Stone 02 Kato

by DB Reynolds

  “You’ve been hanging around my serious brother for too long. I can be quite persuasive.”

  “Ignore him,” Cassandra said, brushing by the big man. “The only time he’s serious is when he’s killing something.”

  “Well, not the only time,” he said, giving her a quick hug before letting her walk up to the door with Grace.

  Cassandra rolled her eyes, but then became deadly intent as she glanced from the door to Grace. “You work here?”

  Grace nodded. “Antiquities and ancient languages. This is my office.”

  “Anything we need to worry about in there?”

  Grace frowned. “Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s been an unusual few days.”

  Cassandra gave her a piercing look. “You don’t have any magic.” It was a statement, not a question, which told Grace that Cassandra did have magic.

  “Apparently I have some, but only enough to cause problems,” she said dryly.

  “Not true,” Kato said, joining them. “Grace is a brilliant linguist, whose skills have drawn the attention of our longtime enemy,” he added, with a meaningful look at Damian.

  “Fuck. I knew it,” the big warrior swore, then did a slight double take and stared at the closed door. “What am I feeling in there, Kato?”

  “Dark magic, but traces only. It’s old.”

  Damian stared at him as Grace unlocked the door. “Like at the university yesterday,” the big warrior said slowly. “What the fuck’s going on? Surely your mother’s long dead.”

  Kato didn’t answer until they’d all filed into the office and closed the door behind them. “The Dark Witch is dead. I would know if it were otherwise. But some of her spell scrolls have resurfaced, courtesy of Sotiris.”

  Damian hissed at the sound of their enemy’s name. “Bastard. The last we saw of him, Nico was on his tail, just outside Chicago. He’d grabbed a particularly vile artifact called the Talisman and was planning to sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “After a demonstration of its effectiveness,” Cassandra interjected. “In fact, I was securing the Talisman for safekeeping when Damian and I met,” she added, nudging the big warrior with her shoulder.

  “When you broke my curse,” Damian corrected, with a half grin. “That’s got to be the best meet-cute ever.”

  Kato blinked. Meet-cute? Grace laughed, and he looked over to see her watching him. “Well?” he asked.

  “It’s a term used in books and movies,” she explained. “It refers to the first time the couple meets before they fall in love. The meet is supposed to be clever or unusual, hence . . . ‘meet-cute.’”

  He glanced over at Damian who was smiling down at Cassandra as if she was his world. He blinked in surprise. Damian in love? Remarkable.

  Forcing his attention back to the reason they were all in the museum basement, he said, “Nico obviously lost Sotiris’s trail, because he’s back here causing problems.” He gazed around the small space where his stone prison had stood for such a long time. Sotiris’s sudden appearance, coming just as he broke free of his curse, was deeply troubling. He didn’t believe in coincidence, not when magic was involved. But he couldn’t think of any reason why Sotiris would want him released. The sorcerer had no chance of controlling him, not as long as Nico was alive and active in this place and time. And probably not if Nico had somehow died before him, either. Loyalty ran too deep in Nico’s people. But he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that he was missing something.

  “Kato.”

  He looked up at the sound of his name on Grace’s lips. “Amata?”

  “I was telling them about Sotiris. As far as I know, his only connection to the scrolls was his suggestion that I be the one to do the translations. I was surprised by that at the time, since I’ve only met him once, and we never discussed my work. But I just assumed someone familiar with my research had recommended me to him.”

  “And the scrolls?” Damian asked Kato. “What can you tell us about them?”

  “There were three scrolls, all the work of the Dark Witch, but not written by her. All intended to summon demons, and all of those are now dead. The demon we killed at the university yesterday, the one that made so much noise on the ethereal plane, was the last, and the only possession. The other two were simple manifestations.”

  “So what’s Sotiris’s interest in all this?” Damian demanded, expressing the same confusion that Kato was feeling. “He hardly needs some second-rate witch acolyte of your mother’s to drag a demon into this reality. He could do it very well on his own.”

  “Exactly,” Kato agreed. “And why . . . ?” He hesitated to voice his doubts about his freedom. He believed what he’d said earlier about Fate being a spiteful bitch. Why not accept his good fortune for what it was and move on? Why question such a gift?

  Because as horrible as his imprisonment had been—trapped by a thin layer of stone that might as well have been the hardest steel, watching, listening, and knowing he’d never touch another human being, never feel the sun on his face, the breeze on his skin, seeing others take for granted what he longed for—as horrible as that had been, it would be a million times worse to be trapped again. And if Sotiris was somehow involved in his freedom, if he’d somehow manipulated events to be sure it happened, then Kato needed to know what he wanted and why. Because he would take his own life before he’d permit himself to be cursed for a second time.

  “Why is Sotiris so interested in dark magic all of a sudden?” Kato asked abruptly. The others cut off whatever they’d been saying, and studied him with varying expressions. Damian had the hard eyes of a tested warrior, but there was a flash of horror in his gaze. He, too, understood the cruelty of their enemy. Cassandra’s reaction was mostly curiosity, immediately tempered by concern as Damian’s stress became obvious.

  But it was Grace who truly understood. Her gaze held the same kind of horror that he knew she could read in his eyes, but it was tempered by a thoughtfulness that told him she’d already considered this very same question.

  “We need to examine the rest of the collection that came in with the scrolls,” she said clearly, reminding him of why they’d come there in the first place.

  He nodded, grabbing onto the lifeline of reason she was offering. He turned to Damian. “Grace was unaware of her magic potential when she started work on the three scrolls. Her power is just enough that she unknowingly activated the spells when she made copies for her work.”

  “Three scrolls, three demons dead,” Damian said thoughtfully. “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Exactly. Something stinks about this whole sequence of events. We came here tonight to break into that office—” he pointed at Gabler’s locked door, “—and examine the full collection that Sotiris was so interested in.” He hesitated on a sudden thought and gave Damian a quizzical look. “Why are you here?”

  “Looking for you. Nico swore he sensed your magic several days back, and since he now believes our curses are going to fall one after the other, he was convinced yours had been broken. You were making a big splash at the university on the day we got here, but by the time we gained access to the scene, you were long gone. So, Nico sent us here, to the museum, to look for you. Instinct on his part, I guess. You know how he is.”

  Kato nodded. Nico operated on a level well beyond that of most mortals. Hell, Kato wasn’t even sure Nico was mortal. Sorcerers could be killed, but not those with his talent. After all, Nico was still alive and working magic after thousands of years. Even if he’d thrown himself into the maelstrom of time in an effort to follow Kato and the others through, he still would have lived at least a millennium or two. Kato wondered if Nico had changed after all that time. Had he become an old man, bent with age, while Kato and the others remained frozen in time?

  Was there a diplomatic way for Kato to ask Damian about it? Probably not.

  “You said Nico will be here tonight?” he asked instead.

  Damian nodded. “He’s probably
landing right now.”

  Kato frowned. He’d seen planes in the sky, and Grace had explained how they worked, to the best of her knowledge. But he still had trouble imagining it. “We should finish up here before meeting him, then. We may turn up something helpful.”

  “Right. What are we looking for?” Damian scowled as he scanned the wreckage of the office.

  “The three scrolls were part of a larger group of documents and artifacts. Grace only saw the three, but she’s fairly certain that her supervisor—a man named Gabler—has the rest of the collection locked in this office.” He gestured at the locked door.

  Damian took one look at the door, then lifted a big booted foot and kicked the door in.

  Grace gave a little scream of surprise, turning from a search of her own files to stare at the smashed door. “What’d you do that for? Couldn’t you just pick the damn lock?”

  “I could,” Damian agreed. “But this was far more satisfying.”

  “Get out of the way,” she muttered, shoving past him. “And don’t come in here. This has to be done right. I can’t have papers flying all over the place.

  Damian watched her go by, and then gave Kato a bemused grin. “You never used to like them so bossy.”

  “There’s never been anyone like Grace.”

  Damian’s expression turned much more thoughtful, but before he could ask for details, Kato followed Grace into Gabler’s office. He found her bent over a large table that was covered in neat piles of paper and thick folders.

  She glanced up. “This is it,” she said, surprise evident in her voice. “I don’t know why it’s spread out like this, unless Gabler was working on it, but . . .” She frowned. “Ancient languages aren’t his field, and the documents in this collection were far older than anything he’d have been familiar with. His specialty was pottery—mostly Greek, a thousand to five hundred BCE was his dissertation—but ancient pottery in general. I’ve never seen him work with anything else.”

  Kato walked over to the table and picked up a folder at random. Embarrassment flooded him. How had he forgotten? Unless it was the language of the Dark Witch, he still couldn’t read. Grace took the folder from him and leaned against his side as she perused the documents. She made it look casual, but he knew her by now. She’d understood his embarrassment, and this was her quiet way of lending him support. He’d told Damian the truth. There was no other like Grace.

  “Anything?” he murmured.

  She shook her head. “These are standard correspondence, nothing of note. Except for the fact that they shouldn’t be here at all.” She put down the folder and picked up another. “Here we go,” she said softly. “A list of the artifacts that came with the collection, and, oh! Photographs. Excellent.” She looked up at Kato. “This just gets weirder and weirder. Look at these vessels, and that perfectly preserved sculpture. These are right in Gabler’s wheelhouse. Er, what he’s most interested in. But I don’t see any of them here. Maybe your friends could locate these pieces, while you and I go through what’s here. They won’t be on display yet, but I can show you on a map where they’re likely being kept.”

  Kato scanned the photographs. The pictures were mostly of small bits of pottery, recognizable, but none of it perfectly intact, except for one or two small sculptures.

  “Damian,” he said, loudly enough to get his brother’s attention where he’d wandered out into the larger office to help Cassandra right a desk.

  He reappeared almost instantly, which told Kato how bored he was. Give Damian a horde of angry barbarians and he’d charge in gleefully. But asking him to sort through a bunch of dry paperwork was a waste of breath.

  “Here,” Kato said, handing him the list and photographs. “See if you can locate any of these. You can start in this facility.” He added a map of the grounds that Grace had marked up. “The locations are indicated by priority, the ones Grace thinks most likely to be fruitful.”

  Damian took the materials with a grin. “I think she just wants me gone. Afraid I’ll mess up her tidy piles.”

  Kato gave him a half grin in return. “Not without reason. Here . . .” He held up the cell phone Grace had bought him. “My cell number, and text me yours, too. And call if you find anything.”

  “Technology, brother? It was never your strong suit,” Damian teased.

  “Kato has a lot of strong suits you don’t know about,” Grace snapped, rising to his defense, although it wasn’t necessary. Damian would never have said anything to wound Kato. Grace had taken his comment as a slur against Kato’s illiteracy, but that wasn’t it. It had more to do with dark magic, which was decidedly primal in nature.

  Damian gave her a stricken look at the misunderstanding, but Kato clapped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, brother. She doesn’t know you like I do.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Grace muttered under her breath. And both men grinned.

  “I like her,” Damian announced and was about to turn away, when Cassandra drew their attention. She was standing in front of Grace’s desk, staring intently at the spot where the demon had manifested. “Hey,” she said looking up. “There was some major magic going on here recently. Did you know about that?”

  Kato chuckled. “That’s Grace’s workspace. The first demon manifested right about where you were standing. It died there, too.”

  “Ew,” she said in disgust, brushing her hands together as she came toward them. “A little warning next time, okay?”

  Damian hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her closer. “Cassandra’s a natural sensitive. She’s one of Nico’s agents and quite an accomplished thief, too.”

  “I am not a thief,” she corrected sharply. “I recover dangerous artifacts. It’s a public service.”

  Damian snorted. “Whatever you say, sweetheart. Come on, we have a job.”

  Cassandra took the photos from him and bent her head to study them as she walked out into the hallway. Damian started after her, but paused long enough to catch Kato’s attention. “You stay in touch, brother. I’m going to be pissed as hell if a demon pops up, and you keep him all to yourself.”

  “After these last few days, I’ll welcome the help. I’ve had my fill of demon battles.”

  The two of them grasped forearms and bumped shoulders, and then Damian was gone, running after his woman, who was already out of sight, around the corner.

  Kato closed the door so they’d have some advance notice if anyone was about to intrude, and then joined Grace in Gabler’s office. “Okay, he’s gone.”

  She glanced up with a worried look. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right. Damian can suck the air out of a room sometimes. It’s his magic.”

  “I didn’t sense anything from him.”

  “You did, you just didn’t recognize it for what it is. That sense you had of him wreaking havoc? That’s his magic at work. He’s a god of war, and war is chaos.”

  She turned fully and regarded him. “Is he actually a god?”

  Kato shrugged. “A god is whatever people want it to be. Damian was worshipped as a god of war, and therefore he is one. War is his art, and you will never find a better fighter, a more skilled strategist. Give him a weapon, any weapon, and he’ll master it in minutes. It’s what he was created to do.”

  “You keep saying ‘created,’ not ‘born.’ Is that . . .” She searched for the right word. “Significant?”

  “Damian’s story is his to tell, but more than anyone you will ever meet, he is a creature of magic.”

  “More than you?”

  He smiled crookedly. “Different than me. He is the light to my dark.”

  “You’re not dark,” she protested. “I don’t care what Mommy Dearest tried to do to you. You’re definitely one of the good guys.”

  Kato hugged her close. “I’m glad you think so, amata,” he whispered against her ear. Then he pulled away. “We need to be done with this. Damian and Cassandra’s intrusion will be noticed soon, and we need to be gone b
efore then.”

  “Right. Most of these docs are the kind of thing historians love. Diaries, supply lists. The day-to-day paperwork that we all take for granted, but that can tell the story of a civilization. I was thinking that Gabler had locked up all the good stuff, but then I came across this.” She handed him a heavy portfolio with a string tie. “This looks like the others to me, but you’re the expert here.”

  Kato glanced at her as he untwisted the string on the portfolio. She’d never know how much he appreciated her belief in him. Her confidence that he could help her with the scrolls had broken his curse, though she hadn’t truly known what she was doing. But that she continued to see him as something more than a weapon, or a useful tool, that she had utter confidence in his ability to make any situation better . . . it made all the difference in the world to him. He couldn’t remember anyone in his life who’d believed in him so completely.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked playfully.

  “Because of you.”

  She blushed, but he could tell she was pleased at the compliment. He was about to say more when he finally undid the final twist of string and opened the portfolio. There was a single document inside, and he knew even before he touched it that it was the Dark Witch’s magic. Just like the others.

  He hissed in displeasure as he slid the lone page of thick parchment into view, taking a few minutes to read before he swore, “Fuck. This isn’t only dark; it’s evil. What was she thinking?” Privately, he wondered again what could have driven his mother not simply to create such spells, but to let them out of her control. The three others had been dangerous, but this one in the wrong hands could be devastating. “We have to destroy this before—”

  They both froze at the sound of a key card being slid through the reader outside the locked door.

  “Damian and Cassandra?” she whispered, as Kato slid the spell scroll back into the folder and handed it to Grace, before moving in front of her.