by A. J. Aalto
How does one collect wrath? I asked, “No other clues?”
“He doesn’t actually know where it is. The solution seems to be scattered all over the damn place. His visions are spotty, like yours, and susceptible to false interpretations. He gets what he gets and his experiences filter the vision. We’re seeing his version of the vision. It’s not a pure reading of prophecy.”
“BugBelly, how do we keep the portal closed?”
Wesley scratched his head. “All other sun sentries must accept loss.” He looked up at me with that wilted violet eye. “You are the harbinger of war, and you must bring wrath to the worm forge, free the bones, and bring the gold.”
“I’m the harbinger of war,” I repeated to clarify, writing sun sentries down.
I’d been a lot of things in my life. I’d been a heartsick goober and a helpless lover. I’d been a psychic, a shark, a fool. I’d been food. I’d been a dead guy babysitter. I’d been a conduit for spirits. I’d been a Nutty Squirrel. I’d been zombie fodder. I’d been a boggle’s punching bag. I'd almost been The Overlord's Captain of something-or-other, but had the good sense to decline that particular invitation. I’d never been a harbinger of war before. It definitely sounded like my worst assignment yet.
BugBelly’s shoulders sagged further, and Wesley took a moment to study my face and catch his breath. “Does any of this make any sense to you?”
“Not a goddamned bit of it.”
BugBelly got up, bearing the heavy yoke of his prophecies, and Wesley and I watched his shuffling progress toward the door. The orc moved like an injured creature, his steps tentative, hesitant. Empathically, I didn’t sense physical pain coming from him, but his burden was overwhelming. He paused in the act of touching the door and then returned to the table, crossing to my side. He laid one of his giant hands on my shoulder. I tensed unintentionally, told myself to knock it off, and peeked up at his face.
His yellow eyes had softened around the edges and filled with concern and hope. He patted me there, his big hand gently tapping. The warmth of the gesture wasn’t shadowed by his menacing visage any more than the odd smell of him, and I’d never wanted a monster to hug me more. If he’d tried, I wasn’t sure if I’d have hugged him back or bolted out of my chair, but we shared a moment of not-quite-fearing one another. If he could have spoken to me, I think he would have wished me good luck. Then he nodded, one sad bob of his big chin, and left the room.
Chapter 5
“Bare Hand Services,” Batten said, studying my business card. One eyebrow darted up playfully. “Didn’t see a problem with that?”
“Well I do now,” I said, exasperated. “Sounds like I give hand jobs for a living.”
“Don’t you?” Batten asked.
I smiled sourly. “Funny. What do I call it, if not that? Groper for Hire?”
“Fuck, no.”
“One-Eight-Hundred-Touch-Your-Junk?”
“You’re bad at this, babe.”
“I’m bad at a lot of things,” I reminded him, since he’d clearly forgotten.
“We’ll brainstorm,” he promised, flinging the card and sending it spinning to the desk. We both looked at the empty spot where the keyboard had been sacrificed to the heat of passion. I hadn’t replaced it yet. I very carefully did not look at him but felt my cheeks warm up. I cleared my throat, very aware of his proximity, even though there was a desk between us.
I’d left a message with Chief Fitchett about my interview with BugBelly before heading home. From the desk, my phone began chanting The Bloodhound Gang's “The Roof is On Fire,” and I grabbed it. Harry would be getting an earful from me for changing Fitchett's custom ringtone; he was obviously more of a “Disco Inferno” guy. I didn't tell him that while we spoke, but did promise that my full report would hit his inbox before I went to bed, and put my phone aside next to my knit cap.
“Still wearing that dorky thing?” Batten said.
“It’s not dorky. It was knitted by a cop. That makes it a badass hat.”
“He was badass, huh?”
“He was ten times the cop you are, and not just because he’s built like a skyscraper made out of moose and donuts,” I said, remembering Constable Schenk with a fond smile. “How was Bolivia? Get any neat insect bites? Speak Quechua now? Bring me a souvenir?”
He shrugged with one shoulder, which I supposed was a no to all of that. Maybe he was the souvenir. I allowed myself a free ogle and figured he’d be gift enough; this was Kill-Notch we were talking about, the only mortal on Earth who looked like he had the power to set off fireworks by twitching an eyebrow or a pectoral. I had written in my Moleskine diary about our date: damn near melted my squee-pocket.
“Chapel sent this for you,” he said, dragging a box from beneath his chair. In it was a black, bulletproof FBI vest with big white letters. I unfolded it and read it with my head cocked.
“This is misprinted.”
“That’s why you’re allowed to have it.”
I felt my lips thin. “This says 'fib.' F-I-B.”
“One of the reasons you should wear it,” he said. “Probably the best reason.”
“That so? Then I guess you'd better reassess all those nice things I say when we're naked.” I glared at him and stuffed the vest, and that mental image, back in the box. “Did you catch your monster?”
“No werewolf. No Chupacabra. Big feral coyote with mange and rabies. Put it down.” He was staring at me steadily, and I could tell by the tilt of his lips that he was still distracted by the memories of the last time we’d been alone in this room together. His voice warmed a notch. “How was New York?”
“Weird and smelly.”
“The orc?”
“Weird and smelly.”
“And your brother?”
“Do I have to say it a third time?”
He snorted softly. “Shit assignment?”
I considered this, puffing out my cheeks then letting my exhale out through pursed lips in duck noises. “That depends.”
“On?”
“How do you feel about prophecies of doom, magic portals, stinky-ass mummies, worm forges, and man-eating trolls chewing the flesh off your bones?”
“Last one concerns me a little.”
“Probably, they’d cook you first.”
“Oh, good,” Batten said.
“Also, uh, this is kinda cool: I’ve discovered — heh heh — that I’m a harbinger of war.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Would you be serious for a minute?” I stared. “There’s gonna be a Trollpocalypse-type situation. An orc mystic said so, so it’s gotta be true.”
Batten kicked off his boots and let out a long, exhausted breath. I translated this to mean, You’ve been home less than an hour and you’re already making my life difficult. Instead, he said, “Do you believe everything an orc mystic tells you?”
I chewed the inside of my mouth in thought. “Well, no orc mystic ever told me anything before.”
“Aren’t orcs notorious liars?”
“Pretty sure that’s leprechauns.”
“Pretty sure?” His teasing glint returned to his eyes; it was subtle, and if you didn’t know him, you’d have missed it, but it was there. “You’re a preternatural biologist, right?”
“That doesn't make me a preternatural psychologist or parapsychologist or behaviorist, mister smarty-pants.” I made the tactical error of looking at his pants. The extremely flattering cut of blue jeans he favored was still doing its best to make me want to tear them off with my teeth. Instead, I shuffled through my mail, separating the handwritten ones from the pre-printed; bill, bill, bill. Opening a business wasn’t cheap. Insurance. Electricity. Internet. “Get lucky in Bolivia?”
“Lucky as in laid?” he asked. “Would that matter?”
Tricky question. I’d been mostly joking, but since I expected to have an undead companion for the remainder of my life, there wasn’t a whole lot I could say to Batten about monogamy, could I?
&nb
sp; “Of course not,” I bluffed, feigning casual. Me, feelings? Pshaw! “We’re not exclusive. Hell, I was just updating my online dating profile.”
Batten’s dark eyebrow danced up playfully. “Can I read it?”
“No.”
“I’ll find it later. One question?”
“No.”
“Are the words ‘doom chasm’ on it? Only fair to warn the male population, babe.”
I stopped flipping through my mail to nail him with my warning-est glare, but the slow grin that spread across his lips was contagious. “You’ve been cautioned. Doesn’t stop you.”
“Rotten impulse control,” was his excuse, punctuated by a one-shouldered shrug.
Liar. Aside from our initial romp in Buffalo, Batten had always shown excellent impulse control. If he unbuckled his belt, I could count on the fact that he’d thought it through at least as far as how it would affect his life temporarily. There was that word again. I fought off discomfort by focusing on the bills.
There was one envelope that didn’t fit the growing profile of stuff that is obviously annoying and responsible -- a large square with no postage. Having come straight from Hell via who-knows-what service, it didn’t much need stamps. I slid it out of the stack. The writing was all too familiar despite only having seen it a couple of times: a filigreed golden scrawl on plain, off-white parchment. If there was one here with my name on it, there would doubtless be one at the cabin addressed to Harry. I left my gloves on and clumsily opened the envelope, bracing against a wave of dread to wash over me any second. When it didn’t, I let out an hmph of amazement; figuring that the lack of fear meant I was finally dead inside, I made a mental note to write my soul a eulogy – or at least a solid limerick – and slid the card out, opening it under the soft light of the desk lamp.
In that same flowing gold script, the invitation enumerated its demands. Scanning the list, my scalp prickled when I saw Harry’s name, relieved to find I was still capable of anxiety.
Batten was watching me steadily from the client chair, slouched back, knees apart, pretending not to be curious. The sharp, calculating look in his eye gave him away. When I went back to the top of the card to read it a second time, he prompted, “News?”
I texted Harry one word: Pack. “I’m going to Norway.”
“Yeah, right.”
I made no-for-realsies eyes at him. “Well, we’re going to Norway.”
“I’m not going to Norway in the winter.” He emphasized this with a firm drumming of his thumb on the arm of the chair. “Nope. Never gonna happen. I’m staying right here to finish the paint job you botched.”
I waved the card at him. “Wanna bet, Kill-Notch?”
“Nothing on that card is going to change my mind,” he promised.
He was very, very wrong about that. I began to read. For fun and entertainment, I put on Harry’s posh London accent, matching it a lot better than my brother ever had from my years of being chided by it.
“The following are hereby immediately summoned to Court, to appear before his Excellency, the Speaker Aristoxenus, no later than the Third of January. Of House Vulvolak, Alastor Vulvolak, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Mrs. Elana Vulvolak. Of House Nazaire, Malas d’Sébastien Nazaire, maréchal Toussaint, vicomte de Brisbois, and his DaySitter, Monsieur Jean-Etienne Auguste Dufort Dreppenstedt-Nazaire.” Jean-Etienne d'Gobbledygook was known to me and Batten as Dr. Declan Edgar, my Irish ex-assistant.
Batten’s eyebrows shot up, both of them, but he didn’t interrupt my reading.
“Of House Prost,” I read, carefully monitoring Batten’s reaction, “Jeremiah Prost and his DaySitter, Umayma Eyasi.”
Batten set his beer bottle on the floor beside the chair and leaned forward. I could see him do an almost unconscious weapons check, and his eyes shot to where, not coincidentally, two of Prost's bullets had hit me on a certain ill-fated stakeout in a Buffalo alley with a certain hard-assed vampire hunter standing nearby.
I agreed with his silent assessment. “Holy shit, right?”
While Malas had escaped an arrest-and-stake warrant, Jeremiah Prost was a much bigger ass to slap, an immortal serial killer preying on children in New York, back when I was working for Gold-Drake & Cross. Prost had mindfucked both Batten and me before escaping. I’d always regretted letting him slip away; I knew he was one kill-notch tattoo that Batten craved badly. Now we knew exactly where Prost was going to be, and when, and though we probably couldn’t arrest and stake the creep in front of a bunch of ancient revenants, we’d at least get the dubious satisfaction of facing him. I’d never even heard that he had a DaySitter, but since he preferred what revenants once called “love by the dram,” I was afraid to wonder at her age. The invitation shook in my hand a little, and I had to take a slow, deep breath to calm myself. The idea of seeing Prost’s face made me feel like I might panic-puke on my Keds. It felt like it was both plus and minus a million degrees in the little office.
I continued, “Of House Buryshkin, Yulian Sergeyevich Buryshkin and his DaySitter, Ms. Georgina Harris. Of House Dreppenstedt, Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, Viscount Baldgate, and his DaySitter, Dr. Marnie-Jean Baranuik. Of House Duchoslav, Tomas Duchoslav, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Dr. Marek Rys. Of House Van Solms, Hendrik Van Solms, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Mrs. Lisa Pivratsky-Churchill.”
“No Strickland?” he asked, clearly thinking of Wesley’s maker and house. I shook my head.
“Also, no Cuthbert, no Ledesma, no Domitrovich, no Cross…” I drifted off. There were a few other house names that popped into my mind, but I could see now that Batten was keeping count. Long ago, I’d told him there were four princes, four bloodlines of the Falskaar Vouras. I’d believed it at the time, but only because the number hadn’t seemed important and I’d never taken the time to really count. Due to the vagaries of revenant surnames, it wasn’t always easy to trace one of them back to a specific house. We’d since learned from Declan Edgar that the four is always a lie when it came to revenants, and, apparently, this was true all the way up to the top.
Cuthbert was a house of clairvoyants, George Cuthbert being Danika Sherlock’s revenant companion before he’d been staked by off-duty NYPD officers who thought they were doing society a favor, and she’d been turned into a ghoul by a combo platter of Gregori Nazaire and his twisted old wench of a DaySitter, both of whom bought their respective farms on the rickety wooden dock behind my cabin. Strickland was a house of telepaths, which we’d discovered when Wesley rapidly developed his peculiar and annoying revenant skills. The Cross family were also a house of telepaths, the DaySitters of which had formed Gold-Drake & Cross in the late nineties to assist law enforcement with their psychic Talents. I wondered if the invitation had intentionally excluded all of the telepathic and clairvoyant lines, but that much seemed obvious. What wasn't nearly so clear to me was why?
I continued reading aloud. “Each house may bring one (1) mortal human to serve as the DaySitter’s Second, should he or she Fall.”
“Fall,” Batten repeated.
“Y’know, die,” I translated, trying to sound casual. “Harry gets to bring a backup, uh, nutritional supplement in case I go tits-up while I’m there.”
“Gee, that’s…” He finished with a long, unhappy noise, apparently finding no words in his vocabulary.
“The opposite of encouraging?” I offered. “Other than the tits part, I mean.”
“You thought I’d be your Second?” His boots dropped off my desk and he sat forward. “Why the fuck would I set myself up as Harry’s backup snack?”
“Before you entertain any thoughts that I see you as some sort of romantic knight in shining armor, I did have a perfectly practical reason to believe you’d want to join us,” I said with a sour half-smile, “and it wasn't because you've already done time on dead-guy watch. If I wanted someone who was just there to be munchies, I could ask Gary.” Our former boss, Supervisory Special Agent Chapel, had allowed b
oth Harry and Wes to feed from him in a pinch.
I shook the card in his face again, and read the name I’d saved to secure Batten’s interest. “From House Sarokhanian, Aston Sarokhanian, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Sayomi Mochizuki.”
Batten let his eyelids close, and his lips started an interesting sequence of twist, bite, push, and tuck; it made me have second thoughts about revealing this name. Batten was a psychic null for me, a neutral, and I’d never been able to feel him with either of my Talents; I never felt this lack more acutely than I did when we were discussing his past. Batten had lost his grandfather, hunter Colonel Jack Batten, during a mission to stake Aston Sarokhanian. I had no idea whether Jack Batten was alive or dead. I’m not sure Mark knew, either, but he had a knotted scar from where Sarokhanian force-fed from Batten’s femoral artery, a visible reminder of his loss. There were invisible scars that might never heal, too, scars that meant failure, regret, and violation. His whole life had been driven by revenge for this loss: first as a cop in Michigan, then gaining fame as the nation’s most notorious vampire hunter, then expanding his reach through international hunts and working for Chapel in the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to ask about Sarokhanian. He opened his eyes and they darted back and forth across my face, like he was puzzling something out. “Who is Speaker Aristoxenus?”
He said it as though he believed that Harry would have ever shared the darkest secrets of the Falskaar Vouras with me. It was both flattering and a little depressing, since I had to shrug like the know-nothing goober I was on that score. I could have made something up; Batten might have fallen for it and been impressed for a little while with my worldly knowledge. Alas, there was no point in fibbing to someone; as soon as we got there, if not as soon as Harry showed up, he'd find out how deep my ignorance truly ran. I took a stab at it, if only to offer him some reassurance that I wasn’t a total knob.