Tall, Dark & Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  “It’s temporary.”

  Sebastian shut his eyes. “Isn’t that what they all say?”

  My cheeks colored a bit. He was right, of course. It was such a line. Besides, Parrish had made his intentions clear: he was totally trying to worm his way back not only into my bed but also into my heart. “It’s not going to be like that,” I said. “I have you. Besides, Parrish comes with a set of problems that isn’t going to go away just because he’s in Madison instead of Minneapolis.”

  “Oh? And what problems are those?”

  The same ones I’ll have with you, eventually, I thought but didn’t say. After all, if I didn’t let him bite me on a regular basis, Sebastian was going to have to feed on other people, too. Hell, he’d already had Feather, and that had made me jealous enough.

  “I’d rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  Sebastian arched his eyebrow without opening his eyes. “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  “Sounds like unfinished business,” he said.

  “And never will be—unless I stop dating vampires,” I said.

  He cracked open an eye. “Oh, so it’s a vampire problem, is it?”

  “It’s a biting problem, Sebastian. I don’t like being used as a food source by my lovers, so sue me.”

  “Ah,” was all he said, then Sebastian fell silent. After a moment, I thought he must have gone to sleep. I’d have taken it personally, except that we were well into the daylight hours. The sun was taking its toll on Sebastian’s ability to stay with me.

  I wondered what I should do. He was safe here. Unless there was a freakish Midwestern earthquake that split open the earth right above this particular hotel, sunlight was not going to find its way through several stories of concrete and steel.

  It still seemed risky to just leave him snoozing in the car. A security guard could decide Sebastian was homeless, sick, or at the very least dodging the hotel room rental fees, and call the cops.

  The hotel was just upstairs, but we’d have to somehow navigate a sun-filled lobby. And any room would invariably have a window, so there wasn’t much point in even bothering—unless I wanted to tuck Sebastian under the bed, which could lead to all sorts of interesting scenarios if the cleaning crew discovered him.

  Crap.

  Selfishly, I didn’t want to miss another day at work. Since I’d decided to stay and fight the Vatican, I wanted to keep my job. I was in danger of being fired if I kept up with the unscheduled absences. I should know; I was the manager.

  I poked Sebastian on the shoulder. He stirred slightly. “How do you feel about sleeping in the trunk?”

  I explained the various problems with his current napping position, and he finally grudgingly agreed. “I’m going to be a prisoner in there unless you find a way to prop it open. There isn’t an internal release.”

  “No wonder the Mafia loved these cars,” I said. In my previous car you could release the seats and crawl into the interior of the car. I knew because on those Minnesota winter days when the temperature hit an arctic minus-twenty and the doors had frozen shut, I’d used that alternate entry in order to start the car.

  “It might be too small for me,” he said. He opened the door and pulled himself slowly, painfully around to the back. I looked for a trunk release for a few seconds before I realized there wasn’t one. Stupid, inconvenient old car.

  He did fit, only barely. Though I agreed to come back once night had fallen, we used one of his bungee cords to jury-rig a kind of internal release. Really, the cord attached to the handle of the trunk, wound inside to where Sebastian latched the other end to the spare tire. That kept the trunk closed but also allowed it to remain open a crack.

  Praying no one would find the arrangement odd enough to investigate, I left Sebastian with the intention of heading to work. The clock in the hotel lobby told me I had more than enough time to grab a quick breakfast in their overpriced restaurant. It was still o‘-insanely-early, not even seven, so I drank several cups of bitter industrial coffee and fortified myself with a cheese omelet and several pieces of soggy, butter-soaked toast.

  I started to feel vaguely human again, almost normal. The sun felt warm on my skin, and I whistled the chorus of a half-remembered Toby Keith song as I walked the few blocks to work.

  I should have realized that was a bad sign.

  The real estate agent was waiting for me when I reached the entrance to the magic shop. I recognized the ubiquitous cut of her fashionable, navy blue business suit a block away and nearly turned to run. But what was she going to do? Murder me on the streets of Madison? That seemed awfully public for a supposedly secret religious order.

  Then again, hardly anyone was around. This might be the best time to leave a body out in public for the police to discover later.

  Well, two could play that game.

  I rubbed my belly to waken the beast within. Lilith twitched across my abdomen anxiously. I felt her strength settle into my bones. My pulse slowed to a measured, calculating, Zen-warrior pace.

  It felt good.

  Sebastian was right. I did know about the siren call of power.

  What was I thinking?

  This was so not okay.

  Eighth House

  KEYWORDS:

  Death, Sex, and Rock and Roll

  I tried to settle Lilith back down, but she wasn’t having any of it. With Lilith’s calculating eye, my brain registered some new information about the agent. Taller than me by several inches, she carried herself loosely, like an athlete. Her soccer-mom fashion couldn’t quite hide the bulge of muscles or the hint of a shoulder holster. I don’t know how I’d missed the signs before, especially since those sensible shoes just screamed “nun.”

  Lilith hated her. So much, in fact, that I found the muscles in my arm twitching as She calculated the effort it would take to grab her and press my thumbnail into the hollow of her throat.

  The image was so vivid that I had to turn away. To keep Lilith from killing her, I focused my attention on getting the right key in the door. The keys jangled as my hand shook.

  “I’m not interested in any real estate,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “You’re not feeling the urge to relocate?”

  I got the key into the lock and twisted it instead of her neck. The key broke apart with a metallic rending sound as the lock clicked open. The agent had the sense to look nervous when I turned to say, “Listen, Sister Mary Real Estate, I’m not running this time. State your business or get out of my way. I have a shop to open here.”

  Lilith rumbled through my intestines, gurgling Her desire for a fight.

  “I can save Sebastian,” she said.

  The tension in my shoulders deflated slightly. She’d said the one thing I hadn’t expected. Still. “Why should I believe you? What do you get out of it?”

  We stood under the awning of the shop. My fingers gripped the mutilated head of the key, which I pointed, somewhat murderously, at the agent’s heart. She seemed to notice it, too, and took another step back.

  Her mouth twitched, as though she were trying on several responses and not liking any of them. I waited, and as I did, I realized that the agent didn’t have an answer, because anything she said would be a lie. She was trying to play me and wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  Something in my expression must have given away my thought process. She twisted her lips into an Oh, screw it line and pulled a gun from her jacket.

  “You will lead me to him,” she said, pointing the barrel at my chest.

  I’d never seen a real gun so close. It wasn’t anything like the toy revolvers the boys in my neighborhood used to pop caps. There was no Lone Ranger pearl handle, no gleam of silver. Matte-black and sleek-looking, it looked vaguely military, although I couldn’t say why I thought so.

  “Move,” she reminded me.

  Lilith tingled with anticipation of a fight. No way, I thought. Goddess or not, I didn’t trust Lilith to dodge a bulle
t. Besides, neighboring businesses had begun to go through the morning stretches of opening. Bobby from the pizza joint across the street was setting plastic patio furniture on the sidewalk. Too many witnesses here.

  I opened my mouth, and Lilith said, “Follow me. He’s hiding in the storeroom.”

  For a trained assassin, she swallowed the bait easily. Carrying a gun can make a person overconfident. The way she purposefully strode through the store, it seemed obvious to me she felt she’d bagged her quarry already. I wondered what rewards the Order bestowed upon her for her kills. Women didn’t exactly get to advance in the ranks of the Catholic Church beyond nun. I supposed she could become a mother superior or something like that. Maybe she was simply greedy for monetary gain or fame or some other earthly pleasure given as dispensation for a job well done.

  We snaked through the aisles of Witchcraft paraphernalia. Her nose crinkled slightly at the sight of a collection of tarot cards.

  “The formula is magical, you know.” Despite the danger of the gun, I couldn’t help but poke. “You’re going to have to go against everything you believe.”

  “Not everything,” she said, brushing her finger on the hierophant on an open tarot deck. The card showed a male figure sitting on a throne wearing vestments, a miter, and leaning on something not unlike the Christian cross. Though my previous association with the image was always of a high priest, when she touched it so lovingly, my first thought was Pope.

  Christian magic. Catholics had a long history of it. Could most people even imagine hunting a vampire without such tools in hand? Holy water, cross, a wooden stake of oak, maple, aspen, ash, or whatever you believed to be the same wood as that of the Cross. You wouldn’t dream of going near the undead without it.

  Holy Mother, this agent could be a Catholic Witch.

  Suddenly, I could far too easily imagine her higher-ups sending the good sister undercover. As a woman, she’d be much more easily accepted into a coven. Much of her Catholic magic could be explained away by the similarities between the Goddess and the Virgin, some of which were nearly indistinguishable. Hell, her dying and rising God wasn’t a particularly new idea for Pagans, either. In fact, we had it first.

  She could fit into the magical community pretty easily without even having to compromise her faith too terribly much.

  Just imagining that kind of personal betrayal caused Lilith to send a stab of pain across my gut. I stumbled with the effort to keep Lilith from slaughtering the agent right here and now.

  Her hand touched my shoulder gently, “Are you all right?”

  Something in my eyes made her gasp and make the sign of the cross. I could only imagine what it was like to look the Queen of Evil in the eye. Honestly, I was surprised she had the chance to react. Lilith could have chosen this opportunity to push me away, like She’d done at Sebastian’s place. Though, perhaps the planetary conjunction that gave Lilith such unusually powerful control over me had slipped its orb of influence. Or maybe my warding against Lilith had worked better than I hoped.

  Of course, if all that were true, I’d intentionally called up Lilith to the surface to do this woman harm.

  That disturbed me.

  As did the genuine look of concern that the agent’s eyes had held when she saw me stumble. I never expected them to be nice. Not even a little bit.

  I pulled myself upright, “What’s your name?”

  “Rosa.”

  A soft, pretty name for a killer. Why had I asked that? I didn’t want to know her name, especially since Lilith was planning on storing her corpse in a box next to the dry ice refrigeration unit until I could find a better way to dispose of it.

  Rosa. It made me think of my father’s strange obsession with finicky, delicate tea roses the colors of lemons, salmon, and snow. Which led me to wonder about her parents—who they were and why they named her what they did.

  Focus on that gun, Garnet. Reminder: this woman is a trained assassin. Who gives a rip if she’s got family somewhere? The people she killed had families, too, just like all my friends in the coven.

  “Roses and Garnets,” she said, reaching out to straighten one of the Kwan Yin figurines in the display on the bookshelf.

  Funny how they’re both associated with the Virgin, isn’t it? Or the Goddess, depending on your perspective.

  “Don’t go there,” I told her.

  She batted her eyes innocently.

  I clutched at my stomach, which ached with Lilith’s desire to be unleashed. “You don’t want to make that connection,” I said. “Because I already get it. I know what you are. You recite their Latin spells, preside over their arcane rituals… you’re a Witch, just like me.”

  The cross at her throat glinted in the sunlight menacingly. “Not like you.”

  “No, not like me,” I agreed. When pain tore at my womb like a knife, Rosa held out a hand to me.

  “We can help you. Exorcise your demon.”

  Did she know about Lilith? No, I thought, there was no way. All of those involved in that night were dead. Except me. “Right,” I said, trying to sound sarcastic through clenched teeth. “And then what? Kill me?”

  She smiled almost beatifically. “All you have to do is renounce your evil ways. Repent, and the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.”

  It actually sounded reasonable. But, these were the same people who showed up at my apartment last night with a longbow and pinned my boyfriend to the wall, who, had he not been supernatural, would be even more dead now. “Listen, if you want Sebastian, we should probably get moving.”

  “Yes,” Rosa said with, I told myself, a hint of blood-thirstiness.

  Because she was evil.

  And evil must be destroyed. Right? Was it justice?

  Yes, Lilith whispered, that was it. Lilith’s warmth spread slowly upwards—no pain now, only hot, angry power. I stood up straight and took in a deep breath, feeling Her heat fill me.

  The storeroom was only a couple of steps away. In a matter of seconds, Rosa would realize I’d lied to her about Sebastian’s whereabouts, and I’d have to make my move. Lilith’s power hummed along my nerves, making my whole body feel taut, ready.

  I stopped with my hand on the door. It would be so easy. I could just shut my eyes and let Lilith take care of everything. I wouldn’t even be there, not really. All I’d have to do was deal with the after. And I’d had lots of practice cleaning up blood lately.

  I allowed my hand to turn the knob, reminding myself that Rosa wasn’t just some stranger I planned to ax-murder. She, or people like her, had brutally murdered my friends. Rosa was far from innocent.

  Closing my eyes, I pushed open the door.

  But I couldn’t walk through.

  Rosa collided with my backside when I stopped mid-stride. “Run,” I told her.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, She’ll kill you.”

  For a moment, she looked like she might laugh in my face, but then I caught a waver in her bravado, a hint of fear flashing behind her practiced, steely gaze. She proved sensible. Her low-heeled shoes clattered as she turned and fled. The bells on the door jangled as my veins coursed with fire. I went away…

  * * * *

  … and Lilith destroyed $745 worth of inventory. And broke a window. And most of my fingernails. I found six new bruises on my arms, three on my legs, and the knuckles of my right hand were so painfully swollen I wondered if I’d broken something vital. My back ached, and I’d be spending the rest of the day figuring out how to replace all the stuff and how I would manage without a paycheck for two weeks when I paid the store back for all the damage.

  But no one was dead.

  And that, I decided in the end, was a good thing, the best thing.

  It was not an easy decision to reach, however. I spent a lot of the time feeling uneasy while I swept up broken pottery and bagged shredded bits of several copies of the Welsh folklore cookbook. I’d let a Vatican killer go. On purpose. All because I’d asked her name. Shouldn’
t I have let Lilith rid the world of one of the bad guys?

  Even as I asked myself these questions, I knew I’d done the right thing. It was the more complicated thing, because now Rosa would very likely come back sooner, this time with reinforcements, but I didn’t want to have killed her just because it was convenient. Then I really would be the monster they thought they were hunting.

  It was one thing to let Lilith defend me from danger but completely another to intentionally lure a victim into a dark corner for the sole purpose of murder, even if that person had a gun pointed at my head. Lilith, I’m sure, would argue that it wasn’t so much murder as long-range defensive planning. Kill her now, so you wouldn’t be at her mercy later.

  Even so, I couldn’t say I regretted sparing Rosa’s life. It got me thinking about my own culpability in the deaths of the agents I’d summoned Lilith to slaughter in Minneapolis. What else could I have done? It felt right to take a life for a life at the time, but had it been? For the first time since it happened, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

  Propping open the back door, I hauled the garbage, one or two bags at a time, to the Dumpster. I’d just finished the last trip when I ran into William. He was dressed in black and had dyed his hair to match. Under his glasses, I could see badly applied eyeliner.

  Holy Mother, he was going Goth.

  “Oh my God, Garnet, what happened? Was there a break-in?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the broken window. It would be a good explanation and one that could net the store a tidy insurance settlement, if only I didn’t have the corresponding cuts on the backs of my hands.

  Yet, what to tell William? I’d told him about Lilith last night, so the truth was an option. But I was embarrassed to admit that I’d done all this destruction myself.

  “It’s taken care of,” I said, which was mostly the truth. I’d eventually have to come clean with Eugene, the absentee owner, but luckily he was currently in Finland attending a spiritual retreat on trancing your way to better profits.

  “Man, I can’t believe it. On top of everything else,” he said, following me back inside. “The stars must be really misaligned, huh? Is this what happens when a bunch of outer planets all go backwards?”