An old crone behind the bar cackled. “The usual, missy Aurora?”
“Yeah, make it a double. I’ll be right back.” She walked through a doorway covered by a black curtain into a long and narrow room. Combination lockers covered one wall. She stopped at number sixty-three, dialed in its combination, and opened it. Then she placed the bag on an empty shelf and closed the door.
Back at the bar, she threw back her head and downed more tequila. Then she dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “That should cover my tab, Mabel. I’ll be out of town for a while, but keep that fact to yourself.”
“Will do. Can’t say that I blame you. Your brother’s causing trouble for everybody.”
Aurora wave goodbye and returned to the van. Before she sat inside, I changed into a pure spirit. Almost immediately, the three sentient beings took off.
-o-o-o-
SONJA’S SPIRIT APPROACHED close enough for me to recognize her. I changed into my human form, and sat in the front passenger seat of the legion’s car. “We need to run down the last sister as quickly as possible. The rats are fleeing the sinking ship.”
“Where is she?”
“West of here,” I said. “A city called Walnut Creek.”
While Sonja drove, I mentally connected with Honah to tell him what I’d learned most recently.
I’ll send someone to monitor that bar, he told me. It sounds like our quarry is desperate for funds. He should drop by soon, or send someone. That is probably our best means to catch him. Just in case that doesn’t work, however, interview the last sister. So far, Caligula has not attempted to contact his nephew, Lou. Inga remains with him.
That last part made my stomach flip with worry, but I remembered what a good fighter she was. And if Caligula himself showed up there, she had enough sense to call for backup. Still, I wished she wasn’t facing evil alone.
It couldn’t be helped, so I moved on to my last question. Is there any chance Rosie Kamau could trace Caligula through that encrypted email service?
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, he said, She will contact you shortly to determine if that’s possible.
-o-o-o-
BECAUSE OF MORE terrible traffic, it took Sonja a half-hour to get to Walnut Creek. Before we arrived at Lucinda’s house, Rosie appeared in the seat behind us.
“What’s this about some whizzbang email service?” she asked.
I explained what I’d learned from Aurora.
“Blasphemy.com? It’s a web-based operation, which means anybody can use it from any place where they find Internet service, including Wi-Fi.”
“Does that mean no?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so, honey. Thousands of people use it every hour to send confidential messages. I could trace the locations people use to connect to the web portal, but that wouldn’t tell me who was sending the message.”
Another dead end. I was getting danged tired of running into roadblocks. “Okay, thanks for the info. We’re running out of leads. I feel like were chasing a ghost, not a sorcerer.”
“Sorry I can’t be of more help. Stay in touch, kiddies.” Rosie vanished.
“The one thing we can agree upon,” Sonja said, “is how frustrating this process has been. I much prefer fighting.”
Amen. No wonder that the legion had gotten along for eons without any detectives. I was useless to them, couldn’t even find one demon.
-o-o-o-
WE REACHED THE address Antonio had given me for his youngest sister. I was surprised at how rundown Lucinda’s neighborhood and her house were. Cars sat on blocks in front of several of the homes nearby. Her roof had been patched in several places, and one of the windows was cracked. Weeds filled the front yard.
I shared Sonja’s mind, and she walked up the cement sidewalk to the front door. When she rang the doorbell, a haggard-looking woman opened the door. Her eyes were red.
“What is it now?” Lucinda had a strong family resemblance to Carmelita, but her hair was silver instead of black.
Sonja introduced herself as the FBI’s special agent and said, “We have a few questions about your brother, Caligula.”
I’d expected to get the same frosty reception we’d received from all of his other siblings, but she waved us inside. Once she locked the door behind us, she said, “He took David, my son, about an hour ago. You know my brother’s an immortal sorcerer, right?”
Sonja nodded. “Why does he want your son?”
Lucinda motioned for us to sit on a threadbare sofa. She sat across from us in a matching overstuffed chair. Then she burst into tears. “My brother plans to kill someone. He promised my son immortality if he helped. My idiot kid said, ‘Great.’ But I don’t want my boy to turn out like his uncle. My husband wanted to move away from here long ago, and I told him I needed to stay near my family. He left me and our children. Man was he ever right.”
It was a sad story, and I didn’t expect Lucinda would get a happy ending. Even so, I had a job to do, and it didn’t involve helping her overcome her bad choices in life.
Sonja sat in silence while Lucinda composed herself.
Then she said, “I’ll help you any way I can if you promise to keep my son alive.”
Sonja nodded. “We will do everything possible to keep him safe. You should know, there’s a large reward—”
“Carmelita told me,” Lucinda interrupted. “Just keep my son alive. That’s the main thing. He’s only twenty. Stubborn, like his father. Of course, if I can get the money, too, that’d be great.”
Then her eyes narrowed. “How do you expect to fight a demon? Your gun is useless.”
“I belong to an elite squad within the bureau. We all have magical powers in our own right. If you help us find your brother, I can promise you we have enough firepower to end his reign of terror.”
Lucinda looked askance at innocent-looking Sonja. “Show me.”
My partner sighed. “Don’t forget, you asked for it.” She pointed her right hand at an empty fireplace on the opposite wall. She shot a bolt of white lightning into the firebox. The boom was deafening, and the electricity melted a hole in the bricks large enough for a volleyball to pass through to the outside.
Lucinda shrieked. “Okay! Enough. This is a rental.”
My partner couldn’t keep a grin off her face. “Do you, by any chance, have a picture of your son?”
That was a stupid question. Sonja had obviously never been a mother.
Still rattled, Lucinda wobbled as she walked over to a bookshelf and pointed at a dozen pictures. “Which one would you like?”
“The most recent will be fine. Do you have any idea where your brother and your son went?”
The woman rubbed her forehead with her free hand as she passed the picture to Sonja. “I was so upset, I was hardly listening. My brother said something like, ‘An asshole doctor in Petaluma has a date with destiny.’ Or maybe he said a lawyer? Anyway, somebody in Petaluma.”
That was helpful, but not nearly specific enough. Petaluma was a large town that had to have dozens of doctors and lawyers. We have to narrow it down more.
My partner snapped back, Tell me something I don’t know.
Then she asked Lucinda, “What else did your brother say about the victim? Anything extra might help us find him.”
Lucinda shook her head. “Caligula did promise to let David drive his yellow Ferrari. My brother has a collection of very expensive cars. David is nuts about Ferraris.”
That wasn’t going to help us find the murder victim directly, but it was another way we might be able to track Caligula and his nephew. There couldn’t be that many yellow Ferraris in the Bay Area. I sent a message to Honah. Caligula and his nephew might be driving around in a yellow Ferrari. It’s a rare car. Jack should be able to pull up a short list of owners in the region.
Excellent, the chief said immediately. We will send out a police bulletin and research each potential owner.
The
n I told him about the likely victim in Petaluma. Might have more later.
Then I told Sonja, Ask her whether her kid has a cell phone.
This time, she did it without snapping at me.
“Of course,” Lucinda said. “He always has it on. Caligula told him to turn it off. I doubt he did, but if so, he’ll turn it back on again soon. He has a girl he is sweet on. Hates to miss her calls.” She rattled off the number.
I passed on her comment and the number to Honah.
He got back to me a moment later. The phone is on, and it’s moving. The most recent location is on or near U.S. Highway 101 heading north a few miles north of Novato.
That was on the way to Petaluma. I quickly switched into Lucinda’s head to confirm her truthfulness. The woman had spilled her guts out of fear for her son’s safety.
I told Sonja, We need to get over there as quickly as possible.
She said goodbye to Lucinda and strode out the front door. As she did, I spotted Torino headed up the driveway. He had no way of knowing I was in Sonja’s head, and he gave her a long, hungry looked as he passed. She barely glanced his way.
Uh, so you know, fake special agent, your cover as a witch working for the FBI just got blown. That prick’s a real G-man, and he hates me. In a few minutes, he’s going to hate you, too.
She muttered under her breath, “Your bad luck poisons everything around you. You owe me some good news for a change.”
The way things were going, I hoped to provide that soon. We had two different paths to Caligula now, the cash from Aurora and David’s phone.
Back in the car, I reformed to my human self for what should’ve been a short ride over to Petaluma. Unfortunately, the only feasible highway north of the bay got backed up suddenly because of an accident on a causeway. I was really beginning to hate driving in the Bay Area.
As though he wanted to depress me even more, Honah sent a message. David’s phone remains on, but it has stopped moving.
That couldn’t be good. Perhaps Caligula’s fancy car had suffered a breakdown, or maybe he’d discovered David’s phone and chucked it out the window. Still another possibility was that he’d slaughtered his own nephew and dumped the body.
I hoped for one of the first two possibilities and feared the third. The problem was, the sorcerer was a lunatic and loved to kill. Anything could set him off.
I asked Honah, Is there any chance you could get someone up there to fly overhead and look for the car or the phone or a body?
He said he would. I dreaded the next message from him because of what he might say about David. The kid was a total, absolute dirt bag, but his mother loved him. For her sake, if not his, I prayed that we’d find him alive and before he became a demon.
-o-o-o-
BY THE TIME we made it to Novato, I knew we were in trouble. Nobody had found the Ferrari, and the phone hadn’t moved for over an hour. On the plus side, nobody had spotted a corpse lying along the road either.
The traffic was almost as bad as on the 101, so I changed into my bird form and flew alongside the highway. Sure enough, a mile up the road, I spotted a cell phone with a silver case in the grass alongside the highway.
A moment later, Sonja caught up with me and dialed David’s number. The phone I’d found rang.
Damn it! We’d lost our best means of finding Caligula and his moron nephew.
Chapter 22
HONAH HAD ORDERED all of the San Francisco angels to fan out over Petaluma. When Sonja and I arrived, we did our part searching for yellow vehicles.
Yellow is a surprisingly popular color, particularly for commercial vehicles. We found a bunch of cabs and delivery vans but no Ferraris.
We even scanned the neighboring farms and vineyards. That didn’t take long. Few people lived on the farms between the city and the sea.
In the early afternoon, Honah and I met in a nightclub’s empty parking lot. “We’ve missed him again, haven’t we?” he asked.
I had to be honest. “Yep. The SOB seems to be able to vanish completely.”
The chief looked around, like he was searching for answers. “What do you suggest we do now?”
“It’s possible they’ve already grabbed their intended victim and took off for the coast. If that’s the case, we may be too late to save the next victim.”
Honah nodded. “I will send most of our team toward the ocean in the hope we can prevent another crime. Any other suggestions?”
“The other possibility is that he and David took off joyriding in the sports car. If so, they’ll probably show up here eventually to murder whoever they’re after. I’d leave a few folks in town, in case they show up.”
“Of course. If I ever get my hands on Caligula, I intend to rip him apart rather than let him die from clean thrust of a blade.”
I understood the feeling completely. He’d ruined so many lives already and wouldn’t stop until we caught up with him.
-o-o-o-
THE BOSS AND I stayed in town with a handful of angels while most of them flew west. He and I sat at a picnic table in an almost empty park. I absentmindedly watched a border collie catching a Frisbee thrown by his owner. Once I had a few minutes to think over all of our past missteps, I realized I might’ve overlooked one important point.
Honah’s eyes had a faraway look. He always had a dozen things going on at any one time, and hundreds of angels from all over North America were constantly sending him messages. From the sour look on his face, it seemed that someone else had sent him bad news.
I raised a finger to catch his attention, and a moment later, he said, “Yes?”
“It just occurred to me that we are close to one place Jack and I thought Caligula might go, namely Bodega Head. It’s a promontory with dramatic cliffs overlooking the ocean, just west of Bodega Bay. It’s perfect for staging a murder, particularly for someone from Petaluma.”
After brief pause, he said, “You and Sonja can go there. Unfortunately, I have a crisis in New York I must handle personally.”
The next thing I knew, Sonja and I were standing in a freezing cold westerly wind. Fog surrounded us thicker than I’d ever noticed it. Even with my excellent vision, I could only see a dozen feet in any direction. We wandered the parking lot we’d landed in and found an empty Ferrari off by itself in one corner.
“They can’t be far,” I said. “We may still have time to stop a murder.”
We changed into our bird forms and took to the sky. We flew south toward the high cliffs I’d seen on our earlier visit. That seemed to be the best place to dump a body.
I stayed close to the ground because otherwise I’d be lost in the fog. Sonja popped in and out of view off to my left.
A few minutes later, I noticed a man overlooking a sheer drop-off. I headed straight for him, and once I got closer, I realized he was Lucinda’s son, David.
He cowered. A gust of wind coming off the Pacific flattened the knee-high meadow grasses surrounding him. I was about to contact Sonja with my news when Caligula and a middle-aged, balding man in an exercise suit appeared next to David. The bald guy’s eyes bulged, and his skin looked as white as a ghost’s.
I told her, I found them! Come to me along the cliff.
She had to be close, but I got no response.
Caligula pulled his sword, opening the space between time. David and the other guy froze.
“Fight me,” Caligula said, “or I’ll kill them both.”
I didn’t see any good options, so I dropped to the ground and took my fighting form, complete with wings and a flowing white gown that got tangled up in my legs.
The handle of my sword appeared at the back of my neck. As I pulled it, I sent another message to both Sonja and Honah. Caligula is about to kill two men. I’m going to try to keep him busy, could really use some help!
Still no response.
In an effort to buy more time, I said, “Happy to oblige, but why do you want to kill this poor fool? Yo
u own a casino, for Christ’s sake. You should love gamblers.”
Caligula stuck out his chin and glared at me. “He had destroyed his family through years of wanton behavior. They’re now homeless, thanks to him.”
I merged with the victim’s mind for an instant to get his side of the story. When I regained my fighting form, I said, “He’s rehabilitated himself, hasn’t fallen off the wagon in four months. And even if he was still gambling, he doesn't deserve to be slaughtered.”
The sorcerer cackled. “How little you know of human nature! This degenerate has rehabilitated himself a half-dozen times. He stops gambling for a few months and says he’s cured. Then he breaks his family’s hearts again, just when they’ve begun to trust him. That’s even worse than staying on the wrong path consistently.”
I was happy to argue the point forever instead of fight. “What can you possibly hope to accomplish with all of these murders? Just draw more attention to you?”
“You are stunningly ignorant.” He hissed at me. “By sowing panic and confusion, I nourish my followers and myself. I’ve never been stronger thanks to the endless hatred around me. Even better, the fallen angel in charge of North America loves how I’ve terrorized people. He asked me to rule all of California.”
I wanted to keep the demon talking, but he began waving his flaming red blade from side to side close to me. The stink of sulfur filled the air, driving any other questions out of my mind.
As Caligula swept his cursed sword lower, he caught the knee-high grass surrounding us on fire. A gust of wind swirled the flames and smoke, mixing them with the fog into a surreal haze.
For me, the flames posed no direct danger, but they could burn and suffocate the two humans, maybe even kill them.
Sonja! Honah! Where the heck are you? I need help, now!
Their silence scared me, but I’d stalled as long as I could. To catch the sorcerer by surprise, I lunged first. My white-hot blade whooshed as I swung it waist-high.
Infernal Justice (Angels at the Edge Book 2) Page 21