“Yes,” she answered.
Then I faced Casey again. “They found something that may or may not be smoke,” I said. “And it’s moving. Twitching, actually. I don’t know, maybe I can use it as a fetish.”
“Aren’t you supposed to save those for me?”
“Casey… Not now.”
Casey smiled and nodded. “I will keep Dulcie company. Just be careful.”
“I will.” I leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon. Promise.”
“A team of Feds are on their way to Knight’s,” he said. “You may want to stay there and tell them whatever you can. Including what you feel and see and anything else that’s pertinent.”
“You don’t trust Bram,” I said, more as a statement than a question.
“Do you?”
“Hardly,” I answered. Honestly, I hoped Bram would duck out when Casey’s teams arrived. The last thing I looked forward to was spending a thousand hours in a small, dark room answering questions with Bram of all people. “Don’t move too much, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
And I left.
THIRTEEN
Sam
“Oh, hell,” I said as I walked in.
Bram looked over his shoulder at me, his expression more than a little grim. “My sentiments exactly.”
Everything was trashed, but that wasn’t quite the right word. A destroyed hotel room covered in spilled drinks and broken bottles, tangled sheets and torn curtains would have been bad, but this didn’t have the look of a rock-star riot gone awry. It was the scene of a violent mauling, with lots of blood and purposeful destruction.
The sofa was torn in pieces, cleaved in half as though a massive scythe bisected it. The inside padding drifted through the room like fresh snow. The walls were gouged out by four claws, strong enough and big enough to pierce through the stone façade outside. The ceiling fan lay on the floor in the middle of the living room surrounded by the shredded remains of the thin beige carpet. The carpet was torn up completely in some places, exposing the tired, pale, wooden planks beneath. They were all streaked and crosshatched with claw marks.
“Is that Knight’s blood?” I asked, indicating the long reddish-brown stripes on the carpet, the walls, and the ceiling—what was left of them, anyway. I flashed to an image of Casey with the claws still embedded in his shoulder and wondered if we were just lucky.
“No,” Bram answered. His arms were crossed as he surveyed the scene with casual disinterest. His foot kept tapping ever so slightly, a nervous tic I remembered from our brief stint together.
“The blood is not Vander’s,” Bram replied. “It belongs to the abomination. It must have fought something else or went insane and managed to hurt itself in its search. I suspect the latter, due to the number of head-bashes and blood splatters clinging to the walls.”
“Why would it do that?”
“Insanity, my dear,” Bram answered with a shrug. Then he strode forward into the living room, his frown deepening and turned to me. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“There is… hmmm.” He moved away and took a few more steps, standing in the middle of the living room. His fists clenched so tightly that his nails pierced the skin on his palms. “Something was here.”
“Yeah, the abomination,” I said slowly. “Right?”
“No. Something else entirely.”
I swallowed hard. “Um. What kind of something else?”
Bram shook his head. “Something… I fail to recognize it. It is similar to the vacuum of Meg’s power, but also different… somehow. It seems colder, and less stifling. I have no idea what it could be. I have never felt anything like it before.”
“Oh, good,” I muttered. All we needed now was another unknown unfriendly to add to our neverending list of bad guys.
“It does not feel inherently bad necessarily,” Bram added. “And its residue is also very faint, but I do not believe it could be benevolent, not by any means. It also lacks Meg’s signature…” he waved his hands in the air, as if he were searching for the word.
“Fuck-you-ness?” I suggested.
“That works.”
“So is that all you found?” I asked.
Bram shook his head. “No. Quillan is with it right now in the other room.”
“It? As in…?”
He shrugged. “Something neither of us can identify. We have no doubt it is magical, but beyond that…” He shrugged again and gestured for me to enter the bedroom off the hallway. “Go and see for yourself.”
I looked around the demolished room one more time, feeling sick to my stomach. Bram said a few hours had passed since Knight was last here, but still, I worried. Was it even possible Knight could have survived this? I figured he must have or else they would have discovered his body...
I walked into the bedroom and found Quillan kneeling on the ground in front of a massive grey shadow. Covered in feathers and fur, it had long teeth and red, sharp claws. He was staring intently at its face, which was thin, gaunt, and now, sunken in. The features appeared to belong to something that died a long time ago.
Its eyes were shut and its mouth was hanging open. The skin was stretched tightly over the bones in the mummified expression of something in a great deal of pain. Its teeth were sharp, and of varying shapes. Some were needle thin and lengthy, while others were thick and flat, and still others were round and pointed, as if they were hammered haphazardly into its gums. Suture marks were clearly visible at its throat, shoulders, wrists and ankles. All the bits and pieces of deceased creatures, and not nearly so clean as the one at my house. The stitches on this one were clumsily done, and many were falling apart, oozing out a thick, black substance that might have been blood. A distinct smell arose from it, something thin and sharp, like rust in the rain.
“This one is older,” said Bram. “Meg’s first attempt, I think, or thereabouts. Sloppy work. The dark magic she used to so lovingly render the one at your home is definitely lacking here.”
“Like pancakes; the first one’s always a throw-away,” I muttered.
I knelt beside Quillan. The abomination was dead, and there was no doubt about that. It wasn’t moving, and the blackish liquid it lost had soaked the carpet from here to the windows. I looked down at my knees and saw it staining my skin like hair dye, leaving behind ugly purple circles and splotches like bruises. I worried that it would be impossible to wash out of my clothes, but that was hardly my priority now.
“Ew,” I said.
“Yeah,” Quillan answered. He looked tired—like all of us—but appeared mostly unchanged. His hair was still blond, although it was a little longer now, and decidedly more unkempt. His skin was pale and currently spotted with the abomination’s blood. It looked like he caught an awful Netherworldian pox, but he was an elf, so the rest of his body was damn near flawless. He wore a yellow dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and dark blue jeans. He was also leaner than I remembered.
He looked up and smiled at me with eyes that seemed cold and haunted, and in which I saw the reflections of a hundred different ghosts. For a moment, I was briefly transported to where it all began: sitting behind my desk at the ANC, checking the contents and side effects of confiscated potions. Back in the good old days when Dulcie was writing a romance novel about Quill and the three of us were besties.
“Hi, Quillan,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
“It has,” he agreed. His smile was warm, sincere, and sad. I wondered if he was also remembering the ANC, in the days when nobody wanted to kill us and he and Dulcie could have been in love. “How are you?”
“As a rule, not great,” I said. “How’s Christina?”
“She’s doing very well.”
“And the two of you?”
His smile widened and for a second, the shadows left his eyes, making him appear a little brighter on the inside. “We’re do
ing well too.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Really good to hear.”
Behind us, Bram cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but are there not more pressing matters to attend to at present than discussing the status of your romantic relationships?”
Quillan snorted and scowled at Bram over his shoulder. “This, coming from the high king of screwy priorities?”
“I have never pretended to be even remotely gallant,” said Bram. Quillan stiffened beside me, and I sensed this was part of a much larger, longer conversation. I wondered how long it had taken them to get at each other’s throats. Quillan was as level-headed as they came, and Bram so high and mighty that I couldn’t imagine their reunion had been a good one. And since both were in love with Dulcie at one time or another, it was more than enough to start a fire raging between them.
“I had no choice,” Quillan seethed. I went cold as I realized what they were talking about.
Bram grinned and opened his mouth, preparing to say something unfriendly.
“Okay,” I said, clapping my hands, breaking the silence with a snap as sharp as cracking glass. “What are we looking at?”
Quillan shot Bram a look, which Bram returned with red-eyed, vampiric fervor, and the air seemed to get sucked out of the room.
“Bram,” I said slowly.
He sighed as he turned his attention to me. Slowly, ever so slowly, the red faded from his eyes. “This,” he said.
And he held out the heart for me to see. It was totally calcified, a thin, broken, grey stone—like somebody used a meat cleaver on a papier-maché balloon. The inside was blackened with something similar to wet soot that oozed from the hardened arteries like ancient toothpaste.
“Shit,” I said. “That’s… that’s really ugly.”
Bram nodded solemnly. “The heart,” he said, “is where the afflicted soul usually embeds itself.”
“Is that the soul?” I asked, my stomach twisting. Or what’s left of it. “Is that what happens when you…”
“Force a newly dead soul into a cursed body?” he asked. “No. Not at all. Whatever was inside this heart a moment ago was no soul, be it mortal or immortal, not that I have ever seen, and I have seen many over the centuries.”
“Then what is it?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” he answered. “But it is certainly not a soul, or any part of a soul.”
That was good to know. Probably. “Okay. How can you tell?”
“Because souls like yours and mine—and I do have one, despite what your romance novels might say—are composed of non-organic components that more closely resemble light than… whatever this is.” He tilted his hand to the left and right so I could see the black gunk glinting in the reflection. “If it expired in a manner that allowed it to leave something behind, it should be a faint, colorless glimmer with a smell like cold wind on snow. Not this.”
“Could Meg’s darkness have corrupted it somehow? Or made it look that way?”
“Perhaps,” Bram responded. “Or she may have discovered a Darkness-driven method to twist bodies into terrible monsters that can only be called other. This seems to be a unique prototype and not a perversion of something less sinister.”
“And you’re basing that on?”
“Just a feeling.”
Quillan snorted.
“There is only dark magic here,” Bram said without looking at him. “No traces of anything that might once have been remotely human. If a soul was involved here of any kind, Meg must have pulverized it straight out of existence. Whatever this is, it exists in its own right and merit, much to our chagrin and that of the natural world.”
“Aww, just like you,” Quillan said. “Maybe you can become friends.”
“Quillan, come on,” I said. It was a cheap dig and we had more important things to do than insult each other.
“Why do you know so much about this?” Quillan asked Bram, his eyes narrowing.
“I have been alive for four hundred years,” Bram proudly stated although his voice was cold and steely. “Suffice to say, I have seen many things.”
“You can’t expect me to believe it’s that simple.”
“No, I expect you to believe it because you are that simple, and historically willing to accept your fate with total ignorance. But if it makes you feel superior to believe that I spent several years learning how to make homemade monsters to use for more nefarious purposes, I welcome you to indulge yourself.”
“Boys,” I said, and they abruptly stopped glaring at each other. I looked between them with an expression Dulcie refers to as “motherly venom.” I love you, but if you don’t shape up, I will throw you off a cliff. “Priorities. Get them sorted.”
Quillan looked down, visibly ashamed. Bram snorted his derision and looked away.
I sighed. “So what is this?” I pointed to the black goop that coated the inside of the heart.
Bram took his time replying. “That answer, I hope, will come from you,” he said. “Regardless of its origin, this is only the residue. Whatever was formerly inside it is now hiding inside the body. It is incapable of reanimation without the heart, so the body is in no danger of posing a threat to us. But we should all know exactly what we are dealing with, since it is not a proper soul.”
“Is that what’s in its throat? The mist or whatever?”
“Precisely.”
I leaned forward a bit and peered between the jumbled teeth. Just behind a slate grey tongue swirled a mass of black smoke, twisting over and under itself like a writhing snake.
“What is that?” I asked.
Quillan shrugged before looking in with me. Bram took a step forward to see it as well, leaning over both of us with his arms crossed and a sour, uninterested expression on his face.
“I don’t know,” Quillan said. “It was more solid before. And I doubt it’s just smoke, otherwise it should be rising, shouldn’t it?”
“It should,” I answered.
“It is losing control of itself,” said Bram. “This is most likely what was animating the body, since no soul was present. Without its heart intact, there is nothing to which it can anchor itself.”
“Hold this open for me.” I handed Quillan my purple apothecary bag of knicks and knacks, filled with sweet-smelling ingredients in glass bottles, my “witchy trinkets” as Bram referred to them. Quillan obliged.
“Anything I may do to assist you?” the self-impressed vampire asked.
“As a rule, no,” I said, “Just don’t move.” I dug around in my bag for a teeny, tiny, minute mason jar of white powder.
“What’s that?” Quillan asked.
“Ground bat bones,” I answered. “If this is black magic, the bones will turn black and dissolve as soon as the smoke absorbs their power. If it’s neutral magic, they’ll change color; and if it’s just super weird smoke, nothing will happen.” I hesitated. “It’s almost definitely dark magic, but I want to make sure we’re not just dealing with a weird, slimy parasite.”
“You think Meg would use parasites to animate these things?” Quillan asked.
“Maybe. She’s done weirder shit before.”
“Wow, Sam, you’ve really come a long way,” Quillan said, his tone of voice nostalgic. I faced him with a sad smile.
“Thanks.” Then I turned to face the third person in our party who was frowning at us both. “Bram, hold this.”
Bram stretched out his hand and gingerly accepted the mason jar. He shivered as the glass touched his palm. “I would not think the bones of bats could carry enough arcane energy to be felt through a jar.”
“There’s other stuff in there too,” I said. “Sage, ginger, and garlic, but not much. Just, ah, don’t eat it or anything.”
“I will try to resist with all my strength,” Bram said sarcastically, holding the jar as far away from himself as possible. He frowned at me, apparently not exactly thrilled with the task.
I pulled a small, silver, rectangular box from the bag. It was covered in f
lowery stickers with my name etched into one side of it. I popped off the lid and removed the paintbrush, popsicle stick, and a tiny round jar of green paste from the indentations inside the green foam base.
“Give it here,” I said, and Bram handed the bat bones back to me, so fast that I nearly dropped it. “Shit, be careful,” I said, “if this breaks, it’ll go up in a toxic cloud and you will die.”
“It would take more than a touch of garlic to kill me,” Bram retorted. He sounded a little offended, or maybe he was just unsure. Pumpkins had a far more detrimental effect on vampires than garlic ever could, but it would still be wildly unpleasant if any of it landed on him, let alone, if he inhaled it.
“Sure, whatever, just be careful,” I said. “This stuff is also expensive.”
“Of course,” he responded as he stepped back a bit before bowing. “Not to mention it is quite stinky.”
I popped the glass lid off the green paste and dipped the brush into it. It ran thick as syrup from the bristles as I lifted it out and dipped it into the powder bones. They hissed and steamed as they connected, and when I raised it up, the green paste had lost all of its color and turned completely white. I brushed the new color onto one end of the popsicle stick, laying it on as thick as cream so I’d definitely be able to gauge the reaction.
“What’s that?” Quillan asked, gesturing to the small green jar.
“An all-purpose medium,” I said. “Sugar paste. Like what they use for color indicators in chemistry. It allows you to see the reaction happening that would otherwise be invisible.” I handed him the box and bone jar and turned to the mouth of the abomination. The smell of its blood seemed to coat my mouth, sloshing around in my lungs like inhaled saltwater. “You guys feel that too, right? The extra weight in the air whenever you breathe?”
“Yes,” said Bram. “It is most unpleasant. Luckily for me, I do not need to breathe.”
“I feel it too,” said Quillan. “It’s the blood. It’s emitting something.” He took a half-breath and swallowed, grimacing. “Like burning tar, almost.”
“Yeah, but it tastes different,” I said. “Maybe because it’s losing its integrity.” I held the popsicle stick over the abomination’s mouth and waved it around, seeing if I could coax more smoke out of its throat with the smell of bat bones and calcified sugar. If it stirred, I failed to see it.
What Screams May Come Page 16