by Kevin Hearne
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but did you say that you have changed your mind?”
“Yes, I did say that,” I confirmed, “but only if you’re super-duper sweet to me.”
“What must I do in return for your aid?” he asked warily.
“Help me kill some witches in Gilbert.”
“That is all?”
“Well, there’s only two of us and about twenty of them.”
“That is all?”
“They’re pretty mean and they might be dressed like the Go-Go’s. I’m talking Aqua Net and those shirts that hang off one shoulder and everything.”
“It sounds atrocious, Atticus, simply heinous to the nth degree, but I have no idea to what you are alluding.”
“Then how about this? We might literally catch some hell, because they’re baking demon babies in their wombs. Maybe some other surprises, who knows.”
“Fine, fine. When do we do this?”
“Tonight. Right now. Call up your ghoul friends; there will be plenty to eat when we’re finished.”
“And when do we kill Thor?”
“I’m going on a scouting mission to Asgard before the New Year,” I said, leaving out the part where I’d be stealing one of Idunn’s golden apples for Laksha. “After I return—and that should be before the New Year as well—we plan our raid and put our affairs in order. You get your A-team together, whatever badasses you have in your network, and I will get the lot of you into Asgard.”
“Will you give me your oath on this?” Leif asked.
“Dude, I’ll even pinky-swear.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll give you my oath. Just come pick me up in your batmobile.”
Leif hissed his displeasure into the phone. “I have never turned into a bat, no vampire ever has, and that particular myth of Mr. Stoker’s is growing tiresome.”
“If we live through this, Leif, I swear I’m going to make you read some damn comic books.”
Chapter 23
Leif showed up at my house wearing a steel breastplate and a broad grin. “I have not lived this long to let a few witches stake me tonight,” he said, leaning casually against his Jaguar. He was wearing one of those old-fashioned white linen shirts with enormous poufy sleeves underneath his breastplate. He didn’t go full Renaissance, however, and complement this with breeches and a codpiece. Instead, he wore a black pair of Levis and some Doc Martens with a surplus of buckles.
“You have one other vulnerability, I think,” I said. “And we need to address it.”
His grin disappeared. “They have sunlight in a bottle or something?”
“No, but they will probably have some hellfire available. Eight of them are carrying demon spawn. You’re rather flammable, am I right?”
“Well, yes, now that you mention it.”
“I have a fix for that, strictly a loan item for tonight only.”
“All right.” I gave him Oberon’s talisman and activated it to protect him. He regarded me doubtfully and flicked the amulet hanging from his neck. “This hunk of metal will keep me from turning into ashes?”
“You’ll feel the heat, but it shouldn’t burn you.”
He raised his brows and rolled his eyes briefly by way of a facial shrug and said, “Fine. Are we ready to go?”
“Couple more things we have to do first,” I said, and wagged my head significantly at the house across the street. “You remember my inquisitive neighbor?”
“Of course.”
“He let it slip the other day that he has a rocket-propelled grenade in his garage. I’d like to see if he was telling the truth and, if so, liberate it for the greater good of the East Valley.”
Leif’s head didn’t move, but his nostrils flared. “He is in the house right now.”
“Oh, aye, and he’s watching us through his blinds.”
“What do you propose we do?”
“You charm his ass and get him to open the garage for me. I’ll brazenly walk in there and take what we need, then you tell him to forget it.”
“If he has military weaponry in there, we should report him to the ATF.”
I sighed in exasperation and pinched the bridge of my nose. Who would have thought a bloodsucking lawyer would actually care about the law? “Okay, but only after we take some to play with.”
Mollified, Leif said, “He is looking at us now? Through his window?”
I slid my eyes sideways to confirm that the blinds were still parted. “Yes.”
Without warning, Leif whipped his head around and stared across the street at the blinds. They fell closed after a couple of moments.
“Got him,” Leif said. “Proceed. The garage should open in a few seconds.”
We strode across the street, and the heavy door began to rumble open ponderously. It occurred to me that I’d never seen it open at all; Mr. Semerdjian drove a silver Honda CR-V and always parked it in his driveway.
The rocket-propelled grenade—one of several—was there. And so were a crate of standard fragmentation grenades, several crates of automatic weapons, and handheld surface-to-air missiles. There were also a dozen flak jackets hanging on the wall.
“Wow,” I said. “It’s just like my garage, except with extra overkill.”
“Clearly these weapons are not for personal defense,” Leif said at the threshold. Mr. Semerdjian was under his control, but he hadn’t invited Leif into his home of his own free will yet. The man was standing, somewhat slack-jawed, by the door that led into his house. “Mr. Semerdjian,” Leif addressed him, “please explain why you have all this weaponry here.”
“It’s for the coyotes,” he replied.
I looked up sharply. “What did he say? What coyotes?”
Leif repeated my question, since Semerdjian wouldn’t answer anyone but him.
“Coyotes. The men who smuggle people across the Mexican border.”
“Oh, those coyotes,” I said. “Okay.”
“I supply two different gangs of them,” Semerdjian continued. “They always need something extra to get away from the border patrol these days.”
Leif pumped him for more information about his suppliers and customers, while I loaded up. I took a flak jacket, remembering that die Töchter des dritten Hauses liked to use handguns, then I snagged two RPGs and stuffed five frags into my pockets. I laid the RPGs in the trunk of Leif’s Jaguar and then called across to him that I was just about ready to roll.
Granuaile and Oberon were inside the house, entertaining three werewolves with the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring. One of them was Dr. Snorri Jodursson, and I called to him to follow me into the backyard for a minute. He inquired after my health and thanked me for paying his huge bill so promptly, then vaulted me up into the branches of my neighbor’s palo verde tree, where I unbound Fragarach and Moralltach but kept them camouflaged. That was the full extent of the aid I could expect from the Tempe Pack, under Magnusson’s orders.
After depositing the weapons in the trunk of Leif’s Jaguar, I was truly ready to pick a fight—or, rather, to finish one that die Töchter des dritten Hauses had picked with me.
“Come on, Leif,” I called across the street. “Wrap it up and drop a dime on him later. Let’s go pick up the nice witches now so we can go kill the naughty witches.”
Chapter 24
The Sisters of the Three Auroras came down from their tower quickly and met us in the underground parking garage. They walked briskly in their pointy boots toward a line of slinky two-seat sports cars. Malina and Klaudia stepped lively to an Audi TT Roadster; Bogumila and Roksana made for a Mercedes SLR McLaren; and Kazimiera and Berta, something of a mismatched pair, looked as if they were going to squeeze themselves improbably into a Pontiac Solstice. Unlike the German hexen, they knew what decade it was and how to properly dress in black. Bogumila had actually pulled her hair back into a practical ponytail, and I was mildly disappointed that the previously hidden side of her face was perfectly pleasant, no hideous sc
arring or missing chunks of flesh or gaping ocular cavity with a worm wriggling around inside.
“Time is of the essence,” Malina explained as their cars’ security systems chirped at them. “I think we’ve shielded ourselves from divination, but if they somehow penetrate it and know we’re unprotected now, they may have time to repeat the hex that killed Waclawa and wipe us out all at once. I’m sure they have demons ready and waiting to aid them.”
“The clock is ticking, eh? How long do we have?” I wasn’t worried about being found through divination; no one but the Morrigan could find me that way, thanks to my amulet. And Leif had nothing to worry about either, because it’s tough to divine dead guys, and they’d have to know he was involved ahead of time before trying.
“Once they begin the ritual, perhaps as little as twenty minutes. Follow us and we’ll talk on the phone.”
Leif became a little bit envious as he watched the witches pull out in front of him. “Those are very nice toys. What do they do for a living?”
“Consulting.”
“Really? What sort of consulting?”
“Magical, I guess, in the sense that they magically draw a salary without truly consulting anyone.”
“How very clever of them. Though I suppose it is not all that different from real consultants.”
“Malina made the same observation,” I said as we turned left onto Rio Salado and headed for Rural Road to catch the 202 east. My cell phone began to play “Witchy Woman,” and I said, “Speaking of whom, she probably wants to consult with me on our plan of attack.” I flipped open my phone and cooed, “Hel-loooo,” with my voice gliding up into an interrogative tone at the end.
“You’re sounding remarkably cavalier about this confrontation,” Malina said, her Polish accent pronounced. She was already getting herself into a snit.
“I’m simply living in the moment and enjoying it. The near future holds a kill-or-be-killed situation, so I am sucking all the marrow out of life while I can. Leif has a crush on your car, by the way.”
Malina ignored all this and said, “We are traveling to Gilbert and Pecos, so we’ll be heading south on the 101 right after we get on the 202. They’re on the top floor of a vacant three-story building. Something’s waiting for us on the bottom two floors, but we couldn’t see what it is.”
“So you and your sisters are going in while Leif and I wait outside?”
A cold silence greeted me for a few beats, then Malina said, “No, it’s going to be the other way around.” I could almost picture her grinding her teeth as she said it.
“Oh, that’s too bad, because we were going to stop off at Starbucks and get a couple of lattes while you took care of this.”
“That’s the famous vampire Helgarson you’re riding with, isn’t it? Is he fond of lattes?”
“I don’t know.” I looked over at Leif, who was grinning—he was hearing both sides of the conversation, of course—and said, “Malina wants to know if you like lattes, and I want to know if you’re famous.”
“No to both,” he said, as we screamed onto the 202 on-ramp.
“Sorry, Malina,” I said to the phone. “He’s not famous.”
“Perhaps it would be better to call him infamous. It is irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is that my sisters and I are not great warriors. Were the odds even and they did not cheat with modern weapons, I would say, yes, we could walk in and win a magical battle against most opponents. But we are outnumbered more than three to one.”
“How many are there?”
“Twenty-two. Some of them have firearms, but they are not great warriors either. And while they may be expecting you, Mr. O’Sullivan, they will not be expecting Mr. Helgarson to get involved. I imagine the two of you together will be quite formidable.”
“She’s complimenting our martial prowess, Leif,” I said to him.
“I feel more manly already,” he said. The short distance on the 202 was already covered and we were merging onto the southbound 101.
“Hey, Malina, tell me how much you want to see us play with our swords.”
Leif threw back his head and laughed. Malina’s accent thickened to the point that her English was nearly indecipherable. “Mr. O’Sullivan! You will stop this unseemly innuendo immediately! How someone so old can be so immature and inappropriate is beyond me. Try to refocus your attention on our goal, please.”
“Oh, right, right. My apologies.” I grinned, completely unrepentant. One day I’d get her so mad she’d give up on English entirely and just cuss me out in Polish. “I suppose you were going to explain what you and your sisters will be doing once we arrive.”
“We will be setting up an illusion around the perimeter of the building so that it will appear to ordinary citizens that nothing unusual is happening, even if there are gunshots and explosions and hexen being tossed out the windows. We will also prevent any of them from escaping, should they take it into their heads to flee your … giant, mighty swords.”
Leif and I both had a good laugh at that, and I could almost see Malina rolling her eyes as she sighed noisily into the phone, signaling that she hoped we would get the silliness out of our systems soon, now that she’d thrown us a bone.
“We will also take care of the blond one when we get there,” Malina added, when she felt we’d wound down sufficiently to understand her.
“Oh? Why didn’t you do it already?”
“Because then they’d know you gave her hair to us. It is better they not know for sure we are working in concert until it’s too late for them to plan around it.”
“All right. Then we’ll be responsible for twenty-one witches. Plus whatever demons they have hanging around.”
“Correct. All of whom you must kill quickly. They will almost certainly begin Die Einberufung der verzehrenden Flammen as soon as they know we are below, counting on their defenses on the bottom floors to hold until they’re finished.”
“You’re talking about the infernal hex that killed Waclawa. They call it, what—The Summoning of Consuming Flames?”
“Yes.”
“Could they target Leif with this ritual?”
“Absolutely. The demon involved in the ceremony provides the targeting. They don’t need hair or blood or anything else to find someone. It’s why I’m a bit uncertain about our shielding from divination.”
I looked soberly over at Leif. “That trinket I gave you won’t save you from that,” I said. “It’s only good for hellfire attacks thrown at you using line of sight. So the bell tolls for thee, my friend, if we let it toll at all. You’ll go up like a Roman candle.”
“Then our best defense lies in the speed with which we dispatch them?” Leif asked.
“That’s right.”
“Is the Roman-candle expression accurate? What happens if they are successful?”
I relayed the question to Malina, begging her pardon for asking her details of Waclawa’s death.
“I cannot help you there,” she replied. “We didn’t see it happen—I’ve never seen it happen. We see only the aftermath. In this case, we got the report from Detective Geffert.”
“Geffert!” I exclaimed. “I knew I’d heard his name somewhere before! He visited you in your condo, didn’t he?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“He’s the one who’s been pestering me recently. You have his hair in a jar, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Malina confirmed.
“Very interesting. That might come in handy later. But look, for now, we’ll move fast once we get there. We’ll put a couple of grenades through their windows and maybe take out a few if we’re lucky, then we’ll move in downstairs.”
“Did you say grenades?”
“Yeah, we have a couple of RPGs, so we’ll be starting out with a bang. Hope your illusion can contain explosions.”
“Where on earth did you get RPGs?”
“Garage sale across the street,” I said. We rang off so that Malina could share the news with her sisters. Leif
put in a call to Antoine, the leader of the local flesh-eating ghouls, as we exited onto the Santan Freeway and headed east to Gilbert Road.
“Antoine. I have an all-you can-eat buffet coming up real soon. Load the boys into the truck. It is a three-story building on Gilbert and Pecos. Twenty-two witches on the menu, some of them carrying demon spawn.”
I didn’t have the same quality hearing that Leif did to pick out the individual words, but by his tone Antoine sounded pleased.
After exiting the freeway, the building soon towered above us on the south side of Pecos, as much as any building in Gilbert could be said to tower over anything. The Phoenix metro area tended to sprawl instead of build up, and three-story buildings in these suburbs meant a fairly ritzy office address. This building had been meant to house multiple businesses, but once the recession hit, it never scored a single tenant. Architecturally, it sported large glass walls with periodic steel-reinforced columns of cement blocks; some attached wedgelike structures of painted, textured Sheetrock provided just a wee bit of rakish modernity and broke up its boxlike sterility. Streetlights revealed that it was painted largely in beige, gray, and sage green along its solid parts, while the wedges were the color of sun-dried tomatoes.
The building sat right on the edge of the street, with a large empty lot to the south. We parked there, and they surely saw us if they had the most rudimentary watch set. The single entrance faced the parking lot, to the left of center. Leif and I mounted the RPGs to our shoulders and cautioned the Polish ladies to stand away from the breeches in the rear. Malina said not to worry; they were going to spread out and surround the building as best they could right now. We should just aim high so they wouldn’t be in the line of fire. I chose the top left corner of the building, where a lookout was most likely to be watching us, and Leif chose a wall of glass on the third floor to the right of center. We carefully aimed through the optical sights, then pulled the triggers on the count of three. The rocket trails hissed above the witches’ heads and hit at first with a dull thunk, followed shortly by the sound of shattered glass and the concussive shock wave. That would get their attention.