“Thanks,” I said, loading a lot of meanings into that one word. “It’s good to see you.”
He grinned back. “Come on.”
The three of us shambled over to a dingy white door, pale as a broken tooth in the hazy moonlight. Benedict knocked. I felt the prickle of scrying magic along the backs of my hands, and then the door slid open.
One last look over my shoulder, down the road, and I didn’t see anyone. They were coming, I knew, but not quickly. That might be good enough for now.
We went in.
Benedict took us onto the main factory floor, chains and winches and whatnot hanging in the darkness, toward the ghastly circle of fluorescent light that hung in the distance. I hoped Haverty wasn’t zoned out. Waking her from one of her magically enhanced nods would be impossible, and I knew we didn’t have a lot of time. The hairs on the back of my neck wouldn’t sit down, and besides, I’d never known Lazzaro to be a particularly patient man.
Haverty was up and around, though. Her pupils were the size of quarters, but she was at least ambulatory, and, honestly, I’d never seen her when she wasn’t a little fucked-up. It didn’t seem to make her any less competent. She gestured for me to sit on a metal worktable that had taken the place of the bed I’d spent so much time in.
“You just can’t stay out of trouble, huh?” she said.
“No.” Didn’t seem like there was much to add to that.
“You want the quick fix, or can you stay awhile?”
“Quick fix.”
She shook her head. “Costs more.” I knew she wasn’t talking about money.
“I’m out of time. Do it.”
She grinned. “Your funeral. Take off your shirt.” As an afterthought, almost to herself, she mumbled, “This is going to hurt a lot.” There was a strange, sad enthusiasm in her voice, and I wondered if she meant it was going to hurt her or me. Both, I guessed, but she seemed to be looking forward to it.
In a moment of insight, I finally understood Benedict. We were all addicts here, of sorts—I had magic, Benedict had his alcohol, and Haverty had it the worst. But the booze made sense to me for the first time. It was methadone, or a nicotine patch. Benedict knew the magic was going to consume him in time, so he sought refuge in something slightly less bad. For the first time, I felt sympathy for him rather than disgust.
“Shirt. Off. Are you in a hurry or not?” Haverty said, prodding my shoulder.
I looked at Kit. “I don’t know if you want to watch this.”
She had the cop face on, and she even had her gun out. I got the sense that she had no idea what was going on, but she’d found herself in some very unpleasant company, and she was in no mood to fuck around.
“I’m staying right here,” she said, unable to keep from casting a suspicious glance at Haverty.
“Yeah, okay.” I started to take off the shirt, but it was impossible. I couldn’t lift my broken arm, and the other one didn’t seem too inclined to help out much, either. “You’re gonna have to cut it off me,” I said.
Haverty obliged. I heard a sharp intake of breath when Kit saw the whorled web of scars on my chest and belly, the charm that kept the Devourer from draining my life away even then.
“Jimmy, what . . . ?”
“Long story. Maybe I’ll tell you later.”
Haverty prodded me again. “Lie on your stomach.”
I did. The table felt like it had been chilled to just above the temperature where a slight tap would shatter it into a billion pieces, and it leached the heat from my body at an alarming rate. I was shivering in moments.
Haverty said an incantation over her scalpel, heating it to a nice glowing white, and she got started.
There was a click as Kit pulled back the hammer of her gun. “Stop this,” she said. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you stop now.”
Haverty didn’t even slow down. She continued to carve an arc in my flesh, vocalizing the incantation under her breath.
“Put the gun away,” I told Kit. “She’s trying to help. I swear I’ll explain later.”
“This is insane.”
“Welcome to my life.”
Haverty lifted the scalpel and started in on a vertical line over my shoulder blade, then down my broken arm. I gritted my teeth. Over the faint sizzling of my flesh, I heard Kit uncock her gun.
“This is sick,” she said, but it was barely loud enough to hear.
I was making noises by then, like a gutshot pig, and despite the ice-cold table, sweat poured off my face. I wondered briefly why Haverty couldn’t have given me some anesthetic before starting this operation, but I knew better. Considering the source of her magic, I suspected the pain was a necessary component.
The cutting and chanting went on for maybe ten minutes. By the end of it, I felt twenty years older, and even Kit looked like she’d aged ten. But my arm moved. I could clench my fist, rotate my shoulders. Even my ribs seemed to have pulled themselves back into place. I felt like a new man. A new man that’d been run over by a cement truck, sure, but that was actually an improvement.
Haverty’s eyes had rolled back into her head, and she seemed to be riding the blissed-out edge of a wicked spell. I knew how that went. She made for her chair and her rig, and she was tying off before she even sat down. Kit, miraculously, said nothing.
“Rest a few minutes,” Haverty said without looking over. “I know you’re in a hurry, but you’ll be in a lot better shape if you sit tight for ten minutes or so.” She pushed in the plunger and she was gone.
I waited, drumming my fingers against the table. She was right. I felt better by the second.
“All right, Jimmy,” Kit said. Her face was pale, bluish under the fluorescents, and though she was talking to me, she couldn’t take her eyes off my arm, where not only had the bone been set and healed, but the gash it had ripped through my biceps was now barely more than a scar. It must have looked like a miracle to her—and it was, of sorts, though I knew that most of that damage hadn’t been healed, merely transferred from my physical body to something more enduring and, unfortunately, less able to cope with damage. “Now. What is going on?”
It finally registered that she wasn’t in uniform, that we’d taken her old Honda Civic to get here instead of the patrol car. Has she been suspended? Is it her day off? She must know Donnelly’s dead, right? Questions for another time, I supposed.
“Well,” I said, unsure where to begin. “I guess you know Frankie Lazzaro’s not quite dead, huh?”
“I shot him. Four times, Jimmy. They pronounced him dead at the scene.”
“And then?”
“And then, he got up in the back of the ambulance on the way to the morgue and killed everybody on board. The other body is gone, now, too. And my partner . . . ”
“Yes?”
Her eyes were haunted when they met mine. “They found his body, Jimmy.”
“I can explain.”
“I don’t want to hear it. You told me he was dirty, and Benedict backs you up, so I’ll accept that for now. It doesn’t matter. Nobody else will buy that story, not yet, which means you killed a cop and nowhere in Boston is safe for you now. Funny thing, though—that body’s missing, too. They think it was stolen for desecration as part of a Satanic cult or something you’re supposedly involved with.”
“The Satanic cult part isn’t all that far off,” I said.
Kit’s eyes flicked to the scrawling on my chest, the scar on my arm. “You can’t be . . . you can’t be serious.”
Benedict chuckled. I ignored him.
“Okay, ‘Satanic cult’ might be going a bit far, but I’ve gotten involved in some very bad shit. The mob is the least of it, I’m truly sorry to say.”
Kit waited, either trying to draw me out or because she was at a loss for anything intelligent to say in response to that.
“I killed Frankie Lazzaro,” I said.
“The experience has driven him quite mad,” Benedict chipped in.
“Huh
?”
“Yeah. He came to me this morning. Told me we’re too special to be under the thumb of Joey the Slob and his ilk, and tried to recruit me for a coup.” Benedict grinned, a chilling ghost of a smile that didn’t come near his eyes. “After we killed you, of course. He was adamant on that point.” Benedict coughed, cleared his throat, looked at the floor. “I was glad to hear you were still alive.”
“What did you do?”
“I made some affirmative noises, then got away the very first chance I could. He’s insane, and the reek of Hell coming off him told me everything I needed to know.”
“He was insane before he died,” I said. “He died trying to work some kind of mass-murder spell.”
“I thought you killed him?” Kit said.
“Well, I, uh—I sort of shoved him in, if you get the idea.”
“So what now?”
“Now he’s un-fucking-possible to kill, and he’s recruiting help from Hell. He’s dragged back a bunch of people I killed to come hunt me down.” Something occurred to me, and I shuddered. “He’s got Donnelly, some of the Slob’s guys, and some Russians. I hope to Christ he doesn’t bring back Old Man Chebyshev or fucking Kelsen. That’s the last thing we need.”
“Tink killed Kelsen,” Benedict pointed out. I think he was trying to be helpful.
“Peachy. Let’s hope that means something.”
“So, what?” Kit repeated. “So now an undead psychopath is going to kill you, then appoint himself mob kingpin, then rampage through the streets of Boston?”
“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”
“What do we have to do? Drive a stake through his heart? Cut of his head? Shoot him with a silver bullet? What?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. If I were you two, I’d get as far from me as possible. He’s not going to stop until I’m dead, or worse.”
“He’s not going to stop, period,” Kit said, “whether you’re dead or not.”
Benedict merely fixed me with a rueful look. “And I ran out on him. I’m probably next in line. Looks like we’re in this together.”
They were being stupid, I told myself. There was nothing they could do but die with me, so what was the point? Nonetheless, this was the first time in forever that I felt like I was with people who’d stick with me, not shoot me in the head as soon as I became inconvenient. Something heavy and painful seemed to have lodged itself in my throat, and I looked away, blinking more than was strictly necessary to keep my eyeballs from drying out.
“Okay,” I said after a few moments. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere else. We’ve been in one place for too long.” I realized I didn’t have Donnelly’s gun anymore—it was probably in an evidence locker, covered in my fingerprints, waiting for the day I could be indicted for the non-murder of a bunch of non-dead criminals and one non-dead cop. That’ll make some fucking legal history, if it ever goes to court. I snatched up Haverty’s scalpel and pocketed it. It was better than nothing.
I headed for the door, Kit next to me and Benedict close behind. I didn’t know where to go, but with three of us, we could drive in shifts, keep a lookout, and actually have some kind of chance. It was a world of difference from the Lone Jimmy show, and it kindled something that could be mistaken for hope in my chest.
We were almost to the door when a resounding boom! thundered forth ahead of us, vibrating the metal walls of the building.
“I don’t suppose that’s the police?” I asked Kit. She shook her head.
Another boom.
“They’re breaking down the door,” I said. It was a major door, heavy and metal, and magically locked, so it could take a little while. Not a long while, unfortunately, but a little while.
I looked around for another exit, anything. There was a big, walled-off area, looming and vague in the darkness. Probably the factory’s office space. That was better than nothing, I guessed. They’d at least have to come through the doors one at a time instead of being able to surround us, like out on the floor.
“Come on!” I grabbed Kit’s hand and started moving that way.
“What about her?” she asked, pointing back toward Haverty.
“Not unless you want to carry her,” Benedict said. “She’s out of it. Gone.”
“They’re not here for her anyway,” I said. “Come on.” I ran toward the office, Kit next to me and Benedict’s footsteps following close behind. The office door wasn’t locked, so we rushed inside and locked it behind us. I thought of Lazzaro blowing Kit’s door apart and wondered why I even bothered.
Dim moonlight shone through the dirty windows, barely enough to help us navigate the room without turning on a light. If the windows hadn’t been so close to the front door, where my former friends were scrabbling for an entrance, I’d have kicked out the glass and run for the car. As it was, though, I was sure we’d just be overrun. I started shoving a heavy wooden desk. Benedict got the idea right away, and together we dragged the thing in front of the door. I wondered if we’d even gained as much time as it took to move the damn thing.
We made our way through the room, around disused desks and empty shelves, heading deeper in.
“We need somewhere defensible,” I said. “And some time to prepare wouldn’t hurt.”
“Prepare what?” Benedict asked as we slipped into the next room. “I don’t even know what will work on these guys.”
I ran my hand over a desk, and my fingertips came away coated with greasy dust. “Banishment spells,” I said. “I don’t know if they’ll work, but I’m short on ideas. Maybe we can send the fuckers right back to Hell.”
“Maybe,” Benedict said. His tone said something else entirely, something along the lines of “Good fuckin’ luck.”
I heard wood crack a couple of rooms back. They were in the building, then, and maybe even in the same office area. We were going to have to move fast. I pushed Kit through the next doorway and locked the door behind us. It was pitch dark in there, so I got out my lighter. We were in a stairwell. I didn’t really want to go up, the memory of my disastrous leap still fresh in mind, but I was out of options.
I started up the stairs, two at a time, and the others followed.
We came out in a short hall on the second floor and stopped.
“Paper, pen? You got anything?”
Benedict nodded and pulled them out of his inside pocket.
“Light?”
He made some light.
“I don’t know the banishment spells,” Benedict said quietly. He looked strangely lost, and old.
“Do what you can,” I said, scribbling as fast as I was able.
Kit pulled her gun from the waistband of her pants, chambered a round.
There was a loud crack from below, and the sound of running feet.
One diagram done, then another. Maybe I’d get three before they arrived. Not enough.
Kit and Benedict bent over the railing, waiting for the first of our enemies to show up, while I scratched away.
They came moments later, and they came in a horde. Lazzaro had been busy, it seemed, and we were spoiled for targets. I recognized another couple of Russians I’d killed back when. Maybe more than a couple—I wasn’t really doing a head count, but I guessed there were a good ten or twelve people down there.
Kit started firing into the mob right off. Two guys dropped immediately, and before the rest even looked up, I said a few words and finished the banishment spell. Nothing happened.
Fuck.
Benedict unleashed a blinding sheet of flame into the stairwell. The screams and the stench were horrifying, and bile rose to the back of my throat. Why fire? Why is it always fucking fire? Another moment, and there was a sound like God’s popcorn popper going berserk, and I realized that the flames were causing all their ammo to explode. I threw myself backward, away from the conflagration and the flying bullets.
Benedict jerked back, and blood sprayed from a hole in his n
eck. His hand flew to his throat and he dropped to his knees, making an awful choking and gagging sound. I scrambled toward him as he slumped to the floor and finally fell on his side. Blood bubbled around his fingers. Already his eyes were glazed and far away.
“No!” I shouted, the word lost in the gunfire and conflagration. He’d brought the card. He’d believed in me, stood by me when almost nobody else would. He’d dragged me into this shit, too. He was a teacher, a friend, the asshole who’d started me down a path where I could fuck myself up beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I didn’t know what to feel, so I felt everything at once.
Tears came to my eyes, but Kit was already pulling at my shoulder. “Jimmy, we gotta go.”
She was right. We needed to run before they made it up the stairs. I took one last look at Benedict’s body, the life nearly drained away, wiped my eyes, and turned away.
Kit and I ran to the end of the short hall. She checked the last door while I looked back toward the stairwell. Nobody was coming yet. The door was open, and the room inside was full of unused furniture and draggled skeins of cobwebs. The windows provided a little pale light. It was a miserable place for a last stand.
I started moving a desk in front of the door. They’d have to batter their way through, in single file, and I’d be able to pick them off one at a time. I hoped.
Meanwhile, my mind was going a million miles an hour. More Russians—Lazzaro had found himself more goddamn Russians. More people I’d killed in the so-called line of duty, living incarnations of regret and waste and stupidity. What the fuck had I been thinking?
“Come on!” Kit yelled. “Push!”
I realized I’d stopped pushing at the desk, and she was struggling with it alone. I resumed pushing.
They were going to arrive in minutes, if not sooner. How many were left? Banishment was no good. Maybe we could kill them the old-fashioned way, but we were hurting, my soul was tired, and I didn’t know how many bullets Kit had left. Couldn’t be many. Probably not enough.
We started moving another desk, preparing to lift it on top of the first one.
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