Mercenary

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “Why not?”

  “The building is condemned. The man who leased it last filled it with garbage—illegally, of course. Then he hired a demolition crew to destroy it, but he lied about the building being asbestos-free. The demolition crew destroyed part of the building, and asbestos contaminated the area. The EPA cleaned up most of it, but the place is still falling apart, and it’s still full of garbage.”

  He drummed his fingers on his desk. “At the moment, the debate is ongoing as to who is responsible for cleaning it up. I think you’ll find there are many individuals who have taken advantage of the situation to use the building for…” He paused searching for the right word.

  “Criminal activities?” I suggested.

  He shrugged. “More or less. Though I think you’ll find the threat of asbestos has kept out most of the human criminal element.”

  “So it’s a breeding ground for Otherworld criminal activity.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Perfect.”

  “And you say that was the last word Mr. Temple managed to say to you? You’re certain he said ‘Acme?’”

  “Positive.”

  Finally, he nodded. “I won’t interfere in your investigation,” he said slowly. “I trust you’ll address this matter with the same enthusiasm that you showed earlier this year.”

  I shifted uneasily in my seat. I didn’t need the reminder that my first case had been assigned to me by the vampire. It made me think of the contract I’d signed. The magic that enforced it. The possibility that someday I could end up like Roger.

  “But I must caution you on two points. First, Roger Temple is a significant part of several…arrangements, I’m involved in. It would be very unfortunate if anything were to happen to him.”

  I swallowed hard. “Duly noted.”

  Anton’s facial expression didn’t change. “I trust you’ve not spoken to the doctors since you called the emergency medical services?”

  “No. Why?”

  Anton held my gaze. “I’ve spoken to my contacts at Borvo Springs. The coma won’t save Roger from the contract for long. Since the magic already began its attack and he has no understanding of how to stop it, even if he does not awaken and fight it again it will eventually seep into other areas of his mind and body like a poison. Dissolving the contract is the only way to save his life.”

  “How long?” I asked, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat.

  “I cannot say. But it will be a very painful death. I suggest you find the contract, and whoever made it, quickly.”

  It was impossible not to think of my own contract. The one I’d signed with the vampire. It wasn’t until that moment that it hit me how complacent I’d become with it. It would take so little for me to end up like Roger.

  “Find out who holds the contract,” Anton said softly. “And find out soon. Mr. Temple’s life depends on it.”

  Chapter 9

  “Right now, we need to get to Acme and find some physical evidence. If Roger was there, then we should find evidence with Vincent’s forensic spell.”

  I hit the heavy door of the Winters building hard, and it didn’t automatically open as fast as I’d expected. Several men and women waiting in the security line turned to stare at me as I bounced off the door. I flushed.

  “Very graceful,” Peasblossom muttered. “You know he got that on the security cameras.”

  I cleared my throat and pushed on the door, carefully this time. “I’m not sure about the inside though. If the place is full of garbage, that means there’s going to be an endless supply of irrelevant DNA. Human and Other.”

  “It’s old garbage,” Peasblossom pointed out. “Vincent’s spell was only designed to find trace evidence that’s less than twenty-four hours old. How far back did you manage to stretch it?”

  “Please get under my hair while we’re in public.”

  “No one pays me any attention.”

  “Peasblossom…”

  She huffed, but scooted back until she was concealed.

  “It’s not that the spell could only track DNA that was less than twenty-four hours old,” I continued. “That’s just how Vincent designed it so it would restrict information to what was recent. It didn’t take much to adjust it to find any DNA. Unfortunately, that’s a help and a hindrance. I can find older DNA, but the relevance of what I find is more questionable the older it is.”

  “You can’t date it?”

  I sighed. “Not beyond knowing if it was from the last twenty-four hours or not, no.”

  “Pity.”

  A small voice in the back of my head suggested that I very well might be able to date it if I continued to work under Flint’s guidance. The sidhe’s infuriating refusal to let me work with Andy, and his condescending insistence that I work on my spellcrafting like a child practicing violin, had paid off. Whether I liked to admit it or not. Spells that would have left me in need of a nap last month were coming easier now, and I’d managed to cast a few that had been beyond me before my unwanted FBI hiatus.

  As much as I hated Flint for exerting that much control over my life, I couldn’t deny the benefits.

  That thought unsettled me, and I spent the drive to the National Acme Building avoiding all thoughts related to my sidhe master. Helpful or not, I wasn’t so foolish as to think he didn’t have an ulterior motive. I knew he wanted my skills to improve so I could be of more use to him.

  I just didn’t know what he intended to use me for.

  The National Acme Building sprawled on the east side of Cleveland like a sick animal waiting to die. Lonely streetlights did little to banish the shadows clinging to the building, somehow making everything look more decrepit instead of hiding it. My night vision was better than a human’s, and almost as good as Peasblossom’s, so I could see the extent of the devastation.

  Broken shingles lay on the roof like scabs, the broken windows covering its sides gaping like a series of open sores. Graffiti cover the old brick like blood, and dirt and grime ate away at what was left like gangrene.

  I opened my car door and immediately gagged.

  “Oh, gods,” Peasblossom complained, clapping a hand over her nose. “That smells awful!”

  “Yes, it does.” I unzipped the pouch and rooted around for the respirator mask. I’d used it six months ago when I’d helped Julie clean up her mother’s house after she passed. Her mother had been a hoarder, and as bad as I’d thought the smell was then, it was nothing compared to the dilapidated building in front of me.

  I slipped the mask on, settling the respirator over my mouth. I wasn’t worried about asbestos exposure. The EPA had cleaned up most of that, and besides, witches healed faster than humans. Not as fast as shifters or fey, but I would heal from asbestos scarring long before it killed me. The mask was mostly for the smell.

  “I want a mask too!” Peasblossom protested.

  “I don’t have anything small enough for you,” I said, my voice taking on a slightly mechanical tone as it filtered through the respirator. “But if you want to wait in the car, you can.” I put a hand over the mask, the smell of death and sickness lingering in my nostrils from the unfortunate breath I’d already taken. I wanted to wait in the car too.

  “Is that a ladder?”

  Peasblossom flew ahead, her curiosity apparently overcoming her desire to avoid the stench of rotting garbage. I waved a hand in the direction of her voice, sending four balls of bright pink light after her into the shadows. Peasblossom glowed with her own power as she bobbed into a dark corner of the building almost hidden by a few brave trees that flourished in the desolation of the property. I walked faster as I spotted the ladder.

  I probed at the ground beneath the ladder’s legs with one finger. “It’s on top of the grass, so it hasn’t been here long enough to sink into the ground.”

  “It’s too dark inside, I can’t see.” Peasblossom’s voice was tight with frustration as she hovered in front of the broken windows. “I want to go inside.”

  “Don’t y
ou dare!” I climbed the ladder faster than was strictly wise, ready to reach out and grab the pixie if she tried to go inside alone. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

  Peasblossom scowled, but waited semi-patiently while I sent the four balls of light spiraling into the darkness of the building’s interior.

  The lights illuminated a wide open space of what had once been a factory floor. On one side, heaps of garbage formed a labyrinth of twisting tunnels that could probably kill a human by smell alone, to say nothing of what monster might live there. The chaos made the perfectly bare section of floor on the other side of the room feel more purposeful, as if whatever lived there used the empty space to lure people in, and then the tunnels drew them deeper into the decrepit building to get lost.

  Or eaten.

  Something about the floor caught my eye, and I pushed the lights down to get a better look. The floor and walls in the circular area that didn’t hold piles of refuse were blackened, covered in ash. I could see where the fire had stopped before the garbage, the drastic difference in color on the floor. There’d been a fire, carefully controlled so it didn’t spread to the labyrinth.

  Perhaps by an ifrit. Like Aaban or Charbel Nassir.

  “I doubt Roger carried a ladder with him as part of his routine equipment,” I mused. “So maybe whoever called in the anonymous tip left it here specifically for him. And if he stood on this ladder, looking inside, then he would have seen anyone entering through that doorway.”

  I pointed through the window at the doorway visible on the other side of the building. It looked like a loading dock of some kind. “He might have even seen the vehicle they arrived in.”

  Peasblossom had picked a dandelion while I wasn’t paying attention, and she held it firmly over her nose as she landed on my shoulder. “So who was here?”

  I started down the ladder. “Let’s go inside and see if we can find out.”

  “Looks like someone burned away the evidence,” Peasblossom said. “Maybe an ifrit?”

  “I do think we’re going to have to talk to Aaban and Charbel again,” I agreed. “But if he was trying to get rid of the evidence, why not burn down the whole thing?”

  I spun my finger in a circle, sending the balls of light I’d summoned into orbit around me. I circled around the building, careful to keep an eye out not just near the building, but in the surrounding areas. It was ten o’ clock at night, and the reek of garbage forced what few people might have been out and about to give the building a wide berth, so there weren’t any witnesses around to wonder what I was doing.

  The odor was worse inside. Much worse. And not even the mask could save me. I tried not to gag as I held a hand over the area and used Vincent’s forensic spell.

  Shapes exploded into the air in a veritable herd of animals. Mostly rats, some cats, a few dogs, and a handful of humans. There were Otherworld creatures too, werewolves and fey, with one vampire and a shape that looked suspiciously like a mermaid. The biological evidence that reacted to the spell seemed confined to the areas of the floor covered in garbage, so most likely it was old and had come from homes where those creatures lived. Nothing appeared within the blackened circle. Fire was the ultimate destroyer.

  Slowly Peasblossom and I turned to look at the inky blackness of the garbage labyrinth. Stacks and stacks of garbage created twisting tunnels like the black tentacles of some giant sea creature, and when I stared at them too long, I swore they were reaching for me. From this angle, there was no question the stacks had been pushed apart, carefully arranged to form a pathway.

  “I don’t want to know what’s in there,” Peasblossom said nervously.

  I held out my hand and she landed on my palm, wringing her hands. Her wings buzzed in response to her apprehension, filling the air with a low hum.

  “Stay under my hair,” I warned her. “Be ready to fly if something bad happens.”

  A shadow moved.

  I only caught it out of my peripheral vision, but I didn’t second guess myself, didn’t question the urge to dive out of the way. Instinct took over, and I rolled on the ashy floor and came up in a crouch, palm out, a spell ready to fling at whatever it was. Something splattered above me. My heart pounded, my pulse thundering in my ears and almost drowning out the low hiss of something eating away the stone pillar I’d been standing in front of a few seconds ago.

  I waved my hand, sending a ball of light closer to the sound. My stomach rolled. A sickly yellow substance with the consistency of maple syrup dripped from the stone, and it had eaten away part of the rock completely.

  “What was that?” Peasblossom shrieked from under my hair.

  I swallowed, hard. “Venom.”

  I locked my gaze on the entrance to the garbage maze, my full attention on the shifting shadows. Something moved on top of one of the trash piles, and I caught a glitter of scales struck by the pink light of my spell. Scuttling back, I put the pillar between us, leaning out just enough to keep an eye on where the venom had come from, waiting for the monster to show itself.

  A hissing sound preceded a long, sinewy body. “I missssed.”

  I didn’t move, didn’t release my spell as the creature crept over the garbage, moving more solidly into my line of sight. It was a snake. No, not a snake. It talked. And now that it had moved into the light, I could see that its body was much thicker than its head. Something twitched a few inches above its body, and I realized it had wrapped its tail over top of the garbage above it. Its tail didn’t resemble a snake’s so much as a rat’s, thick and pink with no hair or scales.

  “A tsuchinoko,” Peasblossom said, her voice lilting in surprise. She grunted. “Great, just what we need.”

  “We’re not here to fight,” I called out. “My name is Mother Renard, and I’m here looking for information.”

  “Everybody who comess here iss looking for information.” The serpent’s voice was dry, rasping like the sound of its scales against the mound of refuse it slithered against. “But you are alone. Where will you get your information?”

  “If you’re feeling helpful, perhaps I could ask you a few questions?” I suggested.

  Peasblossom snorted. “For what good it will do you. Outrageous liars, tsuchinokos.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but at this point I’d settle for a half-truth. Tsuchinokos were opportunistic. They preyed on rats and smaller animals, but they’d eat bigger prey given the chance—up to and including humans. But they were also very lazy. Now that it had lost the element of surprise, this one probably wouldn’t fight me just to get a big meal.

  Probably.

  “Why should I ansswer your quesstionss? What’ss in it for me?”

  “Let’s see,” I muttered under my breath, unzipping the pouch. “Do I have any alcohol in here?”

  “You have the Marsala wine.”

  I sighed, but reluctantly dug through the pouch looking for the bottle. “I was going to use that to make Chicken Marsala tomorrow.”

  “Priorities, Shade,” Peasblossom muttered.

  I gripped the bottle by its neck and waved it at the snake. “I’ve got a bottle of wine here. It’s yours if you’ll answer a few questions.”

  The snake crept out another few inches, bulging black eyes reflecting the pink light from my spell as it tilted its head. “All right. It’ss a deal.”

  I touched a finger to Peasblossom’s head, passing her the spell I’d been holding ready. My fingertip tingled against the strands of her pink hair as the magic passed between us. “If it tries to attack us, let it have it.”

  “Right!”

  I straightened my spine, and opened the bottle, but didn’t hand it over yet. “You said this is where people come for information. What did you mean by that?”

  The snake didn’t take its eyes off the bottle. “Thiss iss where they come with their ssourccess. They bring them here and yell their quesstionss. Then when the misserable ssoul refussess to ansswer, they drop their human facess and have their fun.”

  “Ha
ve their fun?”

  The snake stuck its head farther into the space between us, opening its mouth just enough for me to get a glimpse of long, curved fangs. “Give me the bottle.”

  “Tell me who brings people here to question them, and it’s yours.”

  “The ssoldierss. Now give it to me!”

  I handed over the bottle, and it took every ounce of self control I had not to flinch when the snake darted its head out and closed its mouth around the bottle neck. I stared, trying to keep a straight face as the beast upended the bottle, the yellowish scales of its neck rippling as it swallowed the wine in gulp after gulp.

  “Soldiers bring victims here?” I looked around at the maze of garbage. I frowned. “What soldiers? What do they ask?”

  The tsuchinoko lashed its tail around the bottle to hold it while it pulled the neck from its mouth, forked tongue stabbing the air on a happy hiss of satisfaction. “They’ve never cleaned up before,” it observed, its voice slightly slurred. “That’ss new.” It stretched, its tail lashing lazily from side to side. “The fire sscared the ratss into the shadowss. We ate well that night.”

  I followed its gaze to the fire-scorched circle. “When did that happen?”

  “Lasst night. Or lasst week. Or lasst month.” It licked the top of the bottle. “Who can remember?”

  I tried to keep my frustration out of my voice. “What did they look like? Before they dropped their glamour? Were they wearing uniforms?”

  The tsuchinoko dissolved into a fit of giggles, rolling off the pile of garbage to land with a squishy thud on the floor.

  I growled in frustration, glaring at the miserable reptile as it stuck the end of its disgusting rat-like tail in its mouth and rolled away like a tumble weed, disappearing into the rank tunnels of refuse.

  “These tunnels aren’t an accident,” I murmured to Peasblossom. “Someone made them. And it wasn’t that lazy worm.”

  Peasblossom stared at me, refusing to follow my gesture toward the opening of the garbage labyrinth. “I’m not going in there. If it’s drunk it might take another shot at you again.”