The precinct’s front doors were locked, but that didn’t stop me.
I punched straight through the glass and reached inside, unlatching the lock. No alarm sounded, which I took as a good sign. Maybe my luck was changing. Keeping low to conceal my presence, I slunk through the sea of empty gray cubicles.
Eyes scanning the desks in search of anything helpful, I found an end cubicle bearing a placard with a familiar name.
Detective Scott.
I ducked inside to take a closer look, settling into his squeaky, well-worn office chair. I set down my own folder to start rifling through the mountains of paperwork towering on his desk. Lots of memos and field reports about what was going on at my loft, which was exactly nothing.
Good to know that Scott hadn’t lost his hard-on for me over the past six months.
A paper stamped Internal Affairs caught my eye, and I eased it out of the stack. The subject line was regarding the surveillance tape. As I skimmed the words, cognitive dissonance set in. This had to be a lie.
Scott was obviously responsible for the tape’s release. He’d had it out for me since the first day I’d stepped foot in this town. And here he was, lodging a formal request for an investigation into the leak of the tape.
That seemed like a pretty bold fucking move, considering he was the source of the leak.
I pushed the paper aside. There was nothing here I didn’t already know.
“Don’t move.” A pistol’s safety clicked off, accompanying the familiar voice.
“You don’t want to get involved, Detective Berkson.” I turned around slowly, finding Scott’s partner about two cubicle rows across. Her legs were planted firmly in an academy-worthy shooting stance.
“He’s not here.”
“I have no issue with you.”
“That depends,” she said, expression blank, “on what you know.”
“I need a favor,” I said.
“What’d you find?” She jabbed the gun my way in an oddly desperate manner.
“I didn’t find anything—”
“Tell me what you know, goddamnit.”
Which is when I figured it out.
Scott hadn’t released the tape.
No.
Because Detective Lisa Berkson had beaten him to the punch.
Only one question remained, then.
Why?
46
I rose from the desk chair slowly, hands raised as high as I could make them. “I know you’re a good cop, Berkson.”
“That sounds pretty lame, Aeon.” I had to admit she was right. She pointed toward the .45 and added, “Take it out slowly.”
“It’s empty anyway.”
“So that was you on the scanner.” Her gun didn’t move as I placed the pistol down on the floor. “Now kick it over.”
I did as I was asked. She walked over to my row of cubicles, reached down and pocketed my .45.
“Why’d you do it, Berkson?”
The detective didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Her eyebrow raised in the slightest fashion, enough that it was like a big neon flashing sign.
“The Order,” she said, without any malice or Machiavellian overtones. It was almost disappointing. “I thought things would turn out differently.”
“Ripping the bandage off never goes well.”
“Should’ve told me that six months ago.”
“What happened to Dom?” Dominic Rodriguez had been Scott’s previous partner. All sorts of warning signs should have gone up when he’d been replaced. But I hadn’t exactly had time to dwell on the details when we’d been ambushed by the daystriders.
“He quit.” She shrugged. “I guess he figured getting shot once was enough.”
Couldn’t argue with that. Especially since I was the one who’d shot him.
It was all necessary, let me assure you.
“I could arrest you right now.” Her tone was flat, legal and factual. “Criminal trespass.”
“You could try.”
“Demons can’t outrun bullets.”
“You know the rest of your buddies are gone.” By her reaction, this wasn’t news. “Your scanner? That was Redmond.”
I shook my head to convey that he hadn’t made it.
The gun quivered. Last surviving member of the Order. Or, at least, the only one still carrying the torch. Kind of a lonely position.
“I always thought it would turn out differently.”
“Why don’t we call it even, and head on out of here Berkson?” I nodded toward the door. “You got no dog left in this fight.”
I could see her weigh the option, tantalizing as it was. But she said, “Can’t do that, Aeon. She was family.”
“Who?”
“My aunt was a beacon of light.”
I furrowed my brow. “Dolly?”
“She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Come on, I’m not responsible for what Nadia—”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “That thing wasn’t Nadia.”
“Sure, whatever, I get that.” We stared at one another. “I’m not the one you really want.”
“But you’re here.” Like I would make for a suitable proxy. Revenge and honor made people do stupid, asinine things. Well, at least from my perspective. Mainly because I was gonna be the one getting shot. “Gift wrapped.”
“You know what they say about gift horses.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Berkson said.
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Don’t tell me what I want.”
“I saved your life.” Always a good card to play.
“You’re the only goddamn reason I was in danger anyway.” The hammer cocked. “It’s over, Aeon.”
“Do I get any last words?”
“Better say them fast.”
I stared at her for what seemed like a long time. “This is why you guys never won.”
“We’ll see about—”
A sharp rifle shot cracked out, and Detective Lisa Berkson crumpled to worn carpet. Blood spatter covered the nearby cubicles. Boots echoed as the gunman walked closer.
“Christ, Aeon, I thought you were slicker than this.”
I didn’t know whether to scream or smile. “Detective.”
“See, all it takes is a little respect for us to be friends.” Detective Scott walked past me without so much as a nod and kicked the gun away from his dead partner. “Knew something was off about her.”
“Quite the viral video,” I said.
“You know what Aeon,” he said, without looking back, “it don’t feel so good now that it’s all out in the open. Seeing what’s happened.”
“That an apology?”
“Don’t push it, dickhead.”
“Good to have you back, Detective.”
“The storm’s coming,” Scott said, his tone grave. “And none of us built the right ark.”
“Didn’t take you for the religious type.”
“Momma tried. It didn’t stick.”
“How’d you know Berkson was a mole?”
“I didn’t until I listened through that busted door,” Scott said. “I was gonna come in and shoot your ass stone dead. Figured you’re the only bastard dumb enough to trigger the silent alarm.”
“I guess I should say thanks.”
“Slate’s clear, Aeon,” Scott said, walking away. “As long as we avoid one another.”
“There’s one more favor.”
“You’re pushin’ it,” Scott said. “I ain’t forgot about Roderick.”
“I need to know where my friend’s being taken.” I briefly explained Gunnar’s situation.
“We’ll see.” Scott paused at the end of the cubicle row and glanced back. “And check the bitch’s pockets.”
“For what?”
“Hell, maybe you’ll find something.”
And with that, my former arch-nemesis strolled into the break room, rifle slung over his shoulder like some sort of big game hunter, and started making his early-morning coffee.
Just like any other day, right? Plug your partner and make nice with a demon.
If that wasn’t a harbinger of the impending apocalypse, I didn’t know what was.
47
Ruby Callaway gave me an honest-to-goodness hug when she got out of the car.
“It’s only been like twelve hours for me, you know,” I said. The last few months had clearly worn on her steely nerves. Her eyes told me they’d run completely out of options.
“I don’t know, Kalos. I just don’t know what to do.”
“And here I thought I was doing the world a favor by sending you back early.”
“You thought wrong.”
“I have a plan.” Her slate-gray eyes narrowed in skepticism at my bold proclamation. “My turn to play leader, right?”
With a sigh, she said, “End of days.”
“Can’t be that incompetent,” I said. “Brought your gun back.”
It glinted on her back. Driving with that must’ve been uncomfortable. But given the current state of the world, it might’ve been more uncomfortable trying to survive without it.
I took over chauffeur duties, which didn’t seem to bother her. She gave me a curious look when I punched a string of coordinates into the GPS, but didn’t raise any objections. As the car smoothly rolled away from the precinct, I briefly considered how a Porsche would drive in Agonia. It would probably look even nicer. Zero to sixty in under a second.
And then the bottom would drop out like a Pinto.
Thankfully, if I played my cards right, I would never spend another damn minute in another world.
I explained to Ruby my hypothesis about the daystriders: how it was a spell, not a moon burning, responsible for their slavish servitude. I supported the point by citing the rash of kidnappings in other areas, performed by other creatures of dark essence.
Which led me to the centerpiece of my plan. “We need enough essence to shatter Delphine’s magic.”
“Why would she work with Marrack?”
“She wouldn’t,” I said. “Obviously.”
Then again, nothing had been obvious over the past year. But it didn’t stand to reason that the woman who had saved my ass on multiple occasions—and put on a serious display of witchy pyrotechnics to help me trick Isabella and Marrack just last year—would suddenly head to the dark side.
Then again, Nadia had fallen into the abyss and through a damn wormhole, so maybe I wasn’t the best judge of character.
Still, I had faith in Delphine. That was saying something, given the swirling tumult my life had become.
“I don’t think we can find that type of power just lying around,” Ruby said.
“That’s why we’re taking a detour,” I said. “Two detours, to be exact.” By way of explanation, I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, toward the crumpled manila folder on the seat. It lay next to a ring of keys I’d taken from Detective Berkson’s pockets.
“Paperwork?”
“My warden left me a large collection,” I said. “I hadn’t picked it up because, really, I was good on the essence front.”
Ruby raised her eyebrow.
I said, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, you were thinking something.”
“It was kind of like a toddler with a bazooka.”
“Everyone’s a critic once you’re mortal,” I muttered. “Funny how these objections weren’t raised earlier.”
“Fair point.”
“Anyway, we’re getting off-topic.” How powerful I once was had no bearing on the current situation. I was a garden-variety human. We’d have to work within those parameters. “I never bothered to check things out.”
“So there’s a ton of magical artifacts just sitting in storage.”
“Worth a shot, right?”
“I’m not seeing how that solves our Nadia problem.”
“One thing at a time.” My head might explode if I tried to work out how to slay a god. I’d ended Athena the Goddess Killer, but I’d had the benefit of a shitload of essence and a little luck working for me.
Plus, she wasn’t technically a real god. Just the closest thing we had.
Ruby shrugged, like she had no better ideas to offer. “And the keys?”
“You’re familiar with the Order of the Marksmen?”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Idiots.”
“Extinct idiots,” I said. “Those belonged to the Mistress’s niece.”
“Okay?” Ruby was apparently unimpressed.
The GPS chimed, indicating we were closing in our destination. I glanced out the window, surveying the landscape for threats or booby-traps. Ambushes, too, since those seemed to be in vogue.
The service station was still. I cut the engine and sat silently for a moment, making sure nothing would come out and yell boo.
“What is this place?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” I leaned into the back and dragged out the keyring. They jingled merrily as I thumbed through them. “But there’s only one that came with directions.”
“I guess it’s kind of on the way,” Ruby said, craning her neck. “Scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Kalos.”
“Have a little faith. There’s a new god in town, remember?”
Ruby shook her head and got out of the car. I heard the shotgun ratchet as I stepped out.
At the very least, we might get to shoot something.
But she was right.
In the current climate, silver linings were getting hard to find.
48
The Order of the Marksmen might have seemed to be dead and buried, but if I’d learned one thing about those assholes over the past seven centuries, it was this.
They were like fucking cockroaches. Stomp them, burn them, shoot them in the head; it didn’t matter. Four more nutbars moved to take their fallen comrade’s place.
With this in mind, I moved cautiously toward the rusted service station. This place hadn’t seen a customer since the gas lines of the seventies, maybe before. The elements had eaten holes in the rubber hoses, rendering them useless. A few windows were covered in newspaper, the others simply left broken and open.
As I approached, I saw that Texas had begun reclaiming the interior. Small desert shrubs and a thick layer of dust coated the empty product racks.
I swept the empty .45 over the interior as a warning to any potential attackers.
Nothing but the silent early dawn greeted me. As another day rebooted, it was hard to believe that it’d been just four since Nadia had come to the loft and seen fit to spray it with bullets. Even for someone old, this current trial had felt like a Möbius strip. Infinite loops through life-threatening challenges that never seemed to get me closer to stopping the world’s annihilation.
“See anything?” Ruby spoke in a low, covert tone. I turned, almost bumping into her. I hadn’t even heard her footsteps.
“Empty.”
Her shoulders slackened ever so slightly. The keys jingled in my pocket as I walked toward the door. It could’ve really used some WD-40, because the thing made more noise than a stamping plant as I opened it.
“After you,” I said, gesturing inside.
“What a gentleman.”
“Your gun actually has bullets.”
“Whatever it takes for you to sleep at night, Kalos.”
The mention of sleep reminded me that I hadn’t closed my eyes in the last day. Did passing out after burning down the gate to Agonia count? I couldn’t claim that was a particularly restful experience.
/> I dragged my tired body into the service station, coughing from the build-up of dust. The shop was a cramped space no larger than a bedroom. Whenever the structure had been built, sprawling convenience stores hadn’t been the thing.
“Footprints,” Ruby said. I thought she meant to cover mine, until I glanced over to her aisle. Indeed, etched into the dust were semi-fresh tracks. They headed toward a back door. Ruby disappeared, and I followed, eager to get away from the stifling interior.
My relief was short lived, however, because the trail ended next to a rusted cellar. The door was massive—easily ten feet wide—and bound tightly with yards of new stainless steel chains. There were at least three padlocks.
I fished out the keyring to start finding matches.
“I have a better way.” A blue burst sizzled through the air, blasting a hole straight through the center of the door. I peeked inside, ears ringing, seeing a steep wooden stairwell that led into absolute darkness.
“A little warning would be nice.”
Ruby pumped the shotgun, the spent shell dropping to the ground without a sound. “You go first this time.”
“What an honor.”
I backed into the tight space, blindly searching for the next rung as I descended. Fortunately, the cellar wasn’t deep—maybe a dozen feet beneath the earth. Taking my cell phone out to guide the way, I called back to Ruby.
“I’m down.”
No response came.
“Ruby?”
Still nothing. I pulled out the empty .45 and glanced up, heart beating. Who could have followed us out here?
“Ruby, please answer me.”
A second later, I heard, “Just fucking with you.”
“Come on.” I glowered as she came down the steps. “That shit’s not funny.”
“If you can’t laugh, what’s the point of surviving?”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I swung the light toward her as her boots hit the ground, making her squint in displeasure.
Revenge.
Then, taking lead, I began exploring the space. It wasn’t anything special, as secret lairs or hidden caches went. Pretty low-tech, in fact: unfinished floors and cinderblock walls. Somehow, even though we were in the desert, it smelled slightly damp and musty.
Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3) Page 20