“Maps? We’ll have to go through those. No reason to print out maps unless they’re being used for something.” Damned near every person in the world had a phone that would display any map they wanted. And why would Elesio keep paper copies of documents?
“Yeah,” she said. “A stack of about thirty copies of a map with drawings on it. Another map of the area on the Catonsville campus where that rally was held. I assume the marks on it have some meaning. You having any luck?”
I turned my screen so she could see the email I had been reading. It was from Susan Reed to someone in Austria. It contained the formula and magikal technique for creating the thallium-bound salt that Julia Danner had whipped up.
“I think if we ever manage to apprehend Susan, this might be a crucial piece of evidence,” I said. “We’ll need to notify our counterparts in Austria.”
We arrived back at Police Headquarters and walked in on pandemonium. Hundreds of people had been arrested, and the booking operation was shoving them into cells wholesale, without bothering to identify them. I was informed that the Rifter section of the jail was just as chaotic.
I spent the next few hours attempting to sort through the intelligence everyone had gathered and make some sense of it. About nine o’clock in the evening, Luanne came into my office and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Captain, you’ve been at it since seven this morning. Have you eaten anything today?”
“Carmelita brought me a sandwich.”
“Well, she went home a couple of hours ago. I think you probably need something more than that. And you need some sleep. All this crap will still be here in the morning. Go home.”
Since my eyes felt like someone had poured sand in them, I decided she was probably right. I signed out of the computer, stood up, and grabbed my coat. “Thanks, Luanne.” As I left, I realized that she had come in at seven like I had. I turned and saw her gathering her coat and turning out the lights.
My stomach growled at me, and I realized I was starving. Instead of taking the elevator down to the parking garage, I decided to grab some dinner before I went home.
Walking through the building and on out into the night, I saw that the chaotic scene I had encountered that morning hadn’t changed much. Cops and soldiers were still bringing in prisoners, but the sergeant on the front desk was different. Shift change had occurred hours before.
It was cold out and smelled like snow. As I stepped out from under the building’s front portico, I realized there was a fine frozen mist beginning to fall. Few people were out on the street, and traffic was light.
I turned to walk down the hill toward Jack’s. Two blocks away from the station, I turned a corner and found Besevial standing in my way. My first thought was that Osiris and Whittaker were correct—I was a slow learner. For the past month, every time I’d gone out alone at night, the demon had confronted me. I drew my Raider but didn’t point it at him, waiting for him to speak.
“I don’t suppose you’ve thought about returning Akashrian’s avatar,” he said, in that deep, rumbling voice.
“No, because I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He bared his teeth and snarled. It was very impressive, and in spite of myself, I took a step back.
“Don’t play games. You are the one who killed Ashvial. He was weak, and by right, all his possessions pass to you. But the avatar wasn’t his. It is Akashrian’s, and she has empowered me to recover it.”
It might have been foolish, but I decided to take a chance. “Just assuming that I did know where this thing is,” I said, “why should I give it to you? What’s in it for me? I mean, if it’s so valuable, maybe I could sell it.”
He made a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard—somewhere between a steam whistle, a rusty hinge, and a cat whose tail has been stepped on. Steam rose from his head, and I took another step back.
“Because I would eat your liver before taking it from whoever you sold it to.”
“Oh. I guess I shouldn’t do that, then. Well, how much are you prepared to pay for it?”
The steam from his head seemed to dissipate, and he leaned toward me. “I could make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
I had to chuckle. “My dreams are pretty wild. This is all hypothetical, you know, but suppose I did have it. I would trade it to you for my father.”
The demon straightened. He stared at me in silence for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he said, “Hypothetically, what makes you think I could do that?”
“I think Akashrian could do that. Value for value.”
He stared some more, then slowly nodded. “You are arresting demons. Why?”
The change of subject caught me off guard. “We’re arresting only those who have broken our laws, and those who fight against us at the behest of our enemies.”
“I could call them off, abandon Akiyama. Would you trade the avatar for that?”
“You could throw that into the deal, sure. You should do that anyway. Why back a losing hand? My father and demon neutrality. Sounds good to me.”
“Akashrian doesn’t bargain.”
“Aw, c’mon. How stupid do you think I am? She’s a demon. You all bargain. It’s part of your DNA.”
He took a step toward me, and I raised the Raider, pointing it at his chest. There was a movement behind me, and I stepped to the side, risking a quick glance in that direction. Instead of another demon, as I expected, it was Mychal, Raider in hand.
Besevial chuckled. “We shall continue this discussion later.”
He disappeared.
“Well, that’s a new one,” Mychal said. “I didn’t know demons could do that.”
“Besevial isn’t your run-of-the-mill demon.”
“Besevial? Oh.” He looked down at his Raider, then holstered it. “Will a Raider kill a demon lord?”
I shrugged as I holstered my own weapon. “I hope so, but I’m not sure if he knows, either. I was on my way to get some dinner. Care to join me?”
Chapter 22
I walked along in a fog. My head was spinning, and I couldn’t see to process what had just happened. Had Besevial confirmed that my father was still alive? That my dreams weren’t simply a young girl’s wishful thinking? Or was I still caught up in denial about his death?
We arrived at Jack’s and found a booth in the back. When I reached out to key the automenu, my hand was shaking. Deciding I needed something more than just a meal, I ordered a beer and a double shot of whiskey to go with my fried oysters.
“Your father?” Mychal asked after we finished ordering.
“Lucky thing you happened along,” I said, pretending to ignore his question.
“Actually, I was following you. It seems like you’ve been having some demon problems lately.”
Our drinks arrived, and I retrieved mine from the chute. I took a slug of the whiskey and savored the burn, then washed it down with some of my beer. Mychal continued to stare at me.
When I didn’t say anything, he did. “I thought that Lucas James was killed twenty-some years ago.”
With a sigh, I said, “Almost twenty-three. He and my Granduncle Richard were ambushed about three blocks from here. Richard and seven of their guardians were killed, another six were injured. All of their bodies were left in the street. My father was never found. My Family always suspected Akiyama was behind the attack, and that there were demons involved.”
“Why Akiyama? I mean, I know that Findlay and Akiyama have always been rivals, but why assassinate your father?”
“He was the strongest magitek in the world. Findlay and Akiyama compete in many areas, but both were developing magitek products, and both were far ahead of anyone else. Findlay has always assumed Akiyama was making a play to dominate the market.”
“If that’s the case, it doesn’t seem as though it’s done them any good. Both Findlay and Dressler continue to compete with them.”
I didn’t say anything. Both Mary Sue and I had designed magitek devic
es for our Families since we were teens. We'd become a lot better at it since getting our engineering degrees, but it was magikal strength, imagination, and creativity that made a good designer, not technical skills. Had we caught up to Lucas James? I wasn’t sure, but I could duplicate or improve upon anything he’d ever built.
“So, what makes you think demons have your father?” Mychal persisted. “Why do you think he’s still alive?”
I shrugged. “I have dreams. Dreams where he speaks to me.”
“And you don’t think that’s just subconscious wishful thinking?”
“How many people can speak and read demon?”
His forehead wrinkled, and the look he gave me showed he thought I was changing the subject. “I don’t know. A few hundred, maybe. There were about a dozen people studying it at Johns Hopkins when I was there.”
“I have an implant that my father designed. He had one also. According to people who knew him, he didn’t speak or read demon. Now, I’ve never studied the language, but I’m fluent in it. I learned it in my dreams. I know more about demon society and psychology than anyone I’ve ever met. That includes demon experts at the universities who’ve been studying them all their lives.”
Mychal took a sip of his beer and said, “Tell me about Akashrian and this avatar thing.”
So, I did. I didn’t tell him where the avatar was, but I did describe it and told him I thought it was the reason for the slaughter at a drug house he and I had investigated. Told him about seeing Akashrian in my dreams, and Besevial’s repeated demands that I return it.
“You saw the image over the harbor on New Year’s Eve,” I said. “That was Akashrian. If I’m hallucinating, then it’s contagious.”
When I finished, Mychal said, “Have you thought about who’s behind the Harvesting Souls Church? Most demons in our dimension are thugs. They don’t even think tactically, let alone strategically. Setting up a church as a means of exporting fresh meat across the Rift took some imagination.”
It hit me. Mychal was right. The churches showed up at the same time as Besevial took over Ashvial’s territory.
I shook my head. “And just when I was ready to write you off as simply another pretty face. Damn! The answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
He winked at me. “I think you missed the forest because of all the trees. Now, why does Besevial want that little statuette so badly?”
“I don’t know. I wondered if it was a means of communication across the Rift, but when Akashrian’s image appeared with Besevial on New Year’s Eve, she didn’t seem to have any trouble communicating with him. Perhaps it’s a means of enhancing his power in this world.”
Mychal chuckled. “Or maybe it’s just a status symbol, like a fancy sports car.”
It wasn’t a surprise when I fell into dreams about the demon realm that night. Akashrian railed at me for what seemed to be a long time, screaming and threatening. Gradually, I realized she was berating not me but my father.
When she finally left, he turned to me and imparted several key bits of knowledge. He told me that the avatar was actually a portal Akashrian and her minions used to safely travel back and forth between their dimension and ours. Without it, they couldn’t be certain of landing back in the demon realm instead of in Alfheim, or the dragon realm, or someplace equally inimical to their kind. The catch was that she needed someone—a demon lord such as Ashvial or Besevial—to open it for her from our side.
I knew there were twelve demon lords on earth, and they had defined territories. But Dad told me there were only three of the avatars, one for each of the demon goddesses in the demon realm. When Kirsten and I threw our wards around the statuette, we severely limited Akashrian’s control of the four demon lords who owed her fealty.
Another key piece of information was how to kill her if she did show her scaley head on earth. Father told me that there was no way to destroy the statuette, but if Akashrian died, the avatar would lose its power and strand her worshippers on our side of the Rift with no way to return home except by chancing the Rift.
I had all kinds of questions, but no way to ask them. That was the nature of my dreams. All the communication was one way. Then he gave me a hug and a kiss on the forehead and told me that he loved me. It was one of the few times when I woke up after a dream about the demons and had a smile on my face.
At breakfast, I told Mychal and Kirsten about my dream. When I mentioned the statuette, Kirsten’s eyes shifted toward Mychal.
“I told him about the statuette last night,” I said. “I also told him some things I’ve never told anyone before, not even you or Olivia.”
I went on to give her an abbreviated account of my dreams and my belief that my father still lived.
“I always suspected something like that,” Kirsten said when I finished. “Remember, I’ve been listening to you have nightmares since we were sixteen.”
“You never asked about them.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, I have, but gently. I figured if you didn’t want to talk about them, then it was none of my business. But I was pretty sure they were about your father. Sometimes you speak of him in present tense, as though he’s still alive.”
I sat staring at my hands holding a coffee cup. “It’s never felt like he was really gone. But I couldn’t figure out if that was just denial. But after I got my implant, I started having really vivid dreams. He’d come to me and tell me things. Then one day, I woke up and I was able to read and understand demon.” I glanced up at Kirsten.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s pretty weird.”
Mychal and I drove into work and discovered the previous day’s chaos hadn’t slacked off. The jails were filled with everyone from idealistic college kids to murderous drug-dealing demons. We had so many drugs piling up that Whittaker had commandeered a vacant office building and turned it into a warehouse. Almost half of the Rifter-run businesses in the Metroplex had been shut down due to illegal activities discovered on the premises.
“Pretty amazing what we can accomplish if we don’t have to fiddle with warrants and civil liberties,” Whittaker commented. “Of course, the number of complaints from lawyers is up about a thousand percent from last week.”
“Authoritarian regimes tend to be very low on real crime,” Mychal said. “They have sedition instead. The Families have always tried to avoid that.”
I spent the morning browsing through the HLA arrests, trying to make connections between the people we hauled in and Susan Reed. I referred a handful of them to Carmelita for interrogation. I didn’t believe that Susan was spending all of her time cooped up in the Findlay mansion. She had to get out occasionally to keep her criminal underlings in-line. She would use those opportunities to touch base with her co-conspirators in the HLA, and if we could figure out when and where she did that, we had a chance of trapping her.
In the afternoon, I went over to the office Mary Sue had set up so I could meet the Dressler Robotics magitek engineers and start work on redesigning the battlebots. The young man was technically very good. The young woman was creative. Both had several years of experience and immediately understood what we needed to do. By the time we knocked off that evening, I felt a lot better about the project.
That gave me the freedom to go home for dinner and begin designing the device my father imagined for use against Akashrian.
Chapter 23
Luanne burst into my office. “A stretch limo just left the Findlay estate going north.”
“Have a drone follow it.”
“Already happening.”
“What color?”
“The limo? Gray. Maybe silver. Why?”
My grandmother’s car. All but two of Findlay’s limos were black. But Olivia preferred to be different.
“Tell the surveillance team to keep to their stations. It could be a decoy, or it could be nothing at all,” I said, getting up from my chair. I grabbed my coat. “Are either Carmelita or Mychal here in the office?”
“Carmelita i
s. She’s interviewing one of those HLA members you tagged.”
“Call her and tell her to meet me in the parking garage.”
The limo might possibly be a decoy, but I would bet it held either Susan or Courtney. My grandmother’s cars were softer, plusher, and more girlie than the other Findlay limos.
The week had dragged since my encounter with Besevial. I had met twice with the Dressler engineers, and they agreed with my assessment that it would be easier to design new battlebots from the ground up. There had been too many scientific advances over the past eighty years. Some of the older designs could be imported into the design software and used as a starting point, but those were the basic physical parts, such as the tank treads.
The roundup of HLA suspects and criminal Rifters had slowed down as well. The police force had grabbed all the low-hanging fruit, but any of the drug dealers and flesh peddlers with any sense that we missed in the first sweep had gone to ground. Junkies who couldn’t find a fix were flooding the area hospitals. We had put a severe crimp in both Besevial’s and Susan’s operations.
I reached my car at the same time Carmelita did. We jumped in, I started the engine, and we drove out onto the street. I took the first freeway onramp, not caring that it went in the wrong direction. I just needed clear space so I could take the car airborne.
“Coffee?” Carmelita asked as I completed my turn and leveled out heading north about five hundred feet over the freeway. She handed me one of the to-go cups she was holding.
“Thanks. How did you have time to pick this up?”
“Your timing’s good. I just had them delivered from the fancy coffee place down the street. What’s going on?”
I filled her in, and she fiddled with the radio until she connected with the drone operator.
Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 12