by C. C. Mahon
The woman’s warm smile twisted into a more or less shrewd grimace. “Just an incident. We’re waiting for the city technicians before being able to reopen access to that area. It’s just a precaution. If you need to get around, we can graciously lend you a car for the day or call you a cab.”
“I just needed to get something out of my car.”
The hostess’ smile fell a little more, but she clung to it to answer, “I’m afraid it won’t be possible for the moment. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. If there’s anything I can do to replace…”
I shook my head and let it go.
I then tested my luck in the inevitable coffee shop off the hotel lobby. I ordered a large coffee, with two extra shots of espresso, and let slip to the barista, “Apparently they found a body in the parking lot. Did you hear about it?”
The barista—a small chubby lady with short gray hair—checked to make sure no one was listening to us before leaning towards me. “I got here at the same time as the police. I seen him before they had a chance to cover him with a sheet. Poor kid.”
“Kid?”
“Oh, when you get to be my age, everyone’s a kid. He must’ve been…in his twenties? Well, I say that because of his clothes and because he was thin. But there were a lot of bites. Animals must’ve found him during the night.”
“You mean…after he died? Or was it animals that…”
She shook her head. “Oh no, sweetheart, don’t you worry. There are no wild animals in the streets of Las Vegas. You know on TV when they say things like ‘the wound was post-mortem because it didn’t bleed.’ Well, it was that: lots of bite marks but very little blood. I imagine the poor child was addicted to drugs or alcohol and died alone in the parking lot. A few stray coyotes did the rest. It’s really sad.” She handed me my coffee and took advantage of it to touch my hand and declared with strained enthusiasm, “Here you go, sweetheart, have a cookie to lift your spirits.” Before adding more quietly with a wink, “On the house.”
I took my coffee and my cookie and strolled slowly into the hotel lobby. But I didn’t find any more information, and once I had finished my second breakfast, I decided to get to bed.
Three bodies in a few days, even for a big city like Vegas, was a lot. In the capital of gambling and excess, it wasn’t rare to find guests dead in their hotel room, often victims of their own addictions. It was said that a lot of desperate people came here to commit suicide. And of course, there were the stupid accidents and brawls caused by alcohol. But those three dead—Phoebe, Adam, and the young man in the parking lot—were…different.
Adam and the kid were both young, and both were covered in bite marks. Maybe there was a link?
Phoebe presented a whole other mystery. Not only did I want to know who had killed her, I also wanted to know how. And why.
“Aah, too many questions, not enough sleep,” I mumbled as I opened the door to my hangar.
I parked my bike, checked that everything was locked, and made my way up the stairs like a zombie.
I was exhausted, but of course sleep eluded me. I tossed and turned in my bed to the rhythm of the questions that ran around in my head. Exasperated, I ended up pushing back my blanket, left the warmth of my bed, and went over to the case above my bed.
As soon as my fingers wrapped around my sword, the chaos in my head calmed down.
“Try not to light the bed on fire, okay?” I said to the sword before going back to bed.
The sword didn’t answer, and I fell asleep in record time.
17
I DREAMED OF vague and far-off fights. Battles of epic proportions between hoards of men brandishing swords. I flew over the scene and judged the courage, strength, and technique of the fighters. Sometimes, when one of them fell to the strikes of the enemy, I flew straight down to whisper in his ear, “I open the doors of the banquet hall to you.” Then the man gave me his hand, and with a flap of my wings, I propelled us into the clouds.
I replayed the scene two times, three times, five times, on sunny battlefields, in sloughs of snow reddened by blood, in the middle of the ocean, on the decks of wooden ships.
I woke up with a splitting headache. At least my sheets hadn’t caught fire. After my first two cups of coffee, I decided that the lack of fire when I woke up indicated a definite progress of my personal situation. To celebrate that, I poured myself another cup of the burning black liquid. The sun was approaching the horizon. I was going to have to go down to prep the club for opening. That night, I had a new bartender to assess.
Enola arrived late, her encyclopedia of cocktails pressed against her chest as if to protect herself from the world.
“I almost didn’t come,” she confessed, looking down.
“Nerves?”
She shook her head, and her long black hair danced around her shoulders. “A shadow is looming over you,” she breathed. “A dangerous man. He’s watching you.”
An icy shiver gripped me. “What man? Where?”
“I don’t know. I see him as a spider, and you’re in his web.”
“Henry?” I exclaimed without thinking.
Enola’s eyes widened in surprise. “Who?”
“A customer who’s the descendant of a spider-god. But he doesn’t seem dangerous at all. Just depressed.”
“Oh, all right,” said Enola. “No, I don’t think it’s this Henry. My visions are often…symbolic. The spider more likely represents a master manipulator, a hunter awaiting his prey in the shadows.”
Okay, Erica, breathe. Nate is at the door, Barbie is working tonight, and the Guild’s protections have already withstood a Valkyrie. It’s not the spider-man that’s going to scare you.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” said Enola. “I scared you.”
“No, you did the right thing. I’ll be careful, thank you. But do you think this man is a danger for you and the other employees?”
“I thought so for a moment. That’s why I almost didn’t come. But now I know he’s only interested in you.” Her mouth twisted bitterly, and I thought she was going to add something, but she changed her mind. After a moment of hesitation, she squared her shoulders and said, “Am I starting behind the bar right away?”
I showed her where the alcohol was stored, the types of glasses, and the ingredients she would need for basic cocktails.
“We’ll be two at the bar for tonight,” I said. “You’ll make the easier cocktails…” I unfolded the drinks menu to illustrate my point. “These specialties, I’ll take care of them. Pour beer, serve alcohol, and if you have any questions, call me. Can you do that?”
She assured me she could handle it, and I didn’t have time to double check: Matteo was crossing the room quickly and stopped in front of us. Usually, he arrived early to prepare his kitchen, and until his appearance, I’d thought he was already in front of the stove. His brown curls were a mess, his lips were pursed, and I could tell he was dying to talk to me. I left Enola alone at the bar and followed Matteo to a corner of the room.
“He’s alive,” he announced.
“What? Who?”
“Carver.”
“WHAT?”
A bloc of ice fell in the pit of my stomach, and my ears rang for a few seconds so I didn’t hear what Matteo was explaining to me.
When I gathered my thoughts, he was talking about off-shore accounts and shell companies.
“I didn’t understand any of that,” I said.
“Carver is alive; he’s going by the name Denikin. I don’t know where he is yet.”
This time, it wasn’t just a matter of a prediction from a quasi-stranger. Matteo might have been my cook, but his father ran one of the biggest financial empires in the area, and he passed down enough notions of finances and creative accounting so that Matteo could one day take over the family business. If Matteo said that Callum was alive, I took him at his word. My worst nightmare was coming true.
Matteo made me sit down, and I let him. In my head, the same thought was playing on a loop: “He’s
alive; he’s alive; he’s alive.” My first instinct was to pack my bags and get on my bike. Leave, no matter the direction, and drive fast enough that he couldn’t catch me.
A shadow surrounded me, and my heart skipped a beat. But it wasn’t the spider-man who had gotten closer. The shadow was being cast by Barbie’s red wings. The harpy put a glass down on the table, sat down next to me, and wrapped her arm around my shoulders.
“Drink that, boss. It’s one of my own recipes.”
I downed the drink in one gulp, barely noticing the burning of the alcohol on its way down. Barbie squeezed my hand in hers. The talon pointing towards the inside of my wrist poked my skin and brought me back to reality.
“Boss,” said the harpy, “we’re here for you. We all defeated a psychopathic goddess, so a human isn’t going to be the one to scare us.”
“She’s right,” agreed Matteo. “Gertrude won’t even need her magical hammer; my powers work, no problem, on humans.”
“And wait until Nate gets involved,” added Barbie. “He’s gonna annoy you so much from wanting to protect you that you’ll forget to be scared.”
“Okay,” I breathed, “okay, thanks. I need to…I need to…”
“We need to find out where he’s hiding,” said Matteo. “I’ll get on it, but I was thinking… Shouldn’t a law-abiding citizen let the cops know? I’m sure that by faking his death, Carver broke several finance laws. And there’s tax evasion. Not to mention…” He interrupted himself and frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“If those aren’t Carver’s remains in that shoebox in that Chicago morgue…whose are they? Boss, do you think he would…”
“Murder someone and have his body put on one of his yachts then switch his toothbrush with the dead guy’s so the DNA would match?” I asked. “That, he can do everyday before breakfast.”
“Charming,” mumbled Barbie. “I’m almost looking forward to meeting him to be able to gouge his eyes out.”
“There’s no evidence that he’s in the country,” intervened Matteo, “much less in Vegas. Boss, if you’d like, I’ll send an anonymous message to get the police on his trail.”
“Go ahead. Send the IRS, homicide, the FBI, and the seven plagues of Egypt after him if you can.”
He nodded and took my free hand into his. “You’re trembling. Do you want me to absorb your fear?”
I hesitated. As a psychic vampire, Matteo could absorb any human emotions. I had already tested it, and finding yourself suddenly liberated from paralyzing terror was…“magical,” in every sense of the word. But it also seemed too easy. Kind of like cheating.
“Boss,” whispered Barbie, “we’re opening in five minute.”
And I was unable to get up, much less work. I had to decide, immediately.
“Okay. Go see if Enola is ready, would you?”
“I don’t like the new girl,” said Barbie, looking over at Enola. “Being late on the first night, you just don’t do that. And now she looks like a chicken who got her hands on kitchenware…”
Barbie walked away shaking her head, and Matteo took my other hand.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
The first time that Matteo had swallowed my fear, I had felt an icy wave leave my body. This time the sensation was jerky, uncomfortable. In front of me, Matteo seemed taken aback.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he murmured. “I was barely able to take away a little bit of your fear.”
He let go of my hands and pushed back his chair, as if to get a better look at me. His eyes got lost in the distance. “Your aura is different,” he murmured. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice.”
“Notice what?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, his eyes were clear again. “You’ve changed since last time. Have you noticed anything?”
I ran a hand through my hair and showed it to him.
“What?” he asked. “What am I supposed to see?”
“Nothing. Not one hair.”
He shook his head, looking confused.
“Humans lose their hair,” I explained. “A few dozen a day. They’re replaced by new ones. It’s a normal cycle.”
“But not you?”
He obviously had trouble seeing what I was getting at, but in his defense, he was proving to be patient.
“Not Valkyries, and not me either. Not since I killed Goldilocks. Britannicus thought it might have something to do with some sort of exposure to an explosion of magic, but apparently I’m the only one affected. Unless you’ve noticed something on your end?”
He shook his head, and I continued.
“The other explanation is that my sword decided to protect me, the same way it protected the Valkyrie before me.”
“By stopping you from losing your hair?”
“I suppose that’s just a side effect. In fact, I have no idea.”
“Right now, where’s the sword?” asked Matteo.
“In its case, in my loft.”
“Do you think its protection extends this distance?”
“It’s a magical sword that catches fire in response to my emotions and was able to decapitate a goddess. It’s not going to be held back by two or three stories.”
I could tell that my explanations were only half convincing him, but he didn’t press the issue.
“In any case, I can’t rid you of your fear,” he said. “Sorry.”
“But of course you can. Look: five minutes of conversation, and I’m almost not trembling anymore. I feel better.”
“It could also be Barbie’s cocktail,” he said, smiling from the corner of his mouth. “That thing would wake the dead.”
18
LOLA CAME BY not long after we opened, a big purse on her shoulder.
“Hey, you trying out a new look?” I asked.
Lola wasn’t the purse type.
She put her bag down on the counter and sat on a stool. “New employee?” she whispered, looking at Enola.
“Test run,” I said. “The usual?”
I made her her favorite cocktail, and she took a file out of her bag.
“This,” she said, “never left the police station.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I answered.
I put her glass in front of her, and she opened the file.
On the first page was a picture of a young African-American man, soft features and eyes shining with intelligence.
“This morning’s victim,” said Lola. “Andrew Gardner. MIT student in Vegas for a few days. Clean record. From what I could see, he was a promising young man.” She pulled out a page from the file and read quickly. “He and a few of his friends were staying at a nearby hotel, the Sphinx.”
We exchanged meaningful looks. The victim staying at the same hotel as the wolves couldn’t be a coincidence.
Lola continued, “Andrew and his friends were gambling at the hotel casino last night when the group lost sight of Andrew. The kids had been drinking a lot, they concluded that Andrew had, and I quote, ‘scored,’ and that they would find him the next morning to hear all about his nocturnal adventures.”
“Poor guys,” I murmured. “Talk about a weekend in Vegas.”
Lola nodded, took a drink from her cocktail, and pulled out another page from the file. “Preliminary autopsy,” she indicated soberly.
“Let me guess: the bites are post-mortem.”
My friend gave me a quizzical look. “How do you know that?”
“A barista who watches CSI told me.”
Lola’s left eyebrow rose to the middle of her forehead.
“The barista got to the parking lot before your guys had a chance to hide the body,” I said. “She saw the bite marks, noticed the absence of blood, and she remembered what they say on TV.”
“And for once, TV gets it right. Once the heart stops beating, it’s no longer circulating blood in the body. Only gravity makes it flow. But there’s something else.”
“I was wrong about the coroner. It just so happens that before coming to work under the Vegas sun, he worked in Alaska.”
“And?”
“And in the Great White North, he saw his fair share of wolf bites. He affirmed that those animals are not responsible for the marks on Andrew’s body.”
“Coyotes then?”
Lola shook her head. “The jaw size doesn’t match the coyotes. They match wolves, but the doc talked about the depth of the lacerations, the direction of the tears and,” she looked at the autopsy report before saying, “‘applied force, in PSI, on the flesh and bones of the victim.’ Long story short, the jaws weren’t strong enough, the teeth didn’t pierce far enough, and they didn’t tear at the right angle.”
I called over Barbie, who joined us. The harpy no longer bothered to hide her wings and talons in Lola’s presence.
“Barb,” I asked, “do you know anything about ghouls?”
She grimaced. “No more than the next harpy. Why?”
“Would you say their jaws have more or less the same strength as a wolf’s?”
“Are we talking a regular wolf or a metamorph?”
“There’s a difference?” interjected Lola.
“A little. Metamorphs have a little more strength than regular wolves.”
“And how do the ghouls compare?” I asked.
“Stronger than wolves, I would say. Sharper teeth, too. They’re almost needles. The mafia used to hire them to crush the arms of disobedient employees. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Like this?” asked Lola.
She showed Barb a photo. Andrew Gardner’s body was lying on a slab in the morgue, exposing the dozens of bite marks on his skin.
Barbie shook her head. “Nah, that’s nothing compared to the work of a ghoul. They have two rows of teeth. That doesn’t leave much.”
The waitress went back to her customers, leaving Lola and I looking at the gory photos of poor Andrew’s mutilated body.
“It could be a smaller animal,” I suggested. “Maybe rodents?”
“Size of the jaws,” Lola reminded me.