by E. A. Copen
“I am your father!” he repeated as if he hadn’t heard me the first time, his ghost glowing brighter. “I demand respect!”
“I don’t give a damn who you were in life, and I don’t owe you respect. I don’t owe you shit. No one else does either. Call yourself whatever you want. You’ll never be anything other than a bad memory to me. And in a few days, I’m going to bury that memory six feet under the cheapest headstone I can find and walk away without one ounce of guilt. I’ve given you enough of my time. That part of this nightmare is over.”
I walked out of the bedroom.
Bill screamed and rushed after me.
I turned and unleashed a spell of pure will and fury at him. It struck him and scattered his form into a million pieces of ghostly dust. He wasn’t destroyed. A few days and he’d be able to pull himself back together as long as no one spread any salt or holy water around and his body—and the house, since his blood was everywhere in there—remained intact. But I wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore.
Bill Kerrigan wouldn’t be hurting anyone else ever again.
Chapter Seventeen
I needed to call up to Angola and find a way in to see Drew Littlefox, but that wasn’t going to happen in the middle of the night. There were also funeral arrangements I needed to see to, but that’d have to wait until morning, too. There wasn’t much of anything I could do at two forty-five in the morning but stomp back to my car and sit behind the wheel.
My hands shook as I placed them on the steering wheel. The enormity of what I’d just said sank in, and I fought the urge to run back and apologize. It was a knee-jerk reaction, that fear I’d done something unforgivable. Had I made the right decision walking away from him?
Yes. I knew I had. But that didn’t make it any easier.
I started the car and decided a drive would clear my head.
A Terror, he’d called it. That didn’t seem like the right name, but it was better than just calling it a monster. He’d also said the thing could be trapped, but I was guessing he didn’t mean here. He must’ve meant on whatever plane that thing existed. That gave me a theory about its motives then. Maybe it was trying to come through.
I’d read stories about gods and certain incorporeal monsters needing sacrifices to manifest. The question was, how many did this Terror need, and what would it do once it got here? Nothing good. I had to stop it.
I didn’t have any dream catchers, but I had something almost as good across town. When I’d lived above Paula’s bar, I’d carved an intricate circle into the floor around the bed. My intention had been to sever the psychic connection between Emma and me so we would stop sharing dreams, but I could never get the thing to work. Then, when Paula rented the place out to Josiah, he fixed it. Or said he did. The guy couldn’t help himself. If he saw a magic problem, he had to solve it. He’d called it a dream circle. I didn’t know what a dream circle did, but I knew how to find out.
But first, coffee.
I hit a twenty-four-hour drive-through and got three large coffees with extra shots of espresso. When they asked me how many extra shots, I asked how many I could get without signing a waiver. It cost me a small fortune. I was so sending the Terror my bill.
Armed with an unhealthy amount of coffee, I drove over to Paula’s. The bar had closed at two, but she’d still be around, tidying up. The lights were still on inside when I pulled up, casting weak light on the darkened parking lot.
By the time I got out of the car with my tray of coffees, Paula had pushed open the front door. She stood with her backside against the door bar, arms crossed, face stuck in that permanent scowl. Guess her mother had forgotten to tell her that her face might get stuck like that because I’d never seen her with any other expression. She had resting bitch face down to a T.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she snapped at me when I came within earshot. “Is one of those for me?”
I plucked one of the coffees from the cardboard tray and held it out to her. “Black like your soul with enough espresso to kill your hopes and dreams, just the way you like it.”
She grunted, took the coffee, and sipped. “Not bad. Why are you grinning at me like that?”
My smile widened. “You accepted a gift.”
Paula was fae. Or half-fae at least. She was fae enough that she was beholden to their very strict code of conduct. No outright lies. No debts left unpaid. Accepting a gift was akin to accepting a debt in their world. Now she owed me one.
“Ah, hell,” she snarled. “You’re not even playing fair. Showing up at three in the morning with coffee. You’re the epitome of evil, Laz.”
I wiggled the fingers on my free hand. “Uh, necromancer? Ex-con? Have you met me?”
“Point.” She sighed and gestured to the bar. “Well? We going in, or do I have to freeze my ass off for you too?”
Paula’s was a true dive bar, a place only the locals knew or cared about, but they cared about it fiercely. None of the décor was upscale or expensive, but it was all polished lovingly. At Paula’s, even the roughest knew better than to leave without putting up their cue sticks and cleaning up after themselves. I once saw a guy spit on the floor. She made him spit shine the whole floor as payment.
Paula took her coffee and slid behind the closed bar. “So, what is it you want?”
“You renting out the apartment upstairs currently?”
She frowned. “I’ve been trying. Put it up on one of those room-sharing websites. You know the ones. The places where tourists can rent a room out like a hotel?”
I selected one of the coffees and took off the lid so it would cool. “How’s that going for you?”
“Terrible. I’m too far from the Quarter they say. Damn tourists. Never mind that the room is half the price of all those overpriced rooms in the Quarter.” Paula took a loud gulp of her coffee. “Why? You thinking of getting into rentals? Don’t. It sucks. People bitch about everything and call you up in the middle of the night to complain about stupid things.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a lot like my job already. But no, not in a million years would I want to be a landlord in this city. I was just hoping I could use the room.”
Paula squinted at me. “Don’t you have your own place to go to now? And where’s that kid of yours?” She scrutinized me another minute before continuing. “This have something to do with a case?”
“Yep.”
She stared at me a minute before picking up the coffee. “Seventy per night with a twenty-five-dollar cleaning fee, all due upfront. No freebies.”
“I gave you a coffee,” I pointed out.
“Which entitles you to a favor of equal value. This was what? Five bucks at most? Definitely not seventy-five.”
I grumbled and dug out my wallet, only to find it devoid of cash. There was a credit card in there I hadn’t maxed out yet, but it’d hit its limit once I handed it over to Paula. Dammit, I couldn’t win for trying. “Here.” I sighed and held the card out to her. “Next time, I’ll bring more expensive coffee.”
Paula ran my card through the machine and handed it back before dropping a familiar key on the bar in front of me. “You know, you could’ve just broken into it, and I probably wouldn’t have known. I’m sure you know how to get in and out quietly.”
“I could,” I said, taking the key, “but this way, you owe me a five-dollar favor.”
Paula cringed. “Don’t say it like that. Sounds like something a cheap hooker would offer.”
I offered her a salute and headed for the stairs.
“And don’t you do any destructive magic up there,” she called after me. “There’s a fee for that!”
The old apartment hadn’t gotten much of a facelift since the last time I was in there. My old recliner still sat next to the worn sofa, facing a wall-mounted TV. If I turned it on, I’d find a hairline crack in the corner of the screen. The wooden floor groaned as I walked over it, making for the bedroom. She’d updated the bed and all the linens and covered the floor
carving with a big rag rug.
I pushed the bed against the wall and pulled up the rug, revealing a near-perfect circle eight feet in diameter. Every two inches moving toward the center, there was another, smaller circle. Between the circles, strange shapes tipped right and left. Runes touched one line and leaned like trees blown in a heavy wind. Smaller circles bisected others, forming a series of diamonds, inside each, three lines laid out from a center point like a sun, except whoever had drawn it left off the circle at the center. In the very middle of the circle was an Eye of Providence, also known as an All-Seeing Eye.
In modern-day, the Eye was probably best known for its association with the fictional Illuminati. Understandable since it appeared on the Great Seal of the United States, in currency all over the world, and in some Christian iconography. In reality, the Eye was just another symbol appropriated by Freemasons and medieval religious groups. It was a symbol that belonged to the world of magic, not secret societies.
I hadn’t known all that when I made the original circle. It wasn’t until a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking Australian wizard named Josiah Quinn added a bunch of symbols that looked like nonsense and that big eye in the center that the thing actually worked. Or at least it was supposed to. I hadn’t been there when he powered it up, and I had no idea what exactly it did.
Once I had the circle exposed, I sat down in the center with my phone and hit the internet, looking for more information. Most of the info on the net about magic is bullshit, which is exactly how most magical people liked it. We couldn’t have every jerk on the street trying to turn lead to gold or tossing around fireballs, right? There were people who devoted their whole lives to erasing the supernatural from security cameras, YouTube feeds, and other media. There were also people trusted by the rich and powerful of the magical community to spin things. They crawled the web and changed something on Wikipedia here, added something to a blog there, adjusting the truth about magic just enough that it wasn’t dangerous to Normals.
There were dynasties in the magic world, whole families who passed down keys and decoding techniques to figure out what had been changed, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have been raised in one. I’d had Pony, who believed pain and hard work were the best teachers. The only time he cracked open a book was when he wanted to drill home magic theory, which bored the crap out of me.
“I need a magic wizard decoder ring,” I muttered and moved on to the next article.
Three hours later, I’d jumped through enough links I couldn’t remember where I started and still had nothing. I’d even paused at one point to call Josiah, but he didn’t answer. Bastard was probably dodging my calls. Or dead. I hoped it was the first thing. Whatever was powerful enough to kill someone like Josiah wasn’t something I wanted in the world.
I stretched and considered giving up. The dream circle might be useful, but only if I knew what it was for. If I couldn’t figure it out, I’d be better off heading up to talk to Littlefox.
Just as I was about to close the laptop, I saw something on the screen that sparked my interest. The article on night terrors I’d been reading linked to an entry on Greek mythology. I clicked on it.
“Demos Oneiroi,” I read aloud. “The land of dreams. A wild and untamed section of the Greek underworld ruled by the Oneiroi. The Oneiroi were three brothers, each responsible for a different aspect of dreaming. According to Hesiod, the Oneiroi were the shapeshifting offspring of Nyx and Erebus, the goddess and god of darkness, respectively. Morpheus, the eldest, was able to take the forms of men in dreams while his brother, Phantasos, personified inanimate objects in dreams. Lastly, Phobetor was responsible for nightmares and beasts. Phobetor may also be known as Ikelos.”
There it was again. Nightmares. And not just that, but Nyx had been the queen of Shadow I had killed, and I had been to the underworld lately. Could this be connected? Maybe. It was the only lead I had so far.
I tried digging deeper into this Ikelos character but hit a brick wall. Everything I found quoted the first article with only slight variations. I considered talking to a god, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with one without dying.
Then again, it would be nice to meet whoever my new reaper was supposed to be. I’d gone through two since taking up the Pale Horseman mantle, both of which I liked. It just didn’t work out.
What am I thinking? I almost slapped myself. I’d need someone to revive me if I died, and that usually meant Nate. I couldn’t call him at this hour. He’d probably taken the night off work to be with his family. No way was I pulling him away from them on a holiday evening to help kill me, even if it was temporary.
Talking to a god was out, but maybe I could talk to someone who talked to gods.
I left the little apartment and braved the stairs. The bar downstairs was empty, with Paula having gone home for the night. Good. That’d make this easier. I wouldn’t have to argue with her.
As I slid behind the bar, I swear I felt her eyes on me, even though the place was empty. Just to be on the safe side, I left a note after I poured two glasses of rum: Got a drink. We’ll call it even. Then, I went back upstairs.
Back in the apartment, I pulled out my deck of tarot cards and walked over to the bed where I sifted through the cards in search of Death. The hooded figure stared at me from atop his pale horse, the scythe tilted forward slightly. If I looked closely, I could just barely see the skull face shrouded by the hood. It grinned as if someone had just told a dirty joke. Maybe he was just giddy over having a scythe. I needed one of those.
With a glass of rum on either side of me, I held the card firmly in my right hand and concentrated on the image. It would’ve been easier if I had a cigar and time to put on a nice suit jacket, but I hoped it would work without those things. After all, I did sort of work for the guy. He should be available to his employee when I had questions.
“Come on, Samedi,” I grumbled and pushed a little will into the card. “Quit hiding.”
“Couillon! Baron Samedi doesn’t hide,” boomed the Baron’s voice behind me.
I picked up the rum and turned around. “You hightailed it out of the parking lot pretty fast after I showed you that drawing. Said you’d be back but didn’t show. I call that hiding. What do you call it?”
He flashed perfect white teeth and leaned forward on his cane, both hands gripping the skull at the top. “I call it strategic. There are some things only a fool toys with. That is one of them.”
“Then you know what it is?” I held one glass out to him.
“Of course I do,” he said, reaching for the drink.
I pulled the glass away. “Tell me what you know.”
Samedi scowled. “I didn’t have to come, you know. Your ritual was incorrect and downright disrespectful.”
“So?” I shrugged and tossed back one glass before wiggling the second one. “Last chance. Tell me what you know about Ikelos.”
Samedi’s eyes got wide. He sped across the room to put a hand over my mouth, spilling the drink in the process. “Don’t speak that name!” he shouted, eyes darting back and forth. “You really are stupid, aren’t you?”
“Mrrrumph,” I protested.
The Baron pulled his hand away from my mouth.
I frowned down at my booze-stained clothes. “I already know he’s a god, so you might as well cough up the rest. Is that who’s behind these attacks?”
“Not a god, boy. A god could be reasoned with or, in a worst-case scenario, killed. With a god, you stand a chance of victory. To weaken one of the Oneiroi took the full force of the gods. They had to be subdued one at a time in fierce battles that shook the Earth to its foundations. This planet was still young when those battles were fought, and she bears the scars still.”
The full force of the gods just to weaken them? There weren’t many things in Greek myth the gods fought and struggled to defeat.
I blinked. “He’s a Titan.”
Samedi nodded gravely. “I’m afraid even your magic is nothing to a Titan. Any s
pell you cast will only make it stronger. And Titans have no souls, no physical form. You can’t kill him, Lazarus. Not with the force of an entire army could you stop him.”
“There has to be a way. The gods did it before.”
“The gods imprisoned the Titans, and you saw fit to let one of them free!” Samedi gestured wildly, eyes blazing red.
Fenrir. Crap. I was hoping he wouldn’t find out I’d let the wolf free from Helheim. Guess it was inevitable.
I shrank. “It was only one, and he promised not to hurt humans.”
“One with the power to free others on a whim.” The Baron lifted his cane and smacked my forehead with the skull end just hard enough to hurt.
I grabbed the cane to keep him from doing it again. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know that!” I shoved the cane away while he sneered at me. “There has to be a way. The gods did it once before. They can do it again.”
The Baron loomed closer. “Weren’t you listening, boy? It took a full-on war just to weaken them! Even attempting it now would wipe this city off the map! You cannot defeat a Titan! Your only chance of escape is to avoid being noticed altogether!”
I cringed and pushed him back a step. “Yeah, about that. Kinda too late. He sorta already showed up and tried to feed off my magic. Even if he hadn’t, I’ve been doing my best to stop him from having people kill each other. What’s he get out of that anyway?”
Samedi shook his head. “Titans feed off chaos and magic, and once its hunger has been sated, it will be powerful enough to come through into this world. If that happens, the world will see disaster and destruction on a scale not recorded in living history.” He put a hand to his forehead.
I shivered. All the wars, the genocides, the destruction we’d done since writing was invented would pale in comparison to what Ikelos would do if he got free, and yet there seemed no way to stop him. No, I couldn’t believe that. Everyone had told me killing the Devil was impossible too, and I’d done it. I just had to find the right information before it was too late.