by Debra Dunbar
Reaching the garage, I did a slow circuit around the building, holding one of the charms on my bracelet as I chanted softly under my breath. The only thing that lit up was by the door. Of course. If I were going to set a ward, that’s where I’d put it, too.
Remembering Raven with Bliss’s warded grimoire, I pulled the butter knife out of my pocket and jammed it into the lock.
“Fue!” The door handle exploded outward like a tiny cannon ball. I stifled a yelp as I jumped to the side, then kicked the door open realizing that Eleanor would have been woken by the spell detonation and be ready to fight.
She was. A wind held me in place while a dozen knives flew toward my chest. I grimaced, my sword shaking as I struggled to raise it against gale-force winds.
“Confodere!” Ten of the knives bounced away to clatter to the cement garage floor, while two skimmed my shirt and imbedded in the wall behind me.
“Eleanor Jean Jackson, surrender to me or I will kill you.” It was a bit extreme for a modern Templar, but I meant it. I didn’t have time to deal with this crap. I had one other Fiore Noir mage to track down before I went after Dark Iron, and I didn’t have much left in terms of energy—physical or magical. If she insisted on flinging knives and doorknobs at me, I would be forced to run her through with my sword.
A woman wearing only underwear and a snug tank-top dashed around a storage box, a pistol in her hand. I dove to the side, knowing full well that bullets beat sword. Luckily the gun wasn’t pointed my way, it was pointed at fake-Araziel and the moment the woman laid eyes on my companion she froze, the gun falling from shaking hands to clatter on the floor.
I winced and jumped away, relieved when the thing didn’t go off.
“No! Don’t kill me. Don’t.”
She was pleading with the “angel,” not with me. I wasn’t all that thrilled about being upstaged, especially by an imposter, but if it kept me from getting shot, so be it.
“He won’t as long as you come with us to the police station and plead guilty to murder.”
She jerked her head toward me, her eyes enormous in the faint light of the garage. “You!”
Yes me.
“You have killed at least seven humans by death magic, using souls to power your spells. If you don’t turn yourself in right now and plead guilty to multiple counts of murder, I’ll run you through.”
I adjusted my grip on Trusty, but her eyes never even flickered to the sword. “It wasn’t my idea to kill them. We had to. We had no choice, and now with everyone locked up, all those people we sacrificed will have died in vain.”
“You murdered people. You stood by and watched while people screamed and pleaded for their lives, and you did it over and over again.”
Eleanor winced. “I told you, we had to. It was for a greater good. Sometimes you need the extra energy that soul magic provides. Sometimes the lives of a few must be sacrificed for the benefit of many.”
Not this again. The benefit of many? Whether the spell had been for material gain, knowledge, power, or even protection, it was never worth the death of those people.
“Make your choice. Die here or plead guilty to murder.”
Eleanor swallowed hard, shooting a quick glance at my companion who stood silent by the open doorway, scrutinizing his fingernails. “I’ll turn myself into the police. But you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll be sorry.”
Her threats just pissed me off further, and I’ll admit I was a bit rough searching her person for magical items. The woman was practically naked, but I still took the ring and the necklace she was wearing off as well as her belly ring. I’d never seen someone charm a body piercing, but there was always a first time. After I was sure she was clean I left her in Araziel’s care and went through the garage.
That’s where my keychain came in handy. One of the spells I’d engraved into a spare key I’d picked up at the hardware store was a finder. In no time at all I had two scrolls, an amulet, an athame, and her grimoire. I wasn’t foolish enough to open or pick any of them up, so I called Eleanor over and made her put each one into a large, plastic grocery store bag that I had stuck in my pocket.
The plastic bag was one of my favorite magical items. No, it wasn’t a bag of holding like in my Wednesday night Anderon game. It was a null bag. Templars learned early on to create null spaces. It was vital for survival when dealing with magical artifacts and ancient grimoires. As each item went into the bag, I heard a pop and knew that it had been rendered harmless. As long as it was in the bag, that is. In order to safely remove it, I’d need to create a null room. I’d been meaning to do that anyway. With the circle taking up most of my living room, the null room would have to be either in my bedroom or my bathroom. I was leaning toward my bathroom. Sometimes it was important to be able to cast a spell while in the bedroom.
I folded the bag over on itself so nothing spilled out and held it in one hand along with my sword. Taking the mage’s arm with my other hand I nodded to the door. “Let’s go.”
Araziel followed us out, oddly silent. I noticed there was a faint light on in the house, and the curtain twitched aside as we walked by, a pale face briefly visible at the window. Eleanor’s sister-in-law had to have heard the commotion. It said a lot that she obviously hadn’t called the police.
Eleanor sat in the backseat, as far away from the angel as possible. I had Araziel keep an eye on her while I drove. Then I escorted the mage into the police station, hoping that the look-away spell on my sword worked better on the desk clerk than it did on detective Tremelay.
It did. After leaving Eleanor there to confess and sending Tremelay a quick text, I headed back out to my car where the angel sat, still in the backseat.
“Let’s catch the other Fiore Noir mage, then go after this Dark Iron.” The angel/demon’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
This time the “angel” directed me to an all-night diner on Saratoga Street. Great. How the heck was I going to walk into a diner with a sword on my back and a demon by my side and “arrest” a mage?
“Who is this one?”
“Charles Kennedy Jones. Born November 4, 1955, in Dundalk, Maryland.”
What, no other details? I thought about how I planned to arrest a sixty-year-old man in a diner as I got out of the car and strapped Trusty to my back. “Araziel” followed me inside and pointed to the man at the counter sipping a cup of coffee and working a puzzle.
Holly’s Place was… well, it was a diner. Long and narrow, with vinyl covered seats and chrome-rimmed Formica tables. They’d done a nice job on the retro look. Even the sleepy-eyed waitress in the corner was appropriately attired with a lemon-yellow dress and white apron, her hair in a tight bun. She smiled wearily at me and went back to staring at the clock. I got the unspoken message—take a seat and she’d be over, otherwise I wasn’t going to even get a verbal greeting.
I slid onto the seat next to the mage.
“’Bout time you got here,” he grumbled, his eyes never leaving his puzzle. “I’ve been waiting for you. Actually I’ve been waiting for him, too.” He nodded toward my companion.
“Charles Kennedy Jones?” He was the only guy in here that fit the description, but it was good to be sure.
“Yep. Call me Chuck.”
The guy scribbled something in his puzzle book. I peered over his shoulder. Crossword, not Sudoku or word search. My mother did crossword puzzles, too. I waited a few moments and watched him erase an answer, writing something else. This was it? No declarations of innocence or accusations? No dramatic cursing of Templars and trying to attack me with flying knives?
“Um. I’m here to take you to the police station where you’ll plead guilty to murder.” I kept my voice low, shooting a quick glance over to the waitress to make sure she couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure whether to threaten the guy with my sword or with “Araziel,” given that Chuck seemed pretty peaceful
“Okay. Don’t you want to talk first?”
It was a weird question for him to ask, but
the whole encounter so far had been surreal. “Talk about what?”
He shrugged, smiling at me. It was a tired smile, pulling at the deep lines bracketing his mouth and crinkling the corners of his pale blue eyes. “About the mage you really want to catch? About what’s going to happen once the spell fades?”
Chuck… He had a threadbare wool coat on that look like he’d bought it used in the ’70s. It was shiny at the elbows and smelled of decades of tobacco. Besides the oddity of him wearing a wool coat in the middle of August, the man looked like a regular retired, blue-collar guy, like he’d spent his life moving freight at the docks or shuffling bills of lading at a warehouse. I knew the spells powered by murder and souls had been to contain something, to protect against something. Whatever it was, twenty-five people felt justified in murdering to keep it at bay.
“Dark Iron. I already know about him. An as to what you all were doing the ritual for, I’d guess that someone screwed up a spell, and you spent your energies and countless lives protecting yourselves from whatever you conjured? Which demon is it and where do you have him trapped?”
The smile broadened. I swear if the guy had been a few decades older, fifty pounds heavier, and bearded, I would have totally gotten the Santa Claus vibes from him.
“You Haul Du mages, so tied up with your demons. When you play with the devil, you assume everyone else does, too.”
No. There were all kinds of things they could have summoned that they needed to contain—an elemental, a gryphon, a banshee. Heck, maybe all three. Just because a mage turned their nose up at demons didn’t mean they weren’t likely to haul some otherworldly creature into this plane of existence, or even wake a sleeping monster.
“Ahh, it’s no matter.” He waved his hand like I was a pesky fly. “I knew we couldn’t keep them contained forever. It was just a matter of time.”
“Keep what contained?” I really needed to know, having visions of gryphons flying down Charles Street. What could be so horrible that it took regular sacrifices to contain?
His eyes twinkled, evil Santa that he was. “You’ll find out soon enough. It’s your town now, you’re the Templar. It’s your problem to deal with.”
Oh no. These guys screw up and summon a monster, then dump it on my shoulders when they all get arrested for murder? No way. “What is it?” I demanded.
“Something that has slept a very long time. We didn’t wake it. We didn’t bring this curse upon the city. But we did take it upon ourselves to keep the city safe.”
“By killing other people. Is restraining this thing really worth a dozen or more deaths every year?”
“Yes.” Chuck folded up his puzzle book and stuck it in a pocket of the old coat, sliding off his stool. “Now take me to the police so I may confess my crimes. It’s a relief, actually. Death magic does bad things to a person’s soul. I mean, an occasional chicken or rodent is one thing, but killing a human, killing many humans… it has become more than I can bear. Time for this burden to move on to younger shoulders.”
I was beginning to really worry about this monster. Not that any monster excused murder, but I really wanted a heads-up on what I might need to deal with in the coming weeks or months.
“Tell me what Fiore Noir was trying to contain, or instead of the police, I’ll let him take care of your punishment.” I pointed to “Araziel” who was a few seats down sipping coffee.
The mage laughed. “I am not afraid of that. Just because I don’t spend my time summoning demons doesn’t mean I can’t protect myself from one or banish it if needed.”
Araziel-wannabe froze, coffee halfway to his lips. I schooled my face into what I hoped was a convincing look of shock. “That’s an angel, not a demon. You all made the mistake of not only killing a demon-marked man, but a woman who had been angel-marked. He’s here for vengeance, and you can’t banish an angel.”
With a flick of his wrist, a gold band dropped low on the mage’s wrist. Etched symbols across the surface lit up red. “He’s cheesy low-level scum, that’s what he is. It’s an insult, really. Eieci, ti. Go, I banish you.” The man’s voice boomed, like he was suddenly using a PA system. The angel/demon flung out a hand, but his reaction was too late. With a bang and a puff of black smoke, he was gone, leaving behind a cup that fell to the counter and rolled to its side, dumping coffee across the Formica.
The waitress screamed and hit the floor the same time the smoke detectors shrieked.
“Young lady,” the mage hollered at me over the wailing alarm. “If you have any intention of being this town’s protector, of fulfilling your duty as a Templar, you need to be able to tell an angel from a demon.”
I’d figured it out. Granted, it had taken me a few days, but I had eventually figured it out. And now I was screwed. Balsur’s minion was gone, and although that did make me a bit happy, I’d still needed him. It would have been better if Chuck had banished the demon after I’d gotten Dark Iron’s real name and whereabouts.
The coughing waitress was standing on the counter, waving a menu at the smoke alarm. Behind her stood a guy I assumed was the cook, a befuddled expression on his face as he looked around at the dissipating smoke. Chuck was standing, but wasn’t making any movements toward the door, so I watched the smoke drama and waited to speak until the alarm became silent.
“I needed him. Yeah, he was a demon impersonating an angel, but I was hoping to keep mum on that until I got him to lead me to the Stranger—Dark Iron of Haul Du. I’ve got no idea his real name or where he is.”
Chuck threw a ten on the counter and headed toward the door. “Mitchell Raymond Sauer?” he chuckled. “Everyone panicked when the psychopomp tried to get through the barrier at Old Town Mall. Your Dark Iron was carrying the one thing that might cost him his life, so he hid it, intending to retrieve it later. I’m not afraid of an angel, I knew who he was coming for, so I grabbed it up on the way out.”
The mage reached into his pocket and took out a small wooden container. It looked like a cheap jewelry box except for the symbol on top.
“Know how to use it?” he asked, handing it to me.
I didn’t want to know how to use it. I didn’t want to even be holding it, but better me than in the hands of Dark Iron.
Chuck nodded at the box. “Collect the soul in ritual, then hold it until you need it. We only used it as a channel since we were powering a spell right away, but it can be quite useful in powering magic on the fly at a later date.”
This guy was sick. For all his harmless old-guy vibes, he was a psycho. “But Raven… Dark Iron tried to take her soul. How could he if you had the box since last Friday?”
He shrugged. “That dead girl downtown? Amateur. It was a hack job made to look like the previous murders to implicate one of us. Any mage worth his salt could see the guy had no idea what he was doing. Your boy might be good at demons, but he doesn’t know squat about death magic.”
No, he probably didn’t. “You used the soul trap to find out his name.”
For that Goetic mages usually relied upon a demon, although many mages could trace a person through blood, hair, or saliva. Seems this guy was skilled enough to do it through an owned item.
Chuck nodded. “Simple divination really. A two chicken job though, since the first time got me some guy down in Argentina. It’s yours now. Do what you want with it. And do what you want with that Haul Du scum.”
His name would help, but how the heck was Tremelay going to prosecute Dark Iron? We couldn’t even link him to the soul trap since the prints on it were probably smudged. I doubted a jury would accept a divination done with two chickens as adequate proof of murder.
“Does he know you have it?”
Chuck opened the diner door and headed down the steps with me close behind. “Yep. And he really wants it back. Probably has more to do with that guy in Argentina than it being used as evidence against him.”
I halted at his words then ran a few steps to keep up. “Can you do a favor for me?” It seemed weird to be a
sking a murderer who I was taking to the police station for a favor, but there it was.
The mage paused at the passenger door of my car, making me wonder how he knew it was mine. There was no parking lot. My Toyota was one of many cars lined up along the curb. Maybe I’d underestimated this mage. Maybe he had known I was coming before I’d stepped foot in the diner.
“Tomorrow. Midnight.” Chuck gave me an address in Butcher’s Hill. Then he pulled a little notepad out of his pocket that reminded me of Tremelay’s and wrote down a number. “It’s your choice whether the police take him in or you do it yourself. After all I’ve done, I’m not about to judge your methods of justice.”
I stared at the paper in amazement as Chuck magically unlocked my car door and crawled into the passenger seat. An address and a time. I had all day to prep, and Dark Iron wouldn’t expect me to be there. Well, I hoped not.
“What do you want in return for this?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Four times a year, a tub of Fisher’s caramel popcorn. The big tub, not that little one.”
I guess if you were going to spend the rest of your life in prison, you wanted to ensure a regular delivery of comfort food. I had my cannoli, this guy had his caramel popcorn.
I climbed into my car and started it, still a bit stunned at his request. It was an easy trade, and I was so close to the end of this whole nightmare. The angel impersonator was out of the picture, at least for now. All the mages would be in Tremelay’s hands. I didn’t have to threaten violence to this one. Well, not much threatening, anyway. And soon I’d have Dark Iron.
The mage crinkled his nose as we pulled away from the curb. “Ugh. Your car smells like demon. Hope you’ve got an air-freshener at home.”
Chapter 36
I DON’T KNOW how I managed to sleep. I don’t know how I managed to make it through my shift at the coffee shop. Brandi asked me how my friend Raven was doing and I burst into tears, needing to take a break in the storeroom to compose myself. After that my co-workers tip-toed around me, giving me wide-eyed stares.