by Harvey Click
Nyx was sitting in a chair watching TV with the sound off while Joe pulled some items out of a suitcase sitting open on the bed, and Amy was surprised to see that there was no other bed in the room.
“Amy and I are going to contact the FBI tomorrow,” Shane said.
“I don’t want nothing to do with the law,” Joe said. “If that’s what you’re gonna do, the rest of us might just decide to take a hike tomorrow.”
“If you do we’ll understand,” Shane said. “But Amy and I need to do whatever we can to find our daughter.”
“It’s not that we don’t want to help you,” Lucky said. “It’s just that for the past couple years we’ve been working on a few odd jobs that from a technical point of view may not have been strictly legal. Morally impeccable of course, but not strictly legal.”
Nyx let out a sarcastic snort but said nothing. She looked different, and not just because her hair was longer now and brown instead of orange. She was still fairly slim but no longer looked emaciated, and the extra weight made her face more attractive, almost pretty. The tattoos were still there but the scowl seemed to have faded.
“You remember that Unseen oath you guys took?” Joe asked. “The part about not ratting out the others?”
“I know it by heart,” Amy said. “It says, ‘I furthermore swear never to speak a word about the Unseen to any outsider and never to betray the Unseen or any of its members by any word or deed.’”
“Yeah, that’s the part,” Joe said. “And ‘any outsider’ don’t just mean the Lost Society, it also means anybody with a badge. Those FBI agents are gonna ask you so many questions that pretty soon you won’t remember what you’re supposed to say and what you’re not.”
“I’ll remember,” Amy said.
Joe looked at her closely. “Well, I’m still in favor of cutting out,” he said. “But I’ll let the others vote on it. Lucky?”
Lucky smiled and said, “You can deal me in, Amy. Let’s not forget the other part of the oath, which says we swear to do whatever is in our power always and ever to defeat the Lost Society and its minions, and I don’t know about the rest of you but I get the feeling I’m sniffing some minions about these parts. And I do believe if Amy was able to stand up to Sandoval and his demons, then a couple FBI agents won’t be likely to spook her very badly.”
“What about you, Nyx?” Joe asked.
Nyx didn’t look away from the TV screen. She yawned and said, “Eh, I guess I can use the exercise.”
Amy was greatly surprised. Nyx had certainly never been her friend, so why was she so willing to help?
Joe frowned deeply and said, “If they start tracing your phone, they’re gonna find my number.”
“I already thought of that,” Shane said. “That’s why I’ve been calling you on a prepaid.”
Joe frowned some more and said, “Well then, I guess tomorrow I better start making me up a big batch of arrows.”
“You know how to sanctify them?” Shane asked.
“Yep.”
“So if Amy and I find a couple decent swords somewhere, can you turn them into demon killers for us?”
“I can, but we need to find a safe place where we can build a good fire. They have to roast in a fire all night.”
Joe put his suitcase on the floor and sat on the bed. Nyx had the only chair, and Amy thought it would be rude to sit on the bed, but her feet were too tired for standing. She sat on the floor and a moment later Shane joined her.
“I don’t understand how you caught up with me, Joe,” she said. “I was running most of the time.”
“Were you down in them ravines?”
She nodded.
“I stayed up on the high ground,” Joe said. “It’s not a far distance as the crow flies, but you might’ve traveled many miles down in them ravines. Well, if we’re gonna fight demons again we better make some plans.”
Nobody said anything. Nyx played with the remote control until she found Clint Eastwood in cowboy garb staring down a street at Lee Van Cleef. Lucky was the only one still standing. He looked the same as he had at Neoma’s compound, same neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, same whiskey look in his lean face, and pretty much the same clothes—long-sleeve white shirt, brown corduroy pants and a corduroy vest with a silver watch chain hanging between the two watch pockets, a pair of nice brown cowboy boots a bit scuffed from his trek in the wilderness.
“One thing I’ve been thinking,” Amy said. “I remember Manda saying Sandoval had to perform sacrifices and gain a lot of power before he could control demons as far away as thirty miles, which was how far away his house was from Neoma’s compound. So unless whoever’s controlling these demons is more powerful than Sandoval, he must be located within thirty miles of the place where I was. And also my house, because there were demons there too.”
“And there were two of them at Candy’s house,” Shane said.
“So we get a map of the area,” Amy said, “and we draw a thirty-mile radius around each of those three places, and where the three circles intersect is where we start looking for the sorcerer.”
“Shane, I believe you’ve found yourself a very intelligent wife,” Lucky said. “But how’s her cooking?”
“Pretty good,” Shane said. “I’ve put on a few pounds.”
“Maybe the sorcerer wasn’t sitting at home at those times,” Bloody Joe said. “He could’ve been driving around in a car.”
“Maybe so,” Shane said, “but tomorrow I’m going to buy a map and draw some circles.”
“Tomorrow I’ll drive to Silver Stone and find a good saloon,” Lucky said.
Nyx stared at him and said, “Well, that’s real big of you. How can we ever thank you?”
“It’s honest labor,” Lucky said. “I’ll be gathering information, and I know of no better place to do that than a saloon.”
“Shit,” Nyx said. “Me and Joe can go sit on our asses in a beer joint all day too.”
“Yes, but nobody would talk to you,” Lucky said. “This is delicate work that requires a modicum of charm.”
Nyx made a sarcastic noise and flipped through the TV channels till she found a spaceship flying through a sea of asteroids.
“Tomorrow I’ll see if I can find ingredients to sanctify swords and make some protection bags,” Joe said.
Nyx got up and said, “I’m gonna go brush my teeth. Joe, why don’t you kick out this riffraff so we can go to bed?”
Amy looked at Bloody Joe. He shrugged and looked away, but she thought she saw a faint smile on his face.
“Well, I believe I’ll go back to my room now and get some shuteye,” Lucky said. “I have a hard day ahead of me sitting in God knows how many saloons.”
“Amy and I are going to go look for another motel,” Shane said. “There’s no way I can thank all of you enough. You saved Amy’s life.”
“It’s not the first time,” Nyx said, but when Amy got up and gave her a hug, Nyx actually hugged her back. Amy gave Joe a hug too, and after she stepped outside she hugged Lucky.
“What’s gotten into Nyx?” she asked him. “She hasn’t even threatened to kill me yet.”
“How much do you know about her past?” Lucky asked.
“Nothing really.”
“Five years ago the Lost Society murdered her entire family,” he said. “And her entire family included her one-year-old daughter. Nyx was a different person back then, no tattoos, no scowls, just a loving mother like you. Believe me, Amy, she wants to find your daughter just as badly as the rest of us. And we will.”
Chapter 7
Dear Mr. Codson, or should I call you Codpiece since I’m sure you wear one to hide the fact that your pecker is the size of a midget snail. You continue to ignore my messages while I continue to accumulate evidence of the drug manufacturing and trafficking that goes on in that so-called church of yours. I’m talking about hard evidence, Codswallop, and it’s going straight to the attorney general if you don’t agree to my demand, namely one million in gol
d bullion.
Meanwhile my church is growing by great leaps and bounds while yours is shrinking to the size of your pathetic snail dick.
Sincerely yours,
Sam Non, The One True Son of God
***
Shane stayed in bed for a while after he woke up, savoring the feel of Amy’s naked body against his. She felt so small and vulnerable, and he believed if anything happened to her the world would turn dark before his eyes.
He eased out of bed quietly and went to the bathroom where he wouldn’t wake her by talking on the phone. It took some time before he was talking to a human being instead of a recording, and then the human being didn’t seem much more human than the recording had.
“Is there an agent assigned to the kidnapping case of Emily Malone in Silver Stone, New Mexico?” Shane asked for the second time, and the human being for the second time said, “I can’t say.”
“Okay, fine,” Shane said. “But if there is one, please tell him that if he ever wants to talk to me and my wife, then he needs to call me within the next half hour.”
“What did you say your name is?” the voice asked.
“Shane Malone.”
He hung up and started brushing his teeth, but before he was finished his phone rang.
“Is this Mr. Shane Malone?”
“It is.”
“This is Agent Brian Bradford, FBI. Where are you?”
Shane told him the address of the motel.
“Is your wife there with you?”
“She is.”
“Do you have your baby?”
“No.”
“I want to talk with both of you. How soon can you be in Silver Stone?”
“We don’t believe we’d be safe in Silver Stone right now. You have to come here if you want to talk.”
Agent Bradford hesitated for several seconds. “Okay,” he said. “I can be there at noon.”
“Can you make it 11:00?”
“Maybe. I’ll try.”
It was a little after 8:00. When Shane finished his shower he moved quietly back to the room and began to dress. His clothes were dirty, and he wished he had some cologne or at least deodorant to hide the smell of old sweat. Amy’s clothes, heaped on a chair, were torn and even dirtier. He started making a list in his head of things they needed to buy: new clothes, deodorant, a gun for Amy, swords if they could find any…
Amy suddenly gasped and sat up in bed with a startled look on her face. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine, sweetheart. You’re safe. How do you feel?”
“Achy.”
“Your feet?” he asked.
“No, my heart. It’s aching like a sick stomach.”
“We’ll find her,” he said.
Amy got out of bed and started for the bathroom, then came back and threw her arms around him. He held her slim naked body tightly and kissed her, even though she usually didn’t want to be kissed before she’d brushed her teeth. He saw that her eyes were wet with tears already, but she wasn’t sobbing.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.”
He watched her walk to the bathroom, his heart also feeling like a sick stomach. He couldn’t weigh his love for her against his love for Emily, but both loves weighed more than he felt he could bear right now. He finished dressing and sat on the bed staring at his hands until she was done with her shower.
The motel was half a mile outside of a little town called Tesoro. They were at least fifty miles from the house where Butch and Floyd had taken Amy, and considerably farther than that from Silver Stone, so he thought they should be outside the range of demons.
Though they were both hungry they stopped first to buy new clothes, and they changed in the dressing room. At a small Mexican restaurant they ate huevos rancheros with chorizo and plenty of coffee. At a drugstore they bought toiletries, a compass for drawing circles, and a roadmap of New Mexico. They spoke little and only about practical matters.
They drove back to the motel a little before 11:00, but instead of pulling into the lot Shane parked at a small church across the road.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked.
“I’m waiting to see if Agent Bradford shows up alone. If he brings a whole SWAT team with him plus black helicopters I’m heading down the road.”
“That’s why I love you,” she said. “You’re even more paranoid than I am.”
At 11:09 a gray Malibu pulled into the motel lot and parked near their room and a man got out. He was wearing a gray suit and carried a briefcase. He knocked on the door, waited and knocked again. He was knocking the third time when Shane parked beside the Malibu and got out.
“Mr. and Mrs. Malone?” the man asked, and they nodded. “Brian Bradford, FBI,” he said, and he flipped open a little leather wallet to show them his badge. They both looked at it carefully, and Shane unlocked the door.
Their room had a tiny kitchenette area, and they sat around the little round table. Bradford opened his briefcase and pulled out a file folder and a small recording device. He was a short, stocky man about fifty with thinning black hair that looked dyed and a round humorless face that reminded Shane of a pit bull.
“I want to record our conversation,” he said. “Is that all right?”
“No, it isn’t,” Amy said.
Bradford studied her face. “I’m here to help you find your daughter, Mrs. Malone. Anything you say might turn out to be useful. Sometimes the most useful things are little details that I don’t notice till I listen to them back.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But it’s still not okay.”
Bradford put the recorder back in his briefcase, pulled a blank yellow tablet from his file folder, and got a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket. “Tell me everything that happened,” he said. “You first, Mrs. Malone.”
She told him everything that had happened the day before, just leaving out Bloody Joe, Nyx, Lucky, and the demons. She slid a brown paper bag across the table and said, “Here’s the Browning I took from Butch and Floyd’s place. It’s still loaded.”
Bradford looked into the bag and put it in his briefcase. Shane told his story next, leaving out the same things Amy had.
“Why did you spy on Sheriff Candy?” Bradford asked.
“I thought he knew more about the kidnapping than he let on,” Shane said.
“You say you bought a gun as soon as you left his office. Were you intending to shoot him or threaten him with it?”
“No, of course not. Somebody had kidnapped my wife and daughter, so I thought I might need it.”
“Do you have a concealed carry permit?”
“I do,” and Shane pulled out his wallet and showed it to him.
“One of his deputies was found dead in his kitchen,” Bradford said. “Do you know anything about that?”
“No. But the two men dressed in black entered the house, so probably they did it.”
“Did you hear any shots?”
“No.”
“Did you see these two men carrying guns?”
“I think they pulled guns before they went in the front door, but it was dark.”
“And then you saw them taking Candy to their car?”
“Yes. His hands were behind his back, and I think they were cuffed.”
Bradford’s questions went on and on, and then he turned his attention back to Amy. “Mrs. Malone, you said when you entered your house you found Alejandra Rodrigues laying dead on your living room floor?”
“Yes.”
“Had she been shot?”
“I think so. I saw some bloody holes in her shirt.”
“More than one?”
“Yes. I don’t know how many, I didn’t look very closely.”
“You told me you saw a couple rifles poking out the windows of your house, but you didn’t say you heard any shots before you came in the house. So when was Mrs. Rodrigues shot?”
“Maybe the holes in her back
were knife wounds,” Amy said. “I don’t know.”
“I see. So you say these six men that kidnapped your baby also wanted to kidnap you, but you shot one of them with a .357 Magnum revolver and then your brother shot four more with a .30-30 Winchester, and then the last one drove away with someone else driving another vehicle in front of him.”
“Yes.”
“But then about an hour later you say you were kidnapped by a whole different set of people, and you both think these people were connected somehow to Sheriff Candy?”
“Yes. Like I said, Butch and Floyd kept talking about somebody expecting to collect half a million dollars for me, and it makes sense that person was Candy.”
“Why does that make sense?”
“At one point Butch referred to him as ‘candyass.’ And the deputy Shane described sitting outside Candy’s office sounds like the one who helped them kidnap me.”
“Isn’t it true, Mrs. Malone, that you claim you were kidnapped once before, just two years ago in the state of West Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me the details.”
“I’d gone to Blackwood to look for my brother, who hadn’t been answering his phone. I couldn’t find him, so I started back to Columbus, but I was carjacked and kidnapped by three men in Charleston. They took me to a bank and made me draw out all my money, then they blindfolded me and took me to a house in the country where they kept me for a week. After that they got nervous about keeping me around, so they blindfolded me again and drove me back to Blackwood and dumped me out in a woods not far from town.”
“Why’d they drive you all the way to Blackwood?”
“I begged them to. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Is there a bus station at Blackwood?”
“No.”
“But you said they stole your car, so how did you intend to get home from there?”
“Shane and I were old friends from high school. I knew he would help me out.”
“I see. So did you report this kidnapping to the police in Blackwood?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was sort of in a state of shock.”