The other golem threw its arms forward. Needles struck our arms and I cried out as chains sprouted from the golem’s hands, wrapped around my legs and slammed me to the ground. I tried to conjure a telekinetic blast, but my head bounced off the curb and left me disoriented. Galahad rushed forward again to free me, and this time chains coiled around his wrist. His sword vanished as he was lifted and thrown against the side of the building.
People were starting to come out now. Galahad was trying to stand, and more chains were wrapping around me. They ensnared him too, and although he’d resummoned his sword, with his arms pinned to his sides, he couldn’t swing it. The chains began dragging me forward, and I rolled onto my back. I could see the wicked glee in the eyes of the golem.
And then the golem’s chest exploded. It collapsed to the ground in a pile of metal dust, the chains that had held me fast suddenly reduced to nothing. I scrambled to my feet to see Megan calmly leveling her 1950s ray gun at the other golem. She squeezed the trigger and the air was filled with the scent of ozone. A burst of blue light flared from the end of the gun and bore a hole the size of a pie plate in its chest. It collapsed into a pile of metal dust a moment later.
Megan rushed over and helped Galahad up. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine, child, thank you.” He brushed himself off and glanced around at the handful of people who had gathered on the street. Many of them were eyeing us warily. Galahad sighed and summoned his sword. He held it out in front of him, blade pointing up, and whispered something in Latin. The sword let out a great burst of light, and all the people around us were standing slack-jawed.
Galahad dismissed the sword. “Come on,” he said. “They won’t remember anything they saw over the last few minutes, but it’s best that we were on our way.”
Megan was gathering up some of the golems’ ashes into a small container. “My car’s just around the corner,” she said. “I’ll meet you back at the office.”
Galahad and I got into his Buick and we drove to HQ. “Thanks,” I said, not meeting his eyes. “I was pretty useless back there.”
“Vincent, you are not useless.” His voice was gentle but firm. “You are an incredibly talented agent. The shields you created during that skirmish just now kept both of us alive long enough for the cavalry to arrive. If you hadn’t been there, I’d probably have been killed. And for that, I sincerely thank you.”
I didn’t want to talk about this. I was growing too dependent on the Urisk’s powers. If I ran out of faith in the middle of a fight like that, I’d be totally helpless. I needed a weapon, and for that, I’d need to speak with Gearstripper. I decided to change the subject. “Where do you keep the sword? You had it one second, then it was gone. Is it like a lightsaber or something?”
Galahad only smiled at me. “It comes when I need it, Vincent,” he said simply. “That’s really all there is to know.”
We got back to HQ, and Galahad went up to his office while I stopped in to speak with Gears. Then I went back to Megan’s office and waited for her to arrive. She came in a few moments later. “Good morning,” she smiled. “Doughnut?” She held out a box of Dunkin Donuts to me. I smiled and took a glazed.
“Megan, thanks. You really saved our bacon back there. What were you doing out there, anyway?”
“Part of the job, partner,” her dimple made an appearance. “I was just going to get a hot chocolate. I still haven’t finished unpacking,” she gestured to a handful of boxes in a corner of the room, “and I was hoping things would be quiet this morning. But you guys definitely keep a girl on her toes.” Her expression changed to one of concern. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “What are you packing there, anyway?”
Her dimple deepened. “It’s an extra-dimensional pocket cannon. Made by some of my friends from out of town, if you know what I mean.” She held up her open hand and snapped her fingers. The ray gun suddenly appeared in her hand. It was gone again just as quickly.
“So where’d it go?”
“Imagine a giant wall of lockers in the universe. Locker number 112sd is mine. I can access it, and all its contents from anywhere just by thinking about it.”
So that’s where she kept all her gear. “That’s handy. You must have a ton of in stuff there.”
She shook her head. “It’s actually a very small space, only about the size of a shoebox. Still, plenty of useful things can fit inside a shoebox.”
“I can imagine.”
She nodded. “We were worried about you yesterday. Galahad thought you might have been abducted, too.”
“No, just some problems on the Bright Side I had to tend to. Did you find anything?”
She shook her head. “I spent most of the day going through possible leads on this Maxwell character, and then I was with Tom Bruli and the Midnight Clan for most of last night. We discussed a lot of stuff around the supernatural political forces that might be at work here, but nothing really came of it.”
“Be careful around those guys, Meg.”
Her dimple bloomed. “Don’t worry, Vincent. I can handle myself.” She gestured at the whiteboard. “I’m coming up empty left and right here. Do you have any new ideas?”
I nodded. “I learned that Seamus McElery was attacked outside a movie theater a few weeks ago, and a good Samaritan helped him get to a medical clinic.” I gestured to a sheet of paper sitting on my printer. “I think we should go there and speak with whoever treated him. Let’s make that our first order of business.” I took a swig of Pepsi. “Did you get your Boston IDs yet?” When necessary, the Caulborn pose as agents of other law enforcement agencies. It makes it much easier to speak with non-paranormals.
“Yep,” she replied. “Who are we going to be today?”
“Nothing too exotic,” I said. “Let’s go with FBI. Just give me twenty minutes or so to put some things in order.”
Megan nodded. “Sounds good, maybe I can finally get unpacked.” I went back to my office and spent the next twenty minutes answering prayers and recharging my faith reserves. When I was done, I popped open my desk drawer and took out a shoebox full of wallets in plastic sandwich bags. Each bag was labeled with a sharpie marker. I found the one marked FBI and checked it. My ID, sixty-four dollars in cash, a library card, a photo of a woman and a kid (no idea who they were, they came with the wallet) and some FBI business cards. I slipped the wallet into my pocket and left my real wallet in the desk. Then I put the shoebox away.
I met Megan in the hall and we got in the car and drove over to the clinic. The receptionist was a chipper young woman of about twenty. She beamed at us as we walked in. “Good morning,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”
Megan flashed her badge. “Good morning. No, we don’t have an appointment, however we need to speak with someone regarding a patient who’s recently been treated here.”
The young woman’s eyes widened slightly as she looked at Megan’s badge. “Of course,” she said. She pressed a button on the console in front of her. “Dr. Leevan, would you please come to the reception area? There are some people from the FBI here.” The receptionist nodded and pressed the button again. She looked back at us. “Dr. Leevan will be out in a moment, agents. If you’ll just take a seat?” She gestured to the chairs of the waiting room.
About two minutes later, Dr. Leevan came in. She made some notes on a clipboard she was holding before she looked at us. She was about my height and her black hair was done up in a bun. Her hazel eyes gleamed behind octagonal-rimmed glasses. Ah, so the good doctor was Seamus McElery’s Samaritan. That made this much easier.
We introduced ourselves, and she gave us a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Agents,” she said. “How can I help you today?”
“We’re investigating the disappearance of this man, Dr. Leevan,” Megan said as she handed over a photo of Seamus McElery. “We understand he was treated here a few weeks ago.”
Leevan looked intently at the photo. “I think it best to discuss this in pr
ivate,” she said. We walked to a small conference room just down the hall and Leevan closed the door behind us. She sat down in the chair across from Megan and me. “Now then,” she said. “Yes, Mr. McElery was a patient here. I found him lying on the street, covered in blood and badly injured. I helped him here and treated him.”
“Why didn’t you call the police when you found him?” Megan asked.
“My first concern was stabilizing him, Agent,” Leevan said smoothly. “My facilities were closer than any of the hospitals.”
“Fair enough,” Megan replied. “So what happened after you found him?”
“I brought him here and treated his injuries, of course. He had suffered minor burns and lacerations, so I saw that he was made comfortable and treated his wounds.”
“And then what happened?” Megan asked.
“Well, he stayed here overnight. I had stitched him up and the burns were not too serious. So I gave him a prescription for some pain medication and then sent him home. That was the last I saw of him.”
“And you still didn’t call the police?”
“Agent, I am obligated to notify the police when a patient has a gunshot wound. When I asked Mr. McElery how he incurred his injuries, he told me he’d fallen down a flight of stairs.”
“That didn’t sound fishy to you?” I asked.
“Of course it did.” She waved her hand. “I can’t tell you how many times a victim of domestic abuse claims that’s how they’ve been injured. And typically, if I think that’s the case, I’ll phone the police anyway. But I didn’t get the sense Mr. McElery was the victim of domestic abuse, and he hadn’t been shot, so I didn’t call anyone.”
“We’d appreciate it if you would provide us with a copy of his treatment records, Dr. Leevan,” I said. “We might be able to see if Mr. McElery filled the prescription you gave him, or if he sought further treatment from another facility.”
“I’ll be glad to cooperate,” she said. “To tell the truth, this is a bit of a relief. Something about that night struck me as queer, and it’s been troubling me ever since. I do hope that nothing bad has happened to him. He seemed like a nice man.” Leevan left and returned a few minutes later with a manila envelope. “Here’s a copy of what I did for Mr. McElery. I hope it’s helpful.”
“We appreciate your cooperation, Dr. Leevan,” Megan said. “If there’s anything else, we’ll let you know.”
We left the clinic and walked the block back to Megan’s car. Once inside, I opened the envelope, removed some of the papers and began skimming their contents.
“Well, that seems like a dead end,” Megan said. “So now where do we look? Leevan said McElery left the clinic. Where did he go after that?”
“He didn’t leave the clinic,” I said. “In fact, Leevan’s lying to us.”
“What? How do you know?”
“For starters, she was awfully quick to violate the patient confidentiality policy without a warrant. More importantly, Seamus’ blood was green, and she didn’t mention that or seem fazed by it. Don’t you think a doctor would be curious about a patient whose blood was the wrong color? But it’s not in her notes anywhere. Then there’s this,” I said, tapping one of the pages. “Leevan says that she gave McElery a pint of AB blood.”
“So? She said he’d suffered a lot of cuts. A transfusion in that situation wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.”
“For a human patient, no, it wouldn’t. But Seamus was fae. Giving him human blood would be like injecting a syringe of battery acid into your arm. He’d have such an intense allergic reaction, he’d die within minutes of its administration.”
Megan’s eyes were wide. “Why’s that?”
“Fae are allergic to iron. It’s not present in their blood or anywhere in their bodies. Fae blood is based on three metals: gold, silver and copper.” I ticked each one off on my hands. “Each fae race has a different percentage of those metals, and different percentages result in different colors of blood. Seamus’ blood was green. Urisk blood is pink. Other creatures, like phasilions, have never been known to bleed, so we don’t know what color their blood is. The upshot here, though, is that Leevan forged these medical records so everyone would think that Seamus left under his own power.”
I handed the sheets over to Megan and called Gearstripper. I asked him to look up everything he could on Dr. Leevan. Megan was shuffling through the papers when a brown, furry object rushed up along the sidewalk and leapt onto the hood of the car. Megan let out a squeak as the rat skittered over to my side of the hood and tapped on the glass. I put a calming hand on Megan’s shoulder and reached out to the rat’s mind.
Images raced from the rat’s mind into mine. Nighttime. An apartment building, just down the block from here. Three large men, one carrying a crumpled form over his shoulder. The men didn’t seem to fit their clothing very well, like they were going to burst out of it from all the wrong places. They wore hats low over their faces, but they had a strong scent of flowers and metal about them. They shambled rather than walked, and I was pretty sure I was looking at more golems. I recognized the unconscious form, too. It was Lucille, one of the vampires I’d met the other night.
The men threw Lucille into the back of a van and drove off. The rat’s vision faded then. I told Megan. I could see questions forming in her mind, but she froze. She touched my arm and asked, “Vincent, is that a horse?” I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a mounted figure approaching us from an alleyway. The alley was too narrow for a horse, but the walls warped around it. A gray cloud pulsed around the rider.
“Shit,” I said, swinging the door open. I tore off my coat and threw it into the passenger seat, and kicked off my shoes too. “Meg, drive around the block. Find a parking space or just circle, but go. Trust me. Now.”
“What’s wr—”
“NOW!” I hollered, and slammed the door shut. I moved into the alleyway as quickly as I could in my socks. I gave a brief sigh of relief as the Tercel peeled out behind me. I stood in a warped section of the alleyway, feeling mildly nauseas, and little of it had to do with the distorted space.
“Hello, Pestilence,” I said.
Chapter 17
To: Robert Maxwell
The golems, while capable servants, continue to lack good judgment. I told them we would need to capture the Delions in time for the next full moon, when their lycanthropic powers would be at their peak. The golems interpreted this as needing to take the Delions during the full moon, and attacked them in their NH home. The ensuing fight cost us four gremlins and damaged two of the golems. I will continue to research ways to imbue the golems with greater intelligence. Just the same, our research is progressing rapidly.
-Email message recovered from Kira Leevan’s computer
In the dim light of the alley, it was difficult to make out Pestilence’s features, and that was a good thing. I’d seen him in full daylight once and it made me want to puke. In my mind’s eye, I could still see the weeping sores that covered his face, the scarred pock marks, the rheumy eyes, and the maggots that crawled all over his skin. Flies buzzed around him, and he hacked violently before spitting out a wad of phlegm onto the sidewalk.
“Vincent Corinthos,” he said. His voice was creaky, the sound of a sick old man. “I do not appreciate you using my pets without permission. I have plans for these rats, and in order for them to succeed, they must not be distracted.”
“Apologies, Pestilence,” I said. “No offense intended, I assure you.” The last thing you wanted to do was piss off one of the Horsemen. They weren’t known for being the most forgiving of beings.
Pestilence ignored my comment. “It’s bad enough that War and Death reap the rewards that Famine and I sow. Now I have an upstart taking my tools away from me.”
“What do you mean they reap the rewards?”
Pestilence’s tone was patient, the tone of a teacher explaining something to a very slow student. “Famine kills the crops, I blight the animals. When untainted resourc
es become scarce, people begin fighting. When people begin fighting, it’s natural that some of them die. So War gets his conflicts and Death gets his souls without ever having to lift a finger. We do all the hard work.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry to have disturbed your pets.”
“I do not wish to have to speak with you again on this matter, Corinthos. See to it that you do not interfere with the will of a Horseman.” He turned, the alley warping around his horse, and clopped away. He faded in a gray cloud a few moments later. I hastily stripped off my clothes and threw them into a trash can. Then I drew on the Urisk’s faith and immolated them. I glanced out of the alley and saw Megan’s Tercel coming back around the block. I waved at her and jogged out of the alley. She pulled up to the curb and I ran around the car as quickly as I could. Megan blushed as I slid back into the passenger seat.
“All right,” she said, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Why are you getting back into my car wearing only your underwear?”
“That was Pestilence. Like Biblical Horseman Pestilence. If you’d gotten within ten feet of him, you could contract any disease known to man. Unknown too, I suppose.” I shrugged into my coat and rubbed my arms and legs to get some warmth.
“And you decided to get naked with him?” Megan asked as she turned up the car’s heat.
“No,” I said flatly. “I had to burn my clothes. Anything that was in the open air around him would’ve been at risk.”
“I’ll get you back to medical,” she said as she started to drive. “Will I need some sort of decontamination, too?”
“No,” I replied. “We only need to worry about things that were exposed to him directly. As for me, I’m immune to diseases. It’s a side benefit of what I am.”
“You mean gods don’t get to call in sick,” Megan said, a hint of a smile on her lips.
Imperium (Caulborn) Page 15