by Rob Cornell
He looked ready to argue, but sighed, nodded. “Yeah.”
“But now you know what you’re truly capable of. You get control of that shit?” I shook my head. “You’ll be a force, man.”
That got a smile out of him. “Thanks, Sebastian. You…” He stopped himself, uncertainly in his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Where next?” the driver asked once Odi was inside.
Mom took my hand. “I suppose you need to report your success with the Ministry.”
I made a barfing noise. “That can wait. I need sleep. No. I need a coma.”
I told the cabbie to take us back to the hotel. The whole way, my eyelids kept drooping, and at one point I even started to dream until Mom punched me in the arm to wake me up when we arrived.
That coma I needed came easy when my head hit the pillow. Not even the over-starched pillow case could get between me and oblivion. But I dreamed. I dreamt of Odi. His whole body was in flames and he was screaming in pain. We stood in a giant paper box, and the walls quickly caught fire and burned away, big flakes of ash fluttering through the air like crow feathers.
I woke up in a sweat, still feeling the heat from the blaze that had surrounded us.
The sight of the unburnt ceiling calmed me. I took a couple deep breaths, and my heartbeat slowed.
Light leaked into the room from around the edges of the drawn curtains. I rolled onto my side and checked the time on the alarm clock on the nightstand. Almost one o’ clock. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, got up, and headed straight for the shower. The steam helped clear the last threads of sleepiness out. I could smell the smoke from our oversized bonfire in my hair as I wetted it down. Soot rolled off of me and swirled into the drain.
I thought of the weird dream about Odi. It didn’t take Freud to work out what it meant. I was worried for the kid. If he tried something like he had last night again, he could get hurt…bad. And wouldn’t I feel responsible? I was the one who had told him to trust his gut, the one who had set him up to let loose like that, knowing where it might lead.
I closed those thoughts away and finished cleaning up. Sleep and my magical energy had healed the cut above my eye, and the shower had washed off the last bit of crusty blood. I used the complimentary razor and shaved the scraggly hair unworthy of the term beard off my face. Mom would approve. She always preferred me clean-cut. I guess that’s part of what made her a mom.
I started some coffee in the tiny coffeemaker plugged in on the bathroom counter. As it started, I could smell how cheap the provided coffee was, but I couldn’t wait to go out to Biggby for a caffeine fix. I needed it now.
Mom came in shortly after I started the coffee.
“I was wondering when you’d wake up,” she said, looking fresh. “You always did like to sleep in.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose as if I could squeeze the sleep out of my eyes that way. “We didn’t get back until almost dawn. It doesn’t count as sleeping in.”
“Well, I’ve been up since nine.”
I plopped into the creaky wood-framed chair at the small round table by the window. I had opened the curtains to my wonderful view of the parking lot and the back of a McDonald’s. I knew if I cracked the window I would smell the old grease from the restaurant. My sleepy stomach was already queasy enough.
I kept an ear cocked for the last sputter and hiss from the coffeemaker so I could get that shit inside of me pronto.
Mom joined me at the table. “What’s the plan?”
“We follow up on this Ira Glass dude. Toss his place.”
“What do you think we’ll find?”
I shrugged. “Probably nothing. But I’d like to know why a member of the Ministry tried to kill me. You know, for closure.”
“I think—”
My phone trilled from the nightstand. I pushed myself up from my chair, feeling like a three-hundred-year-old sorcerer with bad knees.
Where’s my cane?
I shuffled over and checked the number on my phone’s screen. I didn’t recognize it. I almost let it go to voicemail, but the call could have been coming from the Ministry wanting a check in. Even if the officers from last night didn’t report my role in Glass’s death, I was sure they had said something about the night. After all, the Ministry would have wondered where its missing officers had been all this time.
The second I answered, I knew it wasn’t the Ministry, because it was Odi, screaming at me.
“We’re trapped,” he shouted. “You gotta get us out of here somehow.”
I jerked at the blast of his voice. I tried to parse what he’d said. Trapped? Shouldn’t they have been tucked into their coffins?
“Sebastian? Come on. Where are you?”
“I’m here. Slow down. Tell me what’s up.”
I heard him take a breath. He sounded only a fraction calmer when he spoke again. “Some group attacked the club. They killed Mortimer, but he warned us in time. Now we’re stuck in Toft’s safe room, and they’re trying to get in.”
Mortimer dead? Safe room?
Of course Toft has a safe room.
“Who’s attacking you?”
“We don’t know. Toft says it’s the Ministry, but that’s crazy, right?”
My stomach dropped as if I’d stepped off a cliff. Any moment I’d hit the jagged rocks below and break into pieces.
He’s wrong. They can’t be Ministry.
“Yes,” I said. “Crazy.” I could hear in my own voice that I didn’t one-hundred percent believe it. After all, hadn’t a random Ministry officer tried to kill me?
A more reasonable explanation occurred to me.
“Has Toft broken Ministry law?”
“I most certainly have fucking not!” Toft shouted in the background, his vampire ears picking up my side of the conversation. He sounded more like a kid than ever before. A kid scared out of his mind. “Get over here, unless you want to let your apprentice die.”
Low blow. Especially with Odi right there to hear Toft using him as the pawn Toft believed him to be.
The coffeemaker in the bathroom sighed. The smell, burnt and bitter, drifted out into the room. I wouldn’t get the chance to drink it now, and I didn’t see that as much of a loss.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Chapter Thirty
We had to take a cab. (I was already missing my Reliant.) It took everything in me not to keep nagging the driver to go faster. When we got there, I had the cab drop us off across the street. The cab drove away, and Mom and I stared at the Black Rose.
From the outside, the club looked like it always did during the day. Toft had already had the shattered window replaced. The afternoon sun reflected off the blacked-out glass, making the windows look as though they were made of onyx.
After a minute, Mom turned to me. “I find it difficult to believe the Ministry is behind this. If they were, Toft and his spawn would be dust by now.”
I didn’t correct her mistake about Odi’s relation to Toft. Toft had picked up Odi after Odi’s maker had abandoned him, much like his mortal parents had when the kid was first born. Odi had a history of people leaving him right when he was most vulnerable. It was another reason why I treated him like I did. I felt sorry for him.
“For all we know,” I said, “they are. We’re going to have to go in to find out.”
Mom pressed her lips together for a moment, gaze focused on the club. “If they are Ministry, you can’t stop them. You’ve already got the death of one officer hanging over you. Interfering in whatever this is?” She shook her head. “I know you like these demons, and you have your reasons, but they aren’t worth pitting yourself against the Ministry.”
Another mistake on her part. I didn’t like Toft at all. I tolerated him—not only because I had to with my Odi situation, but because he had helped save me from becoming a demon myself.
What difference did it make? She was right. I could not openly defy the Ministry. But could I live with myself if I let something happen t
o Odi?
“It can’t be Ministry, though. You said so yourself.”
She sighed, didn’t say anything.
I checked both ways for traffic then crossed the street. I wasn’t sure when I did if Mom would follow. She didn’t need to. But she did.
I half expected Mortimer to greet us at the door like he so often did when I showed up during off hours. But Odi had said their attackers had killed the poor troll. I tried to imagine what Toft would do without his valet/puppet.
Nothing, if Toft were dead, too.
I tried the door, found it open. I heard a metallic clink when I pulled. A piece of the latch had fallen loose. The lock had been broken.
I exchanged looks with Mom then led the way inside.
We found Mortimer on the floor next to an overturned table close to the stage. Well, most of him.
In death, his human glamour had fallen away, leaving him in all his trolly glory. His bulky torso strained the buttons on his tux, spreading his shirt open between them. His dull, solid black eyes stared up at the ceiling from under a protruding brow that could have doubled as a small shelf. He had fuzzy black eyebrows and grayish-green skin. His mouth hung slack, his cow tongue dangling from his mouth and dripping glistening drool.
He was missing both arms. Something had ripped them off and tossed them wide. One lay on the seat to one of the booths lining the outside wall. The other had landed up on the stage. Blood spurted fresh from the empty sockets under each shoulder. One of his legs had also been yanked loose, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. It looked like he might have died from blood loss. I didn’t have a way to tell for sure.
“Gods damn it. What the hell could rip a troll apart like that?”
“A lot of things, Sebastian.”
My stomach shriveled. That wasn’t the most comforting answer.
Outside of my quickened breathing, I didn’t hear anything. No shouts or sounds of struggle. No sign that anything perilous was in progress—except for the dead troll on the floor.
Odi had said he was calling from a safe room. I figured it had to be down in Toft’s underground penthouse. Maybe they were still in there, safe, the attackers gone because they’d given up.
That’s good, man. Stay positive.
I motioned for Mom to follow me into the back, and that’s where we found the second sign of an attack. The door to the stairs leading down into Toft’s lair was off its hinges and nowhere to be found. The hinges were twisted and blackened. The light to the stairwell was on. I peered down, but didn’t find any sign of the door. As near as I could tell, the attackers had completely obliterated it.
I stood at the top of the stairs and listened.
Total silence.
“Dead troll,” I said. “Missing door. But no other visible destruction.”
“They were precise.”
“Yeah.” The sweat on the back of my neck turned cold.
Precision plus power didn’t automatically equal Ministry. But it moved them up the list of possibilities. A bitter flavor, like bad coffee, filled my mouth. I guess I should have stomached the hotel brew. Right now I suffered the bad taste without any of the caffeinated perks.
So far, we hadn’t come up against the attackers. All signs seemed to point to their having left. I didn’t know how safe Toft’s safe room was. Whoever came through here gave the impression that not much would stand in their way. I became more and more convinced I was going to find a pair of dust piles down there. I keep seeing Odi’s goofy grin after cracking some stupid joke, kept hearing his hoarse laugh, kept feeling the unbelievable buzz of his power.
Mom took my elbow. “You want me to go down first?”
I shook my head and started down without a word.
The light from the stairwell cast a rectangle of light into the kind of living room space where I had met with Toft the last time I’d been down here. That light didn’t do much more than pale some of the shadows. The fireplace was dead. The cinnamon smell I’d noticed before still lingered, but not nearly as strong. The air felt a lot warmer than a subfloor should have without the fireplace going. I doubted Toft had the place heated. A waste of energy for a vampire.
A static taste touched my tongue like a spark, the remains of magical power still simmering in the room.
I raised my left hand and ignited it with my magical flame, the standard orange version. I used it like a torch to chase off the shadows and inspect the room. I didn’t find anything of note. The only sign of any cast spells was the flavor of the air. But if they hadn’t used any kind of destructive spell, I didn’t know why that flavor hung so thick. Unless a spell had been cast within the last minute or so.
A single hall fed off from the living room. Flame held high, I entered into the hall’s darkness, Mom close behind. I felt her magic vibrating now, either from nerves or anticipating the need to cast something soon. Maybe both.
The hall had two rooms off either side about halfway down. Both had their doors open and a quick glance found them both unoccupied.
One of the rooms was adorned with tattered flags from a hundred different countries or more hanging on the walls. A votive candleholder on a long stand sat beside on open coffin. The coffin itself lay on a gray stone pedestal, and was lined in pale rose silk. A matching pillow lay askew at the head of the coffin. The candles were out, but I doubted they’d make much light. Just enough so that Toft could get comfy without straining his night vision before blowing them out.
The most chilling feature of the coffin was its size. It was built to accommodate a young person of around twelve. A child’s coffin.
I shivered and turned away.
The other room had a coffin as well, a standard sized one, also open. This one had dark blue silk lining. The outside had a luminous black glaze that made me think of the windows upstairs in the club. It also reminded me of Darth Vader’s helmet after a fresh polish.
Odi’s “bed.”
I moved further down the hall until it came to an abrupt end. While the walls from the living room and down the hallway had wallpaper the same shade and style as the living room, the wall at the end was a dirty iron color. I didn’t see any handle or hinge, but I knew this had to be the safe room. The iron was probably meant to keep any fae from touching it. There were probably other magical wards in the door I couldn’t see or sense.
But, at last, I found evidence of the assault—a black scorch mark square in the center of the door. It didn’t look like much of an effort, especially considering the attackers had fucking melted the door to the stairwell. Luckily for Toft and Odi, this one seemed to be made of sterner stuff.
Still, only a single blast to this door and they’d given up? Unless they’d tried other things that hadn’t left a mark.
I let my makeshift torch flame out then pounded a fist on the iron and called out for Odi. I gave him or Toft a handful of seconds to respond, but I didn’t hear anything. The door was probably too thick to hear through. I pulled out my cell and dialed back the number Odi had called me from.
It rang once before Toft answered. “Light?”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Outside your door.”
“We’re downstairs. Watch yourself. They blew out all my cameras, so I can’t see where they are.”
“I meant I’m outside the big iron door. Do you actually get cell reception in there?”
“It’s a land line, you…” He growled. He was so easy to bait. “You’re down here now?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You took them out?” he asked with nervous wonder as if he’d asked me on a date and couldn’t believe I’d said yes.
“No,” I said. “There’s nobody here. They must have given up.”
A long silence followed. I wasn’t sure if I’d lost him. I checked my phone’s screen. The time counter kept running. The connection was still open.
“Step back from the door a good twenty feet,” he finally said,
then disconnected.
“We’re to stand back, “I said to Mom. I guessed standing by the boys’ bedrooms gave us plenty more than twenty feet. And I was glad I went that far back.
A green and blue static blast shot from the door and clawed along the walls and ceiling. It went on for about ten seconds before dying and left the wallpaper burnt and smoking in spots. The smell of ozone roiled through the hall.
Toft had tripped a ward of some kind, something he had to set once he entered the room, then disarm in order to get back out. Probably something his mage friend (and the guy who had branded me) had set up for him.
I wondered why it hadn’t worked against his attackers.
A moment later, a heavy clang rang out from inside the door. A row of lights down the length of the hall flickered on. Then came a hiss, like steam. The door slowly swung open and Toft came out with Odi behind him.
Toft’s pallor had gone a few shades paler than the average vamp’s pasty gray. His lips had also lost some color and looked a little shriveled around the edges. His eyes glowed a deep red. He had dropped his glamour and looked positively feral with his wrinkled face and sharp fangs.
Odi, on the other hand, looked the same as always, except more nervous than usual, the color drawn out from his face like Toft’s, but without the red eyes, wrinkles, and fangs.
Toft rushed at me. For a second, I thought he was going to tackle me and chew out my jugular, but he slammed me aside against the wall and charged past.
The three of us exchanged confused looks, then came to a silent decision and headed after Toft.
Toft reached the living room before we could catch up. He scanned the room with wide eyes and trembling fists at his sides. He looked like a scared kid who had lost his mom at the grocery store. Well, except with fangs and red eyes and wearing a red velvet smoking jacket.
Then he froze, his gaze locked on something. “You idiots,” Toft screamed. “You brought me right to them.”
Chapter Thirty-One
I rushed the rest of the way down the hall and found one of the most chilling sights of my life.
Out of the shadows in one corner of the room emerged a vampire twice as tall as myself. He had long arms that ended in yellow claws. His elongated jaw hung open to show off three-inch fangs. A glow the color of hellfire filled his recessed eye sockets. He was completely naked, showing off his shrunken bits and his greasy dark skin.