A little of the tension I’d been holding seeps away. My house is the one place in town where I know she’ll be safe, since only the two of us can pass the protective spell on the place.
“Good, stay there,” I say. “Do not go outside. Got that? Stay in the house. The town’s not safe tonight. Don’t go anywhere, not even out to your car. Call me if you see or hear anything.”
“Ian, what’s happening?”
“In summary, monsters that eat magical people are loose and we don’t know where they’re going. They’re fast, strong and damn near invulnerable, but even they can’t cross the threshold of my house.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because an angel couldn’t.”
“Holy shit. I thought this was supposed to be a quick and easy job.”
“Yeah, it’s the latest in the ‘supposed to be’s’ that make up my life. Do me a favor and call anyone you know who has magic or is magical. Tell them to make like an ostrich and hide their heads until morning. Rumor is that these things don’t like the light.”
“Ian, what exactly are these things?”
“They’re called kiovores. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Tell me what Jamie’s found out about them.”
“He’s coming over now. Hold on.” After a moment she comes back on the line. “He says, and I quote, are you fucking with me? All caps.”
“I wish.”
“Hold on, he’s doing it again. He says he’s been trying, but nobody has hard information about them, only legends. Things old sorcerers use to scare young ones, like a boogeyman. They don’t exist, as far as anyone knows.”
“Tell him to dive into the legends, then, and to do it fast because these things are real, and they’re real fucking hungry. In a very short time, we’re going to have a lot of information about them the hard way, but I need to know what they can do before they do it to any more people. Let me know what he comes up with.”
“He says he’s on it. Wait, he’s put his slate down on the couch. Jamie? Where’d you go?”
“Forget it, he’s gone. He’ll be back when he learns something.”
“How does he do that? Nothing’s supposed to be able to get in or out of your house but you and me.”
“There’s more going on with him than we know about. Hey, I’m sending you some pictures I took a little while ago. Let him get a look at them. Just stay there. I’m getting my car and then I’ll be home. An hour or so, tops.”
“Okay.” She goes quiet for a second. “Be careful, Ian.”
“You be careful, too. Hey, don’t eat the chicken fricassee in the fridge. It’s been there way too long.”
“I thought you were going to throw that out.”
“I was getting to it. Start making calls now, okay? We need to get the word out.”
“I will.”
There’s a hitch in the conversation, the kind left by things unsaid. That kind of hole is usually filled by only three words, but neither of us have said them yet and this doesn’t feel like the right moment.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say instead, and we hang up together.
“Far be it for me to say anything…” Hollett begins.
“Shut up or I’ll introduce you to her face first.” He looks puzzled. Must not know what Lisa is. Good, let him wonder.
I send the pictures I took at the kiovore’s grave to Lisa’s phone, then we drive for a moment in silence. At an intersection I have to crank the wheel to make the truck take a tight left turn, and even with the modern marvel of engineering that went into its steering column my muscles feel like wet towels twisted too tightly.
“Any aspirin in the glove compartment?” I ask.
He checks, and it turns out there’s a complete first aid kit in there. Nariko had said that this truck was one of theirs, so maybe a kit like this is standard issue. I pop the top of the bottle of painkillers and dry-swallow a bit more of them than the FDA recommends. While I’m on a hot streak I ask about 40 caliber rounds to refill my depleted magazines, but no luck.
“Hollett, if we’re wrong… if these things head for town instead of the Reese and Gamagori houses...” I look out the window at the nighttime scenery flashing past. “People are going to die.”
“That’s not the worst of it. This town’s only going to be the first, you know. This isn’t an attack, it’s an outbreak and the one Kenta and Celeste dug up is Patient Zero. If just one of them decides to blow this town they’re going to turn into an epidemic. This isn’t the only place around they can find food.”
Shit. Didn’t think of that. “No, but it is the richest as far as their food is concerned. None of them will leave town tonight. But you’re right. This is bigger than us.”
I pick up my phone again and click on one last number. I haven’t called that number since I moved to Superstition Bay, and although I’d used it as a threat in the past I’d never really expected to be desperate enough to actually push the button.
I push the button.
There is no ring, no buzz, no outward sign that the call was transmitted. Just an emptiness on the line. I wait silently, knowing that at this point I’m being scanned by televiewers, psychics who can see through phone lines and knowing that whoever was unlucky enough to get my call is becoming very puzzled at his or her lack of success when they prove unable to read my mind. I’m patient. Eventually they’ll get fed up and transfer me to…
“State your business.”
The voice is husky, the words unpolished and finished with almost a clicking sound. I wonder what species they have on the phones now.
“This is Ian DeLong,” I tell whatever it is. I’m not worried about anyone eavesdropping on the call. Aegis phone lines are enchanted so they can’t be listened in on, and apparently my voice alone isn’t enough to unhinge that spell. “Superstition Bay, Louisiana. Code two-forty.”
“Nature of the agent?”
“Kiovores.”
The moment’s quiet tells me I’ve confused it. I’m picturing something with a beak and tentacles, though I don’t know why. “Nature of the agent?” it asks again.
“They’re kiovores. Just pass the name up the line. They’ll figure it out. I need passive containment all along the borders of the town.”
“Please stand by.” The voice fades from the line before I can object, leaving me cursing at a silent phone.
“What’s wrong?” Hollett asks, not taking his eyes off the road.
“I’m on hold,” I tell him.
“What’s code two-forty?”
“It’s Aegis code for a magical contaminant being released in a civilian area.”
“Think they’ll be able to help?”
“I hope so. We have to get a cork in this bottle, and fast.”
“Is this Ian?” a new, female voice comes down the line.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Ian, it’s Samantha Chappel. Do you remember me?”
I do remember her, very clearly in fact. Samantha and I worked together a few times. She’s a full adept, great at all kinds of improvised magic, like an unpredictable Swiss Army knife. On top of that she’s built like a wrestler and can probably throw most men over the nearest fence using no magic at all. I’m surprised to hear her back at the Adytum. She never was much for desk duty, but it’s been four years since I’ve been there and that can change a person.
“I couldn’t forget you, Samantha. I still owe you ten bucks for that bet.”
“Told you griffins lay eggs, but you just had to check for yourself. What’s this I hear about you having a kiovore in your town?”
“At least four of them that we know of.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as I can be.”
“Only you could retire to a town with a damned impossible monster from a history book in it. I had to have a djinn refresh my memory of just what the hell a kiovore was, but you put a hornet in all the old-timer’s pants just by saying the name. Damn place is in an uproar. Doe
s this have anything to do with tech division going apeshit over some kind of cell-phone werewolf video that’s going viral?”
Goddamn it. It hit even faster than I’d thought it would. “Yeah, it does.”
“The Sovereigns are hanging fire over that.”
“I’ll deal with that one later. Tell them that we were trying to kill it, but it got through us. Whoever they feed on turns into one. We’re going to have a lot more before too long.”
“Where’d it come from?”
“It was buried here. Look, Samantha, it’s kind of a long story. Can you send some backup?”
“I’ve already started rerouting personnel your way, but it’ll take time to set up a proper boundary around the town.”
“How much time?”
“Ian,” Her voice drops an octave, the way a voice does when it’s about to drop bad news. “It’s going to take at least a day.”
Damn. It’s no longer than I’d expected but I’d still been hoping for less. The Aegis has teleporters, but not many and each time they jump while carrying anything more than a large backpack it drains them severely. The strongest among them can make maybe three jumps per day carrying a passenger. Most are lucky if they can do two, and Samantha was right about there being a lot of ground to cover. It’s going to take a lot of conventional travel to man the border.
“You coming?” I ask her. “If it’s going to be a fight I’d love to have you here.”
“Oh, you didn’t hear. I lost my left leg a year and a half ago. Can’t do field work anymore.”
“No, I didn’t hear. What happened?”
“Got in a fight with a were-orca.”
“A were-orca? What the hell?”
“Yeah, I’d never heard of one, either. Surprised the hell out of all of us.”
I think for a moment about the kiovore, buried in legend until tonight, then I go back another six months to a creature that had stepped out of obscurity looking for its sword. “Surprises seem to be happening a lot more frequently these days.”
“We noticed that, too.”
“Did you… I mean, did it…”
“No, it didn’t bite me. Squashed my left leg in between a fishing boat and the dock. I have a golem leg now. I look like a department store mannequin from the hip down. Now I just do stuff around here.”
“They never talked about retiring you?”
“Oh, hell no. I’ve still got some use left in me.” The phone goes silent for a moment. “Shit, Ian, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
I almost miss it, I’m driving so fast, but my reflexes kick in and in a heartbeat I’m all but standing on the brakes. Hollett’s jerked hard against the suddenly tightening seat belt. I slap the van into reverse, and as we back up he see why I stopped. There’s a car on the side of the road, haphazardly nosed into a ditch next to a large, unkempt field. The headlights reveal snakelike skid marks where the driver had tried to stop and wound up skidding off the road.
“Ian?” Samantha says. She must have heard the air being squeezed out of my lungs by the double-team of inertia and seat belt.
“It’s okay, Samantha. Keep me posted. Come see me sometime if they ever give you a vacation.”
“I will. Take care of yourself, Ian.”
We pop our seat belts and get out of the van, flashlights on. Hollett has his in a cross-grip with his thorn wand. I’m armed with hopes and prayers. I wish Samantha had been able to tell me something about kiovores, but the fact that she didn’t meant that nobody there knew any more than I do. Not the most comforting thought I’ve had tonight, and this during a night I’d been contemplating a plague of the damned things being loosed in my town.
I let Hollett take the lead. If it came down to it he’s the only one that could hurt one of them. Not for the first time I’m envious of adepts and mages who can sling magic, how much easier things can be for you if you have the power to use it to help you along. Most adepts disagree with me. I see it as being like money. It’s no big deal if you have plenty of it.
From the van we could tell that the car is empty, unless the inhabitants are scrunched down in the seats. As we drift closer our flashlights begin to reflect tiny soft points of light from a shattered driver’s side window. There’s still glass in the frame, some of it bloody. The car is empty.
“Punched right through the window,” Hollett whispers. “Grabbed the driver and yanked him out.”
I circle the car. There’s a suit jacket laid on the back seat and purse on the floor of the passenger side. Most importantly, there are no toys in the back, no fast food bags stomped into the floor mat, no car seats. No kids. Thank God. “There were two of them,” I say.
“Do you know the car?”
I check out the exterior. It’s a blue Maxima, a couple of years old. Nice enough, but not a standout vehicle. The interior is immaculate, which also makes it impersonal. There are no knickknacks or any of the assorted incidentals that life accumulates. It could belong to anyone. “No.”
I look inside again and notice the roof bulges slightly inward. I shine the light over the top of the car and find the corresponding dent. “It jumped on the roof,” I say. “Startled them so bad they went off the road.”
Hollett pulls the keys out of the ignition, then goes to the passenger side and pulls a cell phone out of the purse. He puts the wand away and brings out a dark cloth pouch. Sprinkles some fine powder on both of them and sets them down on the side of the road, muttering under his breath. I step well back from him, giving him plenty of space. I know what he’s doing, and I don’t want to inadvertently break up his work.
As he stands up he starts looking all around, like there’s a particularly fast bird doing flybys past his head and he can’t quite catch it in the act. I’m told the spell releases lines of color that follow the path the person being tracked last took and that they look like fleeting brush strokes of a master painter on the air. They sound beautiful. I wish I could see them.
Hollett walks about fifteen paces off the road, then kneels in the weedy dirt. I hurry up next to him. The ground’s been torn up almost like a snow angel. We can see sweeping arcs in the dirt with a deep depression in the middle. The kiovore had held one of the motorists down here while it had fed. There’s not even a drop of blood.
“This is where it threw the man,” Hollett says. Then he points deeper into the field. “Looks like the woman made it about a hundred yards that way before it got her.”
“Can you track them now, get a fix on where they’re going?”
“The spell only tracks life. Their lives ended where their trail does.”
We’re interrupted by the sudden chirp of Hollett’s cell phone. He flicks it on, identifies himself and listens with intent.
I’ve seen professional faces before, the blank stone calm that locks away emotion and intention, and Hollett’s got a good one. But I can see cracks around the edges. His eyes tighten, his jaw clenches. It’s not good news, and I have a feeling I know what he’s going to say.
“You were right. They’re at the Reese house,” he says, heading quickly for the van.
I’ve been wrong so many times today. I’d been hoping for one more.
Eighteen
The first body lays in the middle of the Reese driveway.
Geographically, the road is only about five hundred feet away from the gate, but the driveway itself banks and turns through the heavy woods for three quarters of a mile. I’ve seen the pattern before. The winding road makes it impossible for a heavy vehicle to drive straight up to the house, so it’s impossible for anyone who wants to charge the gate to gain any kind of momentum. We’ve barely passed the first turn when I pull the truck jarringly off the path, stopping with the passenger side quarter panel only inches away from a scrubby pine tree. He doesn’t need to ask me why I did it.
The body is sprawled facedown carelessly across the middle of the road, perfectly captured by the headlights.
It’s a man, wearing the Reese goon uniform of black slacks and shirt, this time with a lightweight black jacket. Hollett and I reach him at the same time, but I let him turn the body over.
I never got his name, but he’s one of the bookends who rode with us over to the school. His jacket is unmarred but there’s a black glaze on his shirt, glistening in the moonlight. The shirt makes a sickeningly wet sound as Hollett peels it away from the body.
No bite, but the cause of death is obvious. His chest has been ruptured like an overripe grape. Short of a medieval war hammer I can’t imagine what could have caused such catastrophic damage to a human body.
Hollett turns his light and starts looking through the nearby trees.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“Scott,” he says. “Michael’s partner.”
I join the search, but it only takes a moment for us to reach the same conclusion. It’s a lost cause. Hollett surely knew that Scott had some innate magical ability. Michael here didn’t. They’re both dead. Everything else is just details.
I check my phone, hoping that Lisa would have sent me a message. In a better world it would have told me that Jamie had figured the kiovores out. In my world, I have no new messages.
“The fight’s up ahead of us, Hollett.”
“I know that.” He takes Michael under his shoulders and hauls him off the road, depositing him under a tree with more care than I’d have taken, then we race back to the truck. It’s a matter of seconds for us to reach the gate, and if Hollett had his way we would have sped through it without a second thought. Too bad for him, I’m driving.
I slew the Raptor sideways, sliding it next to my Jeep. I leap out and freeze, momentarily struck by the sight of the Reese house.
The central hub’s vast glass front has been shattered in half a dozen places, body-sized holes punching through the armored plate glass like plastic wrap. Most of the holes are floor level, but some of them are higher up. I’d guess the highest is between fifteen and twenty feet off the ground. Flickering lights on the spiderwebbed windows suggest a fire’s broken out somewhere inside, and occasionally a flash of light precedes either a gunshot or a small explosion. On the wind I can hear the faint sound of screaming.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 16
