The anthrophage that erupted from the boxes and charged towards Riordan didn’t know that, though.
The gaunt, gray-skinned creature surged forward with terrific speed, its black claws ripping at the floorboards, its yellow eyes fixed on Riordan. It lunged towards him, jaws yawning wide, but Riordan was ready. He slashed his Shadowmorph blade, and he took the head from the anthrophage with a flick of his wrist. The head hit the floor and bounced away, and the body collapsed with a thump.
Silence fell over the attic once more. Nora stepped forward and prodded the scattered boxes in several places, but nothing moved.
“God,” said Nora. “Do you think it was just the one, or are more of them hiding here?”
“Probably just the one,” said Riordan. He pointed at the copy of the Summoning Codex on the table. “It’s open to the first page. A practice spell and a simple circle for summoning and binding an anthrophage from the Shadowlands. Watkins probably used his blood to empower the spell. Maybe he thought he could use an anthrophage to terrorize his neighbors. Except he screwed it up, and the anthrophage broke free of the spell, killed him, and then killed all his cats.”
“He paid for it, though,” said Nora, eyeing the corpse.
“Yeah,” said Riordan, sifting through the papers on the table.
“Dumb arsehole,” said Nora.
“Yeah,” said Riordan again, lifting a heavy leather-bound book. “And this looks like Watkins’ actual business records.” He started paging through the old-fashioned ledger. For a reclusive crank who had gotten himself killed, Watkins had good handwriting. There were also several pages folded and tucked into the book.
“Well,” said Riordan, unfolding one of the pages and looking over it. “Explains how Watkins stayed in business.”
“Dragon Imports Art Gallery?” said Nora. “I’ve never heard of it."
“It’s a high-end art gallery on the Upper West Side,” said Riordan. “A guy named…um, Max Sarkany owns it.”
“Sarkany?” said Nora. “As in Della Sarkany?”
“I don’t know if they’re related,” said Riordan. “But it looks like Dragon Imports sometimes sold things on consignment through Songstress Books. Probably that’s how Songstress Books kept from going bankrupt. No one in their right mind would come in here to browse, even before all the dead cats. Look at this.”
Riordan held out a printed letter to Nora.
“Watkins,” she read. “The main shipment has come in. Sarkany wants to keep the main pieces for himself, but there’s a lot of other stuff you can sell quietly. Two copies of a very interesting book are coming with it. Be sure to keep it discreet. If we keep this up, we can have a very profitable relationship. Sincerely, Your Friend.” Nora snorted. “Your Friend? Who the hell is that?”
“Someone who was giving Watkins things to sell quietly,” said Riordan. “Like two copies of the Summoning Codex. Ricci must have bought it here, hoping to get some fancy antiques on the cheap, and didn’t realize what he had until it was too late. Watkins decided to summon himself an anthrophage servant before he sold the second copy.”
“Bad choice,” said Nora, glancing at the ghastly corpse.
Riordan nodded, gathered up the invoices, and tucked them into the ledger. “We’ll take this with us. Also the Summoning Codex.”
“Our next stop is the Dragon Imports gallery?” said Nora.
“Maybe,” said Riordan. “According to some of these invoices, they have a warehouse in Brooklyn. The security there might not be as tight, and I would like to have a look around there before we confront Max Sarkany himself. I…”
He froze. He had been flipping through the Summoning Codex, checking to see if there were any documents tucked into the book, and a folded piece of thick yellow paper fell out. Riordan opened the paper and found himself looking at rows of Cyrillic characters.
“Nora,” said Riordan. “Look. I think this is another page of that Russian lab report.”
“It is,” said Nora, her frown deepening. “What the hell?”
Riordan pulled out his phone and started his translation app. He held the camera lens over the document, and after a moment a crude translation appeared.
“I think it’s an earlier page from the same document,” said Riordan. “It has the same date, July 12th, Conquest Year 109. It’s talking about the five experimental subjects from the other page in the report. It says they’ve been moved to a storage facility in the Ural Mountains in Chelyabinsk Oblast.”
“Guess that explains why that document’s in Russian,” said Nora. “But why the hell are lab notes about some two-hundred-year-old Russian medical experiment turning up in copies of the Summoning Codex?”
“That’s a really good question,” said Riordan. He shook his head. “I don’t have an answer for you. The top of this page is talking about how the test subjects were gathered from other ‘incorporated catalyst’ facilities around the world…no, wait.” He pulled up the translation of the page he had found in Ricci’s warehouse. “Wait. It’s not a phrase. It’s a proper noun. It’s not incorporated catalyst, it’s an organization called Catalyst Corporation.”
“Catalyst Corporation?” said Nora. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“Neither have I,” said Riordan. “Though if they were around in Conquest Year 109, they might have gone out of business years ago.” He folded the lab report, put it back into the Summoning Codex, and gathered the documents and the ledger into a neat pile. “We’ll take it with us and sort it out later.”
Nora jerked her chin at Watkins. “What are we going to do about him?”
“We’ll call it in to the Firstborn,” said Riordan. “He’ll have someone contact Baron Thronaris of Queens, tell him that we disposed of an anthrophage who killed Watkins. That’s the truth, and it will wrap up Watkins’s death with a minimal investigation.”
“Doubt anyone’s going to miss him much,” said Nora.
“Probably not,” said Riordan, giving Watkins’s corpse one last look. The man had obviously died in agony. Riordan wouldn’t wish a death like that on anyone, but Watkins had just as obviously brought it on himself. And God only knows what a bitter, combative man like him would have done with an anthrophage had he successfully gotten the creature under control. “Let’s get out of here and head to the Dragon Imports warehouse in Brooklyn…”
“Can I ask a favor first?” said Nora.
“Sure,” said Riordan, expecting that she would ask if they could stop for a quick dinner somewhere. He was getting hungry, come to think of it.
Nora swallowed, a muscle jerking near her eye. “Could we stop by the Sanctuary for a change of clothes? Between the cat piss and the blood…God, I’ll be smelling it in my clothes for the rest of the day.”
Riordan glanced at her, startled, and then felt a wave of guilt. Nora was a Shadow Hunter, but she was still quite a bit younger than he was. Riordan had become inured to horror and blood. Ever since he had been a terrified man-at-arms in the service of Duke Tarmegon of Houston all those years ago, holding a shield and a spear in the battle lines of the Elven nobles as a mob of anthrophages and orcish mercenaries howled towards them. He had seen men die, ripped apart by anthrophages and orcish battle axes, had seen anthrophages gorging themselves on the corpses of the slain. And Riordan had more horrors after he had become first an officer of the Wizard’s Legion and then a Shadow Hunter, all in pursuit of the ability to save his brother from Morvilind.
His brother was dead, and so was Morvilind, but Nora was still alive, and she was shaken by what they had seen today.
She looked away as if embarrassed to have revealed a moment of weakness, and then forced a smile.
“Besides, I would like a better pair of shoes.” She gestured at her feet. “Do you have any idea what a pain in the arse it is to fight in high heels?”
“I’m afraid not, no,” said Riordan.
“Just as well. I’d bet the tigress would be worried if you did.”
“Well, if
you snapped an ankle, it would be a lot of paperwork,” said Riordan. “Let’s go. We’ll change and get some proper equipment at the Sanctuary, and then we’ll head for the Dragon Imports warehouse in Brooklyn. Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of this.”
***
Chapter 9: Dragon Wrath
Della cast her spell, fire blazing around her fingers, and I reacted on instinct.
I summoned magical power of my own and cast the Shield spell. A translucent dome of bluish-white light appeared in front of the desk, just in time to intercept Della’s blast of elemental fire. Her bolt of flame struck my Shield, and it hit hard. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold the Shield in place against her blast. She was strong, strong enough that I wasn’t sure if I could take her in a magical fight.
“Murderess!” screamed Della. Even when shrieking her voice sounded musical. “You shall not escape justice for the death of noble Malthraxivorn!”
She raced through the office, her pretty face a mask of rage, her hands hooked into claws. I realized that she wasn’t going to bother with magic, that she was going to beat me to death with her bare hands. I might not be able to take her in a magical battle, but I definitely couldn’t take her in a hand-to-hand fight.
I worked one of the spells that Arvalaeon had taught me, sheathing my hands in invisible gauntlets of telekinetic force. Della leaped towards me, her fist shooting forward. I blocked her blow with my left hand, and I felt the impact in my mind as her fist struck the gauntlet of force. Without the spell, trying to block her fist would have broken every bone in my left hand, and if she had hit my face, she probably would have cracked my skull or shattered my jaw.
But I could hit hard, too.
I hammered my right fist into her stomach. She might have been a shapeshifted dragon, but I could still put a lot of power into my spells, and the force of my blow threw her backward across the office. Della hit the side of one of the easy chairs, and she flipped over it and landed on her ass.
She looked more surprised than hurt. Her green eyes were wide, and her mouth hung open in startlement. For a moment puzzlement overrode her rage, and I pulled together power for another spell.
“You’re human!” she said, getting to her feet in a single fluid motion. “It’s not an illusion spell, I can smell you. Your scent is human. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
I tried to think of a way to convince her that I hadn’t killed her uncle, and then I realized that I didn’t have to say anything at all. I sent a mental command to the blood ring on my right hand, and the translucent image of the High Queen’s elaborate seal appeared in the air between us.
Della blinked at it, her puzzlement increasing.
“I didn’t kill your uncle, Lady Delaxsicoria,” I said. “I am an agent of the High Queen of the Elves, and she has dispatched me to find your uncle’s murderer and bring him to justice.”
“But you’re human,” said Della again. Her nostrils flared. “I can smell you.” I guess she really did have a good sense of smell. “You’re somewhere in your early twenties. You bathed this morning after a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and sometime in the last day you have mated with a human male.”
Uh. Guess Della had a really good sense of smell.
Some of my surprise must have shown because she smirked. “Would you like me to tell you the brands of your shampoo and soap as well? But you’re human. Humans can use aetheric force, but on average you cannot wield magic with this degree of power.”
“Do you think the High Queen recruits average humans as her agents?” I said.
“Hmm,” said Della, and she tapped her lips with a finger. “No, I would suppose not. But this might all be an elaborate deception. Someone of great power killed my uncle, and it might be you.”
“Until this morning, I had no idea that either you or your uncle existed,” I said.
She drew herself up, offended. “You haven’t heard of me?”
“No. Sorry.”
Della continued speaking. “You haven’t listened to my music? You haven’t heard my albums? You haven’t bought any of my songs?”
“I really don’t listen to music,” I said. I tried to think of something to placate the obvious offense I saw on her face. “But I’m sure I’ve heard something you’ve sung on the radio while I’ve been at the gas station or something.”
Della stared at me as if I had just confessed to throwing up on her bed.
“On the radio,” she said. “At the gas station.”
“I think we might have more important things to talk about,” I said.
“More important?” said Della, her voice rising again. “Well, we’ll just see right now if you’re a trick or not.”
She gestured and cast a spell, gray light flaring around her hand, and hit me with the mindtouch spell.
I had always thought you had to be, you know, actually touching someone to use the mindtouch spell. Guess Della was powerful enough to dispense with that little formality. Her will hammered into my mind, and I stumbled back a step. It felt like steel talons were slicing into my thoughts.
Her will was strong, but so was mine. I seized her thoughts with my own and drove them into the burning memories of the Eternity Crucible.
I had done this before when people had tried to use magic to invade my mind, and I could also use the mindtouch spell to project these memories into an enemy’s thoughts. Usually, when I did that to an Elf or a human, the torrent of agony and death in the memories caused their minds to overload and more or less reboot. They generally woke up a half-hour later missing thirty minutes or so of their memories.
Della was too strong for that.
But her eyes popped wide, and she stepped back with a hiss of pain like she had just accidentally brushed a hot stove. The mindtouch spell winked out, and Della took another step back, one hand coming up in the beginnings of a spell, her eyes narrowed.
“What the freaking hell is wrong with you?” said Della. “The inside of your head is all twisted up on itself.”
I grinned my mirthless grin at her. “I had a bad day once.”
“A human mind should not look like that,” said Della. “What, are you the High Queen’s mad bad wizard girl?”
“The maddest and the baddest,” I said.
Della blinked, snorted, and shook her head. “Wait. I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”
“We never met until you walked through that door and tried to kill me,” I said.
She snapped her fingers. “I remember! I saw that news report. I watched it with my uncle. You’re the Worldburner, the one who killed the Archons.”
“Lord Morvilind killed the Archons,” I said. “I just helped.”
“Then you really do work for the High Queen,” said Della.
“She didn’t give me much choice in the matter,” I said.
Della snorted. “That sounds like the High Queen. All those of power or ability on Earth must work for her, or she’ll destroy them.” She shrugged. “My uncle understood this, and so do I. For I have seen worlds with worse rulers. So, your name is…Nadia Moran, yes?”
“Yeah,” I said. It was actually Nadia MacCormac now, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I really, really wished that stupid news report with my picture hadn’t run.
Damn reporters.
“And you are here to find out who killed my uncle?” said Della.
“Yeah,” I said again.
Della drew herself up. “Then why have you not spoken to me before this? Why do I find you creeping like a sneaking thief through my uncle’s gallery?”
I had been a sneaking thief for a long time, so that was my default mode of approaching problems.
“I wanted to look at everything with a clear head, without any preconceptions,” I said.
Della sniffed. “Then you presume to think that I murdered my uncle?”
“I don’t presume to think anything yet,” I said, watching her. I realized I had misjudged her. The histrionic displays of emotion in the ga
llery had made me think that she was stupid or at least lacking in self-control. Yet there was a powerful mind under all that emotion, and she had played it very cool with me so far. “I haven’t seen enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions.”
“If you think that I killed my uncle, then you are either delusional or ignorant,” said Della. “Do you know anything of dragons, Worldburner? I was born on Bel-Thunezad, a world far from here. When the Dark Ones overran and destroyed that world soon after I was hatched, my uncle took me and brought me to Earth, to be raised in the security of the High Queen’s domain. My uncle was a great and noble man, a man who enriched the lives of the human apes by collecting objects of beauty for them to enjoy in the fleeting time of their short mortal spans. I owe everything to him, even my very life. And you dare to suggest that I might have killed him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Did you?”
Della let out a sound that might have been an exasperated laugh or an annoyed huff. “You are as persistent as a bass drum.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I said. “I notice that you keep failing to answer the question. Did you kill your uncle?”
Her eyes narrowed again. The question had insulted her. Either she really hadn’t killed Max Sarkany, or she was an amazing actress. Both seemed well within the realm of possibility. Especially since she could use magic to control her appearance and could probably make herself feign whatever emotion she wanted with perfect precision.
“Very well, agent of the High Queen,” said Della. “You wish to question me? You seek the truth? Then come with me downstairs. We shall have the truth, you and I.”
“All right,” I said. I stepped around the desk, watching her. Maybe she intended to kill me downstairs. On the other hand, if she really wanted to kill me, she could do it up here just as easily. Though I could put up a hell of a fight, and while she was physically and magically stronger than I was, I might be able to take her.
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