by Devin Hanson
“My scooter is awesome,” I said and shared a grin with him. “I’m a little surprised to see you so far from Santa Monica. Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?” There was something about Friday that let me drop my guard around him. Maybe it was because he didn’t stare at my chest whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. It was refreshing after being optically groped by Eric.
“Joint task-force, you know how it is. We’re all just trying to cover as much ground as possible. Today, that means I’m in Silverlake. My partner’s inside; she wanted to meet you before she agreed to taking you on as a consultant.” He shrugged apologetically. “I showed her the steel ball you made and she wasn’t impressed.” I punched him playfully on the arm and he mock staggered, catching himself on a garage door and looking up at me with an outraged gasp. “Brutality!”
“The only thing around here that’s brutal is your sense of humor, Friday. I can’t believe you kept that ball. Come on, I want to meet your better half.”
“I’m keeping it,” he said seriously. “To remind me that not everything is as meets the eye.”
I sighed. “Just don’t tell anyone else where you got it from. It might land you in trouble.”
“With you, or someone else?” I ignored the question, and after a pause, he led the way up the stairs into the sheltered walkway leading back to the townhouses. “Our good Samaritan neighbor called from unit C. We’re going to unit D.”
I saw the blonde gleam of splintered wood on the doorframe and knew what to expect when we walked indoors. The home… I couldn’t call it a home. The moment I walked through the doorframe I knew the threshold had been disrupted. The unit had all the earmarks that I recognized from my own apartment and the other two that I had seen. The place might as well have been a cheap motel room for all the homely warmth it had left.
There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or item in the whole place that hadn’t been systematically destroyed. Scattered gleams of metal from the kitchen caught my eye, eating utensils bent out of shape. The large plasma TV hung on the wall next to the fireplace had a poker rammed through the center of it. The couch was scattered from one end of the living room to the other. The only thing that I didn’t expect to see was the hulking form of a marid sitting on the ground next to the couch, his hands bound behind his back.
A tall, lean woman in a pants suit was standing over the marid, and she turned around as we entered. She had a proud nose like a hawk’s beak, narrow lips and black hair just starting to turn gray bound up in a professional bun and lacquered into place.
“You must be Alexandra Ascher,” she said. “I’m Detective Lara Moreno.”
“Nice to meet you, Detective,” I said, and shook her proffered hand. “Friday didn’t tell me you had the suspect here.” The marid was staring at the floor, oblivious or ignoring us.
“Didn’t see the point,” Sam shrugged. “We picked him out loitering outside. He’s unresponsive. I was about to call a wagon to haul him to booking.”
“That’s a little strange, don’t you think? You sure it’s the right guy?”
“Look at him,” Lara said.
I glanced over at the marid and noticed he was spotted with drywall dust, his knuckles were freshly scabbed, and he had a downy feather stuck in the curly hair on his head. He looked like he had just finished destroying an apartment by hand.
“He might talk to me,” I suggested. Lara looked skeptical, and I added hastily, “Consider it an audition. If I can get him to talk, you hire me.”
“Done,” Lara folded her arms. “This I’d like to see.”
“You don’t have to do this, Alex,” Sam said quietly.
“Let me try,” I said. Sam backed off and went to peruse the destruction in the kitchen. Lara stayed hovering over my shoulder and I turned to her. “Detective, a little space if you don’t mind.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, but went to go sit on the stairs out of easy earshot.
I squatted down in front of the marid. He glanced up at me, and I saw the grooves running beside his nose. He was definitely a marid. “You know who I am?” I asked him.
He just stared at the ground, ignoring my question.
“What do you think Tovarrah would do to you if I told her you were aiding vampires gain a foothold in America?” I asked him softly, just over a whisper.
His head jerked up, his eyes wide as he looked at me newly. “You’re with the Red?”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Lara had bolted upright, and was on the verge of walking over. I waved her back. “Let’s just say she and I have similar goals. I’m willing to assume you didn’t know why you were paid to wreck this place,” I said.
“It’s just a job, lady. Easy work for a price tag you wouldn’t believe.”
Oh, shit. “Did you meet the guy who hired you?”
“I didn’t get a name, if that’s what you’re after. He paid me in cash.”
“Skinny guy, terrible taste in jewelry?”
He nodded.
Raveth. “Why’d you wait outside?”
The marid shrugged. “Was part of what he wanted. I was supposed to get arrested. The cash I got was enough to cover bail as well as pay me for the job.”
I stood and snapped my fingers at Lara, gesturing her over. Her face took on an affronted look, and she stalked over. Before she could say anything, I pressed a finger to my lips for silence. I knelt, grabbed a torn hardcover book cover off the floor and frisbeed it at Friday’s head.
“Ow! What—”
I jerked a hand across my throat, pleading with my eyes for him to stay silent. Sam nodded, a bemused look on his face, and came over, rubbing at the side of his head.
“We’re in danger. Right now. Are you armed?” I whispered.
Sam pulled his jacket to the side and drew a handgun. He messed with it for a moment, then looked up, his eyes ready. Lara wasn’t so easy to convince. She put her hands on her hips. “Not so fast, I—”
There was a metallic click from outside the window and I dove at her, bearing her to the ground as the windows shattered inward and a line of bullet holes stitched through the wall where the detective had been standing. It was all surprisingly quiet. Outside, the gunshots sounded like someone was rattling a can with a single nail inside it. The marid popped the heavy plastic restraints around his wrists with a grunt, grabbed the frame of the couch and flipped it up, sheltering us from the window.
“You trust me now?” I demanded to Lara as I rolled off her.
A white can with blue stripes flew through the window and bounced off the upturned couch. Sam grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Gas!” he hissed in my ear. “We need to go up!”
Lara was already on her feet, heading for the stairs. I kicked out and jostled the marid’s shoulder. He looked up at me and I jerked my head toward the stairs. I saw hesitation in his eyes and left him behind. There was no time for a discussion. The gas grenade popped with a sharp hiss and a cloud of yellowish fog boiled up on the other side of the couch.
The three of us scrambled up the stairs, barely ahead of the rolling clouds of fog. We ran into the master bedroom and Sam slammed the door shut behind us. He grabbed a scrap of the torn comforter and jammed it into the gap between the floor and the door.
“Who are those people?” Lara demanded.
“He calls himself John Raveth,” I said. “He’s… uh…” what was I supposed to tell the detective? I couldn’t tell her he was an incubus of Mammet. Her eyes were narrowing. I had to come up with something fast. “He’s kind of got a cult.”
“A religious nut?”
“Erm. No. Well, maybe in America. He gets people to do things by calling to their greed.”
“This is not the best time for talking,” Sam said from the window. “They’re coming in.”
“He pays them?” Lara looked skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like a cult to me.”
There was a burst of suppressed gunfire downstairs and a man’s deep voice cried out in shock
and pain.
Lara’s eyes jolted wide and she snatched her phone from its case on her belt. “Dispatch, we need backup. I have a group of armed hostiles with fully automatic weapons. We’re currently pinned down on the second story of a townhouse.”
Sam pulled me aside as Lara gave the dispatch further details and the address. “Here, you know how to use this?” He handed me a snub-nosed revolver. “I found it in the bathroom.”
I took the gun from him. It felt as heavy as a brick of solid steel. “Just point and shoot, right?”
“Hah. Good enough. Pull the hammer back, there, for an easier trigger pull. Aim with the front sights, don’t point it at anything you don’t want dead.”
I heard boots coming up the stairs with a heavy tread. So far, I’d been operating on reflex. The reality of the situation hadn’t had a chance to sink in. I’d been skating across the top of my growing fear, and now it started to sink black talons of dread into me. The combination of the solidity of the gun in my hand and the footsteps coming up the stairs made everything suddenly very real.
“Hey. Look at me.” Sam caught my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “You’re tough. You’re a fighter. Chin up, Alex, I need you to focus.”
I swallowed and nodded. My heart was hammering in my chest and I was having a hard time catching my breath.
“Backup is on the way,” Lara said from behind me. “Where’d you find the hardware?”
“Under the bathroom sink. Panic holster in the vanity.”
Lara nodded and turned, scanning the room. “Hey, does that window open?”
There was a thump at the door and I jerked my gun up and pointed it at the door. Sam grabbed my elbow and hauled me to the side a moment before there was a rattle of gunfire and the door coughed splinters into the room. The side table next to the bed jumped under the impact of bullets and toppled over.
“Cover your ears,” Sam suggested.
I did, and he leaned over and shot back through the door, three measured shots, placed randomly around the door. Even with my fingers in my ears, the gunshots slammed at me, painfully loud.
“I’ll give ten thousand dollars to the man who kicks down that door!” I heard Raveth scream. His voice was muffled, probably by a gas mask.
“Time to go,” Sam said.
Lara had the window hauled open and climbed out onto the clay shingles. In her flat-soled shoes, I could tell her footing wasn’t very good. I climbed out after her, and we stood on the little awning that covered the walkway below. It was only a few feet wide and there was nowhere to go. Over the edge of the awning, the ground was nearly twenty feet below, looking into the neighboring lot cut into the downhill slope. Dropping that far was a sure way to break an ankle or worse.
There was a rising shout from the hallway and the door crashed open. A burly man wearing a bulletproof vest over a sleeveless wifebeater stumbled into the room, clutching an assault rifle in his hands that was spray-painted to look like fallen leaves.
From outside the room, Sam’s pistol shots sounded much softer, even without my hands over my ears. The detective’s first two shots slammed into the man’s vest, knocking him against the wall. Sam lined up his last shot then hesitated. “You don’t have—”
The thug gave a wordless snarl, his eyes glazed with greed. His gun swung up and Sam pulled the trigger. The man’s head snapped backward and a sudden spray of blood splashed up on the wall.
Instantly my gorge rose and I spun away from the window, violently sick. I had seen bodies before, but never someone die right in front of my eyes. One moment he was there, a living person with hopes, dreams, a family, children maybe. Then in an instant it was all gone with nothing remaining but an empty corpse.
Lara caught my arm before I tumbled over the edge. I may have splashed a little on her shoes.
“Alexandra,” she hissed, “get ahold of yourself!”
I swallowed back my next spasm and leaned back against the wall. I felt dizzy and the distant ground seemed to sway beneath me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could be sick as much as I wanted to later. Right now, there was too much going on for squeamishness.
The awning creaked beneath my feet as Sam climbed out onto the narrow ledge and scooted over to the far side of the window.
“We can’t stay here,” he said conversationally.
“Up,” Lara said, tilting her head back. “We can hold the roof until backup arrives.”
“Right.” Sam inched around until he had his stomach against the wall and stretched up. Even at full extension, his fingers were still a few inches short of the edge of the roof. There were no clay tiles there, just a waist-high pseudo-adobe wall around a rooftop patio.
“You’re going to have to jump,” Lara said.
“Hang tight,” Sam told me. “This will only take a moment.” As much as I appreciated the chivalry, it was wasting seconds that could have been spent actually rescuing me.
He took half a step back, made sure his footing was secure, then jumped upwards. Sam caught the lip with his fingers and hauled himself up and over the ledge.
“Thirty thousand!” I heard Raveth scream from inside. “Forty, damn you! I want those fuckers dead!”
Sam appeared above me and extended an arm down.
“You first,” Lara said.
She didn’t need to tell me twice. I jumped up and caught Sam’s hand. He grunted under my weight and hauled me up to where he could grab my wrist with his other hand. I heard footsteps from below and Lara pivoted to take the place I had just vacated, a slim, almost ladylike pistol in her hands.
The bark of Lara’s gun lacked the booming thunder of Sam’s weapon, but it seemed to do the job. Sam got me up high enough to where I could hook a leg over the edge of the roof and pull myself up. Adrenaline got me up onto the roof in a flash. I leaned back over the wall in time to see Lara’s pistol lock open on an empty magazine, and she jerked back into cover. The clatter of suppressed gunfire came from inside and the window shattered outward in a glittering spray of shards.
“Lara!” Sam shouted.
She looked up, saw Sam leaning over the edge with his hand extended. She holstered her pistol and leapt upward to catch Sam’s hand. I leaned over the edge and grabbed her other hand. Between the two of us, we hauled Lara up and over onto the roof.
“Is it always this exciting around you?” Sam asked me with a forced grin.
“This is your party, not mine,” I shot back.
“Later, you two!” Lara snapped. “We need to cover the stairwell!”
The roof had a three-foot wall all the way around the edge. Crushed granite gravel crunched underfoot as we ran through the sun-bleached lawn furniture to the stairwell. The patio doorway was set onto a knee-high brick wall; the door itself was solid steel, painted by someone who had read about what flowers looked like, but had evidently never seen one in person.
Sam hauled the door open and checked the stairwell. It was clear, at least for the moment, and he let the door fall closed again. “We need a way to lock this thing.”
I looked around the rooftop and spotted a ratty-looking reclining sunchair. I ran over and wrenched it apart with my hands, fear and urgency driving me. I returned to the doorway with a couple feet of steel tubing and wrapped the tubing around the door handle and the edge of the frame, locking the door closed.
Sam leaned down and gave it an experimental tug. The door stayed firmly closed and he grinned at Lara. “Told you so.”
Lara eyed him skeptically as she exchanged her spent magazine for the reload on her belt. “I withhold judgement,” she replied.
“Test it yourself.” Sam winked at me and stepped back, giving Lara room to test my impromptu door lock.
She leaned over and tugged at the door, then tried to bend the steel tubing I had wrapped around the handle. She managed to get the tubing to bend a little bit, but it sprang back after she let go. I realized what it was Sam was talking about. He was referring to my trick with the syrup cup.
&n
bsp; Lara stood, dusting off her hands. “I don’t understand.” Her voice was hostile, and she glared at me, as if my apparent strength was something that threatened her.
Before I could say anything, Raveth called up from the window below. “That you up there, cousin?”
Sam and Lara exchanged a puzzled look, then turned to me. I sighed. “He’s making a joke.” Louder, I called back, “What do you want, Raveth?”
“Your head would be a nice start. Hey, cops! I have an offer for you. A hundred grand each. You hand my cousin over and I let you walk out of here unharmed.”
“Is he serious?” Sam muttered, shaking his head.
Lara looked at me speculatively. “Two hundred thousand dollars is not small money,” she said.
I shot a look at Sam, then focused on Lara. The older cop pursed her lips at me and I became very aware of the pistol at her side. Was she going to give in to Raveth’s offer? “It’s greed,” I said quietly, urgently. “That’s the strength of his cult.”
Lara shook her head abruptly and rubbed her forehead. “Madre.” She looked up at me and pinched her lips tight at the look on my face. “I’m not going to sell out, Alexandra. You don’t need to look at me like that.”
“Go to hell,” Sam called over the edge.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand, each,” Raveth replied. “I’m good for it. I have it here, on my person. Five money orders for fifty thousand dollars apiece, one envelope for each of you. I’ll hand it up now if you want, so you can verify it.”
“Seriously?” Sam whispered incredulously. “Who caries half a million in money orders on their person?”
“John Raveth does,” I said grimly.
“I can feel your interest,” Raveth called up, cajoling. “Think about what that money could get you. A quarter of a million dollars, tax free. If you invest it wisely, you could retire in five years and live a life of luxury.”
“What guarantees do we have?” Lara called back. Sam looked at her in shock and she whispered, “Just keeping him talking.”
“I send up the money, you send my cousin down by the stairwell. You can stay up on the roof until your backup arrives. Once I have my cousin, I will leave you alone. You’ll never see me again.”
