by Rob Cornell
Green snickered, his eyes sleepy and bloodshot. He passed the joint. Mom took a long drag, then eased back in her seat with a sigh, smoke streaming out her nose.
By the time we reached Sly’s house, all three of us were high. But my buzz died as we pulled into the driveway. I remembered Odi was here, in his coffin in the basement, without a doubt still fighting for his life. I worried I would open his coffin and find nothing but dust.
If he didn’t get fed soon, that’s exactly what would happen.
On the way in, Mom sobered up some, too. Green had good stuff, but not good enough to cut through the gravity of what we faced. We’d need tequila for that, as long as we drank enough to pass out.
Sly greeted us at the door. His brow creased as we entered, and he took a deep sniff. “Whoa.”
“Yep,” I said.
“That bad, huh?”
On the phone, I had only mentioned to Sly that shit had gotten serious. I didn’t want to talk details on the phone. Paranoid, maybe. But I wasn’t taking chances.
Green headed into the living room, plopped himself in a recliner, and put on a Wings game. They were playing the Chicago Blackhawks and down by two, the slackers.
Sly, Mom, and I gathered around the kitchen table. He had a pair of Styrofoam containers holding tacos from El Charro’s, with their signature puffy shells. Between the pot munchies and a basic lack of food since the sparse continental breakfast at the hotel, I could have eaten all six tacos in front of me. Sly claimed to have eaten already, so I mowed my way through three, and Mom got the other three. It took us mere minutes to polish them off.
Sly put the empty containers in the recycling, and Mom pulled the journal from her back pocket and snapped it onto the table like a poker player laying down a royal flush.
Sly stared at it as he sat down again. But before he asked about the book, he asked us if we wanted to wash up first.
I had totally forgotten what we must have looked like after coming out of the shambles at the Black Rose. As soon as Sly mentioned it, I craved a good, long, super-hot shower. But we needed to get this out of the way first. We needed the whole story, or at least as much as Mom could remember.
“I don’t remember everything,” she started. Then she tapped the book with her finger. “But this helped me fill in a lot of gaps. Just looking at the sketch. And I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears ran down her face. She held stiff for a moment, as if bracing herself against an incoming blow. Then she rolled her shoulders forward, bowed her head, covered her face with her hands, and cried.
I scooted my chair closer to hers and held her. Her body shook against me as she gasped between each sob.
I softly hushed.
Sly looked on, lips pressed together, a moist shine in his eyes.
The hockey game’s announcer on the TV rattled on in the background. Instead of annoying me, I actually got a little comfort from its utter normalcy. I could have used a whole lot of normal right then. We all could have.
After a short while, Mom recovered enough to talk again. She started with what I knew had caused her to break down.
“I remember why I killed your father,” she said, her red rimmed eyes focused on me. Tears still streaked her face. They had washed off the last bits of plaster dust on her cheeks. “I had to. But I was supposed to die, too.”
She might as well have been speaking in code. I heard what she said, but it didn’t penetrate. It couldn’t.
She picked up the journal and flipped to the page with the drawing. “This artifact,” she said and turned the book around to Sly could see. “Walter and I were assigned a dig in the Valley of Mexico. We weren’t given specifics, but we seldom were. The Ministry suspected a specific location might contain information or items pertinent to magical history. That was our job as scholars. Study the past, investigate the present, speculate on the future.
“So we took the assignment. We wouldn’t realize until later that Able and the others had arranged the expedition themselves. They knew, or hoped they knew, what we would find. And they were right: we found this.”
She lay the book flat and open, then pointed at the drawing. “The cloak of hummingbird feathers imbued with the power of the god Huitzilopochtli himself.”
Sly scratched his gray stubble. “What kind of power are we talking about here, Judith?”
“Huitzilopochtli was supposedly the god who commanded the Aztecs to move from Aztlan to the Valley of Mexico. His influence was unmatched. A whole people obeyed his will without question.”
“That doesn’t sound too farfetched when it comes to gods,” I said.
“Maybe not. But if a mortal had the same kind of influence?”
“Now that is crazy talk.”
Mom titled her head to one side. “Yet that’s what the cloak of Huitzilopochtli does. It projects an uncanny amount of…motivation, for lack of a better term. It’s not mind control. It’s more like mass persuasion.”
“So you couldn’t make a whole bunch of people start killing for you.”
“No. But you might have some luck influencing the voters in an election.”
My stomach dropped. “Is that what they’re planning?”
She laughed ruefully. “I wish that were all.”
That seemed like a pretty big deal to me. How could it get much worse?
Which was a question just asking for a nasty answer.
Green cried out. For a second, I thought something had attacked him. I twisted around to look at him in the living room. He had his fists up in the air. “Aw, yeah, baby!”
I checked the TV. The Wings had scored.
Thank you for the near heart attack.
He clearly wasn’t listening to a word from us. He’d baked himself good and thrown himself into sports land. The poor guy hadn’t had more than a passing familiarity with the paranormal until the vamp riots forced it right into his face. I couldn’t blame him for retreating into distraction. I was jealous, in fact.
I brought my attention back to Mom. “What are they planning?”
“The theory is…” She frowned, and her eyes took on a faraway look.
I waited until she was ready. I knew she was navigating memories she had been without for three years, memories that included her killing her own husband.
Mom wet her lips with her tongue, then charged on. “They have this insane notion. If an old and powerful vampire wore the cloak, they think the cloak’s reach could also stretch the reach of his thrall.”
A cold pit dropped in my stomach. I felt about ready to shit myself. “Now we know why they took Toft. Gods, that would make it mind control.”
“If it works.”
“Do you think it could?”
She hesitated. Her gaze shifted to Sly, then back to me. “If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have killed your father.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
My tongue felt like chalk. Dizziness swooped over me. I gripped the edge of Sly’s kitchen table because I thought I might fall off my chair and straight through the floor. I felt heavy. A wrecking ball without a chain.
“Breathe, brother,” Sly said.
I looked at him as if he spoke Chinese. Had he not heard what Mom just said? What good would breathing do? My mother had admitting to killing my father…on purpose. I had kept a slice of hope that we’d learn it was all some horrible accident. Mom’s power gone wild or something. But that wasn’t the case. Not according to Mom. Not at all.
Mom clutched my wrist. “I’m so sorry, Sebastian.”
I swallowed. “Tell me.”
I couldn’t force out much else. Mom got it, though.
“When your father and I figured out what they were up to, we hid the cloak where no one else could find it. We thought we could keep it from them, and that would be the end of it. We had no idea how motivated they were.”
I thought back to my conversation with Goulet. He had claimed to be at the house when Dad was killed. He’d played coy about it, saying another powerful
sorcerer had done it. Well, he hadn’t been lying. And now I had an idea of why he was there and what they were doing.
“They tortured you,” I said.
“We were scholars. We couldn’t have resisted them long. We both knew it. Able can be especially cruel when he needs to. So your father and I, we came to the same conclusion. We couldn’t let them go through with their plan.”
Was what Able planned so horrible that my parents would choose death instead of revealing the location of the cloak? “What are they going to do with it?”
“They mean to save Detroit,” she said with pure disdain. “Let the vampires enthrall the ‘less desirable’ populace and make them willing victims.”
Sly made a noise between a choke and a gasp.
I noticed the announcer wasn’t jabbering, and I couldn’t hear the general mix of cheers, slices, and clacks of hockey sticks from the TV either. I checked on Green.
He stared at us from the recliner, mouth hanging open, red eyes wide and frightened.
The smell of pot had seeped into my clothes, made me feel sick to my stomach.
I spoke slowly, trying to process what Mom had said using my own words. “They give over the poor neighborhoods to the vamps so they can wipe them out. So the vamps are fat and happy, and Detroit suddenly has a whole lot of prime real estate to gentrify. Which explains the mayor’s involvement.”
Though, according to Goulet, the mayor really had no idea what he had gotten himself involved with. The stupid fool.
“But why would Able care about any of this?” I asked.
“A stronger Detroit makes for a more effective Ministry,” Mom said. “And the bargain gives the Ministry a great deal of influence over the vampires. It’s purely political on all sides—mortal, magical, and undead.”
Sly cleared his throat a couple times, but his voice still came out hoarse when he asked, “How high in the Ministry does this go?”
A damn good question. I was glad Sly asked it, because I don’t think I would have had the heart.
“I haven’t any idea,” she said. “For all I know, even the prefect could be involved.”
I had to stand up, get my blood circulating. Unfortunately, my legs had turned to rubber, and I couldn’t. I rubbed my face with both hands, worked at my temples with my fingertips. The air got stuffy at some point. I wanted a breath of the wet October air, a nice chilly gulp to soothe my boiling blood.
“But if you and Dad were dead, they couldn’t find the cloak, and none of their scheme could go forward.”
“That’s right.”
“Which is what you meant when you said you were supposed to die, too.”
“Your father’s magic was always quieter than mine. But we’re both strong. It isn’t easy for a sorcerer to destroy themselves, let alone another one as powerful as Walter. I did my best, but…” She waved at hand. “You know the rest.”
It hadn’t killed her. Only damaged her enough to put her in a near-vegetative state for three years, until Sly had cooked up a potion that finally brought her out of the fugue. Which was why they had had Fiona watching her, in case Mom did wake up. Then they put the vamps on me to keep me out of the way. But the vampires decided they’d rather turn me than kill me. And if it weren’t for that, this whole thing would have ended a lot sooner, and not in our favor.
I was almost thankful for the vamp blood mixed with mine.
Okay, not really. But still…Yay, vamps, for fucking things up!
“I guess that leaves only one question,” I said, though I’d likely have a thousand unanswered questions about all of this until I died at the ripe old age of three-hundred. “Where’s the cloak?”
Her gaze drifted to the table. She stared at salt and pepper shakers, looked like she wanted to crawl into one of them and disappear. “I’m not sure I should…” She wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “It’s too dangerous for you to know. I don’t want what happened to us to happen to you.”
“I can put up a pretty good fight,” I said.
“They’ll hurt you, Sebastian. Badly. Better they kill you than you suffer their torture.”
“So what? You get to keep that burden on yourself? After all you’ve been through?”
She wiped at her face again, though most of her tears had evaporated. Her hand trembled. “No. I need to finish what I started.”
My intestines tied themselves into knots. “What the hell does that mean?” Which was a dumb question, because I wouldn’t have asked so angrily if I didn’t already know the answer.
“The cloak’s location needs to die with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I shot out of my seat. The chair skated across the linoleum and tipped when it hit the line where the tiles ended and the living room carpet began. It made a dull thump when it landed.
“Enough,” I shouted. “Enough of this insanity.”
Sly and Mom stared up at me with enough worry between them to last a lifetime.
“You can’t,” I said. “I will not lose you again.”
“Sebastian, there’s no other way.”
“There is always another way.” I backed away from the table. Pins and needles flooded from my heels to my groin. My knees felt ready to snap. I staggered like a drunk before coming up against the kitchen counter. I leaned against the Formica surface to keep from toppling. “Always,” I whispered.
Slowly, Mom rose. Through the growing wetness in my eyes, she looked like a specter, a visitor from another plane of existence. The light formed a starburst along one side of her, made her glow. She approached me.
I sidled along the length of the counter to move away from her.
“Don’t give me some bullshit lecture about how I need to accept this. I won’t accept it. I will kill every last one of them, before I let anything happen to you. I’ll bring down the entire Detroit arm of the Ministry. I’ll burn the prefect himself if I have to.”
She stopped coming at me. “So you would become just like them?”
I snarled. “I said no bullshit reasoning.” Spittle flicked off my lips. I was totally losing it, could feel my sway toward madness. With it came the hot ember of my magic flaring in my belly. I could already see Able and the two women writing in pain as my fire charred their skin, melted out their eyeballs. Then I saw myself conjure a hurricane to throw the prefect through the window of his Renaissance Center office and down the forty stories until he made a stain on the ground below.
I clenched my fists. The blue flames sparked around them all on their own.
“Shit, brother,” Sly said. “Get hold of yourself.”
I snapped my head around to glare at him. “Are you on her side, then? You want her to commit suicide to keep some stupid artifact hidden?”
He held out his hands. “I didn’t say that. But you look ready to kill us all.”
I raised my fists in front of me and looked down at the blaze that surrounded them. I didn’t bother trying the calming tricks. I forced the flames to die with angry will. The act shot sparks of pain up my spine and straight into the back of my neck. I nearly dropped to my knees, but used the counter to help keep my feet again.
“We’ll destroy it,” I said. “You said it’s made of hummingbird feathers? Should burn easily.”
Mom took a single stop forward. She reached out to me, but there was too much distance between us. “Don’t you think we would have thought of that? There isn’t a way to destroy it. We searched for some ritual or place that could. We found nothing.”
“It can’t be indestructible,” I snapped. “Every artifact has its Mount Doom, the pit of flames to cast it in.”
“The hummingbird feathers are the feathers of a god. We came to the conclusion that only another god could rend it apart.”
“Then we summon a god.”
The words came out my mouth before the rational part of my brain could stop me. Gods weren’t like demons. You couldn’t just call one down with a ritual. The gods did as they pleased without any concern
for the will of mortals—unless our will entertained them in some way.
Mom didn’t correct me. She knew I knew better.
“This is so fucked up.”
I turned toward the voice. Green stood at the edge of the kitchen. He had lifted the tipped chair and righted it. He had lost some of the slack-jawed stoner gape. The pot couldn’t keep even him numbed enough to sit back. “You can’t let your mom just…die.”
I spat a short laugh. “Tell that to her.”
“Judith,” Sly said tentatively. “Sebastian's right.”
Mom studied us each in turn. “You boys realize I don’t want to die. There’s just no other way to keep the cloak out of their hands.”
“This is different than before,” I said. “They don’t have you like they did. If they can’t get to you, they can’t get to the cloak. Fuck the cloak, all right? You are the precious artifact here. You are the one we need to protect.”
Her mouth curled slightly. It would have been a total Mona Lisa smirk if not for the sparkle in her eyes. “I’d rather not be referred to as an artifact. I’m not that old.”
My simmering magical energy cooled some.
“But you are precious,” I said.
I pushed away from the counter, crossed to her, and hugged her tightly. I could feel her own stirred magic against me. We’d both let our emotions get the better of us. After a few seconds, though, we let our power sink back to its natural state, always ready to wield, but safely held in place until needed.
We parted, shared a smile.
“So,” she said. “I’m your artifact. What are you going to do with me?”
“I wish we had someone in the Ministry we could trust,” I said. “Someone who could give us a better idea of what we’re up against.”
Sly snorted. “Good luck, brother.”
I made a face at him. “Not helpful.”
“Sebastian, what about Markus?”
Oh, yeah. The first cat who had tried to kill me. “After what happened between us, I’m not sure he’s someone we can count on for help.”
“He was protecting that house,” she said. “He was looking for who was behind what happened there. He’s looking for the same thing we are.”