“I cannot be certain,” she said, the words coming slowly and carefully, “but it seems likely that Nadia Santos is the vessel.”
“Well, she was on the list,” I said. “At least we don’t have to worry about Marrack capturing her. Right?”
The Order had no doubt equipped their holding facility with a myriad of magical dampeners, amongst other bits of anti-supernatural tech. For Nadia to break through that…whatever the essence transfusion and months in captivity had awakened was incredible.
One might even call them “hidden and unusual properties,” such as the Journal’s final page had outlined.
“It’s not Marrack we have to worry about.” Pearl took a deep breath, then reconsidered her words. “Or, rather, not only Marrack.”
“I’m touched you’re concerned about my safety.”
“Your safety is inconsequential,” Pearl said. “My concern lies with the world.”
“You got all that from a recording?”
“It requires far less evidence than that to identify such traits.”
“The traits of what?”
“Of a god.”
On that cheery note, I kept my mouth shut until Lux’s neon sign appeared on the horizon.
The X was hanging off.
Which drove the point home, deep in my gut.
The world had changed.
And, just maybe, it had left me behind.
41
Here I thought all the gods were dead. And they were, until, through a lengthy series of events, a new one had graced our presence. As seemed to be par for the course, I was directly involved in that chain of events.
I shook my head as I pulled into Lux’s empty lot. The sun still blazed overhead. It wasn’t close enough to nightfall for Gunnar to be awake. But judging by the dilapidated ghost town in the distance, maybe he’d be glad for the company all the same.
I dug around in the back and grabbed a box of .45 ammo. Galleron had given me back the pistol, but he didn’t exactly have an armory filled with non-magical bullets handy. I reloaded the clip and took a deep breath.
“I’m not waiting here,” Pearl said as I stepped out of the car.
“Wouldn’t expect you to.” I tossed her the keys and shut the door. “I’ll be back at the loft in a couple hours.”
There was an awkward pause, and then Pearl brushed her hair out of her face. “We abandoned the loft months ago.”
“Months.” It had been shot to hell, sure, but that didn’t seem like too much of a problem after braving Agonia.
“Watch the news,” Pearl said. “You’ll understand.” She whipped the car’s front around, narrowly missing my legs. “And I’d stay out of public places.”
“Why’s that?”
“Best to find out on your own.” She grimaced. “The vampire knows where to find us.”
The sports car’s tires screamed as she gunned it out of the parking lot. I watched the black vehicle spit up dust, headed away from Inonda. Then the horizon gobbled it up, leaving me alone in the cracked parking lot.
I’d left the shotgun in the car, but the .45 was like a trusty, reliable friend. Magic had always trended toward the shit list for me, but the past year had confirmed what I’d always known: I was better off with flesh, blood and iron. Things I could touch, rather than reading wisps or feeling auras.
I pushed through the door, its hinges squeaking as I entered. A mild dusty smell greeted me, which was odd. Gunnar always kept the place immaculate. The lights were off, but the sun was still bright enough for the windows to offer illumination.
The interior looked frozen in time, like a photograph of a place covered in volcanic ash. Half-filled whiskey tumblers dotted the tables next to warm beers. There were few signs of disturbance other than a few overturned chairs and the mic hanging off the stage.
A torn piece of red fabric clung to the stand like a lonely, haunting reminder of what had gone down here.
.45 raised, I made my way cautiously to the mahogany bar. I rapped twice, but heard no flutter of wings.
“Trevor?”
A rotting stench flooded my nostrils when I leaned over. I vaulted the counter and looked beneath the shelves. The owl’s decaying carcass greeted me, one lifeless eye staring back.
“Fucking hell.”
Something rattled from the back offices, and I stood bolt upright. Casting a wary glance back through the hall, I raised the .45, searching for threats. If Blaise had escaped the Weald, I wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
But against something like a wolf, maybe I’d get a shot.
Then again, this was a little too neat and orderly to be the work of a werewolf.
The rattling continued. My curiosity raised, I walked slowly toward the source of the sound, heart pumping in my ears. I pushed the tip of the .45 against a half-ajar door, finding myself in Gunnar’s office.
A stack of banded bills sat neatly in the corner, next to an idle counting machine. Its red digital numbers sat at zero, ready for work.
There was a loud thump from behind the desk.
“Come out.” I cocked the hammer, the implied threat cutting through the silence.
In response, the rattling grew more feverish.
Ready to fire, I edged my way around the desk.
“Oh shit.” I stared at Gunnar’s sleeping chamber, which now gyrated wildly. A sense of dread overtook me as I reached over to open it.
The latch didn’t unhook.
I closed the door. There were no windows back here, making the room light tight.
I strained against the lock, but it refused to budge. Stumbling backward, my inclination was to use magic. After all, this had the hallmarks of a magical seal. But magic was in decidedly short supply, so I used the next best thing at my disposal.
Nine shots later, ears ringing, I waved away the gun smoke and kicked the chamber’s latch. This time, the top crumbled and fell away.
A wheezing gasp came from inside and Gunnar said, “You do not write, you do not call. I was beginning to worry, ja?”
I offered him a hand, and he rose weakly. His normally robust appearance looked haggard and wan, his jaw gaunt from malnutrition. I helped him over to the seat next to the money counter.
He slumped into it and sighed, his ice-blue eyes narrowed at me.
“Time-dilation,” I said, by way of explanation.
“The bounty hunter and the dog told me about such matters.” He winced and breathed heavily. “I am afraid we have more problems than when you left.”
“Who did this?”
His fangs weakly popped out, the memory still sore. “The yoga instructor.”
“Nadia?” She didn’t do yoga, but it seemed petty to correct him.
“She searches for you, Kalos.” Gunnar raised his arms, barely possessing the strength to get them over his head. “And such is the destruction she sows.”
“What happened here?” I asked, unsure I wanted to know. Lux was like a graveyard, and it required no essence to sense the eeriness pervading its walls.
“She cursed all of them, Kalos.” His tired eyes looked into mine, trying to convey the tale. “And then she consumed their power.”
“And she spared you why?”
“A message.”
“A message?”
“To put you on the notice,” Gunnar said. “That there is no hope and no escape, my friend.” His ice-blue eyes grew even more grave, if that was possible. “She will make you suffer as the world burns.”
“Fuck.”
“Ja,” Gunnar said, closing his eyes. “That is about the only word to describe it.”
And here he and Argos had been so damn certain that Isabella would be the death of us all. You could say a lot of things about destiny.
But one thing you couldn’t accuse her of was being bo
ring.
42
We waited until darkness came. Gunnar needed blood, but according to him, mine smelled “nasty,” which must’ve been a residual effect from being a demon. I was almost starting to forget how my old life felt, even though I’d been mortal again for less than 24 hours.
People treated half-demons differently. And I treated the world differently as well.
I wasn’t too put out about the blood thing. Having him clamp down on my arm was a level of intimacy neither of us were prepared for, even after over 1,200 years.
Gunnar gave a forlorn final glance at Lux, his long blond hair swishing over his hunched shoulders.
“I will miss this place.”
“You could always reopen.”
“I do not believe that is with the cards.”
“In the cards.”
“English.” The vamp muttered something in an ancient Germanic tongue to himself. The Range Rover was parked around back. Looked like I was driving, since he had the shakes something fierce. Not feeding for a week would do that.
On the plus side, it was lucky he couldn’t die of dehydration. Things would’ve been over long before I stepped inside the blues bar.
“…a new supernatural internment camp opened outside of Austin today, the tenth such facility created in Texas since the release of a—”
I shut the radio off as I backed out of the parking lot. “Internment camps, huh?”
“Perhaps it is best you hear about them yourself.”
“No one’s telling me shit.” I got the sense that both he and Pearl were dancing around some huge skeleton in the closet that was waiting to pop out and scream boo at me.
“Some things must be learned alone.” Gunnar winced, pulling at the top button of his wrinkled dress shirt.
“Or you could just tell me. As a friend.”
“A friend does not tell another that he will be in the crosshairs forever.”
I wondered if this was another one of Gunnar’s mangled colloquialisms, but I had difficulty placing it. As I chewed things over, he tapped a destination into the GPS. It wasn’t far.
“Does this have something to do with the loft?” I asked.
“It is best you find out for yourself.” Gunnar crossed his arms, adamant in his stance.
“I’ll do that.” Not like we were up against the clock or anything. I couldn’t wait to hear all the other details my allies had chosen to withhold. Oh, by the way Kalos, a hundred dragons escaped Agonia and brought along the centurions from the Weald as their riders.
It was depressing to consider that this might be a best-case scenario.
I glanced out the window as we rolled through Inonda. The small town charm had vanished, covered in a layer of perpetual grime and urban decay. It was like the shantytown had infected the rest of the area with a virus, spreading its poison outward.
Even Main Street wasn’t exempt. There were fewer news trucks and conspiracy vans lining the street, although I suspected this wasn’t due to a lack of excitement. Probably a case of too much excitement, if the blackened building in the middle of the street was any indication.
I say building, but really it was just a hole across from the theater.
Between that and Lux, I was getting a scary picture of Nadia’s powers.
“It disappeared last week,” Gunnar said.
“Nadia,” I replied, catching him nod in the mirror.
I rounded the corner and glided into one of the many free parking spaces. The navigation system chimed, announcing that we’d successfully arrived at our destination. Under normal circumstances, the fanfare would have been unwarranted, but given the current state of the world even a slow evening drive felt like a big win.
I got out and looked at the sign. “Joe’s Hipster Coffee. Really?”
“The secret is to make terrible coffee,” Gunnar said.
“How the fuck is that a secret?”
“Because then one does not get enough customers to uncover what is really going on.” His fangs clicked out in anticipation, and I realized that this was an underground blood dispensary. Sure, vamps could munch on humans—and, naturally, they did so frequently.
But sometimes they wanted to go a little bit more upscale. Or, of course, you had your pacifist vamps who wanted free-range, ethically sourced blood or whatever hippie bullshit places like this peddled.
Even if you didn’t have expensive taste or morals, it was good to know where the dispensaries were for a single reason.
Weakness.
A hungry vamp quickly turned into a sadly vulnerable vamp. I was reminded of this as Gunnar tottered toward the entrance. I had to open the door for him.
“I had it.”
“Yeah, we don’t have a thousand years, here.”
“Allow me to do the talking.”
“I’m not the one looking for a drink.”
Despite it being well past closing hours, someone came out to greet us at the counter. The short man gave one look at Gunnar and nodded.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir.” I handed Gunnar off to the sommelier, or whatever this guy called himself, and waited behind the counter. The short guy glanced back at me and added, “The television remote is on the counter.”
This was about the nicest you’re not invited I’d ever received. I took his suggestion, pulling out a chair from a nearby table and flicking on the wall-mounted screen. The baseball highlights made me think of Alfred. Not that I was getting misty-eyed.
I flicked through the sports channels, settling on the first news station I could find.
All the scrolls and stories were about the supernatural. Nothing else mattered. Nor was there any question about the existence of magic. In six months, we’d gone from Senate subcommittees to a full-on unveiling.
Two pundits argued about safety. One was the kind of grass-munching social justice warrior that could die of exposure if the temperature in their Prius dropped below fifty degrees. The other was a guy who probably buried landmines on his property to keep trespassers away from his water reserves.
Good to see that at least some things didn’t change. Nothing like a little bit of news theater to inform absolutely no one.
Nonetheless, being in the dark for the past six months, even two morons could help shed light on matters. I pumped up the volume and leaned back, growing dumber by the second.
“We’ve all seen the video,” landmine guy said, moustache twitching like a possessed caterpillar. “We know what these things are capable of, damnit! An internment camp ain’t going far enough. We need to lock ’em up, chain ’em, it doesn’t matter—”
“Are we just going to lock up everyone who scares us now, Mitch?” Uh oh. He’d hit a nerve with the vegan. “Is that the kind of values our country has? That doesn’t sound like freedom to me, Mitch, not at—”
“It don’t sound like freedom getting killed by one of those damn bloodsuckers.”
“That’s an offensive term,” the woman said. “They’re the same as us.”
“Tell me that when that son of a bitch on the YouTube comes and burns you alive.”
“A riveting conversation,” the anchor said, coming on with a faux smile. “Sandra, Mitch, always a pleasure to get your takes on this.”
The image went back to full-screen, mercifully ending Mitch and Sandra’s commentary. But curiosity—and maybe boredom—encouraged me to stay put.
“You’ve seen the video Mitch referred to,” the anchor said, adopting his serious newscaster voice. “Footage that shocked the world and confirmed the existence of species far beyond the human pale. But the question remains: who is Kalos Aeon? And what is being done to bring him to justice?”
I blinked twice, thinking I’d fallen asleep and temporarily dropped into a nightmare that was somehow shittier than my own life. But no, instead the outr
o music played, oddly upbeat when overlaid atop the grainy dash cam footage.
For me, it had been only a couple nights at most. As events went, it didn’t even rank in my top ten. Impressive display of magic, yes—body count wise, though, the Middle Ages had it beat for sure. But for the world, the vamps suddenly bursting into flames in the middle of the street must’ve been terrifying.
Horrible.
Demonic.
As I watched the grainy black-and-white footage fade out, I understood why no one wanted to break this news.
I was enemy of the state.
And with that came one truth: they’d never stop hunting me.
Not until I died.
43
I flipped to a couple of the other news stations, quickly finding that I was the main topic of conversation on them all. Feeling slightly ill, I stood up and headed outside to get some air. I paced for so long that I didn’t even hear Gunnar come out.
“You have heard, then, my friend.”
“Crosshairs?” I managed to say with a grim smile. “More like a fucking RPG.”
“It is not optimal, given our other problems.”
I walked to the car. He beat me to it. At least one of us was feeling better after this trip. I felt like the Weald had collapsed on top of me. Twice.
I stopped at the door, hand hovering over the handle. Not that I was feeling remorse for burning those daystriders alive—not even a little. But the video had tugged at another thread which had been bothering me. It was undeniable that something was off about the daystriders. Blaise’s almost sorrowful proclamation that there would be nothing left was out of character.
Obviously, he was under Marrack’s influence. Resisting it, but failing. These things I knew.
But one thing stuck out: scale.
I ran through the details Pearl had offered, about creatures doing the Conclave’s bidding in the other magical hotbeds. Would any of them let things get this bad? Continue hunting down vessel candidates, even as the mortal world mobilized against them? It seemed everything with a strain of essence flowing through its veins was now being hunted, thrown into the internment camps.
Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3) Page 18