Lachesis laughed. But it wasn’t arrogant laughter, defensive laughter, or anything like it. This was full-on Mark Hamill’s Joker.
Ree asked the questions again, but Lachesis just kept laughing.
She didn’t want to veer into the abuse-and-torture side of captive-holding, but it was getting a shade more tempting, the woman’s laughs cutting at the top edge of her hearing like bamboo shoots under the fingernails.
“When I break free of these simple chains, I will delight in reading the bloody details of your death in the entrails of the pretty one here. I smell him on you. That will make my vision all that much clearer. And you’ll be there, of course you will. When it comes to foretelling death, there’s nothing quite like viscera. The ancient Chinese preferred the tortoise shells, the Yorubans knucklebones, but viscera. Yes, viscera give the truest insight.”
Ree turned to Drake and whispered, “She’s psychotic.”
“It does seem. Though it may be a ploy for dealing with interrogation.”
“Could be.”
Lachesis jumped forward, biting at Drake while the two were distracted. Ree reacted on instinct, throwing a jab at Lachesis’s nose. The woman’s head thunked against the steel shelves, and Ree’s hand came back bloody.
Ree shook her head, wiping her hand off. “I don’t believe in torture, but you go after me, I will protect myself. Then we’ll see whose death we can see.”
“You haven’t the talent. Child of the die, the controller, not the Hex. Fate and Fortune trump mere muddling enthusiasm. He has shown this.”
“One, I’m pretty sure we just proved the opposite. And two, who is ‘he’?
“He,” Lachesis said, murder replaced by longing on her face. “Him. He grants us grace and shows us the path, that we might set things right. Visions of wrongs to be righted, transgressions by the Cowboy and his apprentice.”
“I’m not. His. Apprentice,” Ree said, her own gorge rising.
“Ree . . .” Drake put a hand on her shoulder, the touch light, tentative.
She shrugged off his hand, more forcefully than she’d meant. She turned and squeezed his hand. “I got this.”
Turning back to Lachesis. “I didn’t come after you because he’s my master, because of anything but the fact that you pose a danger to this city. My city. You hear me, or are you back in Psychopath City counting bloody sheep?”
“You’re the sheep. Following your blond shepherd and your bearded false prophet.”
The woman continued to struggle against her bonds, practically foaming at the mouth.
“Yeah, enough of that.” Ree hit Lachesis with the phaser, point-blank on stun.
The woman collapsed.
“Okay, let’s dig up those oracles. They were in the ‘O’ section, should all be in a plastic tub.”
While Lachesis was out, Ree tied the duct-tape bindings double-thick, even with the manacles in place.
Lucretia was intolerable and carried a boulder-size chip on her shoulder, but until Grognard’s, she’d played relatively nice, contributed to the magical underground community in Pearson, such as it was. Connie had been strong and determined, but ultimately rational, a woman with a job to do, an enemy to defeat. Stripping her power eliminated the threat, but in a squicky overkill manner.
But Lachesis? She was just scary.
Keep justifying it to yourself, a voice in her mind said, chiding.
Did PPD have facilities to hold her? Was that a thing they could do?
“Found them!” Drake declared. Ree stayed put, keeping Lachesis dead in her sights, even though she was zonked out, not even snoring, thanks to the stunning.
“Hold that for a minute. I’m going to exhaust our options first.”
Ree scanned her directory for the number she’d gotten for SWAT, the police team that had pitched in during the production of Awakenings when Alex Walters was unleashing all hell, from killer apes to orcs to a freaking dragon. His team had been top-notch, and if they could handle Lachesis, they’d be welcome to have her.
The desk sergeant passed the call up to Captain Chu.
“This is Captain Chu. Ms. Reyes?”
“Yeah, thanks for picking up. I’ve got a homicidal Hexomancer in custody. She tried to kill Eastwood, and then when Drake and I tracked her down, caused no small amount of mayhem before we caught her.”
“That was you, then. Since when are you a marshal?”
“I needed to get out of that situation as quickly and discreetly as possible. I hope you understand. This Strega nearly took us both out. Trick is, she’s totally beyond reason. I can’t in good faith just kick her out of town and expect she’ll grab a bus and leave the area with her tail between her legs. Can you help me out?”
“If I bring her in, we need to charge her regular-style. Do you have enough evidence to indict her in front of a mundane judge?”
Ree removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know. I’m not a cop or a lawyer. Magical signatures are all over, and we have two eyewitnesses she tried to kill, but mostly with magic. Are you telling me I’m on my own?”
“Eastwood said the magical community has its own ways of solving these problems,” the Captain said.
“About that. This woman is part of a sisterhood, and this whole thing kicked off when her sister cheated during a trial. So I’m not inclined to trust in Magical Underground justice right now. She’s totally off her rocker, but my way of dealing with her is pretty harsh.”
Captain Chu paused for a second. “To be perfectly honest, Ms. Reyes, I really don’t need to hear about your plans for vigilante justice.”
“Got it. Then I’ll leave you with plausible deniability. Thanks for taking the call, and give my best to the squad. Especially Washington. The invitation to Grognard’s stands, by the way.”
“Thank you. Best of luck.”
And with that, Captain Chu hung up, having squarely kicked the ball back into Ree’s court.
Drake stood by with a cardboard box filled with dusty card decks and assorted oracular paraphernalia.
“I take it the call did not produce a workable solution?”
“Yep. It’s on us. What do you think we should do?”
Drake set the box down, looked at the Strega, still unconscious, and bit his lip. “Frankly, this woman scares me. The pair of us were barely able to best her, and we did only because she accepted a confrontation thinking she could Hex her way to victory. She’s clearly dangerous to more than just Eastwood, and is unlikely to be reached with reason. I would offer her a way out if our safety can be guaranteed.”
“And Eastwood’s?”
“He is his own man. My loyalty is not to him,” Drake said, looking at Ree as if to make it very clear where his loyalty did lie. Which was flattering, but it once again put the ball in her court.
Her collar, her decision. She consulted her personal oracle/conscience.
Try for the high road and offer her a chance to walk away.
Ree rummaged through Eastwood’s stacks until she found some smelling salts, because of course he had smelling salts. The fact that they were in a section labeled NEEDFUL THINGS was creepy, though.
And after all, this was to protect Eastwood. She was going out of her way, risking her and Drake’s necks for a guy who was still very firmly in the gray area, even with his hero-ing.
But this woman hadn’t just threatened Eastwood. She had to be countered, checked, or removed from the equation somehow, but without leaving the ashy taste of fail in her mouth.
Lachesis snarled to consciousness, fixing dagger eyes on Ree and Drake.
“What? Didn’t have the courage to take the smart path?”
“I don’t want to kill you. In fact, I’d rather not hurt you at all. But you’ve made it pretty clear you’re not going to negotiate or play nice. So what I need to
know is whether I can get your word, your binding word, that you’ll give up on the prophecy and this vengeance schtick. You leave Pearson, never come back, and never use your power against me, Drake, or Eastwood. Swear that, and do it again under giese, and you’ll be free to go.”
Lachesis laughed. Cackled, really. She contorted her head back and away, shaking her restraints, just laughing. The laughter cut through Ree’s confidence and left her feeling naked and weaponless. If the Joker were real, this was what his laugh would sound like.
And Ree wanted nothing to do with it.
She fumbled for the phaser, dropping it as she drew it from her coat, snatching it out of the air with a quick save. She made sure it was still set to stun and zapped Lachesis back into unconsciousness.
“Fuck,” she said, stepping back and grabbing Drake’s hand. “I don’t think there’s a good way out of this.”
Drake nodded. “I’m afraid not. Do you recall how Eastwood conducted the severing of Connie from her power?”
“No, but we have cell phones for situations like this.” She hadn’t had the time to use any genre emulation during the chase, so her phone was still sitting on plenty of power. She just hoped that Dr. Wells had thought to ensure there was a cell signal in her new lab.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Yes?” answered a female voice, faint, as if from the bottom of a well built into a movie theater. Seriously, those things must be actively paying to mute cell signal.
“Doc, this is Ree. Can you put Eastwood on?”
“Ah. He’s just coming up. I’ll take you to him.”
A minute later, Eastwood was cogent enough to relay the steps of the ritual to her, and grumpy enough to do so with all of his patented condescension and a side order of “I told you so.”
“What happened to ‘How dare you take her power, you monster?’ ”
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, Bubba Ho-Tep. This one makes Connie look like pre-jail-time Martha Stewart. Full-on crazy-pants. I offered her a way to walk away, and she went banshee laughter on me. This is the kind of time when you disarm someone. Is there anything else I need to know about the ritual?”
“Just make sure she inhales the ash as soon as the ritual is complete and the oracle has burned.”
He waited a second.
“Thank you, Ree. You bought me another three months.”
“Both of us, this time. You work on not dying. I plan on being angry at you for years to come.”
Eastwood laughed, then devolved into moans of pain.
A moment later, he croaked out, “I’m looking forward to it.”
“That will be all. He needs to rest,” Dr. Wells said, cutting in.
“Thanks, Doc. And good on you for making sure there’s cell signal. Saved me a trip through the muck.”
“It comes in handy. Now be thorough, and report when you’re done.”
“You’re not the boss of me, but I like having a cleric on call, so sure.” She hung up and slipped her phone back into the jacket. “Okay, so here’s what we need. . . .”
Ree wasn’t much for rituals. She usually left that crap to Eastwood, or figured out some genre emulation work-around when the Grumpy Cowboy wasn’t available or when they were on talking-but-not-really-talking terms. But with Eastwood’s instructions, she managed to only burn off all the hair on the back of her hand before getting the ritual to take, the blood sizzling on the correct oracle, the smoke bursting into colors.
She held the mini-brazier up to Lachesis, and the woman’s eyes went wide as she breathed in the magicked ash, awake again in a flash.
The woman’s eyes went white, and she convulsed, rattling the shelf in violation of most sensible versions of physics. Small woman, heavy shelf, and yet there they were.
Ree reached a hand out to cover Drake and guided them both back two steps.
“Did the previous Strega do this?”
“Nope,” Ree said. “And I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.”
“I tend to leap directly to bad when I see convulsions such as that. It reminds me of the exstasis of the Listeners of Da’roun, receiving testament from the Four-mouthed godhead.”
“Awesome.”
“It was that, quite literally. Do you think we should summon Dr. Wells?” he asked.
But then, Lachesis stopped, slumping forward in her bindings. She looked up and locked her eyes on Ree. “My sister told me you tried to stop the cowboy from doing this to her. It seems that you’ve given up even that shred of good.”
“I have this strange personality quirk where I react poorly to people threatening to eviscerate my friends and use them for divination on how best to kill me. I know that might be weird in Strega country, but here in Pearson, that makes me humane.”
Lachesis’s voice dropped, the venom gone for a moment. “Humane would be to just kill me. Set me free. He will not tolerate this failure.”
“Who is ‘he’?” Drake asked.
“You will find out, soon enough. He will reveal himself. And when our sister comes, her shears will cut off the overlong threads of your lives, all of you, the cowboy first. I have seen his corruption, witnessed his arrogance with my own eyes, heard the dissonance he brings to the world with my ears—”
“Got it,” Ree said, tuning the woman out. “Next step is getting her out of town. You up for a road trip? My best guess is it’ll take most of an hour to get to the city limits, more if the snow doesn’t let up.”
“That will make for a rather expensive taxi service,” Drake said.
“Yep. That’s why we’re borrowing a car. You watch Parkour Strega here while I call Anya. Her roommate has a car.”
As predicted, it took them three hours round-trip to drive Lachesis to the edge of town and leave her on the highway, handcuffed. Ree was tempted to take the woman’s boots, but she was already going to be out in the cold without a coat, and without whatever magic was keeping her warm. She’d suffer just fine.
Drake called Eastwood and Dr. Wells on the way back to let them know it was done. The clock showed 4:15 as they finally made it back into the U-District, having successfully dodged black ice, northwest drivers who had never dealt with snow and ice accumulation, and several streets filled with cars dumped over the side of the road.
“I think this calls for a milkshake,” Ree said.
“Seconded. Would it be audacious to declare this celebratory milkshake the actual first date for our nascent relationship?”
“It’s only a date if we don’t run into any monsters,” Ree said.
“Understood. I will make a request with the universe to spare us this one afternoon.”
“While you’re at it, can you ask for the evening, too? I was thinking we could wander down and catch The Hobbit.”
“Didn’t you say that the reviews called it ‘bloated and undisciplined’?” Drake asked.
Ree threw on her turn signal, pulling into an abandoned parking space, snow and ice heaped around it in a rim. The wheels and chassis crunched over the lip, then slid nicely into place. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it for myself. Plus, if it’s terrible, we can just move to the back and make out like teenagers.”
“That sounds rather expensive, given the free alternatives.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to try extra hard to enjoy the movie, won’t we?” she said, pouring all of the rakishness she could muster into a smile. “But first, milkshakes.” Ree shut the car off.
The passenger-side door cut into a mound of ice, and it took Drake another two tries to push through and step out. “Perhaps this time I will ask for the fine proprietors to add whipped cream. This was a particularly trying day.”
“So almost dying justifies an upgrade from vanilla to vanilla with whipped cream?” Ree asked, looping an arm around Drake
’s as they walked.
“Vanilla is a perfectly acceptable flavor choice. Especially with beans as fine as those used by the Burger Bin. I have not found their equal. Vanilla may be bland in some establishments, it is true, but why condemn the flavor for its weakest pretenders to the name?”
Ree leaned into Drake’s shoulders, thinking I could listen to this man rattle on about vanilla for hours.
And so she did.
Walking out of the movie theater, Ree knew she was ranting, but she didn’t care.
“I don’t recall seeing anything in Tolkien’s notes that terminal velocity on Middle-earth was low enough that a pile of dwarves could have a couple tons of wood and metal fall on them without anyone ending up in traction. I must have skimmed that part of The Silmarillion.”
“But did you enjoy it?” Drake asked, the pair walking hand-in-hand.
“Yeah, but it is my gods-given right as a geek to complain about the things I love, and I’ll not have that taken away by anyone, let alone myself. I’ve got another good ten minutes of complaining in me, and then I will download the Misty Mountains song and listen to it on repeat for the whole weekend.”
“That was quite excellently done. Did I see that it gave you chills, or was that merely an intimation that you wished me to hold your hand again?”
They turned the corner from the art-house-and-geeky-stuff theater in the U-District, heading back to the Shithole, where Anya would swing by and pick up the keys to get groceries and return the car. The wind had died down, the air crisp but still. Her weather app showed tomorrow’s highs in the 50s. “Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. Tolkien’s all about the songs, and the Lord of the Rings movies really cut out a lot of that, so it was cool to get that song, at least. Not that I really missed ‘Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way’ from the Bakshi version.”
“Again, you leave me far behind, my dear.”
“That I can fix. Wait. Have you read The Hobbit?”
“I have not. It is on the list you gave me, which if represented in physical volumes would tower over Mt. Rainier.”
Hexomancy (Ree Reyes Series Book 3) Page 19