Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3)

by SM Reine

  “You’re a big boy. You’ll be fine.” Isobel gave me a hard look. “Go find the bathroom.”

  I couldn’t argue with her without giving us away. And every second I waited was another second that we didn’t know what condition Fritz was in—or if he was even still alive.

  “I’ll be fine,” Isobel said softly.

  She had been a priestess at the Temple of the Hand of Death. She was probably safer alone in Helltown than I was, even here.

  So I gave Mary another smile, and I left Isobel alone with the fallen angel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I HAD TO SEARCH three staircases before I found one that led somewhere other than the dusty attic and choir loft. The inside of the bell tower was a long, lightless, spiraling staircase with darkness waiting at the top.

  Climbing those stairs took an eternity. I lost track of the number of floors after the first five. Shadow consumed the stairwell below and above, forcing me to guide myself with a hand on the wall.

  The only way that I knew I was getting to the top was that I could hear wind whistling through open windows.

  Finally, I found myself in a square room big enough to house multiple bells, though there weren’t any bells in sight.

  Empty chains dangled over the hollow core of the tower.

  And there was Fritz.

  Considering that Mary—or whatever her real name was—thought that Fritz was her husband, she hadn’t left him in very comfortable conditions. He was suspended from the middle chain by his wrists. Ropes cinched his ankles together, and a bell’s clapper dangled from his feet to stretch him out long and lean. It looked heavy. The rope was digging into his skin.

  Maybe she hadn’t liked her husband all that much.

  He wore flannel pajama bottoms and no shirt. There was a slipper on one foot, but not the other. She must have literally dragged him out of bed.

  Luckily for Fritz, it didn’t seem that he had any significant characteristics different from those of Mary’s husband. Nothing had been severed. Guess he was already circumcised, too, because his flannels weren’t soaked in blood—and thank God for that.

  “Hey, asshole,” I said. “Wake up and get down here.”

  He didn’t react. He’d passed out harder than a frat boy at his first party.

  I grabbed the chain for another bell and hefted myself off the floor. Maybe I’m not the best at magic, but if you ever need a guy to climb something in about two seconds flat, I’m your guy. I’ve got an upper body like a gorilla’s.

  Kicking off the railing, I swung toward Fritz, reaching my free hand for his chain. I missed the first time and overshot, swinging right past him.

  My hand closed around his chain on the second try. Fritz swayed over the empty tower. A droplet of blood dripped from his nose and vanished into the darkness below.

  I hooked an arm around Fritz, which put us uncomfortably close. Way closer than two guys should ever need to be. Good thing he was unconscious and would never remember having his face nestled against my chest.

  “Sorry, boss,” I muttered. “I just have to cut your ropes.”

  The dagger on my belt was hotter than it had been downstairs, like it was reacting to Fritz’s presence. I could only hold it for a few seconds. Luckily, I only needed a few seconds to saw Fritz free of the chain.

  His entire weight sagged into me, including the iron clapper dangling from his ankles. My hand slipped down a few links. The metal burned up my palm and pinched my wrist.

  “Fuck,” I grunted, shifting Fritz so that his upper body rested over my shoulder. That position was just as awkward. It shoved my face right into his armpit. I grimaced. “First I have to get hip-deep in Lake Tahoe’s snowmelt to save your ass, and now I’ve got to smell your BO to save you again. You owe me so fucking much, dude.”

  He groaned against my neck.

  I released one of the chains and gravity swung us back toward the other side. I let go once there was floor under my feet.

  We both hit in a tangled mess.

  Shoving Fritz away, I wiped some of his blood off my shoulder, scrubbed his sweat off my face. Awful.

  He flopped onto his back. His eyes were still closed, and there was drool at the corner of his mouth in addition to all the blood. I sliced the clapper off of his legs and found that one of his feet was black from the ankle down.

  His circulation had been cut off for too long. He needed a doctor. Or a witch who could actually heal him.

  It was only then that I realized I was still gripping the ritual dagger, and it was blazing with heat from such close proximity to Fritz. It hurt. A lot. I jammed it back into my belt and peeled my fingers open to find the elaborate hilt pattern burned into my palm.

  “What the hell?” I must have really screwed up that binding ritual.

  I’d worry about that later.

  But now what? Fritz was still unconscious. I slapped his face a few times, maybe harder than I needed to. Hey, I was having a bad night.

  No reaction.

  A cry echoed up the bell tower. “Cèsar! She’s coming!”

  Those three words made my heart just about stop beating. I recognized Isobel’s voice, recognized the desperation in her tone, and recognized how bad she must have thought things were if she was yelling at me.

  She’s coming. Mary had left the kitchen and was headed up the tower.

  “Wake up, Friederling,” I said, slapping him again.

  Nothing.

  I checked his pulse. It was fine.

  What was it that Bubba Tanner had said? He had been overwhelmed by the fallen angel’s power every time she visited his street. Fritz probably wasn’t going to be able to wake up until I got him away from the force of Mary’s power.

  Now I could hear shuffling on the stairs. It sounded like a weird, two-legged horse coming at us. Her hooves echoed. The scent of brimstone wafted through the air.

  The only way out of the tower was to go down the stairs and pass her—or jump out an open window.

  Neither option was awesome.

  I checked out the windows of the bell tower. We were several stories above the roof of the church, but I could only tell by brief glimpses of the smooth black surface below, because inky smoke whirled past the windows.

  Nightmares were pushing against the wards, trying to force their way in. The most powerful demons of Helltown knew there was fresh mortal blood inside the church.

  If I jumped outside with Fritz to escape Mary, we’d be just as likely to end up in the arms of some other kind of evil.

  The clopping sound drew nearer. “Agent Hawke,” Mary said in a soft voice, “you’re not bothering my husband, are you?”

  Shit. She was only a couple floors down.

  I checked the windows again. The wards formed a loose bubble around the church, so there were a few feet of safety between the walls and the swirling nightmares.

  As long as I stuck close to the walls, we’d be fine. Maybe.

  We definitely wouldn’t be fine if we stayed in the bell tower.

  “I’m gonna regret this,” I muttered, tossing Fritz over my shoulder again.

  The echoing sound of Mary’s hooves rapping against wood grew until it sounded like thunder in the tower.

  I sat on the edge of the windowsill, threw my legs over the side, and looked down. Pulsing crimson lights were scattered across the street like starlight. They came from some kind of demon I’d never seen before, and it looked like a lot of them. They weren’t used to prey wandering willingly into their midst.

  The ass end of Isobel’s RV was a beacon of light in the sea of darkness. Yelena’s magic was holding. I could almost hear her whiny little voice chanting that stupid rhyme.

  If I could reach the RV, her magic might be strong enough to protect Fritz from Mary’s energy.

  So I turned and started climbing. The decorations on the outside of the tower were easy to grip—stone vines, open-mouthed grotesques, crosses and pentacles. I slid down with Fritz over my shoulder.
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  Incorporeal nightmares blasted past me, just outside arm’s reach. Hot wind ruffled my hair.

  Mary’s voice drifted from the open shutters above me.

  “Shamdan? Sweetheart? Where did you go?”

  I climbed faster.

  I’m ripped with muscle from a healthy combination of weight lifting and strength-enhancing magical poultices. I’d once broken out of an LAPD jail cell by ripping the window out of the wall. I could bench more than twice my body weight, and I was a heavy guy. Hell, I could probably do bicep curls with Suzy if she held still.

  But you want to talk a real workout? Try climbing down the outside of a building, King Kong-style, with a two-hundred-pound adult man over your shoulder.

  I should have had a few more strength poultices before entering Helltown.

  My arms were quickly turning to jelly as I lowered us, pushing myself to go faster, struggling to escape the sound of Mary’s growing despair.

  “No! Lord help us, Shamdan!”

  The nightmares swirled faster just outside the wards of the church, as if frustrated that they couldn’t reach me. It looked like they were getting closer. My heart jumped every time motion flashed out of the corner of my eye.

  They were going to get us. Wrap around us both, swallow us whole, drop us into a pit of eternal fear.

  I’d been under nightmare thrall before. I hadn’t forgotten what it felt like.

  One wrong step, and the nightmares would have me again.

  But then something solid touched my feet and I almost fell off the side of the tower in shock. I gripped the head of a grotesque tightly, heart clawing at the back of my throat as I looked down.

  I’d reached the roof.

  I released my hold on the tower and stumbled over the black ceramic tile with Fritz precariously balanced on my shoulder.

  Darkness swirled above us. I glimpsed clawing hands, skeletal faces, bleeding eyes. “Fuck off,” I said. “You hear me? We’re not food!” I swung my fist at them.

  The nightmares dissipated, whirling away into the starry night.

  I blinked. I hadn’t actually expected that to work.

  “Huh,” I said.

  Then I realized that someone was climbing out of the same window I’d descended from. It wasn’t that the nightmares had been listening to me—they just didn’t want to have to face a fallen angel.

  Smart nightmares.

  Mary had shed the voluminous black robes to make her descent easier. She still had the face of a harmless old lady, but she also had furry satyr legs, cloven hooves, and severed wings. Her skin was wrinkled in places, scaly in others.

  And here I’d been expecting angels to look like those fat-ass cherub decorations for Valentine’s Day.

  She climbed a lot faster than I did, hooves and all.

  I grabbed Fritz tighter and jumped down into one of the dormers to hide. The ledge in front of the stained glass window was narrow. I jammed my heels against the decorative trim, knees almost to my shoulders, and pushed Fritz into the corner with my elbow so he wouldn’t fall.

  “Come on, wake up already,” I hissed, shaking him hard.

  Still no reaction.

  There was no way I could get down to Yelena’s RV before Mary did. He would never wake up like this. If only we’d had time to bind as kopis and aspis before he’d been kidnapped—a bound kopis would have been immune to her energy.

  Wishing wasn’t going to save our lives.

  I drew my Desert Eagle, even though my gut told me that a fallen angel wasn’t going to be real impressed by bullets. I’d just have to empty the magazine into her chest and hope for the best.

  Damn it, I didn’t want to empty the magazine into any part of Mary. It rankled against every fiber of manly decency in my body. She wasn’t just a woman; she was a confused old woman who had been damned by God. If you could ever call a serial killer an innocent, that would be Mary. She didn’t deserve death any more than Fritz and I did.

  But if it came down to Mary or me, I knew who I would choose.

  Shifting Fritz’s weight to draw the gun bared an inch of skin on my back. The knife from the binding ritual scalded my spine. I swallowed down another curse.

  Why was that knife still hot?

  Lucrezia’s disbelieving face as she studied my circle suddenly flashed through my mind. Like she’d said, I hadn’t cast the spell right. It had worked, but it had been weird and wrong, somehow. And the knife was still burning like it was connected to that fucked up spell.

  What if that was because I hadn’t finished the ritual? What if the knife was burning with magic, waiting for me to take the final step?

  Fritz’s limp arm was already in my lap. It would be easy to find out.

  I drew the knife from my belt again. I’d already burned my fingers so badly that the heat felt cold now—probably a bad sign, probably some kind of nerve damage. I slashed the point down Fritz’s forearm and sliced him open from the inside of his elbow to wrist. His blood looked almost black in the darkness of Helltown.

  Demons swirled beyond the wards again, scenting his blood.

  They might as well have erected a neon arrow pointing at our precarious hiding spot, directing Mary right at us.

  Focus, Hawke. Finish the ritual.

  I ignored the nightmares and made a second cut. The blade was so sharp that I didn’t feel the first bite of it into my skin. I dragged it all the way down the vein, just like I’d done to Fritz, and then gripped his arm tightly to hold the cuts together.

  His blood flowed into my veins, and mine flowed into his.

  There was a chant that I should have been saying. I couldn’t remember it.

  But it didn’t seem to matter. Power wrapped tightly around my chest, clutching me in its invisible fist, and I sneezed. The sound was explosive in the windy night. Then I sneezed again, and again, and I couldn’t seem to stop.

  The dagger had gone icy in my hand.

  “Shamdan!”

  Crash. Stone shattered.

  Mary swung into view, gripping the top of the dormer. Her hooves slammed into the roof below my ledge and crushed the tile, sending the shards tumbling hundreds of feet to the street below. Her wings had been severed about a foot from her shoulders. The shriveled stumps were twitching.

  She was one ugly bitch—uglier even than Monique. Her chest was sunken. The tubes of her wrinkled breasts swayed from a scaly collarbone. Her stomach was open to expose the dried-out husks of black intestines. The human face perched on her shoulders looked like a mask now, like it might slip right off her skull.

  I didn’t think I’d had enough time to swap blood with Fritz. There was no way that the ritual could be complete.

  But I was out of time.

  Shoving Fritz behind me again, I swung the Desert Eagle around to bear.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  I’m not a good shot, but Mary was about a foot away, and a Desert Eagle is a pretty big gun.

  A hole punched through her chest. Right between her saggy tits.

  Shock blanked her face, and her hands slipped from the top of the dormer. She just barely managed to catch herself on the cracked tiles. She dug her fingernails in.

  I leaned back and kicked, stomping the heel of my shoe into her hand. “Let go!”

  Desperate fury smoldered in her eyes. “You can’t have Shamdan! I won’t let you hurt him!”

  “He’s not your fucking husband!”

  One more good kick, and her hand slipped free.

  But man, the bitch was fast. She caught her grip again and scrambled over the edge of the roof. Her fingernails had grown longer, sharper. They gashed furrows into the tile.

  We’d seen evidence of knife attacks at the murder scenes, but Mary probably hadn’t needed a knife. The slit throats, the hearts cut out of chests, Jay Brandon’s wrecked furniture—she had done it with her fingernails.

  I didn’t plan on letting her use those against me.

  I started climbing an instant before she did.
I hauled myself over the top of the dormer onto the slope of the roof, leaving Fritz curled against the stained glass window in relative safety. The speed of my reaction gave me about a three-foot head start, but the tile felt slick under my knees as I rushed on all fours toward the peak of the roof.

  Mary was right behind me. I could feel her breath on my legs, burning right through my pants. She stunk like rotten eggs.

  Then the angel slammed into me, rolling me onto my back, forcing both of us to slide down the sloped roof.

  I brought the gun up between us. Her tobacco-yellow fingernails slashed into my wrist—sharper than they looked—and the gun skittered away. It landed in the rain gutter.

  “I won’t be separated from Shamdan again. I just got him back.” Red-tinged tears shimmered in Mary’s eyes. “You’re working with Adam. Aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Her hands closed around my throat, squeezing. The points of her fingernails dug into my skin. “Like I said at the soup kitchen, I just knew that God was working through you.”

  And here I’d thought that she’d meant it as a compliment.

  My vision sparked black at the edges as she squeezed tighter. I beat against her wrinkled arms, tried to push her off. The blows didn’t even make her flinch. All I managed to do was smear blood from the wound in my arm.

  Every thought of trying not to hit a woman fled from my skull, and I beat harder. Harder. But it still didn’t do anything. Her thumbs pressed into my esophagus.

  Mary was strong for an old woman.

  My lungs ached, desperate for oxygen. Where had I left the ritual dagger? Why hadn’t I brought a spare weapon? Shouldn’t I have come into Helltown with a fucking bazooka?

  The world rapidly became darker.

  Too late for regrets.

  Something shifted in my body—in my skull. It felt like I could suddenly smell better, hear better, see better, even as consciousness rapidly faded. My skin felt electric.

  There was something new inside of me. An awareness. A strength. I wasn’t sure what.

  Maybe it was death creeping up on me.

  Then the pressure was suddenly gone and Mary was standing. She turned her back to me. “Shamdan,” she said, and it sounded like she was almost weeping.