such luck. They made me strip down and discard the clothes I’d come in, despite the protective equipment. Afterward, I was hustled through a public shower area where they insisted I let them help scrub me down.
I emerged into another staging area where Haru stood, naked while they ran a wand over him that looked much scarier than the ones they used at the airport. When the apparatus didn’t beep, the Valkyrie waved him over to a counter where new, less flattering clothes waited.
“Lift your arms and spread your legs,” instructed the lady with the wand.
“Just so we’re clear, there’re no cavity searches involved, right?”
She didn’t look amused in the least. Nobody appreciates a joke.
By the time I reached the opposite counter, Haru was half-dressed and mumbling about being humiliated and making heads roll.
I grabbed the black sweats and stepped into them. “Could be worse. Trust me. When I was in prison, there was this one guard who used to use every excuse to get people strip-searched. And he was very hands-on. He didn’t last long before they caught him with doing other stuff with some of the inmates. There was always someone in there. Every other month it seemed they were escorting out a guard.”
Haru looked up from examining the stitches in his side. “You went to prison? What for?”
“Breaking and entering. Assault on a police officer. Resisting arrest. Couple of other things I got to plead down from. Did six years of a ten-year sentence.”
The look he gave me was one I was already intimately familiar with. It was the same look everyone gave me when they found out, a wary, appraising look. As if suddenly discovering I was a felon completely changed their opinion of me.
“I suppose,” he said, tugging the white t-shirt over his head, “I shouldn’t judge. You Americans like your prison. I just didn’t expect you to be so open about it. Like talking about a trip to a summer camp.”
“I don’t bother with the statistics, man. I beat them. I’m out and never going back. I talk about it because it’s part of me. I can’t forget where I came from, what I’ve been through. I don’t want to. That’s what makes me who I am.”
“Know yourself and know your enemy and in a hundred battles, you will never be in danger,” Haru quoted.
“Yep. I know what I’m about. Right now, I’m about to tell you to hold off on your headhunt.”
Haru leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “And I suppose you’ve got a good reason I should?”
I tightened the drawstring on the sweats. “Don’t you want to know why she’s killing people? What the pattern is? I do. And I know someone who knows.”
“You didn’t think to mention this earlier?” He tilted his head quizzically to the side.
“Well, getting that answer requires us to agree on something that isn’t going to make either of us happy. There’s a cost for the information. If we agree and things go perfectly—and that’s a big if—we could take out two bad guys in one move. One of them is even worse than Pestilence.”
I watched the wheels turn behind his eyes. He didn’t have to go for it. If he didn’t, my only choice would be to stop him from killing Pestilence using force, which I wasn’t sure I could do. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Like me, he was personally invested in winning. His girlfriend would become the next Namer, and he could potentially gain a lot of influence for his side. I wasn’t stupid enough that I didn’t see it. I’d be asking him to give all of that up.
But we’d get to kill the Devil.
“My interest is piqued enough to hear the offer at least,” he said at length. “Is there a price for that?”
“Yeah. We have to spend five minutes alone with a succubus.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
“Don’t even think about it. Khaleda is bad news. Sleeping with her is right up there with cuddling up to a porcupine. Do not recommend.”
Haru’s eyes nearly doubled in size. “You didn’t.”
I scanned the wall for an exit and found it.
“You did.”
“Stick to fox chicks,” I advised on the way to the exit. “You’ll live longer.”
Haru chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Nothing like a little mortal peril to get the blood pumping.”
“Dude, keep your kinks to yourself. I don’t need any more disturbing imagery today, okay?”
He spent most of the long walk back to our apartments talking about Min’s ass while I mostly tried to ignore him.
Morningstar and Khaleda were sitting in the main room when we walked in while Emma was beyond in the meeting room, going over some notes. I waved to her. She got up and shut the door.
Haru elbowed me. “Somebody’s in trouble.”
“Gonna be you if you don’t shut the hell up.” I shoved his arm away.
“Well, look at you two,” Khaleda said, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward. “Best friends. Too bad we’re going to have to wreck that beautiful friendship in the finals, Haru.”
“Luckily, Lazarus will be sitting the finals out.” Morningstar raised a glass of amber liquid. “Don’t forget. Less than four hours until we fight the Romans. Are you up for it?”
I shook my head. “I still think you’re wrong. Khaleda should take that fight and I should go in the finals.”
“Not this again.” Morningstar stood and put one hand in his pocket. “It’s not open for discussion.”
“You were wrong the first two rounds,” I pointed out, counting on my fingers. “Coyote put Jane in instead of Sasquatch and the Celts put the little blonde asshole with his sling in. Both times, you said that wouldn’t happen. You’re making another mistake.”
The glass in Morningstar’s hand shattered when he squeezed it. Chunks of thick glass embedded themselves in his fingers and palm letting black blood ooze around them to fall in thick drops to the floor. “You’re testing my patience, Horseman.”
Khaleda stood and came to wrap an arm around her father’s shoulders. “Daddy, you need to go clean that up or you’ll ruin your suit.”
Morningstar looked down at his hand for the first time. “Please excuse me. I seem to have spilled my drink.” He shook out a handkerchief and held it under his hand on the way to the bathroom.
As soon as the door shut behind him, I grabbed Khaleda by the arm and led her toward the dor. “We need to talk to you somewhere quiet.”<
br />
“Where?” she whispered. “There are ears in the hallway.”
“My team’s apartments are clean,” Haru offered. “I swept it for bugs this morning.”
“Paranoid much?” I raised an eyebrow.
“All modern warfare is based in information gathering. I have to be.”
***
Baron Samedi waited outside Kumiho-Sama’s apartments. I did a double take when I saw him because I couldn’t believe he was actually here. He had a habit of going MIA when his help would’ve been useful, so I hadn’t expected to run into him. Guess I shouldn’t look a gift Loa in the teeth.
The Baron was wearing his usual purple tailored suit and fancy shoes. His skull-topped cane hung from the crook in his arm. He unfolded his lanky arms and pushed off the wall with a hip as soon as he saw us.
Haru stopped at the entrance to the hallway and reached to his hip, cursing when he realized he was without his sword.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s with me.”
Baron Samedi planted his cane, placed both hands on it and waited, blocking the way forward, his face serious. “Monsieur Kerrigan,” he said, placing all the emphasis on the back of my last name. “We need to talk. Alone.”
Haru stepped aside. “I’ll wait for you here.”
The Baron passed Haru and clamped a firm hand on my mended shoulder. I tipped to the side to lessen the pressure and hissed through my teeth at the pain. Mended didn’t mean completely healed. Damn thing was sore as hell and he probably knew it. He led me back down the hall and around the corner before slamming my back against the wall.
“What the hell?” I spat, trying to pry his fingers off me.
“Abandon this foolish campaign against Pestilence.” He finally withdrew his hand.
I rubbed the sore spot. “What? Why?”
He remained dark and silent.
“If you’re going to demand I do something, you need to tell me why.”
The Baron tipped his head to the side. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”
“You can’t force me to do anything either.”
“Remember, boy, I do still have your sister’s soul.”