I cleared my throat. “Okay. What are the Brothers Midnight after?”
Brigitte shook her head. “Ascension, obviously. Samuel and Bettany were after money, but then along came a serpent with some real dark magic, the kind that doesn’t come from the soul. He promised them something greater, and oh, ambition got the better o’ them. They wanna be Loa, like us. And won’t that be a lovely greet? A pack of infants with our sort of power, and not a scrap of wisdom to temper it. Bondye, spare us.”
“Why not stop them, then?” I asked. “Don’t you have the power?”
“Power to what? Intervene? Make the world a better place? That’s not how this works. Your Society’s Edict of Consent, boyo. All Immortals live by that rule above all others, including the Ascended. It was law even before the Edicts existed.”
Shit. So that explained a lot about why the Loa hadn’t acted, and why Papa Williams had been loath to ask.
Brigitte’s emerald eyes flashed. “One minute, boyo.”
“Can you intervene?” I asked. “I’m asking, and I’m living.”
“We’re not some army you can raise to fight your battles. Besides. We’ve already helped more than you realize.” She shook the flask. “Papa Willy. Sly old bastard.”
“He told me not to.”
“He knew you’d try regardless,” Brigitte said. “Feckin’ white boys. It’s why I went black.”
Runner snorted behind me. I sighed. So much for the direct approach option.
“Okay,” I said. “Where do I find Jesse?”
Brigitte smirked. “You already know that.”
“I do?”
“Yes, ye thick twat. Have y’checked yer messages yet?” I patted my pocket. She touched her nose and then drank the rest of the rum, setting the flask beside the body. “Time’s up, boyo. Don’t go calling us again, especially not with this Google Rituals shite!” She shivered, then blinked. “Oh. One last thing.”
Her presence suddenly filled my perception. I felt like I did back in my basement, watched by something too vast for me to comprehend.
“You. You made Madelyn. Her blood has a forgotten history, Alex Fossor. Count your shadows as you walk that path. The fourth will be the end.”
Before I could process what she said, Brigitte shuddered and collapsed. Runner and I caught her, and as we could laid her down, her hair lightened to blond again.
“She’s out cold,” Runner said.
I frowned. “Don’t know how long she’ll stay that way. But she’ll be out of our hair for the time being.”
“What do we do now?”
I tugged out my burner phone. The message from Madelyn.
“Hey, uh, don’t know when you’ll get this, but I got a hit from my friend,” she said. “Tyler’s selling at a rave tonight. Pier Seventeen on the south end of the river, at the Bodega Street Marina. He-” Something banged, like the sound of a door being kicked in. “Oh shit! Who the fu-”
The message ended. I stared at the phone in my shaking hand. Madelyn. The bastards had pulled her into this.
“Pier Seventeen?” Runner asked. “I can have every cop in the city there in a half hour.”
“No,” I said. “Runner, I know you want to ride in and do the cop thing, but there could be a lot of people there. It’ll be a bloodbath if someone starts shooting. Besides, the tip she got was for a dealer, not the leaders. I can get the info out of him.”
“How?”
I smirked. “Think about who you’re talking to.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “What do I do?”
“Keep close to your phone. When I know where they are, I’ll call you. This has to be precise, Runner. Those zombies are under someone else’s control. They’ll obey any command they’re given, but they’re not responsible for what they’re doing. Shooting them means killing innocent people.”
“Shit,” Runner sighed. “Is it always like this for you people?”
“This is one of the worst, for sure.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Lorensdottr’s car had boxed in Runner’s cruiser. The keys were in the ignition.
Guess you’re my ride, I thought. I sank into the seat, and a panic attack hit me. My sweaty hands shook on the wheel as I tried to control my breathing. It was bad enough that I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in days, that I was living off caffeine and adrenaline, or that I’d cast more magic in a week than I ever had before in my life.
But I had just gotten schooled by something so powerful I couldn’t process its true form. Few people could keep themselves going after all that.
And my night wasn’t over. I had to storm the gates, take on the Brothers, save Jocelyn and Madelyn, and stop a murderous ritual intended to grant Jesse easy-bake godhood.
I thought about my mom, my childhood, my teens, and the family she’d built while I grew distant. Of the Visatori, and the community I had with them. The Gallows, and the uncertain future they faced. My mind lingered on Madelyn, how her horrible luck had brought her to my door, and now dragged her into my fight.
I’d lost my home, I was being hunted by cops, Keepers and asshole cultists. The people I cared about were under attack. My empty, lonely life was being torn to pieces just as I was pulling it together.
Anger boiled in me. I was a mage, goddamnit. The Society were assholes, but they had given me one bit of wisdom. They’d shown me how far down the totem pole I truly sat, yet they treated me like I was a bomb. Like I could do greater harm than I believed myself capable. They didn’t see some plucky nobody, content to wile away his days in obscurity. They saw me as a threat. Something to fear.
Maybe I could find it in myself to become that nightmare. To pay back Jesse for all the shit he’d put me through. Yeah. They fucked with the wrong necromancer.
Assuming I didn’t get my damn head blown off.
I huffed, shook off the last of my anxiety, and put the car in gear. There wasn’t anything between me and Jesse but rain. I hit the brakes on the edge of Bodega Street and turned the car off. The rain would help mask my approach, but not if I arrived in a police car. I jogged the rest of the way, leaning into the storm.
Port Bodega specialized in boat construction and repair, but the area smelled of fish guts anyway. I was used to the smell of decaying people more than decaying fish, so I had to breathe through my mouth. Weird place for a rave.
I spotted movement in Pier 17. Men in raincoats huddled under street lamps, dressed like dockworkers. Groups of young people, three or four at a time, passed them, heading for my destination, a dry docked cruise liner called the Caribbean Sunset. I recognized it from when Jocelyn and I crossed the Center Street Bridge into Downtown, days before.
The guards gave me stern looks, but none of them stopped me as I walked to the ship. The music from within was audible as I ascended the boarding ramp, a rapid-fire blend of styles that didn’t go well together, but was full of lively, directionless energy.
A single guard waited at the top of the ramp, leaning against the wall of the ship beside an open doorway.
“Hold on,” he said. I could see a polished chrome .50 caliber stuffed into his waistband. “A stamp is twenty bucks.”
I didn’t have a dime on me, so I just smiled, sighed, and punched him as hard as I could. He bounced off the wall with a grunt of pain, but put up his fists, ready to shout for help.
So I hit him again. And again, and again. On the fourth hit, he went limp.
It wasn’t clean, or nice. I shook a kink out of my wrist and dragged his body out of sight, then tossed his piece over the side.
“Sorry,” I said. Couldn’t the good guys knock a thug out with a judo chop? Hadn’t he actually gone limp after the third hit? Maybe I was more angry than I realized.
I put it out of my mind and entered the ship. The music got louder as I descended two flights of stairs and followed the signs to the ship’s ballroom. All around me I could see signs of damage and repair. A battered cruiseliner in need of some renovation and a fresh coat
of paint offered plenty of places to smuggle drugs. They could have stuffed the walls with whatever they needed, hidden contraband all over the ship.
When I reached the ballroom, the noise was almost deafening. Two hefty-looking bouncers in hoodies stood guard, staring at me over their sunglasses.
“Who goes stag to a rave?” One asked. He had to shout to be heard.
I shrugged. “I’ll find a friend inside. If she’s out of it, she’s up for it, right?”
They exchanged looks. “Yeah, whatever.”
He opened the door, and noise, light, and smells bombarded my senses. The rave was in full-swing, a wall-to-wall mass of thrashing, leaping bodies that lost themselves to the chaos. The smell was heavy with weed and sweat, sex and blood. I took a deep breath and shouldered my way into the mass.
I wasn’t so old that I didn’t see the appeal of a rave to someone like Madelyn. It was mindless escapism, where the music sets the tone, drugs steal your worries, and all you have to do is float on an ocean of oblivion. A waking dream.
But I was pushing thirty, I’d outgrown mindless forms of gratification, and so recoiled from it. Bunch of filthy, drugged-out, stomping-child nonsense. They could read a book if they want to get lost in something. It’d save them money and their eardrums.
Seriously, it was stupid how loud it was.
I had no idea where Tyler would be. Did underground raves have concession booths? A souvenir pavilion? I hadn’t see no one dealing on my way in, so he had to be somewhere people could duck in, get a hit, and return to the crowd.
Higher ground had to be the answer. I could see balconies connected by spiral staircases. I drifted towards one, head low so they wouldn’t notice my approach.
A man crashed into me, skinny and topless, wearing headgear that was part alien antennae and part sunglasses. He bounced off me into another, his face a mask of slurred joy. A woman followed him, dressed in tattered neon clothes. She couldn't have been older than Madelyn and didn’t react to the flurry of hands eager to touch every inch of her. Her eyes had a dazed, vacant look as she ran her hands over me, grabbing for below my belt. I had to twist around to escape, putting a guy screaming at the top of his lungs between us. The two collided, intertwined, and the crowd swallowed them.
A hefty-looking guard blocked the stairwell, but I relaxed my limbs and tried to look half-baked. When I got close, he gave me a firm shove. Getting trampled would have sucked, but I stayed on my feet and made a gesture like I was trying to prick both my wrists with a needle.
He nodded and stepped aside, then held off three or four others who tried to crowd in after me. He wasn’t shy about throwing punches either, to make sure the addicts knew he wasn’t playing around. I didn’t want to tangle with him if he could control a group like that.
I ascended the stairs, where another guard grabbed my shoulder and herded me through the corridor. We entered what looked like a private dining area, and he shut the door behind us. It muted the noise from deafening to annoying.
Mr. Handy—Madelyn’s pusher Tyler—sat behind a table with his feet up and a distracted grin on his face. An open suitcase behind him overflowed with blue and red syrettes of Stig.
“You need a hit, then I got what you-” The words died in his throat as he recognized me.
“Heya, Tyler,” I said.
I cast my magic at the guard that held me, and he let out a shout of panic. I turned and slugged him with everything I had, bouncing his head off the door. He dropped without another sound, and I got my satisfying one-hit KO. I drew my revolver and aimed at Tyler before he’d gotten out of his chair.
“Easy,” I said. “I know you like to let those hands wander.”
Tyler raised them. “Hey look, this don’t have to be a thing. If you’re mad ‘bout your girl, it wasn’t personal, you know? Just checkin’ for a piece.”
“Shut up,” I said. “You’ve got something I want, and it ain’t the shit you’re pumping into these kids. The Brothers. Kincaid, Jesse, that little old lady who looks like a shoe. Where are they?”
He blinked. “Sh-shit, are you for real? What are you, like a cop or something?”
“Or something. My finger’s getting twitchy, Tyler.”
“Alright, alright! Damn, you loco man. Fuck it, I ain’t gettin’ greased over whatever spat you got.”
“Then spill.” I cocked the hammer.
Tyler flinched. “They’re here! All of ‘em! Doin’ their Vodou shit upstairs!”
Here? I thought. I was going to kiss Madelyn when I saw her again. “Show me. You got another way out of here? The music sucks.”
“Yeah, yeah, this way.” He pointed towards another set of doors. “Right through there leads to the kitchen, with stairs. The boss has his freaky-ass garden in the lounge, at the end of the hall.”
“Start walking.” I paused, wondering if I should grab the unconscious guard’s gun, or tie him up. When I looked back, Tyler had bolted. He hit the doors to the kitchen and shouted a warning before vanishing out of sight.
So much for subtle. I rushed after him and entered a kitchen full of chrome shelving and custom cooking surfaces for sea travel. Tyler was gone. I dug out my phone and dialed.
“Runner. That you, Alex?”
“It’s me,” I whispered. I spotted a flight of stairs on the far side of the kitchen and headed for them. “I’m on board the Caribbean Sunset, a cruise-liner at Pier Seventeen. I’ve got a semi-reliable source that told me the Brothers are here. You need to surround this place. But be quiet about it. There are a ton of people here. A lot of-”
A door burst open and the hag rushed into the kitchen, shrieking and swinging a pair of flensing knives like maracas. I ducked a slash and deflected a second with my pistol. The hag spat in my face, which made me retreat with a roar of anger, and definitely not a cry of squeamish disgust.
As she rushed in, I threw my phone at her, but smashed itself on a cupboard. With a growl, I aimed my gun at her face. I didn’t want to shoot a crazy old woman, but she was more than prepared to stab me, so all was fair in bloody murder.
She jabbed a crooked finger, hissing a curse in Haitian, and her pain magic skewered me. Every nerve ending fired in my ribcage, and I screamed. The hag huffed and snorted, and the pain dug towards my heart. It drove me to my knees, and my gun fell from my grasp.
But through the agony, I sensed a flaw in her magic. It was potent, but a pain spell was a low effort for someone of her advanced age, who should have been wielding power near that of the Archmage.
Unless she wasn’t as old as she appeared.
My senses attuned to the raw, bleeding energy in her spell. She was peeling her own soul away to boost her power. If the soul were a fruit-bearing tree, and mages gathered the fruit to fuel their magic, then the hag was cutting down an entire branch away to get at all of the fruit at once. A bounty of power, but the branches didn’t grow back. One day, the soul would no longer bear fruit. It would die.
I’d never felt such a thing before. Even sensing the mutilation made me recoil in sympathetic pain. I could have been fighting a woman no older than myself, left decrepit and withered by flaying her own soul. But maybe she didn’t care, when the goal of living forever through Ascension was within her grasp?
Facing any other mage, it would have given her an edge. But a grim, sadistic realization brought a smile to my lips. She was tearing her energies away from herself, leaving them vulnerable. Against a necromancer, she may as well have been attacking me with a Philly cheesesteak.
I pushed through the agony, bound her spell with my will, and pulled. The woman gasped and redoubled her efforts. I snarled and slashed at the tattered soulstuff bound to the magic. It fell away from her like a severed limb, then sank into my flesh.
A rush of sensations overwhelmed me. Pain, shock, and jumbled memories tried to force themselves into my mind. I only got a few momentary flashes, a child in an empty room, a knife, a body lying on its stomach, a cacophony of drums and chanting, angry f
aces and cruel words I couldn’t translate. I didn’t know what significance the memories were to her, but they were part of her magic, and that meant they were important to who she was.
I shook off the stolen reverie. The memories blurred and faded, like dreams forgotten when we return to consciousness. I hoped that’s where they’d stay.
The hag’s attack had stopped. Her arm hung limp and shrivelled, like dried meat.
She screamed in pain, and I punched her in the face. I wasn’t proud of it, but tact was for sweet old ladies who had never hurt a soul in their life, not a crazy witch who trade people’s lives—including her own—for power. She dropped like a sack of grain.
I grabbed my gun and phone. One down, and a bunch more to go.
TWENTY-SIX
I ascended the stairs to a hallway lined with passenger cabins. As Tyler promised, a lounge waited for me at the end, near the ship’s stern. The interior was dark, and rows of aquariums had replaced the tables. Each held three or four pufferfish the size of my fist.
An exit at the rear opened onto an outdoor patio. Planter boxes crowded the deck, white and purple Devil’s Trumpets bloomed within. Not as big as a weed grow op, but the Brothers didn’t need a long-term investment. In the center of the garden was a small shrine of skulls, flowers, bottles of rum, and various bones.
Samuel Kincaid knelt before it, with his back to me. He breathed in tobacco smoke from a clay bowl and put his hands together in prayer.
“Come forward, Alex Fossor,” he said. “I am relieved to see you got my message.”
“You left the note with Josh?”
“I have ensured the Society cannot find us. But I wanted you to, if you were able.”
I approached, more curious than cautious. “Why?”
“The Loa speak your name,” he said. “They say a gravedigger comes for me, a promised rest after months of troubled dreams.”
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