“There is a child who is going to die if they get into that house,” I said.
Angkor paled. “You got the Weeder kids back?”
“One of them. Come on.” I risked a look, and then gathered myself into a crouch. “We’ll go around!”
There was another long, blood-curdling scream, closer this time. It echoed like a claxon off the walls. I broke cover, scrabbling on hands and feet from the stack of tires to the car, just before the entire contents of Noah’s Ark charged down the driveway. An elk, bugling the ear-splitting war cry I’d heard from the street. Horses, wolves, wolverines, with a full-grown black rhinoceros in the lead.
The rhino bellowed like a train as he charged the scuttling horde of phitophages with a double horn longer than my arm. Macrofauna streamed in behind him, snarling, barking and shrieking their rage and fury. Weasels tore into the nearest cockroach, shredding it with teeth and claws; the horse thundered past the car to smash into the phitophages, while a mixed pack of barking dogs, howling wolves, coyotes and hyenas dodged around the yard and set on the remaining gunmen. Talya’s lion brought up the rear, bleeding from half a dozen wounds, one cheek grotesquely swollen with venom. If she noticed, it didn’t show: the instinct to hunt Morphorde overrode everything else, and she fell on the crowd of phitophages with a deep-bellied roar, slapping them away from her chest as they tried to swarm her and the horse.
Some of the phages staggered around the ends of the car. I charged the nearest with a shout, hacking at it with the machete. The blade bounced off its surface like I’d hit a block of diamond, and I had to dive as it began to buck and kick, spinning crazily on its path towards me.
Angkor sprung past me as I tried to run backwards, burying the ax into the glittering body of the giant virus as it reared to stab down with its legs. He pulled it free, and the head and haft dripped honey as he ducked down underneath as it let out a shrill whistle and staggered to one side. I jammed the machete into the open, smoking wound. Chittering, it collapsed to the ground and shattered.
“Get away from it!” Angkor yelled. “Don’t get any of it in your eyes!”
I shielded my face as the crystalline pieces of the phitophage exploded. Without looking to see what was going on, I did the only sensible thing. I covered my eyes, nose and mouth, and ran like hell.
Chapter 36
The Weeders had the advantage now. Morphorde fell beneath hooves and talons. The gray and violet fog was lifting from the street and the parking lot, revealing a mess of blood and bodies among the melee. I didn’t realize I was staring until Angkor pulled me by the shirtsleeve, and I joined him to scramble around the edge of the fight, holding my breath as animals tore Phitophages and giant insects into pieces. We reached the entry to the clubhouse, where the bear was defending the entryway. It bellowed at us as we approached, but didn’t stop us as we ducked inside and into a makeshift infirmary. People moaned and writhed, or simply lay still. They were burned, disemboweled, unconscious. Normal HuMans, people who had been in the bar when it was hit by the first wave.
“I have to help them.” Angkor rubbed a hand back through his hair, damp and sticky with sweat and dirt. His hands were shaking from the cocktail of adrenaline and exertion. “But my Phi is REALLY low. I don’t think I can do much good.”
“We have more important things to do. If Vanya still has the children, he’s going to be moving them from their current location to somewhere else.” I sheathed the machete and started for the bedrooms. “We have to talk to Josie.”
“Hey. Before you go hassling Josie, you need to talk to me.”
Angkor and I turned as one to face Ayashe. She was still nude, tall and Amazonian. She wore her skin like a suit of armor, as if her lack of clothing meant nothing to her.
“Was that you who led the charge? The one with the horns?” I averted my eyes anyway.
“Might well have been,” she drawled. “Jenner SOS’d me when the first wave rolled in. A bunch of guys went in and shot up the club to start with, and then this. I tried to contact the Pathrunners and only found five or six of them still sane. They filled me in with the rest. I had to round up the combatants in the Fires.”
“Well, thank you,” I replied. “You probably saved our lives.”
“It’s my basic duty to kin and kine. Besides that, you saved Josie from the worst sort of people,” Ayashe said, rolling her shoulders back. “Jenner told me you fought DOGs for her, that you were badly injured fighting to protect Angkor from your old gang and from this ‘Deacon’. You got us that computer, and the wave of arrests starts tomorrow. I don’t like your methods, but I owe you an apology for doubting your motives.”
“Accepted,” I said. “I understand you occupy a difficult position.”
“Yeah.” Ayashe rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m gonna have a hell of a time explaining this one to my supervisor tomorrow, believe me. They’re going to arrest everyone here on principle, but I doubt it’ll go anywhere. The Vigiles just ain’t ready to handle a Morphorde attack of this size. Their first solution is just to shoot everything. That only makes it worse.”
“Look, I’m sorry to rush this, but if we don’t start moving, then Vanya will,” I said. “Lily and Dru were using the home as a cover for trade in drugs and children. I think that Vanya was providing transport and protection for the goods, as well as participating in the production of the pornography. They weren’t killed with glass: they ejected it from their bodies when they died. They had some kind of virus, some kind of disease that made them sick in the head. Mason has it. Duke got it when he was stabbed with a payload in a StainedGlass shard.”
“Yen,” Angkor said. “That’s what it’s called.”
Ayashe sighed, and turned her head to the side as she sucked a tooth in thought.
“Just before I left the Organizatsiya, my Avtoritet said something strange,” I continued. “He wanted me on a last minute cleanup job. One of the couriers was killed when he went to go and pick up a ‘regular delivery’. He said something about him being torn apart, something about symbols being left on the ground at the murder site. I think that Lily and Dru must have killed him, and then they were killed and the kids taken by force when whoever is controlling this realized that they were getting out of hand.”
“When was this?”
“Late August,” I replied.
“Spotted Elk initiated them as honorary Elders into the Four Fires around that time,” Ayashe said. She exhaled thinly through tight nostrils, frowning. “He has a bottle of some potion he’d gotten in a lifetime ages ago, and it’s supposed to clear out disease. You have to take it to be an elder in the Fires. He told me that’s how he can weed out anyone with ill intent.”
“Did you drink it?” I asked.
“Me? I couldn’t. I was already with the Bureau and they have a total ban on any Vidge consuming potions or unknown substances, magical or not.” She shook her head.
“Weird. The only thing I know of that’s anything like what you describe is called ‘whimsy wine’,” Angkor said. “It’s a really old draft that preserves Gift Horse blood in a suspension of elderflower cordial and honey. Literally lasts forever, if the Gift Horse who donated the blood is still alive.”
Ayashe blinked rapidly. “That sounds like it’d be sweet. The stuff he had wasn’t. I didn’t drink it, but I got a whiff of it once. It was like red wine, but really bitter. There were herbs in it.”
“Well… euun…” Angkor rubbed his chin, struggling to come up with words. “I don’t know many herbs that are capable of cleaning out a Yen infection. None of them are bitter. Morphorde are killed with honey, peppermint, sweet lemon oil, things like that. You know, I was supposed to tell people something about him or something he said. It about was a talk we had, but I can’t remember any of the last month.”
She guffawed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, seriously.” Angkor frowned. “The last thing I really remember before I was captured was… we were talking with about K
orea and agreeing that I needed to look into the Templum Voctus Sol angle...”
“Templum Voctus Sol? The TVS?” Well, that was one mystery explained. “What happened at the bunker?”
“I got hit from behind by a really powerful Phitometrist,” he replied. Then he glanced at Ayashe. “The Deacon. He’s a Temporalist, a mage who can affect time.”
“Can he see the future?” I asked.
“Probably.” Angkor nodded.
She nodded. “Do we have any idea who this guy is?”
Angkor shook his head. “I was locked into a magic-suppressing collar and blinded for however long I was out, but I know for sure that he’s male.”
“I think that this Yen disease must have originated in the Pathrunners,” I said. “Michael must have been the vector. He gave it to his flock, then Lily and Dru, then Mason. He must have killed John Spotted Elk when they went to Lily and Dru’s changing ground.”
Ayashe pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know. The ghoul squad went to the changing ground yesterday to pick him up. I have to go I.D his body tomorrow… that’s going to be rough. Why do you think they killed him?”
“No idea,” I replied. “Maybe they thought he was too close to learning about their goals. Maybe he said something on the way up.”
Ayashe suddenly seemed very tired. When Jenner walked up and offered her a coat – Vassily’s old trench – she took it and slung it on, belting it at the waist like a robe.
“You get a good look at him?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jenner replied. “They caught him mid-shift, too. He was all fucked up. Half man, half deer.”
Ayashe’s face fell. “Hang on. What?!”
“Yeah, I know.” Jenner rubbed her mouth, grimacing. “It was really-”
“No, Jenner. You don’t get it. It’s not John,” Ayashe said, nearly tripping over her words. “That’s Michael. Michael changes into a white-tail deer.”
Chapter 37
“Holy freaking shit,” Angkor said.
All of us were frozen as the terrible gravity of betrayal settled over us like a leaden shroud. Zane blanched, his warm brown skin turned the color of weak coffee. Jenner didn’t seem to absorb it for a long moment, before her eyes widened and she coughed, putting a hand over her mouth.
“Jesus fuck,” she said. “I… I just assumed…”
“We all did,” Zane said. “I figured, that… you know…”
“No. Michael’s the deer,” Ayashe said. “I’ve seen him shift. Us herbivores hang out together in the good grazing spots sometimes.”
“What is John’s Ka?” I asked.
“I…” Ayashe looked aside at Jenner and Zane, then back to Angkor and I. “I don’t know. He never shifted in front of me. He had his own changing ground… he went there alone.”
“Fucking hell.” Jenner muttered something in Vietnamese.
“The kids are probably at Vanya’s dock complex,” I said. “But they could be at John’s house, or his changing ground. Can Weeders use magic?”
“I’ve heard that some of the oldest Elders can use magic of a kind,” Jenner said. “But… Michael was the one who would have known. Fuck. Oh fuck, none of us even ever thought to ask him.”
“John could have been The Deacon all this time,” Angkor laced his fingers through his hair and pulled it with a sound of frustration. “He knew I was going to the Ross changing ground.”
I didn’t think John Spotted Elk was The Deacon. The dark priest had a sensual, smug gravity that John lacked. The mage was patrician, confident, one of those magi who considered their ability to be a manifestation of their own greatness, their own chosenness.
“He hadn’t known I was going to Moris Falkovich’s house, but if he knew The Deacon and he could use time magic, someone could have foreseen it. Or he could have just arranged it as soon as I began to make any inroads on the case,” I said. “Even though Falkovich was badly decayed, you can’t tell how old a body really is with DOG killings. The kids had been moved from that house recently, I know it… the smell was still in the air. There were jail cells. Plenty of them. They’ve been moved at least once since that time.”
Zane drew a deep, steadying breath. “But where?”
“Vanya has the facilities to imprison multiple people,” I replied. “There is a company called AEROMOR that uses Docks Four and Five at the Red Hook shipyard. He owns all the warehouses and runs the union.”
“They could have just as easily been taken to John’s house,” Ayashe said, drawing herself tall. “He has a huge property up in Ossining. The Vigiles doesn’t have the resources to raid more than one site.”
“Then we do it.” Jenner lifted her chin, hands planted on her narrow hips. “Vigiles go to one site, we go and do the other.”
Ayashe ground her teeth until I thought her face would crack.
“Regular police can’t take on Morphorde,” Angkor said. “You know they can’t. They’d die by the score, Ayashe. All they have is munitions.”
“It’s true. Ain’t no one teaching the NYPD how to use a sword these days.” Ayashe regarded us all with a grim eye, hard and determined. “Jenner, if you lead a team to John’s, I’ll call in the cavalry and go down to Red Hook. It’s likely to be messier there. Besides that, we’ve got enough on that computer to make arrests, especially if Rex willing to testify in exchange for protection.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I am willing to provide an anonymous statement and help you match tattoos. You should be careful at Red Hook... Vanya has a lot of extremely dangerous men working for him. Be prepared for anything.”
“The more of them I can throw in the wagon, the happier I’ll be.” Ayashe jerked her chin forward and tossed her head. “You watch yourselves. I don’t think we ever knew the real John Spotted Elk, and we have exactly no idea what he’s capable of.”
* * *
Zane, Jenner and Talya went to confer with the rest of the Tigers. Exhausted, battle-weary, and starved from rapid-fire shapeshifting, they ordered more pizza than I’d ever seen in my life and gorged on at least four thousand calories apiece. It ended up with everyone clustered around the pool table with a map and a route drawn out on copy paper, laid out in front of us like a table-top roleplaying game. The property was outside the New York City limit, occupying a huge plot of forest land at the end of a cul-de-sac.
“We’ve got twenty-three miles between the site and the Tappan-Zee Bridge,” Jenner said. “We’re going to face one of three possible scenarios. Number one, they’re still there and we have to lay into the house. Number two, we get there in time to find them driving off. Number three, they’ve already left and we have to report to Ayashe so that the highway patrol can get on it. Assuming one or two, if they get the kids to the tollgates in cars or trucks we’re going to find it hard to keep on chasing them. There are cops all up that stretch of highway, and we’ll get pulled up if they’re not in the loop.”
“We should send an advance car.” I pointed at the map. The streets formed a rough circle. “There’s two possible exits to Saw Mill River Road. If we station parties at each exit, we can close on them in the event of a flush.”
“We’ve got shortwave radios on the bikes and in the Lincoln,” Zane said. “Suits me.”
Jenner nodded, leaning on her hands. “Right. Call an Alpha if you see them loading, Bravo if they’re taking off, Charlie if you can’t see any activity. Echo for emergency.”
“If I’m in the advance car, I can probably feel out for signs of life in the house without needing to get too close,” Angkor said, pizza still in hand.
“I’m going,” I said. “I’d rather be in a car.”
“And me,” Talya added.
“Y’git a taste for blood now, kitten?” Big Ron grinned at her with a mouth full of gray teeth. She replied by thumbing her forehead at him.
“I’ll drive.” Zane folded his arms across his chest. “If I could drive a Jeep in Iraq without getting anyone killed, I can do it here.”
&
nbsp; “Good,” Jenner said. “Now, you lot listen up. These fuckers ruined my old man, killed Duke, killed a bunch of children and made funny-films with the rest. You wanna kill ‘em? Then kill ‘em. Don’t play around. If any of us end up in the can for this, we’ll be the fucking heroes of the joint once the people inside know what we’re in for. The Big Cat Crew takes on the critters, and the rest of you take on the HuMans. We’re going full Mad Max on anyone we find, you hear?”
The room erupted with noise loud enough to make me wince, and I took that as my cue to leave. Talya and Zane remained, while Angkor and I went to the bunkroom.
Josie was no longer there, spirited away by Ayashe now that the coast was clear. We lay out tools and sundry, and took opposite ends of the same lower bunk to clean our weapons in the humid stillness of the room. Angkor had borrowed jeans and a leather jacket from Jenner, and he was disassembling, cleaning and loading a rifle with the kind of expertise that spoke of protracted military training. The bedroom still smelled faintly of corruption, the rotten flesh smell I’d dragged in here from Moris’s house. While noticeable, Angkor’s floral scent was not as intense as it had been when we’d first found him. He’d been burning the magical wick at both ends since he woke up.
Watching him, I tried to imagine leaving New York and going to Berlin, hanging up the knives and the pistols, living a life without violence. It was easy enough to visualize – the trappings, at least. The lean European buildings, the university office. Myself, ascetic and professional in a turtleneck and suit jacket. A doctor, preparing lessons, writing thesis after thesis, or a surgeon. But I couldn’t imagine it as a reality. Vassily and me had been bred to this life. He and I were picked and reared as carefully as dogs for the blind.
I could take my degree to Germany, turn it into a Masters, then a PhD. And then what? Pretend I'd never killed anyone as I listened to men complain about their overbearing father or bossy wife? Pretend to empathize with women's relationship problems? Sure thing: me, the angry virgin from America who felt crippling pain with every unintended erection. What could I advise them? To find closure by swinging a sledgehammer into the back of their abusive father's head?
Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2) Page 33