To any passerby, I most likely looked like a human statue. Except that I wore clothes, and I could move. Neat huh? I felt like a stone manikin, and I knew that if I looked into a mirror, my face would still be there, but cast in stone. I could move without impediment, but with this armor I could take just about as much damage as one could dish out, but each hit tore off some of that shielding, so it was only temporary.
I turned to look at Gunnar. His eyes were wide as he looked from me to the statues, and then he began to laugh. “That is so cool! Why do you bitch about my power when you can do that?” He asked, cracking off another shot to send one of the gargoyles down permanently.
I shrugged and turned back to the horde of gargoyles with a grin of my own. “Play with me?” I asked one who was warily approaching me, unsure whether I was ally or foe. It cocked its head in confusion. I reached out, grabbed its throat, and crushed the stone in my fist. The head toppled to the ground with a heavy thud. I pointed at one of the winged gargoyles. “You’re next.” The gargoyle let out a dusty roar, wings snapping out as if preparing to fly. Not today. I rushed the gargoyle, batting down one of its wings as it crouched to take to the air. The wing shattered under my fist, knocking the beast off balance, then I punched it straight in the nose, knocking it clean off. The gargoyle stumbled, preparing to defend itself, but I kicked it in the chest so hard that its head flew off from the abrupt whiplash. The body skidded into the last few gargoyles, knocking them down like bowling pins. “Strike!” I roared.
Gunnar’s gun blasted until two straggler gargoyles died at his feet. He was panting as he jogged towards me. I didn’t wait. I dove into the pile of gargoyles like a wrestler, trapping a leg here, an arm there, until I found a hold. An arm bar tore off its appendage completely, and then I punched its throat until I felt pavement on the other side. A blow to the side of my head made me see stars for a few seconds, and then Gunnar’s gun blasted off the sucker punching gargoyle’s head from inches away. My ears rang, and I could feel some of the stone sliding off my face where I had been hit, leaving naked, vulnerable skin underneath. Gunnar noticed immediately.
“We need to finish this fast, before your armor fades completely.” I nodded back, but was picked up in a bear hug from behind. I kicked out with my heel and connected with the gargoyles knee, shattering it so that he fell down. As my feet touched ground again, I angled my head to protect the soft skin, and head butted his nose with the back of my skull. He fell back immediately, tottering on his one good leg. I turned, crouched, and superman tackled him down to the ground. Gunshots continued as I pummeled the statue until only dust remained of his neck.
All was silent. I looked up to see Gunnar scanning the area. “I think that’s all of them.” He said. “But we need to get out of here before someone shows up and starts asking questions. I’ll tell the cops that we drove by here when we heard the shots, but saw only broken statues in the road. Can you do something about your… appearance?” He asked with a wry grin.
I nodded, climbing to my feet as more pieces of the armor slid off of their own accord. With little effort, the rest of the armor began cascading down my body like roof tiles, crashing to the road in piles of slate. After a few seconds, I could feel the wind on my skin again, and rubbed them for warmth. The stone armor had been cold. I was now covered in dust like some vagrant homeless person. “I might get your car a little dirty.”
Gunnar shrugged. “Nothing to be done about that.” He checked the car for scratches, but other than the first scratch, it was surprisingly unharmed. As we pulled out, Gunnar spoke. “That wasn’t too bad. But it’s too much to be a coincidence.” He paused, face thoughtful. “Someone is gunning for us, but the question is who? The dragons?”
I nodded. It was either the dragons or there was a third player in the game. Gunnar was right. It was just too unlikely to be a coincidence, but I couldn’t imagine who else it could be, or why they would use such an obscure way to take us out. I mean, they were dragons. Why wouldn’t they just eat us? Or burn us? Gunnar interrupted my thoughts.
“This might be a bad scene, Nate. You up for it?” I grunted affirmation, watching the warehouses pass by us as Gunnar finally found our destination. We pulled into a parking spot just outside a trio of flashing police cars.
“Put on your party dress. It seems all the boys showed up for this one. Let’s crash the ball, shall we?” I asked. Gunnar grinned, opening his door, and strutting like a peacock as no less than a dozen Illinois police stared open-jawed at the brilliant Aston Martin parked just outside the tape. The severe contrast of such a specimen in such a seedy district was perfectly satisfying.
“It’s nice having a billionaire as a friend, you know that?” He laughed. With a nod, we strode towards the barricade like gods among men. At least, that’s what Gunnar looked like. I hoped to establish the same sense of self-confidence as I followed behind him, covered in dust and gravel. Phssh. A billionaire vagrant for a friend, more like it.
Chapter 19
W e were quickly past the horde of police officers and into the shop, thanks in no small part to the heap of silent questions behind their eyes as they glanced from the towering Norwegian FBI werewolf in their midst, to the gleaming sports car parked a dozen yards ahead of them, to the dusty and dirty celebrity billionaire civilian in tow. They lifted the tape for us to enter. “Need backup, Agent Randulf? It’s pretty… disturbing.”
“Not necessary. Give us a few moments in private.” The store was in shambles. Paperback and buckram books decorated the floor, torn open to leave loose pages lying about like the useless guts of an eviscerated animal. Fury smoldered deep down inside my stomach, as if I were looking at heaps of dead children lying about the room instead. Books were my children. It was sacrilegious.
Hundreds of spiny, silver needles covered the scene, as if a dozen chrome porcupines had exploded in a last act of martyrdom against the written word. Glancing about, I noticed that the needles were embedded into the walls, bookshelves, tables, and even through one of the side windowpanes, shattering glass out onto the street. Kneeling, I spotted faint droplets of blood on some of their tips.
Gunnar was still, scanning the small shop from the center of the carnage: the calm eye of a hurricane. Then he stiffened. I turned to follow his gaze, and I couldn’t help but take an involuntary step back. On the far wall, the owner of the establishment hung six feet off the ground, crucified by much larger silver stakes at each appendage. Some of the wounds had shed more blood than the others, staining the wall in a viscous smear as it made its way down to the floor.
For instance, the one spearing the man’s genitals into the brick wall had bled the most, belying that it was one of the first inflicted.
I shuddered at the thought, remembering my close encounter with the net-launched web the night before that had almost made me permanently sterile. Gunnar arched a brow. “Pretty sick. Who carries around a bunch of stakes to hammer a person into a wall?”
I pushed back the emotions that were screaming for me to run away, and stepped closer to the body. It was riddled with tiny silver needles as well, like a bad advertisement for acupuncture. He had not died easily. I climbed onto a nearby table and studied the large stakes. After a moment, I glanced back at Gunnar. “They weren’t hammered into him,” Gunnar scoffed, stepping closer.
“Then how in the hell were they-” He blinked, noticing the polished, rounded edges of the stakes. No hammer marks marred their surface. I reached out and tentatively touched the cold metal. My mind immediately crumpled, folding in on itself in utter defeat. I was falling, falling down into a black abyss with no one to catch me, and I was screaming with no one to hear me. Indie’s words came back. Who’s there to catch you, Nate? My subconscious immediately answered. No one. No one cares enough to catch you. You’re all alone. Who are you to fight something this strong? You don’t stand a chance. You should just leave it all alone and go back to your shop. I was terrified, completely terrified, and I
was still falling into the blackness, a blackness like a thousand dying suns…
Something struck me across the face like a bitch slap from Jesus. I grunted in shock, my head instantly clearing up as everything came back into focus. I wasn’t falling. I wasn’t alone. That hadn’t been my thoughts. I realized that I had fallen down from the table, and that Gunnar was holding me protectively on the ground. “Nate! You okay? What happened?”
I grunted, fumbling my shaky arms to hold myself up. He let go and slid back a few feet, watching me nervously. My eyes watered from the blow, and my head rang, but I wasn’t angry with him. He might have just saved my sorry ass. I looked back up at the body and felt breakfast ready to come back up, so I quickly turned away, breathing deeply. Hangover plus dead body equals projectile vomit. “They were,” I shivered convulsively for a second, the fear trying to overtake me again. I managed to take a breath and try again. “They were cast at him. Thrown.”
Gunnar looked from me to the man spread-eagled on the wall. “Cast? Thrown? Do you have any idea what kind of precision that would take?”
I nodded. “Positive. And to hold his,” I studied the man. “190 pound weight into a brick wall requires unbelievable force.” I turned to face him. “This was a dragon, for sure. The same mind-magic as the Raven tried to use is present here. Except much stronger. Instead of lust, this one used fear. Unparalleled fear. She mind-fucked me just by touching the metal, and that was, what, twelve hours later?” Gunnar nodded, remembering the details from the cops outside. “I can’t imagine what this man experienced before he died. He didn’t even deal in the type of circles that would come close to what Raven asked me for.” Studying some of the book covers on the floor, I growled angrily. “History. He was a fucking history book dealer. Nothing even remotely spooky. They must be getting desperate.”
Gunnar nodded, eyes darting to the body again. “Another dragon. With silver stakes…” He sighed hesitantly. “Your ball.”
I stared, momentarily clueless. Then it hit me. Silver stakes were anathema to a werewolf. To hear that one of these beasts harnessed such weapons was beyond scary, even for me, but to Gunnar it was deathly so. “I didn’t think of that. I guess this one’s on me.” Gunnar nodded slowly. “You know, our partnership feels one-sided, Gunnar. I’m handling all the nasties while you read reports. Very bureaucratic of you.”
He grinned, but seemed unhappy about it. “But I’ll be there for motivation. From a distance. With a wall between us.” He glanced at the brick wall holding up the body. “A couple walls between us, but I’ll be there, cheering you on with a megaphone, you little dragon-slayer, you.” He said unashamedly. As a werewolf, Gunnar could handle a world of pain, but he wasn’t immortal. One stake to the chest and his world would end in a blazing eternity of pain. Or so I had read. Not a simple death for a werewolf, more like a Dante’s Inferno, seventh circle of hell, type of death.
“Gee, thanks.” I muttered. I looked at the corpse one last time and then spoke to Gunnar. “Mind if I send him off?” Gunnar shook his head. I didn’t bother with the coins, but spoke the words, filling them with my power. “Requiescat in Pace.” The familiar wail of a horn rumbled deep inside my chest, and Chiron drifted out of nowhere to pluck the victim’s soul away from the body, laying it down in his boat as he continued on, nodding once at me in gratitude before he slipped out the front door. Of course, the cops outside saw nothing. They were blind to beings such as Chiron. And Chiron only took the souls of Regulars, as opposed to taking the entire body like he had with Raven.
Gunnar shook his head, and began taking pictures of the corpse in situ, various angles, and close-ups. Cop stuff. Me, being utterly deficient at police procedure, decided to go peruse the items in the store, verifying and cataloguing the victim’s selection. Had the owner’s loving fingers brushed off that particular buckram cover recently? I used my toe to flip over several books, glancing here and there at loose pages. The wind howled through the broken window, hungry to be the first to explore the virgin building’s insides, and then abscond with the equivalent of a pair of panties for its conquest — in this case, a collection of pages from the destroyed books.
I sat down in a clear area of the floor amidst the chaos, quieting my mind, and drew a mental circle about me, lacing it with power. I needed to think. One by one, I blocked out my senses. First, sound; the fluttering pages, the incessant clicking of Gunnar’s camera, the general creaking of the building, the muffled voices of the police outside, and then the wind. I closed my eyes to kill visual feedback. Then smell, and then touch. Next came sensations of a rather difficult-to-explain nature: the sense of life lingering in the room from Gunnar and I, the sense of death from the corpse on the wall, and then the overwhelming sensation of love that stained every article in the room. It covered everything: the books, the tables, the windows, and even the walls.
The owner had dearly loved his establishment, not looking at it as merely a potential source of income, but as a living being, demanding all the requirements for life. Nourishment from books, care from the owner, praise from sales and contented customers, and vitality from the elements that was the store itself: the wood, windows, floors, insulation, stairs, furniture, and even the pot of coffee on the back table. The place was alive, and to think clearly, I needed to first empathize that life and then discard it.
Finally content, I floated in blackness; complete peace. I had to fight my mind in order to remind it that this was nothing like the blackness I had just experienced from touching the silver stake. This was a peaceful tranquility with no sense of falling or fear. I managed it, barely.
In my mind, I folded myself comfortably into a wingback chair that was suddenly floating in the emptiness. Then, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, I flipped on a Tiffany lamp sitting on a stand beside me. It was dark in my imagination, both literally and emotionally. I whipped out an aging leather journal, and began jotting down notes. All the information I had acquired over the last week that might be relevant to the dragons or my parents was splashed onto the journal, all in question form, and then I took a calming sip of a Mint Julep sitting on the table beside me, contemplating anything else I might have missed. Satisfied, I set the journal down in my lap, and finished my drink, enjoying the cooling freshness of the beverage. I glanced down at my writing, thinking calmly.
Dragons. Dragons were searching my city for a family book, Sons of the Dying Sun, killing anyone who got in their way, allegedly even my parents. My father and Raven had both mentioned tomorrow’s solar eclipse, which had attracted thousands of tourists to the convention center where speakers had arrived from all over the world to discuss the science, physics, and even mystical extrapolations of such an event. Some kid client wanted me to find a book that also had something to do with dragons. Dragon hunters had a mark on a particularly dangerous dragon they believed to be in town. My shop had been broken into, and I had just survived a random hate-crime by a truckload of gargoyles while driving to the scene of another dragon attack. Maybe that last one was just my luck…
I couldn’t think of any particular dangers surrounding the eclipses in history, so what was so important about this one? Perhaps when this scene was finished I could go do some research on dragons and eclipses. To be honest, I knew nothing more than your average idiot about them. Arcane master of knowledge and wisdom, a wizard should be, but there were simply too many myths and fables to study to know them all before one might encounter them in the real world. I wasn’t one of those librarian warrior Grimm brothers. I needed ammunition.
That settled, I spent the rest of my solitude pondering possibilities of tonight’s encounter with Asterion. How would a reformed Buddhist want to duel? What would it consist of? Good old-fashioned arm-wrestle? Political debate? Chess? Surprisingly, none of these seemed appropriate.
I came back to myself to find Gunnar finished with the scene.
He was flipping through a particularly old book without interest
, restless. His heightened sense of smell had to make this place exceptionally unpleasant. He saw me move and placed the book down, waiting for me to speak. I stretched out my legs, careful of any silver needles, waiting for the feeling to come back from my meditation. After a minute, I stood, and he spoke. “We have to find this book soon if we want to stop the killing.”
I stretched my calves languorously. “I think I know a way. A way that might actually get us ahead of them. But it might skirt some grey areas with the law.” I added the last bit carefully.
Gunnar studied me for a long while in silence. “How about I have my men do their job, and pretend I didn’t hear whatever you just said. You can be on your merry way, and do whatever it is you feel like doing while they work this scene. In a couple hours we will have a chat, and perhaps we’ll have information to share with each other.”
My eyes widened. Gunnar was a stickler for protocol, and here he was, urging me to do whatever would get us results. I simply nodded at him. “Good idea. Why don’t you drop me off at Plato’s Cave, and I’ll call an old friend.” He nodded, turning his back on the scene, and heading out of the building. I followed behind him like a good little sidekick. In some cases, it could be helpful to have a cavalry behind you like the FBI, but in many other ways it slowed them down, making them impotent to perform as agilely as was often necessary when dealing with sociopathic freaks.
Chapter 20
T he Illinois cops watched us as we left, already being bombarded by FBI agents parked nearby. They didn’t seem in the least bit upset about passing off the responsibility of this particularly grim crime scene. They seemed elated in fact. “Agent Jeffries,” Gunnar called to one of his men. A slim, rough, Midwestern looking man came up to us obediently. He reminded me of Chuck Norris. An American good ol’ boy.
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