Kanga opened the book and began flipping through the pages. He bent at the waist, absorbed in his search.
“Okay,” I said to Photon. “I am going to try and get as close to him as I can, and then I’ll attack him. If you see an opening, bite him.”
“On his arse,” Photon promised.
I moved to the left, staying behind the scaffolding. When I was far enough back that Kanga would not see me out of the corner of his eye, I emerged from behind the supports. As soon as I was directly behind the sorcerer, I closed on him. Kanga remained absorbed, unaware of my approach.
I was less than two meters away when the key, which had been shining brilliant white, flashed red.
Kanga immediately grabbed it and swung around. He pointed it at me and spoke a few words in that strange tongue. I dove to my right. Bright purple cords burst forth, barely missing me as I executed a soft shoulder roll. I popped up and angled left, trying to turn him away from Photon’s hiding place.
Kanga pointed and spoke again. The snaking strings exploded from the end. I flopped on my stomach, and they sailed over. He leveled on me again. I was too close to avoid the shot this time. As he spoke, a brown-white blur shot past me.
The purple cords went high as Photon attacked. I was up in a moment, slamming into Kanga. We grappled for possession of the key. His forearm strummed with energy. I forced our hands high so he could not point at me again. Photon growled and snapped. Kanga let out a yelp of pain.
I drew back my right hand and threw a punch. He twisted and took it on the shoulder. He gave a mighty yank and pulled his right arm out of my grasp. He yelled again and swatted behind him, trying to dislodge Photon. He never took his eyes off me, though. He spoke and pointed, and this time I couldn’t move fast enough.
The cords burst from the end of the key, thumping into my torso with such force I was driven into the air. I hit the roof on my head and rolled, slamming into one of the sign’s support poles, ending up in a sitting position against it. My scalp was wet and blood seeped into my collar. The strange cables wrapped me in a boa’s embrace.
Kanga shook Photon loose and fired at him several times, missing. Unfortunately, Photon was too small to be a threat. Kanga turned away from him and paged through the book.
He seemed to find his place. He straightened up, looked at Photon, who was sitting well away from him, and then at me, confirming we were where he wanted us. He raised the key and recited a brief speech with his eyes closed. The air filled with static electricity. My hair rose. I heard the boom of distant thunder. Kanga held the key toward the heavens.
With great care, he placed the key on top of the Akashic Records, where it began pulsing. At first it was a slow throb, like the heartbeat of a well-conditioned athlete, then it started to speed up. Kanga walked to me and put his face close to mine.
“I no longer care if I taint your blood. I am going to drug you to keep you unconscious, then I am going to force the vampire to drink you. She can serve as a filter. And I would prefer she be warmer to the touch when I take her.” He took me by the throat and shook, baring his teeth. “And after that, I am going to cut your blood out of her and eat her heart.”
He was close to doing everything he threatened. I struggled against my bonds, impotent fury getting the better of my judgment.
Kanga grunted. “You are not going anywhere, Mr. Montero. You are bound by the most powerful magic in existence. You will stay right here until I rip you back into your real body. And then you shall watch your girlfriend die most horribly. Hebrews 10:31: ‘It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’”
He stood and gazed down at me.
“Consider yourself privileged. You will witness the most important event in the history of humankind tonight—the coronation ceremony of the next ruler of the world. Kanga the First.”
He turned and headed back to the altar, his robes swaying in the breeze. Once he was in front of the Records, he raised his arms, stared at the heavens, and began chanting.
I gestured to Photon with my head. He came to my side.
“Can you chew these off me?”
We examined the purple restraints. They were undulating as if alive. Photon gave me a doubtful look.
“Never mind,” I said.
We watched Kanga. The key rose into the air and began blinking.
At that moment, an unearthly shriek filled the air, the same sound Photon and I had heard earlier. The key pulsed bright red once, went back to its blinking, brilliant white. Kanga stopped chanting and lowered his arms. He looked around, his face clouded with concern.
“What did you say that was?” I asked Photon.
“Some crazy spirit that showed up yesterday. She chased me last night and almost caught me. Me! Nobody has been able to get close enough to ask who she is.”
A wild idea popped into my head. “Photon, you must find her and make her chase you up here!”
“What?”
Kanga had returned to his chanting. The electricity in the air felt like ants dancing on my skin. The key spun and pulsed. Lightning skittered. The roof lit up like a stage. Kanga had nearly completed the ceremony.
“Photon, fetch her up here! GO!”
His jowly face filled with fear, the bulldog disappeared through the roof.
I twisted and pushed against my bonds, furious at my helplessness. Photon needed to return soon.
If he didn’t, we were all dead.
With terrified resignation, I held my breath as Kanga neared the conclusion of the ceremony that would give him abilities like the Greek gods of mythology.
A growing, ululating wail like the nighttime cry of a wounded animal approached. The key pulsed red once. Kanga spun in my direction, his eyes wide.
Photon shot through the roof. Hot on his heels came a gray, screeching spirit with twisting robes and wild hair.
Madame Leoni.
Photon jigged and headed straight for Kanga. The howling woman turned toward him, too.
“NO!” Kanga looked like he wanted to run but couldn’t leave the altar. The key glowed solid red now. Kanga reached for it, but it spouted flames. He jerked back his hand.
Photon sped between Kanga’s legs. Madame Leoni’s head snapped up. She stared at the robed man, hovering in midair. A terrible smile came over her face, wrinkling the skull tattoos under her eyes.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh . . .” Her voice creaked up and down the scale, quivering my bones.
Kanga stood motionless, as if he were on pause. Pale, he held one hand out in supplication. “Wait,” he said. “I can bring you back. If you let me finish, I will have the power to restore—”
He screamed as Madame Leoni looped above him and pounced with incredible speed.
The key whirled faster than ever, flashing madly. The pages of the Akashic Records rippled back and forth as if blown by high winds. The sky lit up. Thunder broke over us like the crash of gigantic cymbals.
Madame Leoni lifted Kanga off the roof, raking his chest with her fingernails. He screamed, tried to fight her off. She cackled. Reed had said when Kanga failed to control her soul, the power had gone into her spirit. It looked like he was right. She was handling Kanga as if he were one of her voodoo dolls.
A thump that shook the building vibrated the air. Flames and sparks spouted out of the Akashic Records. The book belched again, sending up a towering plume of fire and causing another bone-shaking thud. A burning vortex appeared within the volume.
The key was a blur. Sparks flew from it in all directions. It began to descend toward the molten eye in the center of the Records.
“Photon!”
The little dog stood as far from Madame Leoni as possible.
“Get out of here!” I yelled.
“What about you?”
The key was almost touching the book. Kanga gave a strangled yell of terror. I turned to yell at Photon again when the world lit up white.
The blast shocked me with its incredible intensity. It felt as if hund
reds of bullets passed through my body at once, followed by a blast of heat. The purple bonds disintegrated. My skin bubbled off in the inferno. Muscles shuddered with spasmodic contractions. Identity narrowed to a continuous shriek of blind misery. I lost all sense of self, the searing roar filling me to the edges of my mind.
An eternity passed before the tempest began to abate.
Reason tottered back to her throne. The muscle spasms ebbed, though it felt as if I were immersed in boiling oil. With great effort, I forced my eyes open. Smoke filled the world. Was I still on the roof of the Knickerbocker?
I yelled hoarsely for Photon and heard his feeble bark, but I could not see him.
The blast had riddled my body with wounds, all of them bleeding profusely. I imagined all of them closing. Nothing happened.
I tried to get up, could not. My arms and legs would not work. Someone whimpered with pain. I realized it was me.
A powerful magical object, the Key of Akasha, combined with the Akashic Records, had detonated in our faces. No wonder our spirits were in serious trouble. For Kanga and me it was more complicated than for Photon and Madame Leoni. Our physical bodies would be bleeding from these same wounds when we returned to them. Photon had been the farthest from ground zero and was small. I hoped that had protected him from the brunt of the explosion.
Madame Leoni and Kanga had been the closest.
I burned all over, nothing healing, and I had serious doubts that my astral body could survive. My physical body could, however. All I had to do was get back to it.
I focused on my silver cord. Wait. This could not be. I looked around. Nothing. Despair engulfed me as the meaning of that sunk in.
The explosion had ripped away my only lifeline back to my body.
Forty-Five
Friday, December 24, 7:31 p.m.
Fear and I wrestled when a shadow appeared out of the smoke. Madame Leoni’s spirit floated over me, her face dazed, her body spouting a thousand wounds. She opened her mouth—probably to tell me this was all my fault—when her form twisted as if sucked by a cyclone. Screaming shrilly, she faded like dissipating steam.
Seeing her evaporate gave me a chill. It confirmed that a spirit could die from these wounds. I had to get back to the physical world, and soon.
The smoke had cleared enough for me to see that we were indeed still on top of the Knickerbocker. Kanga? I spotted him. He was flying away from the hotel, dripping blood. Madame Leoni must have shielded him from the worst of the explosion by taking the blast directly.
He faded into the distance. He would make it back to his body. With his grimoires, he might have a potion to repair himself. If he did, his first task would be to kill Aliena.
With that thought, I pushed up on one elbow, biting back a scream. I closed my eyes automatically and had to force them open again. When my vision cleared, I saw Photon was standing next to me. His back was slightly charred, but other than that, he looked unmarked.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said. “I got most of the way down before it blew.” His brown eyes studied me fearfully. “Crikey, Montero, you look terrible. And your man has escaped,” he said, looking off toward the fading form of Kanga. “What are we going to do?”
“All I have to do is get back to the physical plane, and I can survive this.”
“No, you can’t. Your corporeal body received these same wounds.” His jowly face was mournful. “It’s already dead, Sebastian.”
“It’s not. And I can repair myself there,” I said desperately. “I don’t have time to explain all of it now. Can you take me?”
“Your scent will be easy to follow. Grab onto my collar.”
I hooked my fingers under the leather strap.
We flew off the top of the hotel so fast the landscape blurred the way it had when I came to the Knickerbocker. My stomach sideslipped, telling me we were spinning. Photon was not only taking us to my car—he was speeding us back to the future.
“Here we are,” he said when we jolted to a stop. He watched me curiously as our surroundings came back into focus again, his jowly face mournful. “If you can repair that,” he said, gesturing with his snout, “you are one of the Ancient Ones.”
We floated above the Maserati. Photon was right. Even from here, it was easy to see the blood covering my body. It looked in better shape than my astral body, but mortally wounded all the same.
Hamilton had turned sideways in the passenger seat, his back flat against the door. He clutched one of the juju guardian dolls, holding it in my direction like a shield.
“Thanks, Photon,” I said. “I owe you one.”
“Then just tell me, what? A straight answer? Are you one of the Eternals?”
He had probably just saved my life, so I told him the truth. “I do not know about Eternals, for I have never met one, but I have been alive for over seven hundred years, and I don’t die from the things that kill everyone else.”
He wagged his tail. Somewhere in the folds of his face I detected a smile. “I knew it. I’m the first to find one!”
“You’re the first.” I felt drained to the bone. I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes.
“Oy, you need to get down there!” he growled. “You look like you’re about to die.”
My astral body was fading fast.
“Farewell, Photon.”
“Arrivederci, Montero.”
I fell into my body the way a parched man falls into a pool of cool water. Once inside, my ears roared with a mass of internal activity. My body felt as if every bone, muscle, and organ was under repair. My heart beat strongly, and the terrible lethargy that had been overcoming me in the ether vanished.
Hamilton chanted in a voice that was not quite hysterical. “ . . . I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest—”
“Steve,” I said, but only a faint hiss came out. I tried again. “Steve.” This time it was a croak.
“Holy shit! Sebastian?”
“Yeah,” I said, coughing. “You can stop reciting the twenty-third Psalm. And you don’t need to scream at me. I have had enough of that for one night.”
“How can you be alive?” He slowly lowered himself back into his seat, but he kept the doll clutched to his chest. “It’s impossible.”
I got my left hand on the seat controls and pressed the button to raise the back. Groaning, I sat up as it tilted me into place.
My clothes were sticky with blood. Small holes peppered my pants, shirt, and jacket. The Maserati’s leather was soaked.
“Twice in three days,” I said, low. “Even Hector is going to be surprised.”
“Sebastian?” Hamilton was peering at me. “Are you really back?”
I risked a quick look at my face in the rearview mirror. My flesh looked normal, suffering from no burns.
“Yes, I’m back.” I twisted the key in the ignition. The clock read 7:43. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed I had been on the astral plane for hours.
“Whoa!” Hamilton said as the engine came to life. “Wait a minute! You can’t drive!”
“If you want to get out, Steve, do it right now. I’m only going to wait five seconds. Four, three, two—”
“Go, dammit! Go!”
I punched it, spinning the car in a tread-burning U-turn. A right and left brought us onto the Boulevard, where I began weaving in and out of slow-moving traffic.
“Well, are you going to tell me what happened?”
“He almost completed the ritual. You can’t believe how close it was.” I hit the brakes, swerved around a car. “But Madame Leoni attacked him and disrupted the ceremony.”
“What? Our Madame Leoni?”
The way he said that brought a lump to my throat. “Yes. She saved us all. When she interrupted him, the Akashic Records and the Key of Akasha exploded right in our faces.”
“Is that when you screamed?”
“You heard me?”
“Fuckin’ A. I nearly dumped in my sho
rts the first time. Sounded like you were being tortured.”
“That’s how it felt.”
“Jesus. And when those holes opened up on you, a huge wind blew through the car and shook the hell out of it. That’s when I grabbed my man, here,” he said, holding up the garish doll.
I turned off Ventura onto Laurel Canyon and began the trip down the dark, winding road.
“All that blood on your clothes,” he said. “How can you keep going after that kind of blood loss?”
“It’s not real blood,” I said. “It happened while I was in the ether, so that’s where the injuries stayed.”
“I always heard you took that with you. What about Kanga?”
“Same thing.” That was another lie. Kanga, with all his power, was not immortal. His wounds were fatal, and he was going to die when he returned to his body. It was possible he was already dead. But I wouldn’t feel at ease until I saw that for myself. If he had a potion waiting . . .
“Open the glove box and hand me the gun in there,” I told Hamilton.
He gave it to me at a stoplight. I cocked it, slid it into my holster.
“Now listen,” I said, “when we get there, you’re going to have to call this in. We can’t both go into the house until we’re certain he’s no longer a threat.”
“What? Screw that, Sebastian. We go in together.”
“No, it’s too risky. What if he’s ready for us again and kills us this time? Who’s going to report where he is now and make sure he doesn’t get out of there?”
“Fine, you call it in,” he said. “I’ll handle Kanga and get Aliena.”
“No. We don’t have a warrant. Kanga could walk, you know that.”
“You’re an agent of the LAPD. You can’t go in there, either.”
“Reyes removed me from the active rolls the day after I began working for her. We set it up for situations like this.” It was the one condition upon which she had insisted before permitting me access to her homicide investigations.
He remained silent. As we approached Kanga’s drive I slowed, turned onto it, and hit the high beams as we sped through the dark tunnel of trees. In a few moments, we rushed into the open field where the big white house sat.
To Kill a Sorcerer Page 29