“And if it didn’t sap all my energy,” he added.
Normals started walking down the street again once the zone was lifted. They were oblivious to what had just taken place here. To them, there were just a couple of people standing in the courtyard next to the GNC.
“There’s another rune over there,” I said, pointing to a board that was propped against the side wall near the back of the courtyard. “Let’s bring it with us this time.”
Just as we started toward it, Haley reappeared, smiled, launched two Empirics at us, and then disappeared again.
Reap immediately dived on his.
He looked up at me, back at the normals who were walking past, back at me again, and then down at the other Empiric.
“Aw, fuck,” I said as I jumped on top of the damn thing.
Chapter 15
“What the hell happened to you guys?” asked Pecker as he studied our decimated jackets and ripped shirts. “Not that I mind the look on you, Piper.”
“What?” I replied sourly.
“Hey, just because I’m a goblin doesn’t mean I’m against playing a game of hide-the-little-goblin with a human.”
“That’s probably the grossest thing I’ve ever heard,” I revealed, “and I’ve heard some pretty gross shit.”
He looked injured by my comment.
Too bad.
This was the workplace and statements like his were not appropriate here. If I played nice about it, I’d end up getting dick pics from him within a week. Goblin dick-pics may press the right buttons for some people, but I wasn’t one of them. Not that I’d ever seen a goblin dick before. For all I knew, they were the same as…
I shook myself.
Why was I thinking about this at all?
“Look,” I said, trying to keep from wincing, “I snagged this rune from where we were just battling.”
He took it from me.
“What kind is it?”
“Shield,” I answered. “Just like the last one, but this is only meant for a single person.”
He nodded and gave it the once-over.
“Can you actually see it?” I asked with surprise.
“Not at all,” he answered, turning the board around and studying it. “I’m just not sure if it will fit in the machine.” He glanced up at me. “Is the rune covering the entire board or can we cut it down farther?”
“Covers the entire thing.”
“Crud,” he said with a grunt. “Okay, we’ll give it a shot anyway.”
He kicked boxes and threw papers out of the way as he headed to another machine.
It was a blocky box that looked kind of like a microwave oven, but bigger. There were knobs and buttons that sat above a little glass window. Pecker opened it and worked to shove the rune board inside. It looked like it wasn’t going to make it, but with a little finagling he was finally able to get it set.
Once in place, he closed up the machine and pressed a button.
Then he walked back to us.
“It’ll take a couple of hours,” he announced. “Hopefully I’ll have something for you in the morning.”
“Why so long?”
“There’s a lot to these things, Piper,” he replied while crossing his arms. “It has to trace the rune perfectly, read in the color nuances and shading, and then do a rune-by-rune comparison with every item in our database. Once it collects runes that are close, it repeats the process against those to compare magical signatures.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, wiping his hands together, “I’ll hit you up as soon as I know something.”
So much for walking in and getting a quick answer.
I supposed it was only fair that his system be given time to run through its checks in order to get the most accurate reading, but the longer this rune maker was out there, the more chances Gallien and his crew had to cause havoc in New Orleans.
“Hey, Pecker,” Reaper said after a moment, “any chance you can make some tweaks to this energy pulse thing you gave me?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Reaper replied quickly, “it’s just that—”
“It knocked the shit out of everyone in the area,” I interrupted, “including me, and it drained Reap of almost all his energy.”
“Huh.” Pecker started up his typing again. “Did you focus it?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Oh, well, that’d do it…wait.”
He was scanning over a bunch of gibberish on his screen. I knew it was computer code of some sort, but I couldn’t understand a lick of it. Based on the fact that Reaper’s face was scrunched up so tight that he looked like he’d had one too many tacos, I assumed he couldn’t understand it either.
“Damn,” said the little goblin. “I didn’t integrate this properly. One sec.”
His fingers took off again and so did the little lines on Reaper’s arm. This time I noticed my new partner was not quite enjoying the changes being made. My guess was that this had to do with the lines being undrawn and then redrawn. I’d never seen lines get taken off a tattoo before.
“Okay, that should do it.” Pecker walked over and pointed at the new lines. “These two will allow you to control the field of fire.” He moved his finger to another tendril. “That one is for setting the power, and that one fires it.”
“Got it,” said Reaper.
“Sorry about the mixup,” Pecker said with a slight bow. “I also fixed the wiring matrix so you don’t get such a power drain. It’ll still eat your energy—that can’t be helped. But hopefully it won’t be nearly as bad.”
Reaper nodded. “Thanks, Pecker. You’re the best.”
“I do what I can,” the goblin replied with a wave of his hand.
“Right,” I said before this bout of man-love could continue. “We’ve got work to do. Let me know when you get a bead on the mage who made that rune, Pecker.”
“You got it, hot stuff.”
I turned back to him with menace in my eyes. He put up his hands in surrender.
“Sorry! Sheesh!”
Chapter 16
Dr. Hale had a body on the table as we walked in. It was one of the ravens, though he appeared to be in transition back to normal.
I’d called Brazen and Kix down to join us so they could be part of the process. They’d been to Hale’s office plenty of times over the years, no doubt, but they’d never seen anything like this. If they were going to get the full experience of being a Retriever, they needed to be here.
“I have some info, Doc,” I said as she was hovering over the body. “These guys aren’t fully turned vampires.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Right, but they are built for attacking only.”
She paused what she was doing and looked at me. “Yes, I know.”
“Oh.”
“When this last batch came in, I pulled up your records to see who it was you were chasing,” she explained. “Then I dug into his past and found out about the rituals. From there, I scoured the records of the previous two doctors who were around when Gallien Cross was doing his deeds.”
That put a nail in that discussion. Frankly, she probably knew more about it than I did at this point.
“Could you maybe let us in on things?” asked Brazen.
I pointed at the body. “That’s a raven—”
“A raven?” asked Dr. Hale. “I didn’t see anything about that in the records.”
“That’s just what Piper has chosen to call these creatures, Doctor,” Reaper stated. “I don’t quite understand it either.”
“Oh, come on,” I badgered him. “It’s really not that hard. Have you ever seen a raven?”
“The bird?” asked Kix.
“No,” I snarked, “the football team. Yes, I’m talking about the bird.”
All of them nodded.
“Well, look at that guy’s face.”
They did, and that should have been all it took to
prove my point. Unfortunately, the dude was in the midst of changing back.
“Okay, not him,” I said with a shrug, “but what he looked like before the doc got to work on him.”
“We’ve never seen one before this,” noted Brazen.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said with finality. “The fact is that a raven has dark eyes and so do these things.”
Brazen nodded. “Actually, that makes sense to me.”
“Me, too,” agreed Kix.
Great, so the two guys who had been annoying me since the day I set foot in the Netherworld PPD were now the only ones on my side. My “partner”—and yes, I use that term loosely because the jury was still out on whether or not he’d keep that title—was either being dull or obstinate. I had a feeling it was a little of both.
“Anyway,” I continued my explanation of what these things were, “when Gallien Cross or one of his vampires feeds on a normal, they mix magic with the bite. This transforms the normal into kind of a vampire zombie.”
“Why not just call them that?” asked Reaper. “Makes more sense.”
“No,” I sneered before turning back to Brazen and Kix. “Now, when they’re transformed they end up with fangs, eyes that are completely black, and razor-sharp nails. They attack super fast and those nails can seriously ruin your day, but they’re really weak.”
While I was speaking, Dr. Hale brought up a visual on her data pad. It showed all three of the specimens that had come in from behind the warehouse and also the original woman that Reaper had sent down before.
“Creepy,” Kix said with a grimace.
Brazen didn’t seem to be as affected by what he saw. This didn’t really surprise me seeing that he was more rough than his partner. If nothing else, that was one thing Brazen and I had in common.
“The point is that they’re pretty easy to take out, but if you underestimate them you’ll be missing your throat before you ever get the chance.”
Everyone in the room nodded at that.
At least we could all agree on one thing.
“What I want to know, Doc, is if there’s anything we can do to change them back before killing them?”
“I’m working on that, Piper,” she replied. “One of the doctors back in the day created an antidote, which is what I gave to this guy. It’s working relatively quickly from what I can tell, but I don’t know if it was ever fully tested. There’s not much in the files on it, unfortunately.” She shrugged. “My guess is that if I’d used it on the original woman you’d sent down it would have changed her back very quickly. This guy was fully turned. She wasn’t.”
“Well,” I sighed, “if you get it sorted out, and we can get it into bullet mode, let me know. It’d be nice to not have to kill hundreds of these things.”
“Agreed,” said Reaper.
Kix’s phone buzzed a moment later and he snagged it and started tapping away.
“It looks like Jax is on the move,” he announced, showing his phone around. “I set it up to send me info on whenever he moves in the hopes that we’d be able to pinpoint Gallien somehow.”
Impressive. I may have even raised an eyebrow and given him an appraising look. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of that because my brain was still wrestling with the possibility that these two may not be the complete boobs I’d assumed they were.
“Nice,” was all I could manage. “Let’s get after him.”
We started out of the room after giving Hale our thanks.
I set about checking my Death Nail supply as we rode the elevator up to the main level.
“What do you want us to do while you’re gone?” asked Brazen.
Just as I was about to give them another round of tasks to do here, something told me it was time to get them neck-deep in trouble. Eventually they’d have to deal with it anyway, so it may as well be now. Besides, damn it, they were doing a decent job of things.
Too bad they were dressed more like cops than Retrievers. They’d stick out like a sore thumb topside. Of course, that could prove to be a good thing.
“Grab your weapons,” I told them. “You’re coming with us.”
Chapter 17
Jax walked into a null-zone shop about a mile off Canal Street. I’d had Brazen and Kix hang back from us to casually scan the area. Their goal was to have eyes on those who may have eyes on us.
The store was your standard pawn shop, except that it carried items for supers. Most of the items looked like your standard items that any pawn shop would trade in, but there were also a few items that sat outside the norm. Plasma products, for example. All legal, I assumed, since these places were constantly checked on by the local PPD.
We walked inside and started browsing.
“Do you see Jax?” I asked through the connector.
“No.”
“Can you track him?”
“There’s something…” He shook his head a few times. “I can’t get a lock on him. It’s very dim.”
That got me to do a more active search. The place wasn’t huge, but it was big enough that Jax could have been stuck between a couple of aisles. This was especially true because of his demure size.
Nothing.
Obviously something was odd about that, but there was more to this place that seemed off.
“This place feels strange to me, Reap.”
“I feel it, too.”
“I usually get the tingles in null zones, but this is different. There’s more to this place than meets the eye.”
His high beams were on again. “Agreed.”
“Eyes,” I said as I brushed past him and headed for the front counter.
The guy standing there was a djinn, which kind of seemed fitting for this area. He was covered from head to toe in tats. My favorites were the horns he had going up over each of his ears. They were shaded perfectly.
“I like the horns,” I commented.
“Thanks,” came the gruff reply. “What do you want?”
You would think a guy like this would relish being complimented. I’m sure he caught a lot of shit from people when he walked around. Granted, most djinn kept their ink hidden from normals, but some didn’t bother. There was no rule against showing your tattoos either. The feeling was that a lot of normals got a bunch of ink done so djinn would easily blend in, as long as they didn’t start causing dreams and nightmares, anyway.
“First off,” I said, pointing at Reaper, “do you guys have sunglasses here?”
“Whoa,” the djinn said with an impressed nod. “Those are some cool mods, pal. How’d you get that done?”
Reaper frowned.
“He’s talking about your glowing eyes, Reap.”
“Oh, I see,” Reaper said and then turned back to the man. “My eyes were part of my build. I’m a reaper.”
“Right on, man,” the djinn said, clearly not catching on to what Reaper had just said. “Anyway,” he added, his disposition somewhat improved, “what do you guys need?”
“A guy came in here a few minutes ago,” I replied. “Small guy with black hair. Looks a bit mousey.”
The djinn’s face hardened and his eyes went cold.
“You cops or something?”
“Retrievers,” I answered, hoping to strike some fear into the dude. “We find it interesting that he came into this building and disappeared.” I leaned in. “We can’t even track him, can we, Reap?”
“We cannot.”
I kept my eyes on the djinn.
“See, that’s a problem. If we can’t track him and he’s in your place of business…” I trailed off and leaned back, away from him. “Well, let’s just say that it could be bad for business.”
He seemed baffled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’ll have to unload a bunch of PPD officers on your place of business, and that probably won’t look good to people who come here frequently, you know?”
His eyes were darting back and forth between me and Reaper at this point. I wouldn’t say he looked
so much scared as he did concerned.
“I didn’t see any guy come in here,” he stated finally. “You must be mistaken.”
“We could always check the video feed, Piper,” Reaper suggested.
He was catching on.
“Good idea. Let’s do that.”
“Wait,” the djinn burst out. Then he licked his lips and appeared to be trying to calm himself down. “I think I remember seeing that guy. He went into the can.”
“The can?” I said. “Where is it?”
The guy pointed to the back.
I nodded at him and opened a channel to Brazen and Kix.
“Guys, come on in to the pawn shop here,” I commanded. “I need you to keep an eye on this guy while we do a little hunting for Jax.”
About a minute later my two trainees walked inside and met us at the main counter.
“Keep an eye on him,” I said. Then I paused and tapped on Brazen’s holster. “You might want to keep that ready.”
He unfastened the clip without taking his gaze off the djinn. Okay, so Brazen could be useful in the right circumstances. There was a rawness about him that would set most on edge.
“Kix,” I said, pointing at the main door, “what say you put up the CLOSED sign until we’re done in here?”
“Hey,” complained the djinn. “I got a business to run here.”
I spun back at him. “And if you’d like to keep it running, I suggest you let us do our thing.”
To his credit, he didn’t respond. He just crossed his arms and tightened his lips.
“I don’t trust this guy, Brazen,” I said through the connector as Reaper and I headed back toward the bathroom. “Keep an eye on his hands and feet. He might try to trigger something.”
“I’ve got it. Just find Jax.”
I couldn’t help but crack a smile at that. Brazen was trying to play like this was old-hat to him. Yeah, he’d been on the beat for a long time, but not as a Retriever. Maybe he’d read some of those fiction novels about us or watched one of those late-night shows. If only my life were half as glamorous as Retrievers were portrayed.
“Going in,” I said as we hit the bathroom door.
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