by DD Barant
“And then?”
“Then I did some traveling. Fought in a few wars. Came back to visit, now and again. Grew up a lot. She didn’t.”
I don’t say anything, because I don’t have to. I get it. Whatever Amy did with her life, whatever she became, part of her would always be a seventeen-year-old girl. An unhappy seventeen-year-old girl.
“I just thought it was a shame, you know?” Charlie says quietly. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does. But I’ll never know—and neither will she.”
“You still see her?”
He shakes his head. “Not so much. Turns out we don’t have a lot in common, after all.…”
TWELVE
“How are we fixed for weapons?” Charlie asks. He’s on his feet, flexing his arms, studying them as critically as a swordsman would study a blade.
“Shotgun with loads that may or may not be effective. Some homemade stakes. Not much else.”
He nods. “This Allen guy—he work somewhere?”
“Owns a bar in town.”
“Good. He’ll have something stashed there. Bar owners always do.”
I glance over at the TV. The DVD player has turned itself off, and all I see is a blue screen. I try to get Azura again, but she isn’t taking my calls—I can’t get her face to come up on the scene menu. Guess she’s busy on her end, too. “Wait a minute, Charlie. Aren’t you in Allen’s mind? Can’t you just remember whether or not he’s got weapons at the bar?”
Charlie shakes his head. “No can do, toots. I’m me, and he’s him, and it don’t look like either of us can peek through the other guy’s window. Which is fine by me.”
I sigh. So now that I’ve got my partner back, it turns out he’s even more clueless about this place than I am, is unarmed, and can no longer bench-press a truck.
Damn, I’m glad to see him.
What Charlie does know, however, is a bunch of the stuff that’s still locked up inside my head. “Okay, I’m assuming Azura briefed you. As far as allies go, Gretch isn’t available. Cassius—called Cassiar here—is. Who else should we be looking for?”
“You got a guy named Eisfanger?”
That surprises me. “Yeah, kind of a computer geek. Albino, stays inside and online most of the time. I know him?”
“You’re colleagues. He’s a forensics shaman—could come in handy.”
“Not here. Different reality, different rules. And I don’t think he’d be much good in a fight.”
“Tanaka?”
“Ex-boyfriend. Hates my guts.”
“Nice to see you haven’t lost your touch.”
I glare at him. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Guess you’ll have to take my word for it, then.”
“Terrific.”
We decide our best move is stay together, keep moving, and hit the bar for possible supplies. “If nothing else, we should be able to find something flammable,” Charlie says as we head for the car. “Fire work against supernaturals here?”
“Not sure. Pires tend to burst into flames when they die, so probably.”
“Probably,” Charlie growls as he gets into the driver’s seat. “That ain’t one of my favorite words.”
“Neither is ain’t. Or it wasn’t before. You used to be quite the philosopher, from what I saw.”
“People change,” he says as he starts the car. “Some of us, anyway.”
I try to get Cassiar on my cell phone as we drive. It goes right to voice mail. “We need to meet,” I tell him. “Call me back ASAP.”
“He remember who he is?”
“No. But he’s on our side, anyway. I think.”
We pull up at the bar. “The Quarry, huh?” Charlie says, looking up at the neon sign. “I like it.”
“Gee, what a surprise.”
When we walk through the doors, we get another one: The place is full of faces I don’t recognize. Big, rough-looking guys in denim and plaid, wearing muddy, steel-toed work boots. One or two are wearing reflective orange vests, and a few have hard hats on the table beside their mugs of beer.
“Uh-oh,” I say.
“Situation?” Charlie asks.
“Not yet.…”
We walk over to the bar. Not everyone in the place is watching us, but more than one pair of eyes track our path. Charlie doesn’t hesitate, just goes right around the bar and into the back. I follow. The relief bartender, Bob, is too busy to even notice us.
We do a quick search of the office. Sure enough, I find a loaded Glock in a desk drawer. “Huh,” I say. “Never figured you for a Glock kind of guy.”
“More like a rock kind of guy?”
“Watch it. You’re stepping on my material.”
There’s a crash out front. Loud, angry voices. I look at Charlie and he looks at me. “There a back door out of this place?” he asks.
“Yeah, but Bob’s out there. Bob’s a decent guy. Not really fair to him—or the guy whose body you’re wearing—to let the bar get wrecked.”
Charlie shrugs. “Hey, for all we know Bob’s really a mafia thrope who wants to eat your liver. But you’re right: it’d be a shame to ruin a good bar.”
I shove the gun in my belt and we go out front. There’s an angry confrontation going on between a group of road workers and a knot of locals: I spot Don Prince, Vince Shelly, Ken Tanaka, and Brad Varney. They don’t normally hang around together, but it seems like they’ve found some kind of common ground—ground that seems to be composed of the mud the road workers tracked in. There are a lot more road crew members than townies, but that doesn’t seem to bother the townies. In fact, they seem almost eager to get the snot kicked out of them.
And then I feel it. In the air, all around me. More than just testosterone or adrenaline. Sorcery. I don’t know how I can tell; I just can. And when I glance at Charlie, I can see that he feels it, too.
“Something’s gonna blow,” Charlie mutters.
Don Prince, the dapper, silver-haired Italian owner of the hardware store, is getting into a road worker’s face. “You think can just walk in here and talk to one of us like that? You have no idea who you’re insulting!”
The road worker—not Joe, but someone who could be his brother—stares down at Prince with a sneer on his lips. It might be a trick of the light, but his eyes seem to have a weird blue glow to them. “I know. I just don’t care.”
Brad Varney, the transvestite mailman, looks about ready to throw someone through a window. “Take it back,” he growls. Literally growls; his voice has dropped at least two octaves and acquired a rumble.
“It’s coming apart,” I murmur to Charlie. “The spell.” It’s just intuition, but I know I’m right; this whole place is aimed at my head, after all. If it goes off the rails, I’m going to be the first one to notice.
The road workers’ eyes aren’t the only ones starting to look strange. There’s a yellow tinge to Don Prince’s, and his fingers are curled into claws rather than fists. Varney, always scrupulously clean-shaven, is looking a good twelve hours past a five o’clock shadow. Both Tanaka and Vince Shelly have their upper lips bared in all-too-canine snarls.
“This place won’t last,” the road worker says. “Not once the new highway goes through. It, and all of you, are just gonna fade away and be forgotten—”
That’s when Tanaka cold-cocks the guy.
It’s an impressive punch. By that, I mean it lifts the guy right off his feet. And through the air. And into the wall ten feet away. I remember what Mayor Leo’s punch did to that dumpster, and by this point I’m pretty sure I know where he got his strength from.
The other road workers don’t seem impressed. They’re all grinning, and their mouths don’t look quite right; a little too wide, a few too many tiny, sharp teeth. Their eyes are giving off that blue glow, too.
And then the fight kicks off with a roar.
Bodies fly through the air. Furniture smashes and glass shatters. Howls of rage and angry cursing compete for volume. The townies are badly outnumbered,
but for four middle-aged guys they’re doing all right. Bob hunkers down behind the bar, and I can’t say I blame him.
Maybe Charlie and I should sit this one out. That’d be the smart thing to do. Let the two sides pummel each other for a while, then wade in and break things up. Maybe learn something from watching, or from whichever side we decide to help.
There are three things wrong with that plan. First, if this goes on for any length of time there won’t be a bar left; second, it’s the smart thing to do. My reputation would suffer.
Third, Tanaka’s in the middle of it.
I shouldn’t care. He treated me badly. He’s the sort of ex who leaves you with a general mistrust of the opposite gender, and I don’t owe him a damn thing.
Except I do.
I have to. Ahaseurus wouldn’t have stuck him in here, wouldn’t have made him part of the grand design, unless he meant something to me. Something that the wizard could twist and distort, turn into something ugly. Which means, by simple and brutal logic, that the jerk I used to date and now hate is more than likely a decent, honorable guy who I might have even been close to.
“Let’s get in there and help,” I snap.
“Sure. Which side?”
I demonstrate, vaulting over the bar and kicking a road worker in the belly. He doubles over, and I straighten him up with a knee to the face.
“Oh,” Charlie says, and then he’s right there beside me.
I could use the gun, I guess. Fire a few rounds into the ceiling, shout for everyone to stop. But I don’t think that would work—both sides are in the grip of something elemental, the ferocity of a barroom brawl amplified by out of control magic. I can feel it myself: I don’t want to shoot anyone, I want to hit them. Hard. Many, many times.
So that’s what we go with.
The road crew obviously aren’t human, but they’re not pires or thropes, either. Some kind of demon is my guess, something Ahaseurus was using as muscle. He’s employed both lems and zombies in the past, so demons shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
But they don’t belong here, in the town itself. I know it, and so do the four neo-thropes fighting alongside me. These mooks are just here to have a little fun while the boss isn’t looking.
I smash a chair over one guy’s head. It leaves me holding two chair legs, one in each hand, which suits me just fine. I’m trained to fight with batons. I proceed to demonstrate on anyone unlucky enough to be within six feet of me.
None of the townies have gone thrope. That means none of them have experienced their first full moon yet, and thus none of them are the alpha. At least I’ve figured that much out.
And then one of the demons decides to kick it up a notch. He’s got one of those SLOW signs with him, the kind you usually see in the hands of a blonde in sunglasses and a hard hat—I read somewhere people are more likely to respond to a blonde directing traffic—and he starts swinging it like a club. Not much of a weapon, really, just a lightweight piece of sheet metal on a stick. He smacks Tanaka in the head with it, and about all that accomplishes is getting his attention.
The demon’s grin gets wider. He turns the sign edgewise for the backswing, and aims a few inches lower. The strike is almost too fast to see.
There aren’t many sure ways to kill a thrope or a pire, but decapitation is one of them.
In the frozen instant before his body slumps to the ground beside his head, I remember who Tanaka really was and what he meant to me. It’s no coincidence—it’s one of the spells woven into the fabric of this place, doing what it was designed to do. Make me hurt.
Kamakura Tanaka. Proud member of the last samurai clan in the world. Security liaison between the NSA and the Nipponese Shinto Investigative Branch, until he was forced to choose between his country and me. My first supernatural lover. An honorable man who betrayed his own beliefs, and never forgave himself.
I’m supposed to blame myself. And maybe, if the spell were working properly, I would—but it’s not, and I don’t. I know that’s not really Tanaka, just someone with a head full of implanted memories. Probably not even real memories, either; the fact that Tanaka’s already dead is a little detail I doubt I’m supposed to recall. Or maybe I’m supposed to believe this is some sort of second chance, that he’s not really dead—but whoops, now he is.
The body hits the floor.
You’d think that somebody getting their head chopped off in the middle of a bar fight might have enough shock value to bring the whole thing to a halt, but no such luck. People continue to curse, punch, kick, and throw things. I’ve laid out more than a few demonic road workers, and Charlie seems to be doing fine with just his fists. And feet. And knees. And elbows. And anything else that comes to hand.
What does stop the melee is the roar of a gun.
Everybody freezes and looks toward the door. Sheriff Stoker and Deputy Silver stand there, Stoker with a double-gauge to his shoulder and Silver with a drawn pistol.
“That’s enough,” Stoker growls. “This is my town. Any of you think you’re tough enough to take a load of buckshot to the chest?”
Apparently these demons aren’t as invulnerable to harm as some supernaturals, because they all lower their fists or release whomever they’re holding. The townies still look mad enough to eat razors and crap barbed wire, but they back off, too.
“They killed Tanaka!” the mayor says.
“Yeah?” Stoker replies. “Where’s the body?”
I look down at the floor. Sure enough, both the head and the rest of the corpse is gone. There isn’t even any blood.
Mayor Leo glowers at him, but doesn’t reply.
“R and R is over,” Stoker says, addressing the road workers. “I think you all have a better place to be, don’t you?”
One of them steps forward with a slight smile on his face. “Sure. Okay. Thanks for the dance.”
Without a word or a grumble, they grab their hard hats and file out the door in a straight line. Their faces all wear that identical slight smile, which is about as eerie as it sounds.
“The march of the wooden soldiers,” Charlie murmurs behind me.
“Something tells me these guys aren’t nearly as flammable, though,” I murmur back.
Mayor Leo, realizing how absurd his claim is with no proof to back it up, strides up to Stoker and glares at him. “You’re just going to let them go?”
“I’ve got more important things on my plate than bar fights and wild accusations. They’ll go back where they belong, and so will you. Understand?”
Something passes between them. “Yes,” Leo snarls. “And I hope you do, too.”
He stomps out, Varney and Prince behind him.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here, Valchek?” Stoker says.
“Your surprise gland isn’t responding to the medication?”
He sighs. “You going to tell me you saw a murder, too?”
“Not me. I was busy dancing.”
“Uh-huh. Charlie, you might want to think about finding a different dance partner.”
“I like this one just fine, thanks,” Charlie says flatly.
“Well, I’m getting tired of the whole do-si-do,” Stoker says. “Because every time I hear the music start up, guess who’s first out on the floor. One Miss Jace Valchek.”
“That’s because it’s all about me, Sheriff. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” Still charged up with adrenaline, I spit the words at him—then realize I’ve gone too far. He stares at me with a new expression on his face as a realization of his own hits him. If, as Cassiar claims, Stoker’s the new leader of the cult, then he knows exactly why I’m at the center of all his problems. But until this minute, he didn’t know I know, too. Good job, Jace.
“What I’ve figured out,” Stoker says, “is that maybe you need to stop roaming all over town looking for trouble.”
“I’ve looked into having it delivered, but I can’t find a rate I like—”
“Maybe a nice cell would firm up the decision-
making process.”
“I doubt that,” I say carefully. “Trouble stalks me like an old boyfriend with OCD issues and a pair of night-vision goggles. You can lock me up, sure—but that just means trouble will have to go through you to get to me. Right?”
He thinks about it. I don’t know how informed he is as to Ahaseurus’s plans, but he has to know I’m basically cursed. Cursed in such a way that the collateral damage surrounding my immediate presence can get pretty lethal. Presumably he thinks he’s protected against such things—the whole purpose of the cult is supposedly to summon the Gallowsman so that he and his friends are happy and safe while others suffer—but by now he knows something’s gone terribly wrong.
“Let’s take a little ride down to the station and discuss it,” he says finally.
“Is she under arrest?” Charlie asks. His voice is very calm, which sets off all sorts of alarms in my head.
“Charlie, relax,” I say. “Sure, Sheriff. Can we turn on the lights and siren, too? I love that.”
Stoker lowers his gun. “We’ll see.”
* * *
I can see Charlie’s vehicle through the back window of the police car, following us. I hope he’s not planning anything stupid; he seems to have taken an instant and extreme dislike to the sheriff. That’s not a good sign, but I don’t have the chance to question him about it.
Sheriff Stoker doesn’t have the chance to question me, either. We’re only halfway to the station house when his radio crackles and the dispatcher tells him he’s needed at the bed and breakfast. Immediately.
“What’s going on?” I ask from the back seat.
“Don’t know yet,” he says tersely. “But at least for once you’re not involved.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I think I know why Cassiar hasn’t been answering my calls.
We pull up outside the B & B. Stoker gets out but leaves me locked in the back. Deputy Silver parks behind us, and Charlie behind him. Silver follows Stoker into the house, and Charlie strolls up to the sheriff’s vehicle.
“What’s happening?” Charlie asks.
“Let me out and I’ll tell you.” He opens my door. “Stoker got a radio call to come here. That’s all I know.”