Of course, her attention had been firmly on Rambo for the last month. Getting the dog settled in and learning to work with him had taken all her attention.
Also, police work in general often involved running from crisis to crisis at breakneck speed. It was easy to overlook undercurrents among coworkers in the race to catch bad guys.
Young launched into his briefing as Faith gnawed over the problem. He stumbled three times just reading off the description of a guy who’d been seen breaking into garages in the Pecan Point neighborhood. The sergeant was normally razor-edged and sarcastic, but he was definitely off his game today.
When he finished, Faith voiced the question that was bothering her. “Sarge, have we heard anything on the murder victim I found dead in the park last night? What did the autopsy find?”
At that, the cops looked at her with a hostility so thick and unspoken, she sat back in her chair in surprise.
“He was a crack addict, Weston,” Young said. “He probably tried to rob the wrong house, and somebody turned their rottweiler loose on him.” The sergeant grinned without humor. “It’s like I always say—it sucks to be a maggot.”
“You think one of us had something to do with it?” Granger demanded, glaring at her.
Faith blinked. “Of course not.”
“Could have fooled me.” Young studied her coolly. “You told Taylor the junkie said things happened to people who go to the city jail. And since the only ones with access to the jail are cops and jailers…”
“And what the fuck do you care about a junkie, anyway?” Granger’s face was flushed under his thinning red hair. “The world’s better off without him. Hell, he took a swing at you day before yesterday. Nice shiner, by the way.”
“I’m well aware of that, Frank.” Faith blew out a breath, striving for patience. “Look, it’s my job to report anything that might be relevant to a death. When two guys in six weeks end up dead after a night in the city jail, that’s relevant.”
“The first guy got cut up by drunks, Weston,” the sergeant said. “That dumbass last night ran into somebody’s dogs. Unless you know something we don’t. I mean, considering you were the one who got in the fight with him to begin with, and you’ve got that big-ass K-9….”
Stung by the implication, she glared. “Rambo sure as hell didn’t eat him.”
Young nodded, his gaze cold. “Then like I say, must have been rottweilers.”
She glanced around the table at the tense, angry cops who surrounded her. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Must have been.”
Faith was still brooding as she walked out to the car. It was a cool night, so for once she hadn’t left the engine running to provide air conditioning for Rambo. The open windows were enough to keep him from overheating.
The dog whined softly from the back as she got in. She closed the door and sat still a moment, frowning out the windshield at the gas station across the street.
“Something’s badly wrong with this department, ’Bo. The question is, what am I going to do about it?” She started the car and drove out of the lot, turning up Main in the direction of her zone.
The usual procedure when a cop suspected fellow officers of corruption was to report the incident to his or her immediate superior. Unfortunately, Faith’s immediate superior was Sergeant Young himself. She could go over his head to her lieutenant, but that was virtually guaranteed to piss off the entire second shift.
Faith was willing to take them all on if she had to, but only if she had some kind of solid evidence of something going on. So far all she had was a gut feeling.
The only thing to do, she decided, was keep her eyes open and see what happened.
Celestine Gentry stood in the ballroom of her plantation house, concentrating fiercely on the spell she was about to cast. A mistake now could be fatal. It had to be perfect.
“What are you waiting for?” the werewolf demanded, clenching his clawed hands as he all but bounced on long, inhuman feet. He was a towering figure, covered in sable fur that shimmered in the light of the chandeliers. Golden eyes all but glowed in his lupine skull, feral with excitement. “Let’s go.”
“Shut up,” she gritted. Keith Reynolds was an adrenalin junkie; he viewed the possibility of getting killed with the enthusiasm of a coke addict surveying a line of pure Peruvian flake. “I have to get this spell right or they’ll be all over us.”
“Don’t worry about the vamps. I’ll take care of them.”
“It’s not that easy.” Reynolds had no idea what it was like to be at the mercy of people who relished your suffering. Celeste, on the other hand, understood that kind of powerlessness all too well.
Obtaining Korbal’s Grail would go a long way toward ensuring her safety, but to get it, she had to go up against Korbal himself. And he was one of the most powerful of Geirolf’s cultists—so much so, he’d been one of the three priests chosen to transform them all into the demon’s vampire army. The idea of confronting all that chilling power made sweat break out on Celestine’s forehead.
Get over it, she told herself savagely. You’re either predator or you’re prey, remember? And you sure as shit don’t want to be prey.
Celestine squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and reached deep for the power she’d seized. She’d told Reynolds to take his time with Cruise, and she reaped the benefit of that magical murder now.
Stolen life force surged though her as she lifted her hands, preparing to cast the spell. Slowly, she began the chant, the ancient, alien words burning her tongue with their twisted syllables. Dark energy boiled up from her soul like a bloody fountain, rolling down her arms to blast from her shaking fingertips. She kept chanting, shaping the magic with every word, forcing it to her will, building a dimensional gate between her home and the lair of her enemies. But not just any gate—one even Korbal with all his powers would be unable to sense.
At last it hung there, shimmering, gleaming red walls visible beyond its swirling forces. But Celestine didn’t drop her aching arms.
“Is that it?” Reynolds asked, his voice a low growl of excitement. His big body coiled as if eager to leap through the gate, no matter who or what was on the other side.
“Almost,” she gritted. “Hold on. I’ve got to shield us first.” Her voice growing hoarse from manipulating death magic, she started chanting again.
Another wave of energy foamed from her hands, coating her body and the werewolf’s, forming an invisible shield around them. Glancing at Reynolds, she watched him grow transparent and finally vanish. With an exhausted sigh, she dropped her arms. They were now impossible to detect by sight or magic. Even their voices wouldn’t carry to anyone other than each other.
As long as nothing went wrong, anyway.
“Now,” Celestine said. “Let’s go.” With the werewolf at her heels, she stepped through the gate. Power pulsed over her skin as that single magical pace carried her hundreds of miles, from Clarkston to the heart of New York.
She and Reynolds emerged in a corridor built of blocks of crimson stone polished to a mirror gleam. Celestine gazed around them, reluctantly impressed. If the decor was any indication, Korbal was even more powerful than he’d been before.
When last she’d been in the New York temple, the building had looked like the rundown warehouse it was, with rusting steel I-beam supports and graffiti-splattered walls.
Korbal’s death magic had transformed it into a cathedral supported by black columns with gleaming solid gold capitals. Eyeing the closest pillar, she saw it was carved with naked, writhing figures, entwined in sex or murder—it was hard to tell which.
“Bet this goes over real well with the locals,” Reynolds whispered. “Looks like a whorehouse.”
“Not from the outside, if I know Korbal,” Celestine said absently as she started down the corridor. “Probably looks just like it did before.”
“…did you call us, priest?” a male voice demanded from somewhere down the corridor. “This had better be good.”
“I suspect you’ll find my reasoning more than compelling, Jarvis.”
Celestine’s mouth went dry at the sound of Richard Korbal’s sonorous voice. For more than a year, she’d been a member of his New York Satanic Temple, until Geirolf had summoned them to destiny. Within hours, she’d drunk from the third grail and tasted true power as a vampire. She’d fought the Magekind as a member of Geirolf’s un-holy army, only to watch the demon god die. She’d have died, too, if Geirolf’s lieutenant hadn’t scattered his vampire army to the four winds.
The spell had dumped Celestine in the wilds of South Carolina. She hadn’t even known where she was, or where she should go next. She only knew she wasn’t interested in rejoining Korbal’s flock.
She wanted a flock of her own.
A week later, Celestine had been driving through Clarkston on her way to Florida when Reynolds had pulled her over. It was then she’d realized she could create her own temple. Hungry for blood, she’d seduced him—had, in fact, meant to kill him. Then she’d realized he was a kindred spirit beneath his badge. What’s more, many of the other cops of Clarkston were just as amenable to seduction.
The question was, what had Korbal discovered while she was laying the groundwork for her own power? There was one way to find out.
Celestine started toward the set of open double doors where she’d heard voices. Reynold’s claws clicked faintly on the gleaming marble floor as he followed.
Rounding the corner, she stopped short in surprise. The room beyond was huge, an echoing space wrapped in gloom and theatrical splashes of torchlight.
It was also completely filled with robed vampires. The stench of death magic rolled over her in waves. To Celestine, the scent was as intoxicating as it was nauseating.
“Jesus,” Reynolds breathed in her ear. “There must be two thousand people in here. I hope to hell you don’t want to take them all on.”
“Not likely. Listen!”
At the other end of the cathedral, Korbal stood on an elevated stage. He was a tall man, graying and handsome, with blue eyes that blazed with fanatical charisma. Behind him, a massive carving depicted Geirolf presiding over ranks of cultists lined up to drink from the three grails.
“We face a great threat, my children,” he said, his voice rising and falling in the hypnotic cadences she knew so well, “one we must band together to defeat—”
“Under your leadership, I assume?” a man sneered from the crowd.
“Does it matter who leads,” Korbal told him, “as long as we deal with the threat?”
Celestine suppressed a snort. No matter what kind of game the priest played, his ultimate goal was power.
“What threat?” a female voice demanded.
The priest drew himself up in in his embroidered black robes. “Three weeks ago, on March tenth, precisely at 11:34P.M., half my army was wiped out in the blink of an eye.”
Celestine’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t sure what was less likely—the possibility that it would happen, or that he would admit it if it had.
On the other hand, Korbal was entirely capable of inventing a crisis to stampede the gullible into following him.
A babble of voices rose. “What the hell are you talking about?” one demanded.
Korbal lifted his graying head in an angry gesture. “Somehow Arthur destroyed them all, while leaving the rest of us untouched.”
Mutters of protest and disbelief. “What? Why?”
Celestine frowned. He was suckering them, he had to be. And yet…perhaps he wasn’t.
“A sneak attack, then?”
“A spell?”
“He lies! Korbal always lies.”
“Go then,” the priest snapped. “Go and die when Arthur’s witches work their magic again. Die unable to defend yourself, between one breath and the next, while you are murdered from a dimension away.”
The shouts subsided to a sullen murmur until another man spoke. “If you know something, priest, spit it out.”
“We determined that all those who died had drunk from the second grail,” Korbal announced in that beautiful, deceptive voice. “Those who drank from my grail lived, and so did those turned by the third grail. But the children of the second grail have been wiped from the face of the earth.”
“He’s lying!”
“No.” Now a woman spoke. “We ran with Harry Kent’s group. The same thing happened to us. Exactly at 11:32P.M. on March tenth, Harry and sixty of our cult mates burst into magical flame and disappeared.”
“Oh, bullshit!”
“Korbal’s subverted her.”
“No,” a man shouted over the murmurs of disbelief. “She speaks the truth. I can sense it.”
There was another wave of sound. Korbal gestured, and his voice thundered, magically amplified. “I believe that one of Arthur’s witches has created a spell to destroy the grails—along with all the vampires who were created by them.”
“But if that’s the case…”
“…We have no defense,” Korbal finished. “You’d be dead before you knew what hit you. Our only chance is to band together to defend our grail.”
“I knew it—he wants to gain control of us all!”
The priest shrugged his black-robed shoulders. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Can you run the risk either way?”
“And perhaps we’ll tell you to go to hell!”
“You certainly have that option,” he said. “But consider—I have the grail. My forces have been greatly depleted by the spell. If I can’t defend the grail from Arthur’s next attack, we will all die—including those of you who turn your backs on me now.”
“And what if we take the grail from you, Korbal?”
He made a dismissive gesture of one long, elegant hand. “Then you will have to defend it against Arthur—without the assistance of my warriors.”
A simmering silence fell as the group considered the obvious implications. Join forces with Korbal and defend the grail, or separate and risk being overwhelmed by Arthur and his men.
Luckily, it wasn’t an issue Celestine had to worry about. She’d drunk from the third grail, but she had no idea where it was and couldn’t do anything about it one way or another. Her only interest in Korbal’s cup was using it to create a vampire army of her own.
She frowned. Unfortunately, this lot would be even less likely to let the grail out of their sight now that they knew their collective lives hung on its possession. And considering how many of them there were, Celestine’s chance of taking the grail and keeping it were faint indeed.
Unless…Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. It sounded as if Arthur would be searching for the grail, too, and he’d likely bring an army with him when he came after it.
Now that had real possibilities.
A plan taking shape in her mind, Celestine turned toward the doorway. “Come on, Reynolds,” she murmured, and slipped out. In the corridor outside, she hesitated a moment, trying to decide which way to go. Then, feeling the mental sizzle from Korbal’s grail, she turned left and descended a flight of curving stairs. The werewolf’s claws clicked after her on the gleaming stone.
They went down four floors—magical, no doubt; the warehouse had never extended that far underground before. Celestine’s fingers brushed over the marble as she descended, tracing across the carved shapes of demons, killing and fornicating with hapless humans.
At last they reached what she sensed was the proper level. But when they stepped out into the corridor beyond the door, Reynolds cursed. “How the hell are we going to get past them?”
No less than ten armed vampires stood in the corridor, plainly guarding a doorway. That, no doubt, was where the grail was hidden.
“They’d be idiots not to guard it, Keith—it’s precious. Which is why I brought you.” She turned toward the werewolf, gave him her best honeyed purr. “You’re going to provide me with a distraction.”
“What have you got in mind?” Even cloaked and invisible as they were, Celestine could sense his anticipation.
She told him.
Then she waited as he crept toward the robed guards, invisible and silent. At least until she dropped the spell around him.
He flashed into view, more than seven feet of werewolf. Just to make sure they got the point, he roared like a lion, a blast of sound that made the guards jump.
Before they could recover, Reynolds dove forward, ripping his claws across one of the guards’throats. He toppled in a fountain of blood, dead before he hit the ground.
The others shouted in confusion, drawing their swords. Too late. The werewolf attacked like a cat among pigeons, and the fight began in earnest.
FOUR
Celestine knew she had only seconds to act before the congregation upstairs heard the sounds of combat. Invisible, she slipped past the battling men, dodging sword thrusts and energy blasts, to aim a spell at the grail in its chamber. It wasn’t the one she’d intended, but it would have to do.
She felt the magic take effect, then whirled to cast a magical doorway. The werewolf was still locked in combat with the guards. Footsteps clattered on the stairs—more of Korbal’s men coming to join the fight.
“Reynolds!” she shouted, “Come on!” She dove through the vortex, the werewolf at her heels. The minute they were through, Celestine spun, planning to cast a spell that would erase her magical trail.
But even as she completed the complicated enchantment and collapsed her gate, a second portal opened. A magical blast lanced from it, tearing apart her invisibility spell.
“There you are, you little bitch!” A guard with a pentagram tattooed on his bald skull leaped through the portal. Four of his fellow cultists followed him, swords in hand, armor gleaming. “You’re going to die for that.”
Reynolds howled a battle cry and charged them, as Celestine gathered her own magic. Apparently the rest of the guards was staying behind to guard the grail.
Good thing, too. They were going to have their hands full as it was.
Faith was still driving around brooding at ten thirty when she got the call from dispatch.
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