by Megan Derr
Wyatt gave him a disgusted look. "I'm not a fucking laboratory alchemist. I have no intention of sitting around and jotting things down in books all damn day. I'm too good for that. There's no point in having my kind of skill if I'm not going to use it."
"You're too young for—"
Snarling, Wyatt shoved him back when Trent again tried to touch him. "Too young? To hell with you. How many times do I have to say it? I'm not a fucking child. That ship sank years ago. What I need is for someone to take me seriously. I thought you did, but you're just like everyone else. You should settle down. You should take it easy. You should relax and enjoy life. You should enjoy your youth while you have it. Fuck all of you."
Turning around sharply on one heel, he fled the kitchen and a few seconds later Jackie heard a door slam. Looking at Trent, Jackie said, "Maybe it's none of my business, but why the hell is everyone so damned determine to keep that boy tucked away? I admit I ain't been no better, but I'm a stranger. Of course I'd tell him to butt out. But you're his friends, even if that stiff-neck vampire says the word is over-generous. Why you riding a friend so hard, hoss?"
He wasn't even sure why he cared, because the good lord knew he had his hands full as it was with things that weren't really his business, but the kid had a good heart and seemed willing to learn. He was right: he just needed someone to take him seriously. Someone to teach him the ropes.
"We're not trying to save him," Trent said. "We're trying to save everyone else."
"This got something to do with the shadows in his eyes?"
"Noticed that did you? He's just a boy most of the time, but his life hasn't been an easy one."
"What gave a good kid those old eyes?"
Trent sighed and sat down at the kitchen table, fiddling with a coffee mug that was still steaming. "Not my story to tell, as much as I'd like to. Suffice to say that if I had to choose between meeting him in a dark alley and meeting a demon, I'd pick the demon."
Jackie's brows shot up at that because he really could not figure out how a pint-sized, mouthy alchemist with a penchant for cake-flavored coffee drinks could be worse than a demon. On the other hand, people often wondered how anyone who sounded like him could string together complicated thoughts. People were stupid. "I'll keep that in mind. Ya'll have a good evening."
He left and wasn't at all surprised to see Wyatt sitting on the porch stairs. "Take care of yourself, boy," Jackie said.
Wyatt didn't reply until Jackie was down the stairs and well past him. "I knew what I was doing with Roman, you know. I'm old enough to know when I'm probably getting into something stupid—"
"Then you should have enough sense not to do it," Jackie said. He turned around, thumbing up his brim.
Wyatt just looked at him. "How often do you realize you're doing something stupid and decide not to do it?"
"Often enough I've lived to see seventy, which is about five decades more than you can say."
"Maybe," Wyatt said, face closing up, eyes going dark. Jackie had a sudden urge to ruffle his hair and tell him it'd be alright, the way his pop had done to him a hundred times or more when he was a boy. He shook his head, wondering at himself. "So what were you doing with Roman, then?"
Wyatt flushed. "Uh. We met because he needed an alchemist who could help him with something, and I'd talked to some people who said you did a lot of work for him. I was hoping he'd introduce me to you. The rest of it, that night… I thought we were just having fun. I didn't know you were together, or that he was that much of an ass. I really am sorry."
"You weren't the one what stabbed me in the back," Jackie replied. "Spilled milk is spilled milk, ain't nothing to be done about it except clean up the mess. But I'd steer clear of him in the future."
"Yeah, no plans to talk to him ever again. I don't like someone who lies like that, and I definitely don't trust them. He can find another fucking alchemist."
Jackie smiled. "Now there's the first smart thing I've heard you say all day, son. Keep that up you may just make seventy. Take care now, hear?"
"I—" Wyatt looked at him, pleading and hopeful—and then his face just shut down and he pulled his flat cap lower to hide his eyes. "Yeah. You too. Bye, Sheriff."
Ignoring a sudden, foolish urge to take Wyatt with him, Jackie left, heading back the way they'd come and continuing on toward where he had first appeared. He tried to forget that expression on Wyatt's face, the look of a boy who clearly had been hoping he'd found someone to take him on. Jackie wasn't sure what he'd done to make Wyatt think he was any sort of mentor, but he sure as hell wasn't. He'd only taken on one apprentice and that man had been older and wiser than Wyatt. Anyway, he wasn't nearly stable enough to be taking in strays, even if he wanted to.
Kneeling on the pavement, Jackie quickly drew the spell circle to take him home. When he reappeared in his workroom, it was practically vibrating from the force of the bass in the club. Must be a good night.
He left the work room and hung up his hat, jacket, and gloves on the hooks by the front door, emptying his pockets on the table next to them. Heading into his bedroom he quickly stripped off and showered, groaning as the hot water soothed muscles tight with tension. When he was feeling moderately human again he pulled on clean jeans and a dark blue t-shirt and then sat to pull on his boots.
Belatedly, he remembered he'd never turned his phone back on. Fetching it from the table he did so, swearing loudly and colorfully when he saw he'd missed a call from his pa. Of course he had. God. Damn. It.
He pulled up the voicemail and listened to it as he headed back to the workroom to fetch the books he needed.
"Son, I don't know what the hell kind of trouble you done walked into, but see yourself straight out of it again. There's doing the right thing and then there's flat out stupid, and you ain't enough on your own to take down that flame-eyed bastard and his master. Call me when you get this. If I can't answer, you best be explaining everything for me to listen to later. If I gotta come save your fool ass, I'm gonna whoop it all the way back to Texas."
Rolling his eyes, Jackie called his father back. He was not even the slightest bit surprised when he got nothing but ringtones. When the voicemail prompted he said, "You wanna know what's going on old man, answer your damn phone. I ain't a greenhorn or a dude, I can handle it just fine. Don't get yourself dead over there."
Hanging up, he shoved his phone in his pocket and skimmed through his bookshelves until he found the book he wanted: a record of territories and who had control of them over the past two hundred years. Territories didn't change hands often, but they changed enough occasionally someone had to write it all down, if only to keep track of hostilities and alliances. Thankfully, there was more of the latter than the former, and most of those were strictly between werewolves. Never had been a friendly bunch, outside of their packs.
Though he was good at memorization and retaining information, even he couldn't remember who owned what all the time, especially those parts of the county that had little to nothing to do with him. Walking into the kitchen, he pulled a beer out of the fridge and carried it into the living room. Stretching out on the couch, he opened the beer, opened the book, and settled in.
Corrigan's home had been nearly right smack in the middle of disputed lands, which was probably why he'd gotten away with his experiments as long as he had. The vampire who had owned them had been killed by a demon, but before he could get comfortable, the Civil War and a far more violent undercurrent of infighting amongst abnormals had sent him straight back to hell. Since then, no one had held it until about the 1920s. That was a long time for a territory to remain disputed.
But if nothing had changed in the last ten years, it was currently under control of Garrett Frye. Not a demon lord Jackie knew anything about, beyond a couple of minor rumors that were as likely to be false as real. Frowning thoughtfully, he pulled out his phone and dialed.
It picked up after three rings. "Long time no talk."
"Rostiya," Jackie greeted. "How goe
s that house arrest I've been hearing about?"
Rostislav laughed, though it sounded a bit forced. "It's hard to complain when your prison is a palace ruled by your lover. Speaking of lovers, ugly rumors are coming my way about you and Roman."
"He proved to be a right bastard in the end," Jackie replied. "Didn't call to talk about him, though. I was wondering what you could tell me about a demon lord named Frye."
"Do I want to know why you're asking?" Rostiya asked with a soft laugh. "He's pretty mellow for a demon, but he's a demon of flowers so be careful."
That was an old-fashioned way of saying Frye was a demon of poisons, one of those who gave rise to myths like the Four Horsemen. If he was mellow, it was because subtle was his way, though it could also mean that he'd simply calmed down over the years and wasn't as quick to lash out as most demons. Either way, it was no wonder he'd managed to take control of such a volatile territory. Mellow and subtle seemed like the only feasible way to manage it, the more Jackie thought about it. "Well, I guess I won't drink the water, then."
"So why do you want to talk to him? Working a case?"
"Personal matter. I need some information and I think maybe he's the only one who can provide it without me being forced to shoot somebody." He started to say thanks and goodnight when another thought occurred to him. "Got another question for you."
"Shoot."
"Name Thorne mean anything to you?"
"Can't say it does, except for this cute little witch I know who lives in Japan now."
Jackie snorted. "Definitely not the Thorne I'm asking after—unless she's related to a boy named Wyatt."
"I'll ask around if you want," Rostislav replied.
"Nah, it wasn't nothing important. You go enjoy the rest of your night, Rostiya. Tell your vampire I said howdy."
Rostiya laughed. "I'll do that, professor. Take care of yourself."
He hung up and Jackie set his phone and the book on the coffee table, then finished his beer and went to get a second one. He was taking the rest of the night off and getting in some relaxing while he could; it was always best to be fully rested when messing with demons—especially one that could poison as effortlessly as he could breathe.
Jackie just hoped it led to something useful, because he was damned tired of running into walls. If people kept putting them up, he was gonna raise a ruckus and start knocking them down, and that was only going to cause more trouble.
Part 04: It's Five O' Clock Somewhere
The most annoying—and dangerous—thing about demons was that there was no damn way to predict one. The ones that should have been terrifying were just plain silly, the ones that should have been relatively harmless wound up having a right terrifying presence. Sable Brennus was one of the few demons he'd ever encountered that looked and acted like his element. If there was a better demon of storms walking the earth, Jackie had never heard tell.
He didn't know what he'd been expecting of a demon of poisons, but it sure wasn't the figure before him, who looked as though he would rather be up to his elbows in a computer or something. He was smartly, but quietly, dressed, with long hair pulled back in a braid and a face that was pretty in a strict, schoolteacher kinda way. His attention was more on the whatever-all gadget in his hands, and Jackie half-expected to be told the meeting needed to be quick because he had to go explain … servers or the network or something to the higher ups in ten minutes.
On the other hand, Jackie had felt faintly nauseous since entering the building. Since entering Frye's office, his stomach had been knotted like he'd eaten something rotted and his skin felt like stuff was crawling all over it. No mistaking the presence of a demon of poisons. "Thank you for seeing me."
"Your phone call certainly captured my interest, I could hardly refuse," Frye replied. "It's been a long time since anyone asked about that dead field. I always hope and dread that someone else will bring it up again because it has long been a stain on this territory, but anyone who attempts to finally put an end the matter winds up dead. You at least seem more promising than the last halfwit who wanted to know more." He turned off the device in his hands and set it aside on his desk, then leaned back in his chair and settled his arms on the armrests. "Why do you want to know more about Corrigan and the mess he left behind?"
Ah, and there was the demon in him: faintly glowing eyes that were a strange, pale yellow-green in color. He wore glasses, though Jackie could not begin to guess why a demon would want to wear glasses. "A friend of mine was murdered by a creature that's connected to him. I aim to find him, find whoever is controlling him, and put an end to them both."
The demon's eyes went from interested to intense and the sudden rise of his power made Jackie feel dizzy on top of the nausea. Spending enough time around Frye would ease up the symptoms—make him immune, sort of—but he didn't want to know what exactly was meant by 'enough time'. "You're looking for Firebrand."
"Firebrand?" Jackie repeated. "Is that what he's called? Apt enough."
"Indeed." Frye's mouth quirked. "I'm not sure he would like it, but we don't know his real name because that is not the sort of detail about which Corrigan would have cared. Firebrand is what those I tasked with gathering information about him took to calling him. Unfortunately, we know very little." He sat up again and slid a folder across the desk. "What we do know is this: Harry Corrigan moved here in 1820. He bought Blue Owl House and had it covered with extremely powerful wards. What little information we could gather on that point, laying them probably took a year to a year and a half. It was a short time after that they started calling it Corrigan House."
Jackie winced. "That ain't easy magic, not by half."
"No, it's not," Frye agreed. "Even I feel tired thinking about it. The wards were broken long ago, but you can still feel the remnants if you go there, which of course you may. He lived there until one of the gunslingers killed him." His mouth quirked. "But I would imagine you know that story better than me."
"Ayah," Jackie said, snorting.
Frye laughed briefly. "After that, the house and grounds were razed to ensure the draugr were gone once and for all. There have been a few attempts to purify the place, but it never takes."
"I can imagine cruelty like that will poison the place until Judgment Day."
"Indeed," Frye said, and Jackie wanted to smack himself for the stupid choice of words. Thankfully, Frye seemed amused, and only continued on. "Whatever records Corrigan kept are long destroyed, but we've pieced a few things together from other sources. We have definitively tracked the sale of roughly two hundred slaves to Corrigan, though we suspect the real number is significantly higher. Notes from the estates that sold the slaves indicated they believed the slaves 'too problematic', essentially, to be worth keeping."
Jackie said nothing to that, though there was plenty he wanted to say. No need, though, when Frye's expression said he agreed with every unspoken word. "Corrigan purchased the slaves and used them for his experiments. Most of his victims died, but there were a handful of survivors. Most of them left behind some sort of account, be it stories passed on to their children or written in journals or told in conversations with other abnormals. Their accounts of what they endured are in the folder. I advise you read it on an empty stomach, or one filled with strong drink. The most important bit is this: two of his experiments were successful. In the first experiment he managed, if the accounts are to be believed, to splice together a human, werewolf, and djinn."
"He what?" Jackie asked. "That ain't possible. You can't turn anything into a werewolf, and djinn have to be summoned. You could maybe summon a djinn and bind it to a werewolf. I wouldn't want to be the poor fool that had to figure out that spell. Or capture the werewolf, for that matter. Those are some mean sons of bitches when they wanna be. But you can't combine all three, that just ain't a thing. Unless you mean he started with someone who was half-wolf, half-human, but I think you woulda said."
"Quite. He took a full-blooded human, a full-blooded werewolf, an
d a djinn, and found a way to combine them." Frye's mouth flattened and Jackie's sense of nausea kicked up. "The results are the one we call Firebrand."
Jackie grimaced. "I see. What was the other success, then?"
"We don't know exactly," Frye said quietly and opened the folder to pull out a sheet of paper. "All we know is that it had something to do with a demon. There was one woman who tried to recall some of the marks on the body, but she said there were more than she could count, an entire body tattoo that she thought had been painted on with blood."
Jackie went cold. "Full body blood casting? That—" The last time anyone did a blood casting like that, a whole hell of a lot of people died and that part of the world vanished forever. The paranormal world don't make things illegal, exactly, but that sort of magic comes real damn close. "That kind of witchery…"
The base spell for it wasn't particularly dangerous in and of itself. High level binding spells were most often used in the forming of angels or the summoning of a demon or djinn. They were meant to contain dangerous beings, though they could be warped into things like spell cages and hexes and be otherwise misused. Alchemists especially were known for binding shit that shouldn't be touched at all, nevermind putting it on a damned lash.
He scowled when Frye slid the piece of paper across the desk. There wasn't much to it, just eleven crudely drawn marks. Three of them were runes and the rest looked like they were probably alchemical. He didn't need the notes jotted alongside the runes to tell him they had been placed over the heart of the poor bastard who had suffered them. Heart. Breath. Soul. They were the master marks for binding two souls together. My heartbeat is your heartbeat. My breath is your breath. My soul is your soul, until my heart ceases to beat, and my breath at last runs out, and my soul passes on. It was powerful magic, not to be done lightly, and failure always meant death.
