by SM Reine
Now I wasn’t as impressed so much as disgusted. I tasted vomit on the back of my tongue.
The spirits of the dead outside of the circle blurred as Calhoun drew on their power.
The flames burned brighter. Calhoun shone a vibrant shade of crimson.
Fritz’s fingers dug into my arm. “The knife, Cèsar, the knife!”
I handed it to him. It was still drenched in Ander’s blood.
Way too much blood in that room for my taste.
Fritz moved fast and smooth, attacking Calhoun with the knife. But in the same way that Gertie magically fit inside of the witch, Calhoun magically wasn’t where Fritz kept trying to strike. The air flickered around them. Fritz swung wildly, stabbing and thrusting, but Calhoun was never there.
And now he was growing.
His arms bulged. Swelled. His shoulders popped as they inflated like fleshy balloons.
The spirits of the Paradise Mile victims flooded the circle, punching into his chest like shots of darkness straight to the heart. Each one made him bigger and bigger.
He bulked up until he was bigger than the biggest powerlifter I’d ever seen, bigger than two of the biggest powerlifters. He was half again as tall as Fritz and more muscular than me. His skin turned gray and veiny. Calhoun’s face squared, eyes sinking deeper into his skull. Scraggly hair flowed down his cheeks.
Vines erupted from the hole in his stomach, wrapping tightly around his midsection to lock Gertie into place. Only her head and arms stuck out. The rest of her was buried deep inside of him.
Gross.
Fritz attacked again. Calhoun backhanded him. The kopis went flying, smashed into the wall of the cave, and broke the circle of power. The magic snapped. Crashed into us like waves. Sucked the breath out of my lungs.
Calhoun chuckled as he studied his massive hands. Looked like he could have popped the head off of my shoulders. It was weird that he was so massive, but he still sounded like the same normal-looking guy that had been there a few moments before.
“To Helltown,” Calhoun said. “Good base of operations. Don’t you agree, Agent Hawke? But it feels like I’m missing something.”
“Your sanity?” I suggested.
“Companionship.” He crossed the cavern in a few steps, ripped Isobel away from me, and tossed her over his shoulder.
“Cèsar!” she shrieked.
I tried to grab her hand, but he wrenched her out of my reach.
For one painful moment, Calhoun was right fucking there, within convenient reach for me to attack.
But I didn’t have the knife. I’d given it to Fritz, who had carried it with him when he went flying.
The Desert Eagle leaped to my hand. I fired on instinct, tracking him across the room. The slope of his back was broad and muscular. Like shooting at the side of a barn.
I fired. Gunshots filled the air.
Calhoun pounded up the slope to the trap door, still carrying Isobel, and exploded out of the basement without reacting to a single one of my shots. I must have hit him at least a couple times. I wasn’t that terrible at aiming.
Fuck.
The candelabras went out, casting the room in shadow. All of the spirits were gone. The magic had gone with them, too. The basement was shockingly quiet, aside from Fritz’s panting and the sound of his feet slipping over the bones as he stumbled toward me.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“Calhoun successfully merged with Gertie,” Fritz said curtly. “He’s going to seize Helltown.”
“Yeah, I caught that part. Do we care? Shouldn’t we let him have it?” I could think of a lot of things much more upsetting than someone fucking with the Silver Needles.
“Calhoun’s placed the current entrance to Paradise Mile in Agent Takeuchi’s neighborhood. There are miles of civilian territory between her street and Helltown.”
And now he looked like the freaking Hulk.
“I can see how that might be a problem,” I said as Fritz shoved me toward the basement door. “But why take Isobel?”
“So that I’ll follow. So that I’ll have to see him using the magic that I’d originally hired him to acquire for my purposes.” Fritz’s shoulders tensed, fists trembling. “To make me angry.” It had worked. Fritz was so fucking angry that I could feel it through our bond, and we weren’t even actively piggybacked.
Calhoun had made escaping the basement look so easy. I had to crawl up that slope on all fours, and it was painfully slow.
“No bad blood between you and your former employee, huh?” I asked, offering a hand down to Fritz.
He ignored it and attacked the slope on his own.
“Good help is so hard to find.” It took him two tries, but he got out of the trap door. “If Calhoun acquires Helltown as his territory, he’ll be able to take the energies of the demons living there to make him even more powerful. It’s called an ascension. Relatively routine in Hell, but hasn’t happened on Earth in centuries. It’s a bitch to clean up. It would mean a lot of overtime for the OPA. Overtime we can’t afford.”
Considering the OPA’s budgetary issues, he might have meant that we literally couldn’t afford that much overtime. But I doubted it.
I could imagine Los Angeles with Gertie in charge: rotten with vines, eternally shadowed by fog, every house filled with carnage. Some of it would be illusion. A lot of it wouldn’t be.
Sure, it would be an appropriate way to celebrate Halloween. But it wouldn’t go away after Halloween. Once Gertie sank her claws into the city, I doubted that she’d ever go away again, no matter how many Union squads we threw at her.
“Okay,” I said. “We can’t let Calhoun out of Paradise Mile. But there’s a problem with that.” We’d emerged from the trap door to the basement to find ourselves in the servant’s hallway once more. It stretched into endless nothing again—just like it had on the way down. Calhoun was nowhere in sight. “How do we get out of here?”
“Piggyback,” Fritz said.
“Piggyback” was the colloquial term for activating the bond between kopis and aspis. It would allow us to draw off of each other’s energy. Make us both stronger. And, hopefully, also make us impervious to Gertie’s mind-altering powers.
“We don’t have time to piggyback,” I said. We’d only done it once before. I wasn’t sure I could do it again without practice under less pressure.
Fritz grabbed my lapels in both hands, and the raw emotion on his face was painful to see. He was usually suave and calm. Never broke the professional mask. “I’m not going to let Calhoun kill Hope again.”
“Isobel,” I said. “Her name is Isobel now.”
But I reached deep within myself, seizing upon the core of power from which all my magic flowed. It wasn’t much of a core. Stronger than it used to be, after all the exercise I’d been giving it with Suzy’s help, but weaker than I would have liked.
My first two grabs for it failed. The magic trickled out of my grip like river water through a sieve.
I took a deep breath. Tried to push away the stress and fear.
The third grab was weak, but it held.
It was enough for me to drag it out, hooking myself into Fritz. The magic secured us to each other like an invisible chain.
For a shocking moment, we shared our thoughts and senses.
We even shared our memories.
I was no longer in the canyon. I was kneeling on the stained carpet in an abandoned office building with a woman’s body at my knees. She wasn’t as voluptuous as the woman I knew now. Maybe twenty pounds lighter. Her nose was broader, her hair a paler shade of brown, her clothes more professional.
She was also dying.
Hope Jimenez.
Her blood stained my hands. I rubbed my thumb over my fingertips, feeling the warmth of the fluid. The warmth was comforting. It meant she wasn’t dead yet. It meant there was still a chance to save her.
I pulled out a cell phone. Dialed an emergency number that would have Care Flight on the roof w
ithin minutes.
I didn’t recognize the square, short-fingered hands handling the phone, but I did recognize the Blackberry. I was in Fritz’s memory of discovering Hope right after Calhoun tried to kill her.
“This isn’t going to cause a problem with our professional relationship, is it?” That was Calhoun himself, leaning against the opposite wall. He hadn’t changed much over the years. The only difference was that his eyes were brown, not red.
The memory blurred. I knew that Fritz had chased Calhoun, tried to fight him, tried to kill him. I felt the burn of his anger.
And I saw the moment when he returned to the office building to discover that Hope Jimenez was gone. Ander had arrived before the paramedics and taken her away. Part of the contract Hope had previously established with him.
Fritz hadn’t known that at the time—he’d just been angry, confused, and…in love?
I was surprised by how much love he’d felt toward her, even then.
When my vision cleared of the memory, Fritz wasn’t looking at me, and his expression was unreadable. He had to know I’d seen into his memories. Had to know that I was getting a picture of the secret parts of his life that we didn’t discuss.
“This way,” Fritz said.
He bolted down the hallway.
It looked completely different now. There were curves that had been masked by Gertie’s powers, and it formed a big loop folding in on itself. Not nearly as scary once I saw how it fit together.
The walls also weren’t completely solid. There were doorways hidden behind the illusion of wallpaper. Most of them were closed.
Most, but not all.
“Here!” Fritz announced triumphantly.
We emerged from one of the doors into the drawing room.
There were bodies everywhere. Rotten bodies bloated with their own gases. The mangled corpses of naked old people were draped over the furniture and half-tucked under the white blankets. The puddles of their blood almost looked black.
Even Herbert was at my feet, veins lacerated by the knife.
He was the one who brought me out of my momentary shock.
His body wasn’t in Paradise Mile. It was at an OPA morgue. He’d already been autopsied, which meant that there should have been a Y-incision on his chest. I’d seen the photos.
There was no Y-incision here. This was just another illusion.
As soon as I realized it, the bodies vanished. They were only images layered over the barren, dusty reality of the room. One more of Gertie’s illusions. But she had no power over Fritz and me, not now that we had activated the bond.
She didn’t keep us distracted long enough to make her escape. Gray flesh flashed beyond the exit doorway.
Calhoun.
I chased him to the front door, ignoring all of Gertie’s illusions—the creeping vines, the dripping blood, the pieces of human meat splattered across the floor. By the time I got outside, Calhoun was a huge, dark shape retreating into the fog. Isobel dangled over his shoulder, arms limp, hair swaying with every step.
“What’s the game plan, boss?” I asked Fritz, pausing to catch my breath.
He handed me the butcher’s knife. “You’ll have to be the one to catch up. Take all my strength and run.”
I could feel that it hurt him to order me to do it. He was angry at his prosthetic leg, angry at the fallen angel who had destroyed his foot, angry at the disability that made him a fraction slower than his aspis. A few weeks earlier, I would have been the one struggling to keep up with him. Now he struggled to keep up with me.
And I might not be fast enough to catch up with the monster that was Calhoun.
I didn’t have the kopis speed, even with the binding active between us. I was just some guy who didn’t spend enough time on cardio at the gym.
“I’ll get him,” I said.
Hopefully that wasn’t bravado talking.
I raced after Calhoun, tearing through the damp air. Fritz opened the bond as wide as possible. I drank deep on his energy as he shoved it toward me, feeding his strength through the invisible chain. He couldn’t give me kopis muscles, but he burned away my fatigue, set my blood on fire, sharpened all my senses.
Calhoun bored a path through the fog, dispersing it with his momentum. The ground shuddered underneath his massive feet. He shook the whole goddamn canyon.
As the fog disappeared, I could see that the road leading out of Paradise Mile Retirement Village had changed.
Instead of the twisting dirt path that I hadn’t been able to escape before, it was a paved two-lane road. The mouth of the canyon opened up onto a dark night. Rows of townhouses. The kinds of cars you expected to see middle-class families driving, like ten-year-old sedans and minivans.
That was Suzy’s neighborhood. Calhoun was headed straight for it.
Now my fears were a lot more specific. Instead of imagining Gertie’s reign of terror all over Los Angeles, I was imagining it in Suzy’s townhouse. She’d been bleeding when we left her, throat ripped open. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine her completely disemboweled.
Calhoun’s not going to have her. Not Suzy.
Fritz’s strength propelled me on. Faster and faster. I ran like lightning shot from the sky.
I drew level with the demon.
Good God, but he was a huge fucking monster. Even bigger when he was right on top of me. There was no way that I’d be able to tackle him, bring him down.
I jumped in Calhoun’s path instead. Lifted the butcher’s knife. Slashed it across his chest, down Gertie’s face. She didn’t raise her tiny arms in time to protect herself.
A cut opened on her forehead down to her jaw. Blood gushed over her features, and her shriek shattered my eardrums.
That got Calhoun’s attention. He skidded to a stop.
“Gertie!” He stroked his hand over her forehead. “Are you okay?”
She couldn’t respond. Not with words. She grabbed his fingers and tried to bite them. He jerked his fingers away from her teeth before they shredded his skin.
I jabbed at him with the knife again. He jumped back.
Calhoun was afraid of his own knife. It was satisfying to think that even he was intimidated by the power he’d been stupid enough to unleash.
“Drop Isobel,” I said.
He jerked her off of his shoulder. Held her between us. She was small in his hands, like a child.
“Okay,” Calhoun said.
The fog blurred around him. For an instant, I couldn’t see anything.
Once I could see again, his hands were empty and Isobel was gone.
I was too shocked to attack.
“We’ve tossed her somewhere else in the canyon,” Calhoun said, patting Gertie’s slimy head. She was clawing at her own face now, tearing the wound open so that she bled harder. It almost looked like she was enjoying it. “You can search for Isobel, or you can try to keep me from reaching Los Angeles.”
I stretched my senses toward Fritz, making sure he heard the ultimatum. Isobel or Los Angeles.
He heard. He’d been heading my way slowly, but he immediately rerouted, going back toward the house.
Not much of an ultimatum. We didn’t have to compromise on anything. I could handle Calhoun while Fritz looked for Isobel.
But Calhoun had to realize that…didn’t he?
I rubbed a hand over my eyes. My head throbbed with magic, blurring my thoughts, turning my brain to mush.
With my eyelids closed, I could see Fritz racing through the foyer. He had to tear vines away in order to make progress toward the rear of the room. Calhoun wasn’t making it easy to search.
Or was he?
In my mind’s eye, it looked like Fritz was beating at nothing at all. Struggling against empty air.
More of Gertie’s illusions. Fritz hadn’t even noticed yet.
What else were we missing?
My eyes shocked open. The monstrous witch was still standing in front of me. His meaty hands were definitely empty, raised in a mockery of surre
nder. He was pretending to wait for me to decide what to do about his ultimatum. But there was still a thread of illusion that I hadn’t noticed—same way that Fritz couldn’t tell that the foyer wasn’t filled with vines.
Through the bond, I saw the truth.
Isobel hadn’t been relocated at all. She was on the ground just behind Calhoun’s massive feet. His raised heel was poised over her skull.
If he took one step back—like if I attacked him—he would easily crush her.
“Okay,” I said, stepping aside. “You can leave. I’ll go look for Isobel in the house.”
Calhoun faltered. “But Fritz—”
I gave him even more space. Angled myself slightly so that I stood to his side instead of front of him, clearing his path to Los Angeles. I couldn’t stop thinking about Suzy waiting on the other side. Giving him space to escape made me feel like my heart was throwing up in my chest.
But I wouldn’t play his game. He wanted me to attack and accidentally kill Isobel, and I wasn’t going to do it.
Calhoun hadn’t considered that possibility. Indecision flashed over his twisted features.
Gertie’s hands strained from his chest, reaching for Los Angeles. She wanted to go. She didn’t care about screwing with my head. She wanted to consume Earth.
Once Gertie made her preferences known, Calhoun didn’t hesitate. He moved with such speed that it sucked the breath right out of my lungs.
Calhoun and Gertie raced for Los Angeles.
I leaped for Isobel.
She was already waking up. She sat up slowly with a groan. “Cèsar?”
Setting the knife on the grass beside her, I wrapped an arm around Isobel’s back to support her. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.” Even if making Isobel safe had required releasing Calhoun into Los Angeles.
“Where is he?” she asked. But her eyes fell on Calhoun before I could answer.
The sight of him woke her up fast. Really fast.
Isobel bolted upright, snatching the anointed butcher’s knife from the grass. “Are you crazy? Why aren’t you stopping him? We can’t let him get out of here!”