The Seanake's a really old school Irish pub. They served Guinness just right, and there was live music every night. The great thing was the music was always traditional Irish drinking songs; no up and coming bands here, only guys who can sing Whiskey in the Jar and Seven Drunken Nights. I smiled as we entered the bar, which was about three quarters full. Three waitresses were scooting back and forth from the bar to the tables, trays loaded with beer and pub grub.
There was an empty table near the corner, about ten feet from both the bar and the band. That table was always empty, and even if the place was packed, no one would sit there. I took Megan over to the table and then walked up to the band, which had just finished one of the more off-color renditions of Wild Rover. I handed the band leader a twenty.
“Finnegan’s Wake,” I said. He nodded his thanks, pocketed the cash and I sat down at the table. A waitress came over and I ordered four pints of Guinness and a shot of Bushmills.
Megan cocked her head at me. “So where is this contact of yours?”
“He’ll be here shortly. Relax, enjoy the song.”
We listened to the band play. I sang along, as did most of the patrons and the staff. The song was about one Tim Finnegan, an Irish bricklayer who fell off a ladder and was presumed dead. The mourners at his wake gradually became rowdy and spilled whiskey on his corpse. This brought Tim back to life and he was most indignant that they thought he was dead and that they were spilling his whiskey.
Our waitress returned with the drinks as the band finished to a booming round of applause. I turned to the third chair at the table and found a pale, dark-haired man sitting with us. He whistled and hooted his appreciation of the music, then knocked back the shot of whiskey.
“Now, these lads know how to send a man off proper,” the newcomer said with a smile as he took one of the pints in front of him.
Megan jumped in her seat and I saw her reach under her coat.
“Easy, Megan. This is Tim Finnegan. He’s my contact here.”
She squinted at him. “He’s a ghost,” she said. There was both wonder and horror in her expression. I winced. Tim was pretty laid back as far as spirits go, but they typically didn’t like being reminded that they were dead.
Tim smiled. “This one’s as sharp as a pin, Vinnie,” he said to me. Then he paused. “You didn’t break up with Petra, did ya?”
“No, Tim, Megan is a business associate.”
His eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “If I’d had business associates with figures like that when I was carryin’ me hod, I’d never have gotten any work done.” Megan shifted in her seat and blushed.
“According to that song, you spent most of your time drunk, anyway,” she said.
He gave her an indignant look. “I do me best work when I’m drunk, thank you very much.” He turned back to me and spread his hands. “Now, what brings you to me tonight?”
I told him about the people who had gone missing. “It’s only paranormals, Tim. I was wondering if you’d heard anything from the spirit world.”
Tim rubbed his chin and stared into his Guinness for a few moments before he shook his head. “Nothing springs to mind.” He drained the rest of his pint and I passed him a second glass. “But I’ll keep me ears open.” He looked at me and the joviality left his face. “But Vinnie, vampires, werewolves and gremlins are all strong and resourceful. They’re the predators, not the prey. Whatever’s taking them is going to be bad. It might be dangerous even for someone like you. So be careful, lad.” His eyes sparkled again. “After all, not many people come in here and buy me pints anymore.”
“Can I get you anything else?” Our server, a perky young woman of about twenty-three, had materialized next to our table in that way only a waitress can and smiled at us.
“Thank you, we’re all set,” Megan said. Our waitress smiled again and left the bill. When we turned back to the table Tim was gone. When you’re a ghost, entrances and exits are always dramatic. I imagined the director’s notations for Tim’s comings and goings as, “Exit - Stage Immediately In Front of You.” Megan looked at the spot where he’d been sitting and then at me. I just shrugged.
“Is he reliable?” she asked.
I nodded. “If any one of the missing people dies, Tim will hear about it, and he’ll pass it on to us.”
She sipped her Guinness, then leaned back from the table, closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. “Today I found a woman whose brain was stolen, met a gremlin, several vampires, and a ghost.” She tipped her head to one side and opened her eyes. “And my new partner is a god.” Her dimple appeared. I started to say something when a crash, followed by a shattering of glass and a yelp of pain from our left took our attention. One of our fellow patrons had decided to do a jig on the table and had fallen off and broken his leg. Our waitress hollered for the bartender to call for an ambulance, and hastily set about making the man comfortable until the EMTs arrived.
Megan looked at me. “Could you heal him?”
I shook my head. “I can only do stuff like that for my followers.” Even if that guy decided to worship me, I wouldn't be able to do anything for him. That was the catch of being a half-deity; there was some rule out there that said you couldn’t have members of your own species as followers. That was why even though Hercules, Perseus and Achilles were half-gods, they were never able to tap their followers' faith to do anything miraculous.
“So are the Urisk your only followers?” Megan asked.
“Yes, and keeping them safe is tricky enough.”
“What about other creatures? Other fae, vampires, aliens? Would you be able to have them as worshippers?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never sought out other followers, but yeah, I guess that would work.”
“So you’re a god who runs on inhuman faith. And that faith lets you do whatever your followers can, as much and as often as you want?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Gods are like machines that run on faith instead of electricity. Each day when I listen to my followers’ prayers, it’s like recharging my batteries. The more I tap my followers’ faith for power, the faster those batteries drain.”
We chatted for a few minutes more while we finished our drinks, then we left the Seanake and she gave me a lift back to my apartment. “See you tomorrow, partner,” she said with a smile. She drove off and I headed inside. My apartment was number 314, and the previous tenant put a “.” between the 3 and the 1. So when I got home, I always thought of pi, and then of pie, which made me hungry.
I grabbed a quick snack, cleaned up, brushed my teeth and headed for the bedroom. My apartment isn’t huge, but it’s got enough room for Petra and me. I looked at the pictures of the two of us on the wall, and then at the calendar, which had the day after tomorrow circled in red. Inside the circle, the word ‘Home!’ was printed in Petra’s girly handwriting. The ‘o’ in ‘Home!’ was a happy face. God, I missed her.
I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes. Fae wars, a de-brained woman, kidnapped paranormals and vampire attacks would be enough to give anyone nightmares.
Especially me.
Chapter 7
Begin Coded Transmission
Details of what transpired during Corinthos’ crossover to the Bright Side are sparse, but from other interrogated fae we have learned that Corinthos’ psychic powers were amplified. This was illustrated when he single-handedly threw back a wave of hobgoblin soldiers that were attacking an Urisk farming detail. The Urisk who witnessed this were in awe of the Godling, and it is believed they were among the first to evangelize him to the other Urisk, proclaiming his heroic deeds.
-NS
End Coded Transmission
I was trapped in a demonic forge. The cavernous room’s only light came from the hellish red light of the forge’s flames, which easily reached the ceiling. The blacksmith, a crimson-skinned fiend with fangs as long as my index finger, pounded on an anvil with a hammer the size of a toaster oven. The blacksmith saw me and snarled, h
urling the sword he’d been forging at me. I tried to turn, but it was like I was stuck in a vat of molasses. The world barely moved as I willed my body to run.
About halfway to me, the sword turned into a man whose eyes gleamed like glass. He stretched his arms out and chains burst from his hands. The chains ensnared me, dug into my skin, wrapped around my neck. I tried to raise my arms to break free, tried to summon the Urisk’s faith, but my body and my powers refused to respond. The man slammed into me, drove me to the ground. A blade appeared where his hand should have been and he drove it at my throat.
I came awake with a start and almost fired off a real telekinetic blast in response to the dream. I caught myself just in time. The last time that happened, we had to replace the bedroom door. I rubbed my eyes and tried to shake off the unease of the nightmare. I glanced at the clock. It was just after six in the morning. Might as well get up.
I started my morning out as I always do, by answering my follower’s prayers. I opened my mind to them, and their voices flooded into my mind. Many of them were just speaking their daily litanies, part of a routine that Lotholio and the other priests had instilled into them. Some of them asked for health or strength, and these I granted. With each prayer that I heard, my faith reserves refilled a bit more.
Twenty minutes later, I stood up and gave a satisfied stretch. When I was fully charged with the Urisk’s faith I felt like I could take on the world. So hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go.
When I got to HQ, I walked down the hall and saw that the lights were on in Megan’s office. I stuck my head in and found her in front of a whiteboard, a pad of paper in one hand and a marker in the other. In pristine handwriting, she’d written out the names of the missing and what we knew of them so far. The board was color-coded, with notes about the missing appearing in green, questions in blue, and miscellaneous bits of information in brown.
“Oh, hi, Vincent,” she said when she noticed me. “I copied these from Miguel’s whiteboard.” She held up the pad and gestured to her own board. “I’ve been going over this for the last hour, but I’m not having much luck.” We spoke for a few minutes while we reviewed what we knew so far. We took another look at the tapes we’d recovered from Mikey’s apartment, but even with the enhanced footage, courtesy of Gearstripper, we couldn’t see much. After about forty-five minutes of rewinding and replaying, it was obvious we weren’t going to solve anything.
“Up for a road trip?” she asked.
“Where to?”
“The Delions had a cottage in Dublin, New Hampshire.” She tapped a map printout. “From what the Caulborn files say about the Delions, Justine would take her son there when the moon was full. The last full moon coincides with the time they disappeared.”
I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad heading north. “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”
During the drive, Megan peppered me with more questions about the Caulborn’s activities in the New England area. She’d done a lot of research on her own, and I was impressed with how sharp her memory was. After driving for a little over two hours, we arrived at our destination. The Delion house was a small, two bedroom cape, located just off of Route 101. The yard was heavily wooded, and the nearest neighbor’s house was over half a mile away.
“Wow,” Megan said as she stared at the red and gold leaves on the trees. “It’s so pretty.”
“Yeah,” I said as I looked around. “Not many people around, middle of nowhere, yep, this is a great place for a werewolf to hang out.”
There was an aging green Hyundai in the driveway. Judging by the amount of leaves that had built up by its windshield wipers, the car hadn’t been driven in some time. We did a quick loop around the house; everything seemed normal. We went to the front door and rang the bell. I rang it again when no one answered after a minute. Another minute later, Megan looked at me.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to answer,” she said. I glanced away for a moment, and when I looked back, Megan had a slim leather case in her hand. She removed a thin metal tool from the case and crouched down in front of the doorknob.
“Lockpicks?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
Megan looked up at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just wasn’t expecting you to be geared for B&E.”
“I love B&E,” she said, her dimple blooming as she turned her attention to the lock. “Seventy percent of my time was spent in negotiations. That other thirty, though, that was when we’d have to break into some delegate’s quarters and retrieve information or equipment. So B&E was practically a requirement for what I did.”
Megan gently raked the lock and her dimple deepened when the tension key turned. The lock clicked and she swung the door open. “I’ll go first,” she said as she ducked inside. She already had her 9mm out. I hadn’t even seen her draw it, nor had I seen her put the pick set away. Dang, the girl had fast hands. We moved through the small kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy here. The kitchen gave way to a living room, and this was where all hell had broken loose. A large, recessed skylight in the ceiling was completely shattered, and fragments of glass and smears of blood were everywhere. Leaves and small tree branches were scattered among the furniture, blown in from the outside.
“Holy cow,” Megan whispered. “What happened here?”
“Looks like the Delions were taken by force, and they didn’t go without a fight.” There were splatters of silver liquid on the floor, as well.
“Something attacked them with silver?” Megan asked, gesturing to the splatters.
“I don’t think this is silver,” I said. “Molten silver would’ve burned marks onto the furniture and rug. Do you have an evidence kit in your car?” She nodded and ducked out to grab it. When she came back, I scraped up some of the silver onto a piece of paper and dropped it into a small plastic vial. We paced around the room, Megan taking pictures. I hadn’t seen her pull the camera out either. Where was she keeping all this gear?
“What do you make of these?” Megan asked, gesturing to a strand of vines on the floor as thick as my wrist. I knelt down next to it, and as I did, my Glimpse kicked on. I saw a slender reed of a man snapping his hands out in front of him. Vines burst forth from his arms, entangling a beast on the other side of the room. The beast, a wolf almost as tall as me, roared in rage and struggled for a moment before slumping to the ground. The vine man effortlessly hoisted the wolf over his shoulder and extended his arm toward the skylight. Vines shot up, and they went up and out of the house. The Glimpse faded.
“You all right?” Megan asked.
I shook myself. “Sorry.” I relayed the Glimpse to Megan.
She whistled. “What sort of creature can shoot vines from its hands?”
I pulled a large plastic bag from the evidence kit and carefully slid the vine inside. Doc Ryan could analyze it, along with the silver fluid. “Could be fae. Dryads do stuff like that, but it’s unlikely since it was inside the house. I’m not sure what else could do it.” We spent a few more minutes going through the house. There were more splotches of the silver fluid and a few more vine fragments, but nothing more.
We got back in the car and Megan started us home.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” she asked. I gestured for her to go ahead. “How does that Glimpse thing of yours work? Can you see anything? Is it always random? Can you pick what you want to see? Or who? Or when? Like, could you look back and see who shot JFK, or what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?”
I tried not to laugh at that last one. “Okay, I’ll try to explain as best as I can. Each Glimpse is tied to a particular person, place or object that I’m looking at. It lets me see a moment in their past that was important or especially formative. I can’t consciously control when it happens, and I can’t control how long it lasts. Sometimes, I Glimpse twenty or thirty seconds worth of time, and other times, it could be twenty or thirty minutes.”
The only time I can actually control
a Glimpse is if I look back on my own life. I can choose to remember everything that happened at a particular point in time, and relive it in my mind. That’s how I got through school without ever studying; I’d just look at the pages in a book, and then Glimpse back during the tests. I kept that little secret to myself, though.
Megan nodded. “I hope you don’t mind these questions, Vincent. These are new waters for me, and I want to understand as much as I can.”
“Not at all. You’re very driven. Galahad says you could be Care Taker someday.”
Megan nodded. “That’s what I’m shooting for. I can see a world where the paranormals don’t have to hide anymore, where aliens and vampires and everything in between can co-exist. It may sound naive, but it will happen someday, and I hope I can be the one to do it.”
I wondered if Martin Buckham, the current Care Taker, ever had similar ambitions. He oversaw everything the Caulborn operatives did, and under him we definitely won more than we lost. All too often though, it seemed like our job was to stay one step ahead of the next paranormal crisis. “That’s a very ambitious goal, Megan,” I said.
“That’s why I need to be out here,” Megan said. “I need to understand as much of the community as I can, see what’s back in the dark corners, and know how those beings see us. Many of the alien races we’ve encountered see us as a primitive race with a lot of potential; they see us like children. But I can see us becoming a power in the universe. In order for that to happen, all the peoples of the earth have to be united, and I have to understand how all the pieces fit together.” She blushed and her dimple popped out. “Sorry, that probably makes me sound stupid, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s a very lofty goal, but I’ve seen enough in the last five or six years to know that anything is possible.” It would probably take Megan her entire life to get the first steps of something like that in place, but if she could, and she was able to name successors who would honor her vision, that might be possible. It would probably take hundreds of years, but I didn’t want to rain on her parade.
Imperium (Caulborn) Page 6