“We’ll have someone there in ten minutes,” she tells me.
As I turn the corner Three Saints looms up in front of me, a five-story brick with a hundred glowing windows. The large neon signs bearing the hospital’s name are on the other side of the building, but the tiny red flashers that line the helipad are bright little Rudolph noses in the new night. The pad is empty, but for all I know the chopper could have lifted off already.
“I’ll be there in five,” I reply, disconnecting.
A moment later I’m pulling into the parking lot. I go right past the valet booth and swing into the ambulance parking lot, parking alongside the emergency room door. I think I lock the door behind me when I get out, but I’m not sure. I tuck the Springfield into the belt at the small of my back, a terrible way to carry a gun but it’ll only be for a couple of minutes.
There’s a keypad next to the sliding double doors of the entrance. Only law enforcement officers, paramedics and hospital staff are supposed to have the code, but I learned it within days of moving to this town. I punch it in and go inside.
Normally there’s a Grey named Alan working the ambulance entrance on the evening shift, but he’s not here tonight. Hopefully it’s because he’s home behind locked doors and not because… well, I don’t really want to think about any ‘because’ right now. There are a couple of civilians behind the counter, but they’ve seen me before. They don’t try to stop me as I sweep past them and head for the elevator at the back of the room. As the door closes I hit the button marked 5.
When they open again I’m in the Special Care wing. It’s less than half the size of the other floors below it, only about a dozen rooms spaced out along a single corridor. There are a few staff members on hand, but they see the look on my face and choose to flatten themselves on the nearest wall rather than question me. I walk by them with a purpose, avoiding the temptation to look into the rooms as I pass by them. Most seem to be empty anyway, but through my peripheral vision I can see one bed with something huge and bulbous covered by a white hospital blanket. Probably someone who got a measurement wrong when mixing a potion. It happens.
The floor is Doctor Laveau’s baby and he’s its supreme authority, but in his absence it’s lorded over by nurse Hawthorne. If she has a first name I’ve never heard it. She’s a tall woman with a rigid physique, copper skin and a regal, almost Egyptian profile. In the past she’s always shown me indifference. She knows I try to help, but then again she never seems to be at ease when I’m around. Maybe Hollett’s onto something about how the Grey see me. I stop at Hawthorne’s desk.
“How do I get onto the roof?”
The good thing about walking around looking like you’re fully ready to kick a minotaur in the balls is that nobody asks you a lot of questions. “End of the hall, door on the left,” she answers. “It’s a stairway. There’s an elevator, but the stairs are faster.”
“Perfect. Thanks.” As I walk away from the desk I pull the Springfield out of my belt and jack a round into the chamber, the sound sharp and echoing in the silent wing. The noise brings a grizzled head out of the last door before the stairwell, an old-timer with flyaway white hair sprouting out from under a plush Santa hat and glasses big enough to serve dinner on.
“What the hell’s that?” he demands. He sees me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with that thing? Don’t you know you’re in a goddamn hospital?”
I have to stop at his door. I don’t know the man, but he looks conservatively to be in the low nineties and I don’t mean his temperature. He speaks with confidence, like a man used to having his voice heard. “Sorry, sir,” I say with utmost sincerity. “But there’s going to be a fight, and we don’t always get to choose where that happens.”
He stands a little taller, which brings him almost up to my collarbone. “Hmph, well, I guess that’s right. Go on then. Just make sure it’s a fight worth having, and come tell me about it when it’s over. I miss good fights.”
“I will,” I promise, then enter the stairway and climb the steps two at a time.
Thirty-Three
The door at the top is safety-locked with a simple push-bar. I nudge it open, verify that I can re-open it once it closes, and step out into a blast chiller. Only six floors up the air feels twenty degrees colder. The winter wind is stronger here, unfettered by the ground clutter, and a couple stray, tiny flakes of wet snow patter against my face.
The door the stairwell lets me out of is in a sizeable wall, big enough that I can only see a quarter of the roof. The wall is part of a building-sized structure on the roof. Once outside I can see two elevator doors – I’m guessing that one’s for regular emergencies and one for Grey. The roof that I can see is only car-sized air conditioners and electrical panels. It’s not until I come around the corner of the wall that I see the helipad.
It’s about fifty feet square, a fragile looking web of struts and cables raised up ten feet off the hospital roof, connected to the roof by a short flight of steps as well as a long, gently angled ramp. It’s ringed with flashing lights and small floodlights, allowing safe landing in the darkest night. There’s a crowd on the helipad, maybe ten bodies, maybe fifteen. They’re about a hundred feet away from me and backlit by the lights on the landing pad, but there’s no mistaking Sota Gamagori’s massive frame. I let out a sigh of relief. I made it in time, but by the way they’re all staring up at the sky I don’t think it’s by much.
As quiet as my sigh is, and even though it has to have been swallowed by the wind, three of the heads gathered around the helipad swing my way. Well, I hadn’t been sure how to approach them anyway. Now I don’t have to worry about it. I slowly walk towards the group. I walk with the gun in front of me, but for safety’s sake keep the barrel pointed down.
“Sota Gamagori,” I bellow.
The crowd, now visible as the group that mugged me and Hollett at their house, separates like a lightning-split tree. Gamagori climbs down the short flight of stairs and walks slowly in my direction, an iceberg on two legs. When he’s twenty feet away the spotlights bring his face to life, but it’s a cold life. The shadows cast on his features are stark and rigid. When he speaks his voice is as heavy as an avalanche.
“None of this would have never happened if he had simply listened to me.”
“Who’s that?”
“Kenta, of course.” He surveys the skies. I’m not worth his attention. “I told him over and over that a relationship with a Reese would only end in pain.”
“You saw to that yourself. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Perhaps, but those are the only kind you can count on coming true.”
“You led them right to the kiovore. You practically drew them their map yourself. Your own son.”
“He was perfectly safe as long as he had his pendant.”
“And what about Nariko? She had one just like his, but it didn’t protect her.”
He sighs. “Kenta made hers. I should never have let him, but he insisted and I relented.”
That must have been the reason for his apology. “That’s irony for you. Now he’s dead, but she’s alive somewhere.”
He still doesn’t look down, but I can see the muscles in his jaw clench. “My son… is dead?”
“Killed himself. Sacrificed himself to end the kiovore curse.”
A stillness forms in the air around him. Even the spattering motes of snow seem to avoid it. He looks at his feet, then at the dirty, billowing sky. “Did he say anything?”
“He said to tell Nariko he was sorry. And to tell you that he was ‘laying them down.’”
A couple of stray snowspecks catch him in the cheek. He holds a massive hand where they landed, then gently withdraws it and watches the melted drops trickle down his palm. He contemplates them long enough for me to wonder if he’d heard me. Then he says, “Ah. How appropriate. He finally learned something.”
“What was that?”
“An old German proverb I taught he and his sister o
nce. Raise no more devils than you can lay down.” He looks regally out over the sporadically darkened town. “It would seem that he did a good job.”
“Better than you,” I tell him.
Naked confusion on his face. “What do you mean?”
“You raised a lot of devils in your time. Maybe you’ve laid them all down up until now, but you missed one this time,” I have to raise my voice over the raw, biting wind. “You have to answer.”
“Answer?” He lets loose a bellowing thunderclap of a laugh. “Who are you, that you think you can make me answer to you? To anyone? I am Sota Gamagori. I answer to no one.”
“You will tonight. You’ll start with me.”
For the first time he dips his head so he can see me, and as he does a smile like a demon in a No play. A second later I know why. The sound of helicopter blades is faint, almost inaudible in the thin, volatile winter air, but it’s there and it’s growing.
“Goodbye, Mr. DeLong,” he says.
He turns his back on me and strides back towards the helipad, moving his bulk up the stairs with elegance and grace.
I can’t let him get on that chopper. I don’t know if Samantha has anything that can bring a helicopter down safely, and once it’s in the air I’d bet heavily that he’ll be able to camouflage it from any and all kinds of detection. I have to stop the chopper from landing, stop him from boarding, or stop it from lifting off again. The first choice is the best. I raise my gun. He’s still close, and so broad that I couldn’t miss him at this range if I wanted to.
“Sota!” I cry out.
A spotlight shows him make a cutting gesture with his right hand. As one, his bodyguards close ranks behind him, forming a living wall between us. Several of the Gamagori Security Team breaks away and heads in my direction, leaving the rest to take care of their boss. A couple of them take the stairs, but most come charging at me down the ramp. I’d been hoping they’d continue to come at me one at a time, like the bad guys in a Bruce Lee movie, but apparently they’re taking no chances. As they pass by the lights I can see that they’ve changed their mode of thinking.
My immunity to magic has served me well over the years, but it does have a major drawback: it’s not a secret. My saving grace has always been the fact that people are creatures of habit, and once something works for them that’s what they tend to fall back on, and magic is no different. Just like a favored cooking method, musical genre or weapons preference, someone who knows magic uses magic, even on someone who they know it won’t work on.
The six men approaching me have adapted. One man’s hands are banded in thick, gleaming metal knuckle dusters. Two of them carry long, heavy bladed knives. Two have thick, police-grade batons. The last one has a gun, a long-barreled revolver. Bruce Lee could have taken them using his speed, skill, creative writing and an editing bay, but in real life a one versus six fist fights don’t play out well for the one. They know this, and that’s why they’re coming at me en masse. Bad move on their part.
I have no intentions of using my fists.
Two guards break from the wall, descend the stairs, and lead the wedge towards me. One of them has a baton in his right hand. The other one is the progressive with the gun. I’m actually more concerned with the baton holder. He’s holding it like he’s used it before, but the one with the gun looks like he had to Google which end of it to hold. When it comes to guns the average person, even one with some familiarity with them, can’t hit a stationary target squarely in bright light let alone a moving one at night, but there’s always a chance this clown will be the one who beats the odds.
But his hands are shaking.
He goes down first, before he can find his courage. My first shot takes him in the right thigh, my second in the left. He gasps, body and brain locked and unable to even scream, wobbling on stilt legs until the trauma overwhelms his shock and he drops awkwardly on his concrete with the gun’s barrel drifting somewhere between the helipad and Mars.
I’m not the average person when it comes to guns.
I fix the baton holder with my sights, center mass, and he obligingly backs away with the wand pointed to the sky. I keep him covered while I walk over to the gunman and kick the pistol out of his grip, sending it spinning deep into the darkness of the roof. Then, since the baton holder is being very polite and non-threatening and standing so very still, I shoot him in the right foot. He drops right away, his scream chasing the rolling echo of the gunshot into the night.
Did you hear that, Sota, you asshole? I hope you did, and I hope you know what it means.
The rest of the goons backtrack immediately, realizing the futility of trying to use their brass knucks against my bullets. One of them calls out in brisk Japanese, then the remainder of Gamagori’s security come streaming down the ramp. They’re the more conservative members of the group; I see wands, a staff, pendants, and a katana that seems more stereotypical than anything else. The mob hangs back enough for one man to take the fore. He’s got an eyebrow piercing. Obviously the rebel outsider of the group. He’s a brave soldier, though, and when he’s a stone’s throw away from me he starts making wild gestures at me with his empty hands.
Either he’s been briefed on how to deal with me or he’s just the lucky one of the group. I’m safely bypassed by the magic he’s slinging but the concrete starts blowing up all around me, like he’s lobbing invisible grenades. I’m hit by a stinging rain of pulverized cement, and I run sideways out onto the roof to escape the next salvo while trying to pick him off on the run.
He matches me stride for stride, his spells blowing a lengthening trench in the roof at my heels while I stitch holes in the wall a steady half foot behind him. I jam my feet into the concrete, stopping so short my knees feel the strain, but it works and his next spell detonates right in front of me. He’s still moving, but with my standing still I have the extra second I need to pick my shot and drop him with my next round. He stumbles and disappears behind an air conditioner unit. I’ll find out later where I hit him.
He took one for the team. While I was taking valuable seconds to dispatch him the rest of his friends have gotten close enough to surprise me. I’d assumed that they’d stop to check out their fallen comrades, but they’d ignored them and now I’m paying for that assumption. I’m outmatched. I run again, heading back to the rooftop building that holds the elevators and stairwell access.
I have a head start. I take the corner a good five seconds in the lead, drop back, then slide into the roof like I’m stealing home. I twist fast and hard, coming to a stop on my belly in a classic prone shooter’s position. I bring my sights up thigh high, and the group does me a favor and charges around the corner as one, a stampede of legs fighting to see which one of them can run in front of my gun first.
I start firing and they start dropping. The ones I don’t hit trip over the ones that I do, or else throw themselves every which way trying to avoid the shots. Half of them are bleeding and clutching rent limbs before the magazine clicks dry. I push myself to my feet, hitting the release button on the way and letting the empty mag drop. I replace it with the second clip, surveying my handiwork.
I hit four of them. They lie in ugly, disjointed piles on the concrete, crying and screaming and too busy clutching at their mutilated legs to even think about fucking with me. Of the ones I missed one is lying unconscious, having hit his head on something as he fell. One is running hellbent for the horizon, apparently having weighed discretion, valor and a paycheck and made a choice he can live with. Two of them are still standing and ready to fight. One is packing an athame, a ritualistic knife with a blade curved to look like a fang.
The other is the slender one with the candle and Zippo, the one who’d seemed so familiar to me earlier. Despite the rush to find Sota Gamagori I’m actually excited to see this guy. I can’t wait to see what that’s all about.
He makes his move first. As he does Knife Guy drops back a step, throwing his arm across his face and giving me all the time in the w
orld to prepare for what’s coming next. Candle guy lights the Zippo and touches it to the candle. At once a stream of flame blasts forth like water from a fire hose, blasting through the air I’d occupied a moment before. When Knife Guy ducks and covers I tuck and roll, the unyielding concrete beating the hell out of my back and shoulders.
There are two kinds of fire I could be dealing with here. Some hexes summon regular fire, and the only thing magical about it is how it’s brought into being. Once lit, it burns like any other fire. Some hexes summon magical fire. There’s nothing natural about it, and it doesn’t necessarily obey the laws of thermodynamics. The second kind is the kind I don’t worry about. It won’t cause me any more harm than watching a YouTube video of a forest fire. The first kind will roast me like it would anyone else on the planet, and unfortunately there’s no way for me to tell the difference until it’s too late.
Candle Guy’s aim sucks, and even without my flashy Captain Kirk maneuver he probably would have missed. I don’t regret it, though. I made it far enough to avoid the blast, but more importantly was that I was still close enough to feel the heat. Or, more precisely, the lack of heat. This close to the flame it still should’ve felt to me like opening a 500-degree oven, but my skin feels as cool as the evening dew. I smile. Type Two fire.
I jump to my feet and start stalking toward him. I see a shaky smile on his face. Closer target, better target. He aims candle and lighter and lets loose. The red-and-orange wave engulfs me, and I can see the flickering tongues of flame flashing past me but I’m as cool as the other side of the pillow. Some of my clothes smolder a little, but that’s the extent of the damage. After a moment the flashing deluge stops and I can see him again.
His face undergoes a metamorphosis. From shaky grin he’d graduated to fully realized laugh, but it crumbles like old concrete when he sees me emerging unscathed from his best attack. His crushed expression is almost comical, and I’m about half a second from my own smile when I realize I’ve seen that expression before.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 29
