In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  The unnatural predator’s sour musk, a putrid combination of wolf and pestilence, washed away the other scents of the yard. The lowing beasts and screaming pigs on the far side of the pens, pressed together into a solid wall by their panic, grew even more frantic. I wouldn’ta thought it possible.

  Its maw gaped down at me, danglin’ pendulums of spittle so thick it refused to break up in the rain, and for a second I figured I’d made the last mistake of my life, that I didn’t need to worry about the taxidermy vampire.

  But that even more unnatural thing still loped our way, and the werewolf decided not to take my noggin as a midnight snack. Maybe, as I’d expected when I concocted this mad plan, it recognized the greater threat—or maybe a small piece of Pete was still awake in there somewhere, tuggin’ what strings and levers he could.

  Whatever the reason, it turned from me, and the age-old battle of cat versus dog flared up again in fronta me on a grotesque, uncanny scale.

  Claws and fangs; blood and splinters and dust; deafening howls and psychic roars. They rampaged across the yard, tearing pieces from each other, crashin’ through fences and walls without the slightest pause. They stomped deep into the mud, leaving depressions, damn near tiny craters, that swiftly filled and became puddles.

  Werewolf jaws snagged a chunk of shoulder, ripping pelt and fragmenting wood. Phantom claws opened up canine hide, and though the weapon wasn’t silver, wouldn’t kill or even maim, its spiritual power kept the wound from knitting itself shut near as rapidly as it should’ve.

  No technique, no intelligence. After the first few blows, not even much in the way of cunning. This was a battle of sheer ferocity, of ripping and slashing and chewing until one or the other simply fell apart.

  And if it sounds as if I was hangin’ back, letting Pete do all the work and take all the punishment… Well, for a minute, yeah, I was. I still struggled to catch my own breath, to give my gut a chance to start its own healing—which was takin’ longer’n it should for the same reason as the wolf’s. I was beat, off balance, and it wasn’t gonna do Pete or me any favors if I jumped back in before I was up to it.

  Slowly, though, I caught my second wind. Or third, or ninth, or whatever the hell I was up to. The rain on my mug stopped feelin’ like small gunshots and started to wake me up some. I still wasn’t in any shape to run up and start swingin’ a sword; that was a good way to get myself cut down, and just as probably by Pete as by the man-eater.

  So I stayed kneeling, braced my elbow on my knee, sighted down the L&G as if it had a scope, and waited.

  They thrashed this way and that so damn fast, but they were both of ’em big targets. It wasn’t too long until they turned just so, until they stood perpendicular to me, the lion’s whole length exposed.

  Bang.

  It staggered hard, screeching in silence as a huge rope of pure luck unwound from its aura and vanished into the wand. Glass orbs blazing with that non-light, it spun my way, ready to pounce, and Pete tore into it, taking half its face and what woulda been, if it still had bones, its skull.

  Back to him, taking a swipe with a paw that drove the werewolf back a step… And I shot it again.

  And again.

  Claw. Wand. Wand. Fangs.

  And finally, with one last scream—one that I actually did hear, not the howl of a beast but the furious wail of the fading spirit—it fell.

  Which still left me with one deeply angry, disturbingly hairy, seven-foot-tall problem.

  On the one hand, I had a plan for that, too.

  On the other, it was based on, at best, an educated guess. A solid assumption, but not one I’d had any chance to test.

  The first dollop of power I’d taken from the man-eater I’d absorbed myself, lettin’ it go to work on the injuries. The rest I’d saved, holding it in an invisible swirling maelstrom around the L&G, around me.

  Pete took one growlin’ pace toward me and I let it loose.

  Y’see, what I’d done with him—to him—was near impossible. More’n that, it was unnatural.

  Yeah, yeah, the whole werewolf thing’s unnatural, but what I’d done here was abnormal even for that. I’d broken the rules that bound him, interrupted and influenced the way of things. So it should prove a lot easier, and require a whole lot less magic, to turn him back.

  Should. In theory. If I was wrong…

  Turns out that, on occasion, I actually know what I’m barbering about. Pete fell to all fours, already halfway human by the time the mud splattered, and I’d rarely been so glad to have a theory proved right.

  Unfortunately, that still left… what hadda come next.

  “Pete?” I’d carefully ankled my way across the pathway to join him. “Pete, you okay?”

  “You bastard.” It came out a choked whisper, smothered by a constricted throat, drowned in tears and raindrops. “You fucking bastard.”

  “Pete, I didn’t have any—”

  “My worst goddamn nightmare. Biggest fear of my whole entire life. I told you that today, Mick. Fucking today!”

  “There was nobody here to hurt!” I knew I was comin’ off defensive, and there was jack I could do about it. “I knew that! I knew you couldn’t—”

  He was on his feet, fists clenched in the thread-laced mud that’d been my collar. “Do you think that matters? Can you even begin to understand why it doesn’t?” He fell back, staggered and leaned against a fencepost. “Jesus Christ. I can see it now. I knew all this time you weren’t human, but I didn’t know.”

  “Whaddaya want from me?” I realized I was wavin’ his gun around, tossed it to the ground over by the nearest building where it wouldn’t get lost in the muck. “There was nothin’ else I could do! Would you rather have been dismembered? Rather I’d been dismembered?”

  If I’d had mortal ears, I’d never have heard his answer. “Maybe not. But it wasn’t your choice to make for me.” He started to shiver; standin’ stark naked in the autumn rain’ll do that, I suppose.

  “Um. There’s probably some spare clothes, or at least someone’s flogger, in one of the offices…” I began.

  “I’ll figure it out. I don’t need your help.”

  “Goddamn it, Pete! I’d just lost Ramona! I wasn’t gonna watch you die, too!” Or me, either, but that probably went without sayin’.

  And I think, maybe, his posture softened a little at that, at the reminder of what I musta been feelin’ in that moment.

  But only a little.

  “Go. You ain’t done. I’ll take care of Ramona, and we’ll… deal with the rest later.”

  He was right. There was already every chance I was too late, that Áebinn had long since reached the Ottatis. Adalina.

  Still, my feet didn’t wanna take that first step. “Pete…”

  “Go, damn you, while this might all still mean something!”

  I went.

  * * *

  I was too late. Just not the way I expected.

  Even though it’d faded back to a light sprinkle, the rain washed the worst of the mud off me by the time I got to the station, which is probably the only reason nobody called the bulls on me. Still, I got plenty of hinky glances, and what few people were in the car when I boarded the L pretty quickly moved on to a different one. Stained with filth and coverin’ a suspicious parcel—my sword, though they weren’t wise to that—wrapped in the ragged remains of my coat, I couldn’t much blame ’em.

  Actually, I was grateful. The fewer distractions, the better. I spent the whole trip concentratin’ hard, hangin’ on to the very edge of control. If I’d slacked, even a little, I’m pretty sure more’n the train’s lights woulda gone kablooey.

  But y’know, I welcomed it. Focusing on not blowin’ my wig kept me from havin’ to think. Or havin’ to feel. About what I might find when I got where I was goin’.

  About what I’d left behind.

  I discovered the first stiff outside the Ottatis’ apartment building—smelled it well before I spotted it—cradled in the branches of a nea
rby tree. I guessed it’d been hurled through a window, and I didn’t hafta guess which one. It was already badly putrefied, and the constant soakin’ just made it worse.

  Vampire.

  A new one, probably one of the spirits Áebinn had summoned. She hadn’t come alone, then; she’d brought undead reinforcements. What weak hope I still had guttered, a candle without much wax left.

  Couple people moved to stop me once I got inside the building, since I clearly had no business in a place even half as keen as this one. I made ’em forget me.

  The Ottatis’ door was ajar, just an inch or so. L&G in my left hand, my blade—still wrapped in what’d once been a coat, but I could shake that loose easy enough—in my right, I nudged the door with a toe and stepped in.

  Lights were out, but the illumination slinking in from the hall was enough for me to work with. Enough for me to tell the place was a shambles. About a million feet’d already tracked mud and water all over, enough so that even in bright daylight, my own contribution woulda gone unnoticed. The sofa I’d slept on and the table beside it were both overturned, and several of the cushions were spread all over the living room.

  So were a handful of bodies, also way too rotten to have been anything but nosferatu. All dead.

  I mean really dead, not “walkin’-around-nibbling-necks” dead.

  Quick glance to the side told me the kitchen wasn’t much better off. The refrigerator door had been torn off and somethin’ had slammed into it, spilling a couple banquets’-worth of food over the floor. The faucet was running: tap water, this time, not salt, though a faint tang in the air suggested that might not’ve been the case a while ago.

  I crept through, headin’ for the bedrooms. Again, one of the doors was ajar, and again I nudged it…

  Áebinn sat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, knees folded up to her chest. Even from here, I could see nasty gashes on her arm, her side, and one cheek. She looked up as I entered, a peculiar expression beneath those gaping sockets, but at first I hardly even saw her.

  Bianca and Celia lay sprawled on the carpet in the corner, still dressed in their nightgowns.

  I dunno what Áebinn saw in my reaction, but she shook her head, though she winced at the motion. “They live, Oberon. I gave them only a fraction of my scream, to keep them out of my way. They’ll hurt when they awaken, and likely have bad dreams for weeks, but they’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t mean that you will,” and it almost scared me how calm and steady I sounded. “Adalina?”

  “Gone.” And then, again, at the clouds that musta been gathering on my mug, “I don’t mean dead, I mean gone. I believe she even left a note. I thought I heard the scribbling of pen on paper.”

  “And you think that’s gonna save you, bean sidhe? You came here meaning to kill her. Your goddamn scheme did kill two…” I stopped when I heard one of the darkened bulbs pop, realized my sword and wand both shook. “I’ve never had a lotta real friends. Sure as hell not recently. Now two of ’em are dead, and I may have lost more than that. All because of you.

  “Tell me why the fuck I don’t kill you right now.”

  “Because,” she said, and I only now realized how bitter her tone tasted, “you’d be wasting your time. I’ll be quite dead enough shortly.”

  Wasn’t quite a splash of icy water, but the resentment and the cold truth in her words calmed me a little. “You look like shit,” I conceded, “but I’ve seen plenty of us recover from worse wounds than those.” She was Fae, after all. As I said, usually, if it doesn’t croak us outright, or at least within minutes, it ain’t gonna.

  “But I know what it was that wounded me.” She shifted, tryin’ to get comfortable against the pillows. “I suppose I ought to be grateful. She could have given me worse than death. I have minutes. Maybe, if I’m truly fortunate, a few hours.”

  “My heart frickin’ bleeds for you.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  I leaned my sword against the wall, knelt to examine Bianca and Celia just to make sure. Yeah, they were breathin’.

  So I stood and leaned me against the wall. “All right. How come this place ain’t swarming with cops, or at least worried bystanders? Doesn’t much look like this all went down quiet.”

  “Nobody noticed. Not one soul. I think because she didn’t want them to.”

  I didn’t hafta ask who she was. “You wanna tell me what this was all about?”

  “And why should I?”

  My grin was mean. “You got somethin’ else to do?”

  Then, when all I got was an eyeless glare, “You cost me a lot, Áebinn. You owe me answers, at the very least. We never much cared for each other…”

  Even in her pain, she laughed at that understatement.

  “But you always had your own kinda honor.”

  I didn’t add that I could still make the last of her time real unpleasant. That wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go—but I would if she made me.

  She didn’t.

  “What have you already figured out?” she asked.

  “What’s that, professional curiosity?”

  “Something like that.”

  I’d gone completely still again. It’s second nature to me to keep up your mannerisms—the fidgeting, the gesturing, all that—but right now, I wasn’t feelin’ too human.

  “This was all about Adalina. You were huntin’ for her. This thing with the vampires, sensing a ‘great and deathly power,’ that was a con.”

  “No, not… exactly.” Was her breath comin’ shorter? I couldn’t tell.

  “Then what was it, exactly?”

  “I did sense something awful, something of deadly danger to us arising in Chicago. But it was months ago.”

  Aw, shit. “When Adalina woke up.”

  “Yes, though I didn’t know that at the time. I knew only, at first, that it was here. Then, gradually, more detail came to me. Its connection to you, for instance. And then, finally, I recognized it for what it was.”

  Her voice quivered. Áebinn was afraid.

  “So what the hell is—?”

  But the bean sidhe didn’t hear me, was lookin’ past me as she spoke. Now that she’d started, she wasn’t gonna stop.

  “I knew I couldn’t report to the Court what I’d sensed. What if they wanted to keep her alive, try to use her for their own purposes? As if such a thing could be kept on a leash! I couldn’t let them play political games, not with this. I couldn’t risk the Unseelie catching word of it, either. I had to do this on my own, had to make certain she was destroyed. I could trust nobody, not even Sien Bheara or Laurelline, with the truth.

  “But they already knew I was investigating something. I had to give them a threat, something big enough that they would permit me to follow up on it in either world. Something I could put you onto, so I could work you for information and keep you out of my way. And I had to have a ‘villain’ I could eventually provide to the Court. The vampire spirits did just that. It gave you, and them, a ‘deathly power’ to pursue, and it gave me minions I could control, who had no allegiance or even connection to anyone else. If only it hadn’t attracted a true vampire as well…”

  “Stole that part of the plan from Grangullie and Raighallan, did you?” I demanded, determined to get a question in.

  She jumped, as though she’d forgotten I was even there. Then, “It worked for them.”

  “It almost worked for them. Which seems to be right about as well as it worked for you.”

  “So it would appear.”

  “You had me going,” I confessed. “I was so sure I was lookin’ for a human suspect… How’d you pull it off?” That was the real question I’d been workin’ toward. “Controlling vampires—newborn weak ones, anyway—that’s magic I’ve heard of. But the spirits? Nobody else even knew that kinda magic was possible, and you’re no necromancer.”

  “Not formally, no. But you know what I am. I have a great familiarity with, and instinct for, the ebb and flow of death. As for vampires,
I’ve studied them for over a century. I’m quite possibly the greatest living expert on them.” She laughed once, even more bitterly. “For a little while longer, anyway.”

  “Studied…?”

  “My bloodline, Oberon.” She meant the family line she’d been attached to, whose deaths she’d first connected with, as all bean sidhe did. “The last of them were slain by vampires. I’ve loathed them ever since.”

  Well, how do you like that?

  “All right. You were after Adalina, couldn’t let anyone else know, called up a bunch of bloodsuckers to ‘investigate’ and to help you out. Fine. But why involve me at all if… Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  She hadn’t known. She was gunnin’ for somethin’ powerful that’d just appeared or just arisen in Chicago, even knew what it was, but she’d had no notion as to who. Maybe she finally tumbled it after I took Adalina to the Otherworld a few times. Maybe she asked around her own contacts and finally discovered exactly when the Ottati girl—whom she woulda known was a changeling—had woken up from her year-long snooze. But however she learned it, it’d taken time.

  “And right after you finally sussed it out,” I said, “I moved the whole family. ’Cause of the Unseelie. And all your research was useless, because you couldn’t find ’em anymore. That’s why you stopped me’n Pete—” I tried not to flinch speakin’ his name “—on the street that day, givin’ me the third degree about everyone I knew.”

  “Gods damned Unseelie,” she growled, which I took for confirmation. “They really do ruin everything, don’t they?”

  “And you buy that they just coincidentally turned up right then?”

  She tried to shrug and groaned at the pain. “Perhaps they, too, had finally learned the girl was awake. They tried to take her once before, did they not?”

  “Or perhaps they wondered what the hell the Seelie Court’s chief investigator was up to pokin’ around ‘the girl’ and her family. You led them to her!”

  “I doubt it. But it hardly matters now. Oberon, listen to me! You must find her!”

  “I’m planning on it. I—”

  “And you must destroy her!”

  Hadda really struggle with myself not to cut her down then and there. “Of the two of us, I think you’ve forgotten which one ain’t you. You’re nuts, sister. I got no intention of—”