I can see Calvin Reese’s body from here, and I don’t even consider checking him. He looks like his head got hit with a flying I-beam. The kiovore never fed on him, but it killed him just as dead. I turn my attention back to Celeste and start rifling through the pile of belongings she left behind.
“What are you doing?” Kenta asks.
I ignore him. Just off to her right I find what I’m looking for and pick it up. I stand up, brushing the hand I’d used to check her pulse against my pants as if I could wipe the dead off it, and walk back over to Kenta, holding it out in front of me.
“She thought this was going to protect her,” I say, waving the carved wooden rune under his nose. “Why didn’t it? Nariko has one, too. Why didn’t it protect her?”
“I have no idea,” he says blankly. No more tears now. No more anything. His eyes are human, but just as empty of emotion as the kiovores. He’s in shock. I get it. His girlfriend and his sister just died right in front of his eyes and he can’t handle it.
“Why not? You made the talismans, didn’t you? All of them. Why is it that it didn’t attack you, but it had no trouble killing them?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know! We did them together, Celeste and me. They’re all the same. I don’t know why theirs failed.”
“Or why yours didn’t?”
“It attacked me, too!”
“No, it didn’t. It grabbed you. It had at least two seconds to bite down on you and it didn’t. That means your protection worked but theirs failed. Was it all a lie, Kenta? Did you botch theirs on purpose so it’d kill them but not you? Another blow for the Gamagori clan?”
“NO!” Kenta roars, coming to his feet now. He’s no fighter, but he’s ready to try. “I love Celeste! I didn’t want this to happen! Something else happened, something else went wrong. The runes were perfect!”
I reach out and snatch his off his neck, snapping the cord in the process, then go over to Calvin’s corpse and pull his over his head. I compare them in the light of the camping lantern, which is starting to flicker. I think it got dropped in the fight.
The runes are indeed identical, right down to the size of the wooden peg they’re carved on. Kenta’s right. Whatever went wrong with their protective charm, it wasn’t the runes. I toss Kenta’s rune back to him and he sinks back down on his ass, holding it in cupped hands.
“Better recharge that. I probably just broke it, and you may need it later.”
My ears may feel like someone’s lit ice picks on fire and shoved them in to the hilts, but I’m still able to hear footsteps on stone. Gault and Hollett walk down the stairs and into the room together.
“It’s gone,” Gault says, rubbing his mouth. His claws are still out, but he’s retracted the fangs. I guess that stings. “Bust out the front door and leaped right over the crowd. Scared the shit out of them.”
“Your friend Adam’s about to have a stroke trying to keep the scene under control,” Hollett adds.
“He’s never had to deal with anything right out in the open like this,” I tell them. “He’s got a lousy poker face for a cop. Can you give him a hand with that?” I ask Gault.
“Adam’s a good guy. He’s out of his league when it comes to magic, but that’s not his fault. I’ll see what I can do.” He turns back towards the door, but I stop him on a hunch.
“Hold off a minute,” I tell him. I walk back over to Kenta and do my best to loom over him. “What’s it going to do now?” I ask him.
Kenta doesn’t look up at me when I talk. He’s still on his ass, staring at the rune like he’s expecting it to talk. I give it a second, and when it doesn’t sink in I ask him again. Finally, something in my voice breaks through his reverie. His eyes finally find me, but what’s behind them is clearly broken.
“I don’t know,” he says flatly.
“This is the wrong time to bullshit, Kenta. You know goddamn well what that thing is, and more than any of us you know what it’s capable of. It’s loose now, and I need you to tell me what you know about it. Tell me how we stop it.”
Kenta’s face sinks again, once again enraptured by whatever the wooden peg is telling him. His voice has disappeared, lost somewhere deep inside him.
“I got this,” Gault says from behind me. I step aside both literally and figuratively, letting him take over.
Gault kneels down in front of Kenta, his right hand held out in front of him. The claws, mesmerizing in the unsteady light, seem to dance maliciously underneath Kenta’s nose. Hollett, who’s been probing the items the Reese/ Gamagori alliance brought down here, keeps a careful watch over the proceedings. The way Hollett is holding his right hand, the one on the opposite side of his body from where we are, I can tell he’s got something palmed. He’s wondering if he’ll have to intervene.
“Hey, kid,” Gault says, in what for him passes for a kind whisper. Kenta doesn’t react, but when Gault flicks his claws under his nose like he’s clearing water from them he blinks in sudden fear.
“There you are,” Gault says. He leans in closer, opening his mouth so that his residual fangs show. “Time to man up. Tell us what we need to know so that I won’t have to dig it out of you.”
Fear is opening the rivers, and Kenta’s starting to drown as he swings from mute shock to fiery panic. His eyes are smaller than dinner plates but not by much, and adrenaline has blown his pupils wide.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he whispers. “It wasn’t supposed to hurt us.”
“The rune was supposed to control it?” I ask.
Kenta nods. “It was supposed to follow our every command. We wouldn’t have let it out otherwise, no matter how much we hate our families.”
“Yeah, your good judgment is going to be legendary.” I roll my stiffening shoulders. “Where will it go now, without control?”
“It’ll feed,” Gault says, coming over to stand next to me.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about it.”
“I know about predators. The old one’s been comatose for centuries. I bet it’s worked up a hell of an appetite. It’ll want food.”
“And it eats magic.” I shake Kenta’s shoulder. He seems to be on the verge of spacing out again. “What about weaknesses? We learned the hard way that magic can hurt it, but silver bullets can’t. What else? You studied a lot of vampire mythology. Will crosses hurt it? Cold iron, garlic, what?”
“There’s almost nothing known about it, remember? Nobody back then wrote anything down. We didn’t find anything about weaknesses or vulnerabilities, just the shield rune that should have given us control over it.”
“Sunlight,” Hollett says from the far wall. “In the old tales vampires couldn’t stand sunlight.”
Kenta shrugs listlessly. “We know it’s nocturnal, but we never found anything about sunlight killing them or if it just prefers darkness.”
The analytical part of my brain kicks into gear. It needs darkness, for one reason or another. That means it can either see in ways humans can’t, either with greater clarity or through infrared or some other wavelength, or it has some other means of tracking prey. It doesn’t have a nose or ears, so unless it has another olfactory organ it doesn’t sniff out its targets and it isn’t picking them out by sound either. I’m going with either super-attenuated eyes or a unique organ that points it towards magical beings like a compass.
An idea strikes me. “Can it drain the magic from an object or does it have to be a person?”
“Has to be alive. It can’t even feed off of a dead person. That much was written down. Breaking open the ley seal was only a shortcut to get it going again, like a defibrillator. It’s not enough to keep it going. It will have to feed.”
Damn. My eyes run into Gault’s. Never thought I’d be using his predatory instincts this way. “Will it go for the strongest first, or the weakest? Easiest prey or biggest reward?”
“Depends on how much human’s left in there. Human will go for the big catch. Animal will go for the quickest.
”
“Okay. Of the heavy hitters in this town, who’s closest?”
He thinks for a second. “Shellbreak Park’s not far off as the crow flies, but she left months ago.”
I know who the ‘she’ is. Shellbreak Park was, up until recently, home base for the strongest coven of witches in all the Gulf territories. Their leader, Moira Durande, was, along with Gault, one of the most likely residents of the town to try to disappear me. She’d lost a lot thanks to my involvement over the last few years, first by helping one of her favorite members break free of her hold (a decision that came back to bite me spectacularly in the ass) and most recently by single handedly costing her the talisman that had brought a library’s worth of monsters to town this past summer. Before that she might have hated me, but she’d kept her distance. After the battle was decided I’d waited for months for her to make her play.
Just before Halloween, though, she’d disappeared. No note. No body. No nothing. Just gone. Most of her coven, too, and the ones I’d still seen around town went absolutely silent when I tried to question them. Since then, Shellbreak’s been home to nothing more than camping families, partying teenagers and the occasional Chupacabra. They’re not as bad as they’re made out to be, just for the record.
“Who else, then?”
“Not many others stand out. There are two or three adepts who have some muscle. Sam Christakos down by the marina claims to be a descendant of Hephaestus, but I’m not sold on him.”
“Probably should call him, just to be safe.”
“We should call everyone, just to be safe.”
“Never thought I’d see this day,” Hollett says in a low voice. “Ian DeLong trying to save the monsters.”
The urge to deck him is strong and instant, but just as quick a cold realization squashes it. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life protecting “normal” humans from monsters of every imaginable type. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that the shoe on the other foot is me.
Gault doesn’t seem like he appreciates it any more than I do. He doesn’t like being characterized as one of my protectees any more than I like being their protector.
I brush the thought off along with the conversation. An idea strikes home, making me unconsciously snap my fingers.
“There’s still a hundred possible food sources in this town,” I say, “but none really stand out. Except for two.”
Gault is quick to pick up on my thought. “The Gamagori and the Reeses. Individually not much more powerful than any other average adept in this town, but collected and concentrated in their compounds…”
I meet Hollett’s eyes. “Did the rest of the goon squad stay upstairs?”
“Probably not. Clive likes his family to stay in the background when there’s an employee around who’s paid to take risks.” He quickly starts dialing his phone while Gault looks down at Kenta.
“Looks like you accidentally got your wish,” he scoffs. “Better to be lucky than good, right?”
“Gault, you take Junior there back to his house,” I say, jutting my chin at Kenta. “Hollett, you drive me back to the Reese house. I’ll have to get my car anyway. Keep your eyes open. There’s a lot of possible victims between here and either place.”
Hollett nods as he hangs up, ending his brief conversation. “All the family members are home and Clive Reese is sealing up the mansion. He thinks Sota Gamagori’s people would have done the same thing so he’s going to call their place and get him to do the same.”
“Okay, let’s roll. Start calling everyone you know who’s got any kind of magic,” I tell Gault. “I’ll do the same. Tell them to hunker down until we can figure out how to handle this.”
“You figure it out for yourself. I know how to handle it.” His hands are human now, but he flexes them like the claws are still there. “I’ll get my boys on it.”
Seems like a good idea to me. A pack of werewolves, even a small one, might be able to handle the kiovore. Anyway, it’s not like I can talk him out of it.
“Tell them to be careful and let me know when you hear something.”
“You should call that girl of yours while you’re at it.” His gaze is steady, unblinking, heavy with implications. “Hate to see anything happen to her one of these nights.”
If I’d had a bullet left, I’d have shot him. Instead I walk over to him so our noses almost touch. “Me, too. In fact, if something did happen to her I just might lose it. Start at the landward border of the town and start walking towards the shore, killing every magical piece of shit I find along the way until I finally reach the Bay. Then I’ll go the west border and start again heading east. Might take me a while but I figure without her I’ll have nothing but time. What do you think?”
“I think you dream too big.” Gault reaches down, grabs Kenta by the scruff and hauls him to his feet before marching toward the stairs. Hollett secures his thorn wand in a sheath inside his jacket.
“I hope you save some of that energy. It’s going to be a long night.”
I brush past him, not caring if Hollett follows or not. “It’s been a long four years.”
“Wait,” Kenta cries, looking back over his shoulder at the carnage in the room. “We can’t leave them here. We have to take them back with us.”
“Kenta,” I say brusquely, “they’re dead. We’ll take care of their bodies later.”
“But maybe, I don’t know, if we can…”
“Kenta, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. Just look at them.” I point back at Nariko’s body.
And freeze.
While we’ve been talking Nariko’s skin has darkened, a dull red seeping through the deathly pallor like blood through cloth, and it looks like it’s beginning to harden. Her eyes have already turned glossy and hard, as black as an empty midnight sky, and her mouth has started to stretch into a rough circle, lips thinning into nothingness along the rim. She leans forward and coughs wetly, spraying human teeth out onto the ground. Gault and Hollett, both of them at the stairs, jump at the noise and snap into fighting stances. Nariko is still on the ground, awkwardly twisted like a drunk vomiting, her face practically resting on her own discarded teeth. When she comes back up we can see black, needle-like fangs spearing through her bloody gums.
Oh, shit.
“They infect their victims,” Hollett says, and I can hear a note of panic in his voice. He snaps into guard, thorn wand extended like a lance from his left hand and Nariko’s tanto reverse gripped in his right. Gault lets out a snarl, fingernails stretching out into talon-like claws. My only weapon exhausted, I face her. Clench my fists. Raise them as Nariko, the newly born kiovore, looks at me with the flat disinterest of a hunter sizing up prey. Her black gaze lingers on Hollett’s weapons and Gault’s claws while utterly ignoring me, then she jukes to the side and with blinding speed she flows past us like we’re not even there. She’s up the stairs and gone before we can attack.
I stand there, horrorstruck by the implications of what just happened. A moment after that a spark of thought cuts through the frozen sludge of my brain to make me realize the greater danger.
“Celeste,” I say out loud, and I look over to find Celeste Reese already on her feet. The transformation went even faster for her, and so silently that I never noticed. Her skin has hardened, her face mutated, her limbs bony and solid. She’s all but unrecognizable except for her pale blonde hair. With a single leap she bounds over our heads, landing like a spider next to the stairs. She stops just at the mouth of the stairwell and looks back at me.
“Nowwwwwww…” she breathes, a guttural slur from a mouth never designed for words. Then she, too, disappears up the stairs and into the darkness.
Sixteen
The damp, near-the-coast salty air feels downright refreshing after the clammy, subterranean earthiness of the cave, but down there the screams have already stopped. Up here, they’re just beginning.
The three of us charge full speed out of the cave, Gault well in the lead but Hollett
and I almost keeping pace. Even from inside the store we can feel the chaos outside; we can see the mad scramble of a panicked crowd and the crazy slashes of flashlight beams, hear the startled-herd screams of fright from the mob. When a crowd gets scared, deep-down, primal scared, they stop being people and become animals, feeding off each other’s fear and feeding it back again tenfold. That fear doesn’t so much rob people of their higher brain functions as much as makes them fling it into the air behind them as if it’ll distract whatever’s chasing them. That’s where we’re at now.
The crowd has swollen to about a hundred or so people in the short time we were underground, and even though we’re in the middle of a two-lane street they seem to be trying to find a hundred different ways out of it. It’s a few colored smoke bombs away from being the final parade scene from Animal House.
“There,” Gault shouts over the din, grabbing my arm and pointing. Through the streaming bodies I can see something on the ground, kneeling down with its head pressed against the chest of the still kicking body underneath it. It has crimson skin and long, black hair. Nariko. Hollett and I run forward, but Gault hesitates.
I stop to look back at him and can’t believe what I’m seeing. He’s holding back. The cop in him (and he’s still a cop, no matter how much of an ass he is to me personally) wants to go help the man underneath the monster because he needs help, and the werewolf wants to tear into the kiovore because it’s an enemy. But he takes that quivering energy and holds it back.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 14
