Crimson Night

by Marie Hall

  He took several deep breaths, swallowing hard. “He could have killed you,” he muttered again. Much as I appreciated the fact that Luc cared, there were bigger issues right now. I was fine. The kids were not.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Luc, how much did you tell the others?”

  His nostrils flared. “Nothing.”

  I crossed my legs, to keep from bouncing them nervously. “Who did you send after me? I vaguely recall hearing you say something about that last night.”

  His jaw popped as he flexed it back and forth. Finally he muttered, “Vyxyn, Bubba, and Kemen.”

  I licked my lips, I wasn’t gonna rag on him for putting my safety above Grace’s orders, but it could have seriously compromised us. “And you told them what?”

  He stood, pacing back and forth in front of me. “I told them what they needed to know. That you and I were testing the prototype and you got caught.”

  His anger prickled my skin. I needed to remain calm to keep him calm. “But, Luc, I doubt they bought that. There’s very little that can bring down a neph unawares.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped. “What else could I do? Your stupidity put me in a bind.”

  I could have reminded him that I’d asked him to tag along, but I doubted he’d appreciate the reminder. I took a calming breath, trying to understand his anger. He was right in some ways. I had been stupid. But there was no point in hashing out the obvious. It couldn’t be changed now, so why bother.

  “When did Vyxyn return last night?”

  He refused to look at me, or even answer. I gasped. “Where is she, Luc?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “She hasn’t come home yet.”

  “Okay, so where is she?” When he failed to answer I was overcome by a bad feeling. “Luc, you did see her before you sent her to me, right? They were here when you sent them to come find me? Please tell me you saw them.”

  Scrubbing his fist down his face, he muttered, “No. I was watching your monitor all night. By the time you flicked your wire back on and I saw the mass of blues and purples I called Kemen with orders to find and retrieve you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing at the beginnings of a headache. “You need to call Grace. Luc, it’s bad.”

  That seemed to take some of the steam out of him. “I heard Molech.”

  I nodded. “Yes, but that’s not the half of it.” I recounted what I could remember, the orgies, the blood baths, and the kids. My voice cracked when I mentioned Brianna. He gave me an odd look.

  “That’s what nearly got you killed? Rescuing her?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d ask such an insensitive question. As if because she was only human she wasn’t worth our time. I crossed my arms. “I’m not gonna argue with you about her. I’d do it again.”

  He glared at me.

  “What about the mic, what happened last night?”

  “What?” He frowned.

  “The IR detector. When I was stabbed, did you see the person that did it?”

  He sat and fiddled with his thumb ring. “No. My monitor went crazy right before it happened. Didn’t see a thing. It happened right after you left Grace’s house too.”

  I frowned. So either he’d had technical difficulties or it was all somehow connected. Luc had told me yesterday it was only a prototype, prone to glitches. But then again, it was spot on with other things. “Did it happen before the priest got the jump on me?”

  His nostrils flared. “No.”

  I bit my bottom lip. Was I being completely naïve to believe it wasn’t him? It wasn’t adding up, and yet, he had ditched me. I sighed.

  I’ve always considered myself a decent judge of character, comes with the territory. I didn’t trust Billy, not really, yet he’d been helpful. He seemed as surprised by what we’d found down there as I had. Either he was the world’s best actor, or he hadn’t done it.

  “What about all that purple? Could it have been another glitch?”

  He looked at me, running his fingers through his hair. “You mean in Grace’s house?”

  I nodded.

  He shrugged, throwing his hands up in disgust. “I wish I knew.”

  I jerked my chin in the direction of the door. “Then maybe it’s time you get Kemen. We need to find out if anything we learned last night was accurate or nothing but smoke and mirrors.”

  The second Luc called out to him, Kemen stuck his head in the door. Made me wonder how close he’d been. “What’s up?” he asked, large frame filling the narrow space of my living room.

  He came and sat down next to me. Luc handed him the black box. “Take a look at this,” he said, “last night we got some crazy readings and I’m afraid it might have gone haywire.”

  Kemen popped open the black box, pulled a small screwdriver from out his back pocket and started fiddling around with the wires and knobby things inside.

  “Well,” he eyed it hard one last time, before turning to look at us, “on the surface everything looks okay. There’s no burn or rust damage, pieces are fitted tight where they should be.” He shrugged. “Won’t know if there’s something really wrong with it ‘til I can get it back to my shop and test the wiring, but right now, I’d say it’s fine. Why?”

  I glanced at Luc’s sullen demeanor. I didn’t want to give too much away, but we needed information. I scratched the back of my head. “Yesterday when I was at Grace’s, Luc saw purple everywhere.”

  Kemen frowned. “That true? How’d it look?”

  Luc walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, pulled out the jug of OJ and poured himself a glass. “Anyone want?” he asked, we both shook our heads no. He took a long swig then finally said, “I don’t know, it was crazy. One second I see Pandora and two red marks, Grace and her assistant. The next this purple fog,” he shook his head, “for lack of a better word, rolled over the entire house, covering everything but Pandora herself.”

  “Hmm.” Kemen held up the box, narrowing his eyes into slits as if trying to somehow divine truth from it.

  “But that’s not all.” I licked my lips, palms starting to clam up. “Twice, someone got the drop on me...”

  Luc growled and poured himself another glass of juice.

  “...and there was nothing. Dead space. Black. How’s that possible? Shouldn’t paras transmit?”

  “Yes, they should. Unless...”

  Luc jogged back into the living room. “Unless what?”

  Kemen’s mouth turned down and he gave an embarrassed shrug. “You’re gonna think I’m full of it.”

  “Please—” I laid my hand on his arm. “Just tell us.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ah, okay. You know, Luc, I’ve been toying with the idea of I.R. for years, tweaking it until I developed the model I did today.”

  “Yes, right.” He nodded, sitting on the recliner with his elbows on his knees. “So what?”

  “I was out in the desert, testing out my ocular scopes and was having success, so I know it was working.”

  Luc waved him on impatiently.

  “I saw Gabriel.”

  I pinched my nose. “As in archangel, Gabriel? Wings, flaming sword type?”

  He nodded. “One in the same.”

  “Flippin' awesome, dude.” I chuckled. It was probably uber blasphemous of me, but I’d always had an extreme fascination for the angels. They’re not your fluffy, pansy caricatures you see on TV, I’m not sure how that lie ever got spread.

  Luc gave me a cross look which I ignored.

  “How did you get away from him?” I asked.

  Kemen grinned. “I high-tailed it out of there before he caught me, but not before I saw that he didn’t transmit on I.R.” He swung his hand. “Zip. Zilch. Black space. Like what you said.”

  I thought about Billy and started laughing, which was a bad idea because the pain returned with a vengeance. I wheezed, holding onto my midsection. Luc touched my shoulder. I waved him off. “I’m okay.” I waited for the worst of it to pass before I said,
“But seriously what caught me was no angel.”

  He shrugged. “Just telling you what I know. Anyway,” he stood, “if you guys don’t have any other questions I’m gonna go check this bad boy out, see if there’s anything wrong with it.”

  Luc slouched back in the seat, obviously unhappy.

  Kemen clapped the door and glanced over his shoulder. “We still got the night off right, boss? Because I’ll probably be tinkering with this thing well into the evening, see if I can’t work out some of the kinks.”

  I looked at Luc.

  He saluted him. “Yeah, scram. Let me know if you find out anything.”

  “What the hell, Luc?” I said once Kemen left. “Who’d you give the night off to?”

  “Everyone.” He gripped the armrests and shoved to his feet. “I closed down the carnival. We’re done here.”

  It’s not often that I’m shocked, but I was then. “Excuse me?”

  His stare penetrated straight through me, made me shiver with its intensity. “Never again will I go through what happened last night. I’m coming with you. One way or another, this ends tonight. I’m gonna call Grace.” And just as he was set to step out my trailer a thought came to me.

  “Luc?”

  Foot in mid-step, he turned to look at me. “What?”

  “Who exactly found me last night? I want to thank them.”

  His jaw clicked once to the side. “I don’t know. We didn’t know where you were, we searched for hours. By the time we got back here you were already in your bed.”

  With that, he left.

  Chapter 23

  Later that night Luc and I were walking in silence toward Grace’s brownstone. I toyed with the crumpled wad of paper in my trench coat pocket, trying to understand what was going on around me. The Gray Man had warned me once again of trusting no one and yet he hadn’t said who, or why. This was all beginning to smack of one big mind screw. Somebody was throwing me red herrings, question was, who?

  And as if it weren’t already bad enough, Grace had refused to budge on her insistence that I work alone. Stating that the I.R. had detected the presence of a neph, therefore it was more important than ever that we keep a lid on things.

  Problem was, and Luc had tried to explain it to her many times, the I.R. was far from trustworthy, Kemen hadn’t gotten back to us with any type of concrete data to state otherwise and none of it seemed to matter to her. So I’d come up with a backup solution.

  The second we got to within a hundred yards of Grace’s home I felt the eyes again.

  “Someone’s watching us,” Luc whispered, glancing over his shoulder.

  He was dressed entirely in black. As was I. Our long hair was pulled back and tucked under ball caps. We wore trench coats, not because it was cold, but to hide the swords we had strapped to our backs. Tonight we came to kill.

  “I know.” I rubbed the back of my neck, patting down the fine hairs. I jogged faster.

  “I’m going to check it out,” he said.

  For the briefest of moments my heart clenched. I wanted to tell him “no, don’t bother”, but it was time I let go. If it was Billy, then so be it. I clipped my head.

  “I’ll meet you back in fifteen,” he said, then left.

  For the first time I breathed a sigh of relief. I was no longer in this alone. Now if only I could get Grace to commit to my plan, we’d be skatin’ pretty.

  I got to her home and bounded up the stairs, knocking on the door the second my feet touched the landing.

  Mary answered the door a moment later, swinging it wide, her expression harried and her eyes wide. I frowned, she looked awful. Her skin was tinged gray, her hair dull and greasy, as if she hadn’t washed today. This time there was no animosity in her; she stepped aside and let me in, never looking directly at me.

  “Do you need to speak with, Grace?” she asked, voice low.

  I nodded, words on the tip of my tongue to ask her what was wrong but she was gone before I could give them voice.

  What was up with Mary? That hadn’t been like her at all. In fact, Mary had looked like a woman scared. Then I got my first good look around the place and saw half filled moving boxes everywhere. The angels on the mantel were gone, as were the drapes and books inside the bookshelves.

  Like a tornado had ripped through the house, it was in a minor state of disarray. What was going on here?

  Grace’s grunts were followed by the swish of skirts and thumping of her cane as she slowly walked downstairs. Her skin was pale. She too looked changed.

  “Grace, what's wrong?” I asked, by her side in seconds and helping her to sit.

  She accepted my help gratefully, leaning almost her entire weight on me. “After I talked with Luc,” she said, “I received word from the order that a major parasite disturbance has cropped up in Mexico. Bodies are being discovered at an alarming rate. Local police believe themselves on the hunt for a serial killer.”

  I cocked my head. “More vamps? Is this Molech ring spreading?”

  She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It doesn’t appear so. The bodies have been mangled, chunks taken from them. An arm here, a leg there, a nose, lips.”

  I winced. “Zombie?”

  The corners of her lip curled with disgust. “Aye. It would seem so.”

  “Okay wait,” I held up my hands, closing my eyes for a quick second, “does this have anything to do with the vamps?”

  “No.” She shook her head, her gray wispy curls danced around her face. “There’s no connection as of right now.”

  “Fine.” I swiped the air with my hand. “One problem at a time.”

  Grace gave me a worried smile. “Sadly, lass, I wish I could agree with ya. The order’s sending me to Acuna night after tomorrow. Mary has been packin’ all night.”

  I gave a short burst of stupefied laughter. “Do they not know we’re dealing with vamps running wild here? We can’t move on.”

  She shook her head. “You won’t. At least not until you’ve dealt with the vampire problem. You have things well under hand here. I’m no longer needed as liaison.”

  “Excuse me. Under control?” I threw my hands up in the air. “I. Do. Not...have things under control. Grace, we told you it’s a hive down there. I need back up.”

  She shook her head, mouth pinched with anger. “You cannot take any other neph with you, Pandora. It would compromise the mission. You said there was neph down there.”

  “No.” I shook my head adamantly. “I said we thought there might be. We’ve told you a million times the I.R. was running defective, to rely on any information we gathered off that is asinine.”

  She crossed her arms, bird chest beginning to rise and fall with the weight of her anger.

  “I’m taking Luc,” I admitted, notching my chin in defiance.

  Grace stared at me; the look was hard and cold.

  “Without help I’m doing little more than committing suicide. A lone fighter, even a neph is useless against the might of numbers. I need help. Send me something. Give me something. Send members of the order. Anybody you trust, I don’t care. But I am asking you as a friend, because I cannot do this alone.”

  And that was my last ace up the sleeve, plan B. Petition for help—not as the order’s brawn, but as one friend to another.

  “We have none to spare.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Had she heard nothing of Luc’s report? “Grace, I didn’t just stumble onto a cult of few, I found the whole lair. Even I can’t promise I’d make it out of there a second time.”

  She slammed her hand down on her armrest in agitation. “We have bodies floating in lakes, zombies run amok.” She groaned. “Dear child, I wish it were otherwise. I wish I had an army of angels at my disposal, but I canna spare even one. And even if I tried, the order would overrule me. I am not even captain of my division; my power within the circle only goes so far.” Her eyes pleaded with me to understand.

  I shook my head, lost for words. Betrayed, upset;
it didn’t even begin to describe how I felt. She reached for my hand, but I yanked it out of reach. “I should leave. I should leave you to clean up your own mess.”

  She took a deep breath. “To betray the order’s directives if to forfeit your life. Please, Pandora, don’t make me do that.”

  I snorted. “My life is forfeit either way.” The only reason I wouldn’t leave was those kids. Did no one care about them but me?

  What the order was doing made no sense and what Grace did, less so.

  “So what of my family?”

  She looked at the carpet, at the wall behind my head, at anything other than me. “We will give them a week to pack up.”

  I bit my bottom lip, hearing what she didn’t say. “And me?”

  Rheumy blue eyes held mine. “You stay until you are done,” she said, words ringing with finality. Irish brogue barely heard in the steadiness of that voice.

  I licked my teeth, strangely calm inside, though I knew it for the disbelief it was. Once I got over the shock, heaven help anybody who stepped in my path. “Then I guess I’d better finish this tonight.”

  The phone rang. She sighed, squeezed her eyes shut as it rang a second time, seeming to grow louder and more obnoxious with each subsequent ring.

  She stood to her feet, movements slow. “Please, Pandora, if it weren’t such...”

  “No. Don’t bother.” The phone seemed to scream this time. “You’d better answer that.” I turned and left, walked down the stairs, keeping my head low and hands shoved into my pocket.

  I’d been so sure and so wrong.

  Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned, expecting to find anything other than Mary running full speed at me, hugging the beige trench coat she wore tight to her slender frame. I jumped into a fighting stance and with the fluid movement of a trainer killer, grabbed one of many daggers strapped to my arm.

  She skidded to a halt, eyeing the weapon with large frightened eyes. She held up her hands. “Please, may I approach ye?”

  “What do you want?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “I shouldn’t even be out here. Father be merciful,” she mumbled.