by Jenn Bennett
Uh-oh. The last few Æthyric demons with whom I’d chatted seem to recognize whatever it was that my parents had bred into me. And pretty-boy demon in the fire circle was now eyeballing me with his head tilted in curiosity. Not good. I slouched lower in my seat and shielded my face with my hand.
More hive-speak from the crowd. More commands from the magician to the silent demon, who prowled the summoning circle, looking for a way out and occasionally pinning me with an angry stare that made my skin clammy.
“Now, for the querent,” Merrin said to the crowd. “Brother Paolo won the query lottery this week. Where is Brother Paolo?”
A short Earthbound man raised his hand and stood. The congregation applauded. Brother Paolo walked to the fiery summoning circle and stood next to Merrin, who laid his hand on Paolo’s shoulder. “What is your question for the demon before us?”
The man cleared his throat. “I’d like to know if my brother will survive open-heart surgery next week.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. The demon standing in front of him didn’t have that kind of information. He wasn’t an oracle, for the love of Pete. I expected Merrin to tell poor, misguided Brother Paolo this. Instead, he was rephrasing the question in Latin. Did the demon even speak Latin? He seemed to be listening to Merrin. His tail flicked lazily, but he remained silent. Merrin pressed him for an answer.
“Pedicabo te,” came the demon’s reply in deep voice.
Merrin’s face tightened. Lon quietly snorted in amusement beside me.
“Yes,” Merrin said hurriedly. “He says your brother will survive.”
The congregation applauded.
“I don’t recognize that verb,” I whispered to Lon as Brother Paolo returned to his seat. He didn’t look all that happy about the news. Maybe he was hoping to inherit his brother’s bank account. “What did the demon say?”
“He threatened to sodomize the magician.”
Frater Merrin’s voice bellowed over the opera epic crackling from the speakers as he called out the banishing words to release the imprisoned demon, who immediately disappeared. A shame. I was starting to enjoy this ridiculous farce.
The altar girls poured black sand over the summoning circle, extinguishing the dwindling ring of fire. More applause erupted throughout the temple. A creepy hosanna-filled hymn followed. These people were one big, collective mess.
A potluck dinner, of all things, was announced. The congregation exited the temple into a room off the foyer. Lon and I stood up and hung to the side, nodding politely as people passed us. The last couple headed out of the beaded curtains. Lon tapped my arm. We strode to the front of the room, ignoring the weak protests of the altar girls, and marched up the set of stairs after the retreating figure of Frater Merrin, who climbed to a small loft room.
Stormy daylight filtered in through a window of glass bricks and cast a hazy light over a mussed up bed and a rack of clothes. An old theater makeup dresser stood against the wall, its mirror bordered with round light bulbs.
The magician turned around. “You’re not allowed up here,” he warned. Mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown. We were standing in front of the man who’d taken a big bite out of Cindy Brolin’s arm. I felt a little sick.
“Don’t remember me, Frater Karras?” Lon asked.
The elderly magician squinted, then picked up a pair of wire-rim glasses off the dresser, hooking the curved ends over his ears. “My goodness, is that Butler’s kid? Well, I’ll be damned . . . it’s been a long time since I’ve set eyes on you.”
“Since your ‘accident,’” Lon confirmed. “The one that caused you to hurt your back so badly, you couldn’t work for the Hellfire Club anymore. What year was that, again?”
“Oh, a long time ago, to be sure.”
“Around the time of the Sandpiper Park Snatcher,” Lon said, hand sliding inside his jacket.
I searched the magician’s face for some spark of guilt, but he simply nodded and smiled tightly. “Yes, sometime after that. How’s your father?”
“Dead.”
“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that.” The regret in his voice almost sounded genuine.
Lon unholstered the Lupara from inside his jacket.
The magician took a step back in alarm and held up his hands. “What is this?”
“Let’s talk,” Lon demanded.
“Talk? About what?”
“For starters, why don’t you tell us about Jesse Bishop? We found your handiwork in the cannery. Was he your assistant? Did he help you snatch those kids, or did he catch you with your pants down?”
The magician’s eyes remained steady, but his fingers curled up under the edges of his robe sleeves like snails retreating into their shells. It took him several moments to answer. When he finally did, he sounded exhausted. Demoralized, almost. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Why don’t you explain,” Lon suggested. “We’ve got time. Why don’t you also tell us why you were biting the kids you kidnapped thirty years ago?”
That got the man’s attention. A wave of surprise shadowed his face. “It’s no use, because you won’t believe me.” He backed up another step and hit the dresser, steadying his fingers on the edge of it. “There’s something far bigger going on that you can’t comprehend. The best thing you can do right now is forget you ever saw me and leave it alone.” His hand inched further back along the dresser top as he spoke. “Because it won’t end. If he’s not successful this time, he’ll just keep trying. Thirty years are nothing to him.”
“Who will keep trying?” Lon asked. “We saw Bishop’s bones. We know he’s dead.”
Merrin sighed. “Bishop was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Then who are you talking about? Why are the children being taken?”
Did Lon see Merrin’s hand moving? I stuck my own hand in my pocket, ready to retrieve my small caduceus.
The magician shook his head and looked away.
“We’re not leaving until you answer me,” Lon snarled, gesturing with the Lupara. He was too angry, not paying attention.
“Hey!” I shouted, my eyes on the magician’s roaming fingers. I tried to yank my caduceus out of my pocket but it got stuck sideways, like a bone wedged inside a throat. That cost me. The magician’s hand grabbed what he’d been seeking, some sort of engraved disk that fit into the palm of his hand.
The lights around the theater mirror flashed off and on as Merrin quickly pulled electricity and released kindled Heka through the disk, pushing it right into us. My hair blew back as charged Heka punched me in the chest so hard that it knocked me off my feet. I didn’t even have time draw a breath before I was thrown backward into the wall.
My leg twisted painfully as I tumbled to the floor. Lon’s head snapped to the side. The Lupara flew out of his hand—a deafening blast cracked the air when it hit the floor and went off accidently. The theater mirror shattered. Better it than me. The Lupara rotated near my feet like a lethal spin-the-bottle while the sharp scent of spent gunpowder blossomed.
And Frater Merrin was already racing down the steps.
I scrambled to pull myself up, afraid the vintage gun might go off again as Lon retrieved it. When I put weight on my twisted leg, pain flared. One of Lon’s arms flew out and snagged me around the waist.
“You okay?”
“Goddamn knee,” I bit out, testing it again. Better this time. Nothing broken.
“Can you—”
“Yes, go,” I shouted, pushing him toward the stairs. I winced as we raced down to the altar, wondering just how fast a man in his sixties with a bad back could run. Halfway down the stairs, I got my answer. The beaded curtain swung in the distance as commotion surged behind it in the foyer.
“Call the police!” Frater Merrin cried out between heavy breaths.
Awesome. Just what we needed. We stormed through the temple and tried to catch up with him. Dear God, I was hurting. A sharp pain shot up and down my leg with every step. It was al
l I could do to push it out of my mind and plow forward, a few steps behind Lon.
I heard the front door crash open. He wasn’t far ahead of us. A swell of angry cries rose up when we pushed through the beaded curtains and burst into the foyer. Lon flashed the Lupara and everyone backed up. Someone in the crowd echoed Merrin’s instruction to call the police.
We darted out the open door and took a sharp left through the covered walkway. It was pouring rain now. I tore after Lon, nearly slamming into him when he stopped short. His torso whipped around as he quickly scanned the sidewalk behind me in disbelief.
“What?” I looked past him. No Merrin.
“What the hell?” Lon mumbled breathlessly. He turned to the street punks still huddled against the inner wall along the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes and sharing a case of Milwaukee’s Beast. Only one of them was an Earthbound, a small boy with his hair dyed bright blue to match his halo, maybe sixteen. Lon singled him out, probably hoping for a little brotherly help. “Which way did he go?”
The blue-haired boy shrunk closer to the wall and shook his head nervously.
Lon repeated his demand to the rest of the punks, but was met with a sea of disinterested faces. No one said a thing.
With a growl, Lon shoved the Lupara back into his jacket and ran toward the street. I raced after him, cutting through a slippery patch of mud and dead grass. I bounded onto the cracked sidewalk half a block behind, but he wasn’t running anymore, only turning around in circles, searching. Traffic raced by, splashing sheets of rainwater as we both surveyed the area. A few umbrellas danced along the sidewalk on both sides of the busy road, but no man in ritual robes.
Frater Merrin had disappeared.
Wet and miserable, we skirted around the side of the brick school trying to root out a place he might be hiding, even checking the Dumpster that the bums had been digging in earlier. It was fruitless. A man with his experience was probably well versed in concealment and warding magick. Hell, I’d figured it out on my own when I was eighteen—the spells were carved into my arm. Merrin could be standing right next to us and we wouldn’t even know.
Crushing disappointment turned my limbs to cement. We were so close. We had him. The Snatcher himself. What were we going to do now? Sit out here in the rain and watch the temple in case he came back? Then again, if we left, he might. Maybe Dare could have some of his people watch it. We could stay until he sent someone.
A police siren wailed in the distance. Shit. Merrin had gotten his people to call the damn cops. I glanced back at the temple. Some members of the congregation were huddled beneath the overhang with the street punks, watching us. I could’ve cried in frustration.
“My gun has been illegally modified. I can’t get caught with it,” Lon lamented in defeat. With an open palm, he swooped back the dripping strands of hair matted against his forehead and blinked away rain. He glanced down at me. “You okay?” he asked a second time.
“Just pissed.” Being outsmarted by a lunatic magician with one foot in the grave wasn’t on my bucket list.
It wasn’t on Lon’s, either. He nodded once, sniffled, then slung his arm around my shoulders and urged me forward to the crosswalk. “Let’s get back to the car and get the hell out of here.”
“We should call Dare and—”
Lon stopped midstep. His arm grew rigid on my shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh . . .” He was watching a truck pull into a space across the street. “Oh,” he said again.
“Lon?”
“The U-Haul . . .”
“Yeah?” I looked again. Nothing weird about it. I couldn’t make out the person in the cab and doubted Lon could, either. The side of the truck was painted with bright graphics—a golfer in Augusta.
“Golf,” he said with a dazed look as the Walk sign flashed. “Christ, Cady. I think I know where Bishop’s Polaroid was taken.”
It took us half an hour to get to the Redwood Putt-Putt Golf Center, located just off an old two-lane highway that once carried a good bit of traffic south of La Sirena before a shiny new bypass funneled it to a larger interstate in the mid seventies. By 1980, all the businesses that had grown up around the old highway had gone under, including two gas stations, the Lucky Roadside Diner, Maria’s Fruit Barn, and poor old Redwood Putt-Putt.
Though the rain had passed, it left behind a threatening steel-gray sky. The industrial-strength heater in Lon’s SUV had mostly dried our rain-damp hair, but I still wasn’t all that keen on stomping around a muddy, abandoned miniature golf course.
Lon spent most of the ride over exchanging phone calls with Dare. His cell rang one more time as we pulled in. He answered and didn’t say much of anything during the brief call. And all he said to me after hanging up was, “Dare’s got people watching the temple.”
Good. Maybe Merrin would be stupid enough to come back. A girl could dream.
Lon pocketed his phone and parked behind a crumbling sky-blue wall that once hid the putt-putt course’s garbage bin from street view.
“Was he lying?” I said as we exited the SUV.
Lon hit the alarm button on his key chain. “Who?”
“Frater Merrin.” I trailed Lon around the backside of the building as he inspected a chain-link fence threaded with green plastic privacy slats that surrounded the property. “Was he lying when he was blabbering about everything being pointless because ‘he’ would just try ‘it’ again? Could you hear his emotions?”
Lon stopped at a locked double gate and bent to inspect it. “I read him. He wasn’t lying.”
“Then maybe he’s not the Snatcher. Maybe it’s someone else entirely.”
“He definitely made it sound like someone else is involved, but he’s not innocent, or he wouldn’t have run from us.”
True. “He said ‘thirty years are nothing to him.’ Thirty years isn’t nothing.”
Lon poked at the gate’s lock and verbalized my thoughts before I could. “Unless you’re an Æthyric being with a long life span.”
“Exactly. I smell a rat. Or a demon. No offense.”
“None taken.” Lon reached inside his jean jacket pockets and retrieved gloves. “You got yours?” He nodded at my hands.
No fingerprints, right. I dug out my gloves and continued thinking out loud. “Merrin’s a magician. Merrin summons demons. What are the odds that Merrin made some sort of deal with one thirty years ago?” Lon didn’t answer. He was busy inspecting the fence. “Are you listening to me?”
“Always.” The corners of his mouth briefly tilted up into a gentle smile before he shook the fence several times. “A deal with an Æthyric demon usually means that the magician gets something out of it.”
“So now we have two parties exchanging favors, and one of those favors involves kidnapping young teenagers. Was the bargain unfulfilled thirty years ago, and he’s back to collect on it? Did Merrin try to worm his way out of a contract? And which one of them wanted the children and why?”
“Excellent questions. The only thing we know is that Merrin was snatching some of the children and biting them—or at least Cindy Brolin, anyway. Stay here.” He trekked back to where we started, then returned with a dented metal garbage can and settled it upside down in the mud against the shorter fence near the gate. He placed a foot on top and tested his weight.
“O-o-oh, no,” I said. “We are not climbing this fence.”
“See where the top is bent? This isn’t uncharted territory. We’ll be fine.”
“Just because someone else has done it doesn’t mean we need to!”
“I’m the one with the shitty back—what are you worried about?” He picked up a damp cardboard box, shook it off, and broke it down.
“I . . .”
“Yes?” He cocked a brow in amusement then draped the flattened cardboard over the top of the fence.
“Can’t you just shoot the lock off or something?”
“That only works in the movies. I’ll go first.” He balan
ced on the creaky garbage can, stuck a toe in one of the links, and pulled himself up, hesitating before going over the top.
“Be careful,” I warned. “There are a few parts of you that are important to me. Please don’t crush them.”
“I’ll let you check for damage once I’m over.” And with a grunt he kicked a leg up and jumped over to the other side, making a sploshy noise when his feet hit the ground.
“You okay?” I called out.
“Right as rain. Come on, girl.”
Following his method, I climbed the fence. But when I threw my leg over, my body froze up, midstraddle.
“Other leg now,” Lon coaxed. “You can do it.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Well, then. Let me just find a long stick and prod you back over. You can wait in the car.”
I grumbled under my breath. Once I got the leg over, I clung to the top of the fence, trying to get my shoe into one of the links. Then I felt his hands on my hips.
“Drop down. I’ve got you.”
Not much of a choice there. My arms were starting to shake from holding myself up. I lowered myself down a few inches. He snaked a steely arm around my waist, so I let go and he caught me, setting me down on my feet.
“Would you like to check my parts now?” he asked, smugly holding his jacket open.
“Oww.” I bent over and rubbed the heel of my hand over my jean zipper, wincing. “Maybe you should check mine instead. I need some fence-jumping lessons.”
His lower lip pouted sarcastically. He slipped a gloved hand between my legs and pressed a finger into the bump in my jeans where all the seams converged. “Where? Here?”
“I’m not sure.” I fought back a breathless laugh. “Keep it up and I’ll tell you.”
He patted me appreciatively, then pulled my coat back into place. “We can continue that later. Let’s do this before it starts raining again.”
We trudged through a marshy maze of tangled undergrowth, fallen trees, and broken branches and emerged in a graveyard of dismantled course obstacles. An immobilized windmill sat on its side, tethered to the ground by vines. Just past it, a dinosaur was broken into ten sections of sun-faded, molded metal.