The maneuver cost me. I had nearly been able to forget about the bruising of my ribs at the hands of the golem, thanks to a combination of being a quick healer and the power of a few pain pills, but the sudden jolt served as a quick reminder. I buckled forward, and my attacker used the opportunity to grab hold of my shoulders and slam me, with quite a bit of force, into a wall.
What followed was an awkward bit of grappling that was part my training in breaking and reversing holds, part instinct, and part luck as the slipperiness of the alley reduced the advantage in strength my smaller and lighter opponent had. I managed to hook a leg around his and throw him off balance enough that I could maneuver him up against the wall.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him like this for long. I could already feel him pushing back against me with a strength I couldn’t match, and despite my best efforts, I knew my lungs would burn after moments of this kind of combat intensity.
Needing to find a way to close out this fight, I recalled The Night Flail to my hands. It seemed any striking attacks on the creature were somehow deflected by that strange powder, but it did nothing to prevent him from being grabbed. With that in mind, I brought the chain up by his chin, and as he twisted to break my grip, it wrapped around his neck. I believe in the power of magical weapons. I also believe in the power of strangling some asshole, regardless of their body composition.
The creature got desperate as the chain gripped him and tried to pull away from me with all its strength, but that only tightened it around his neck. I added that force to my own as I pulled, leveraging my taller stature to yank the chain straight up.
There was a snap as the creature’s neck broke. It flailed around for a bit, struggling in vain as the last of its unnatural life fled from it, before it went still.
Then there was another cracking sound, and the head came off completely, dangling by the chain, as the rest of the body slunk to the ground.
I was more curious than disgusted by this development. It had not been my intention to completely remove the head, and I certainly hadn’t applied the amount of force that it should require.
“This is unpleasant. Again.”
Turning the head over, I noticed the bones sticking out of it were brittle and flaky, ready to break off in my finger with even a small amount of pressure. All of the fleshy color had gone out of its skin and left it looking desiccated, and worn as if by years in the sun. The appearance reminded me of someone else I had met recently: Pembroke.
So this was a mummy.
I knelt down to examine the rest of the body. Like with the head, the flesh had dried up, and a thick layer of the greyish powder now covered the ground around the body. The bones here were just as brittle, as evidenced by me accidentally snapping an arm when turning the body over to search it.
The mummy didn’t carry any form of identification, or much of anything, really, but on one hand I did find something interesting: a ring made of silver and black intertwining bands, engraved in the front with what appeared to be a two headed eagle.
I may not have Lyanne’s appreciation of art or knowledge of history, but I had picked up a thing or two in my travels. While I was stationed overseas, I spent my passes going to museums and cultural sites, learning about the local history. Originally it started as a way to impress the local women, but the more I did it the more I started to actually enjoy the trips for their own sake. Not that I would ever admit that to any of my squad mates.
The ring I now held immediately transported me back to my time stationed in Turkey. There was an old temple there that had been converted into a museum which housed all sorts of strange relics, but the most notable example was of ancient jewelry, all designed with this same pattern of two different bits twisted together to form one piece of spiraled jewelry.
According to everything we had on her, that was the region that Benazir usually operated out of. I think it was safe to say that this latest assault was connected to her somehow. It also meant that the mummies weren’t exactly one big happy family.
So why would a mummy choose to work for Benazir instead of Pembroke? I felt like that question was central to understanding what was really going on.
As I held the ring up to the light to get a better look of the engraving, my instincts picked up another source of danger. I turned to the mouth of the alley and saw a figure standing there, its features hidden by the shadows cast off the surrounding buildings. It must have seen me take notice, because it chose that moment to depart in a blur.
I rushed out of the alley in pursuit, but by the time I got out into the street it had completely vanished, and none of my senses, supernatural or otherwise, could pick him up. He had disappeared and left no trace.
Deciding that going to The Dispensary right now might bring Maura unwanted trouble, I decided to pull out my phone and make a call. A distinctly British voice answered.
“Pembroke, we need to meet. I have something you will want to see.”
I’m not sure what it is about British people and tea, but their love of it surpasses mortal boundaries and carries over with them even after they become a creature like a mummy. Pembroke had gone through the trouble of setting out an elaborate spread which included an antique china tea set, finger sandwiches, and scones. For the first fifteen minutes after I arrived I was unable to get to the point of my visit because first I had to listen to him describe, in detail, all the different varieties of tea he had to offer.
When I was finally able to get a word in edgewise, I told him of the ambush in front of The Dispensary, of my fight with the mummy, and eventually about how he was defeated. I left out the part about the figure in the shadows, deciding that Pembroke still couldn’t be trusted and only needed to know as much as it took for me to get the information I needed from him.
As I finished detailing searching his body, I pulled out the strange ring and set it on the table. Pembroke wasn’t an easy man to read, but it became clear as his eyes fell on the ring that he was deeply uncomfortable. Maybe even frightened.
“What do you know?” I asked.
He picked it up to examine it closer. “It is old. Older than Benazir, even. That is … concerning.”
“Then let’s find her and give it to her.”
Pembroke looked stunned. “Why would we want to do that?”
I surprised him by showing him what I had already figured out. “It’s from Anatolia, right? That’s her general area. Then she either knows who the mummy was, and sent him, or someone is trying to cut into her power base. I’m leaning towards the prior.”
He gave me a coy smile. “Who knows with that one. Perhaps it is just her time?”
The look I gave him told him that I was not buying it.
He sighed and raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, it may have something to do with me paying to have the sarcophagi of all my relatives smuggled over here.”
“Jexie’s family?” I remembered her telling me that her parents had smuggled Pembroke here in the first place.
Pembroke nodded. “I need numbers if I’m going to go head-to-head with Benazir. It’s going to be a real reunion, considering I’ve paid to bring over nearly every dead relative I have.”
“And just how many is that?”
“Enough to fill a chartered aircraft, though some of them haven’t, ah—been awake for some time.”
“And just where did you find these so-called relatives?” I asked.
Pembroke smiled. “They’re most assuredly related to me, but we look a bit different. This branch of the family spent a great deal of time under the bogs of Europe.”
“Bog people?” I thought back to a story I had come across while doing my research. “The ones who were found with ropes around their necks, their hands tied, throats cut?” I asked, my brows lifted.
“One and the same. I said we were related. I didn’t say we get along.”
12
I returned to The Dispensary, this time circling the block a few times to make sure I wasn’t
being followed by someone who was going to take the opportunity to attack me. I really needed to have a quiet word with Maura and get her insight on everything: the mummy attack, Pembroke’s family, and what we had learned about Tandi’s possible history with Benazir. If anyone might have come across information that would point in the direction of my enemies, it was Maura.
The bar was busy—not as crowded as I sometimes found it, but enough to fill the room with the buzz of many conversations. There was something unique about today’s clientele, though: there didn’t seem to be any mortals among them. Perhaps it was the threat of war in the air that was drawing the immortal crowd out in droves to enjoy a last beer before everything went to shit.
I took a seat in a far corner, away from the bulk of the action where prying ears wouldn’t be able to hear whispered dialogue. Maura joined me shortly, carrying a tall bottle of whiskey, which I recognized as a Jameson, and two ice filled glasses.
“I was wondering when you were going to stop by again,” she said as she set one of the glasses in front of me. “I expected it to be earlier.”
“I tried. I ran into a bit of a delay last time I showed up here.” I recounted to her the story of me being ambushed by the mummy right outside her door, and how I heroically led it away to fight it so that the bar wouldn’t be caught up in it.
She shook her head as she filled our glasses. “You should have just come inside. My bar is a neutral zone, and things have not worked out well in the past for those who try to violate that neutrality. Perhaps Benazir, or whoever sent that mummy in her stead, thought that as long as they caught you before you came inside you were still fair game. I doubt they would have been stupid enough to continue attacking you inside.”
As if to defy that statement and prove just how stupid some people could be, the door to the bar burst open, slamming to the wall hard enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room. Two men, both built like professional wrestlers, sauntered inside. They both had dark hair and short black beards, as if they had been to the same ‘Non-Descript Professional Cuts’ barbershop, to match their ‘Generic Brand Business Suits.’ One thing that my brain immediately picked up as odd about them was their hands: they were disproportionately big even for the massive arms they were attached to, like somehow they had attached gorilla hands to the end of their wrists.
My senses screamed to me that these two were dangerous, and their eyes went straight to me. Despite Maura trying to get my attention with something about protocols, I couldn’t help but pull out The Night Flail. Fortunately, I was not alone in this feeling, as all around me I saw and heard weapons being drawn, pulled from pockets and hidden pouches, or simply appearing as if by magic like my flail did. I saw a variety of knives, a short-barreled shotgun, and an older woman near the front had managed to produce a full-sized rapier.
Maura sighed in frustration. “You know, this is a sacred violation of … ah, hell with it.” A gun had somehow appeared in her hand as well—a World War 2-era .45 revolver, if my knowledge of firearms served me.
The two men had not taken their eyes of me, both staring with a determination that was unsettling. I thought for sure they were going to charge straight through this room of heavily armed immortals just for a chance to get their hands on me.
But they didn’t move any further into the room, even though it looked like it pained them not to. Guess they weren’t quite as stupid as they looked.
“You missed, outside there in the street. I won’t miss,” I growled, and the two enforcers let their eyes slide over the room wearing bemused smiles, but I knew it was a show. Their odds were shit and they could feel it. If they’d come inside for the hit, it meant Benazir scared them more than Maura and a room full of seasoned killers, and that fact alone gave me pause.
“Another time, then,” one of them rumbled, and the men slipped out into the night, never turning their backs no matter how cocky they might have felt.
There was a collective rattling as weapons were put away, seats were retaken, and cups refilled.
“Sorry ‘bout that, fellas,” I said after I downed my own shot of whiskey. “Didn’t mean for my troubles to ruin everyone’s night. Next round is on me.”
A smattering of gratitude, some sincere and some hollow, was returned.
I took a step toward the center of the room and lifted my voice to address everyone. “You don’t have to agree with me—hell, you don’t even have to acknowledge I’m speaking. There are two old players coming for Tandi’s network, and they’re bringing small armies of undead to fight for the scraps. But it isn’t scraps. It’s everything in the city and more.”
Then I turned my attention back to Maura. It was time for me to tell her what had really brought me here in the first place. In a low tone, I added, “Even the deed to this place. Or did you already know?”
By way of answer, Maura lit a cigarette and patted the stool next to her. “How did you find out?”
“Paper. There’s always a paper trail.”
“What year?” she asked, dragging hard on her smoke and pouring another whiskey for me.
“Late 1990s or so. You got in trouble, a small bank offered you a loan, and then you found out it wasn’t really a loan. It was an opening gambit by Tandi, who wanted this place, and behind her stood Pembroke and Benazir and a few other names that sound pretty fucking evil, if you ask me. You sold your apartment, paid the loan off, and thought nothing more of it, but you’ve always been suspicious of it. Tell me, what if it wasn’t about the bar?”
Maura’s eyebrows shot up at that. “What else could it be about?”
I leaned in close enough to see the flecks of gold in her eyes, and she pulled away an inch, uncomfortable with really being seen. “Where was your apartment?”
13
Lyanne met us in Queens, at an old apartment building that had somehow survived the remodeling and reconstruction efforts of the rest of the neighborhood it was in. It was a slender, nine story building, currently wedged between two much taller, newer buildings. The building was a modest one without much curb appeal, not the kind of thing that earns landmark status or would get residents to put up a fight if someone tried to replace it. Perhaps the only reason it still existed was the narrow slot it occupied was not worth building something newer in its place.
This wasn’t even the kind of neighborhood that had doormen, instead relying on the tried and true buzz-in system for guests approaching the front doors. And I used the proven method for beating that system: hit every buzzer until one of the residents let you in. Unfortunately, my proven method failed. Either no one was home, or the residents were paranoid of strangers.
Before I could come up with a plan of how I was going to break down the door without making enough noise to attract attention from the rest of the building, Lyanne had already knelt near the door’s lock and pulled what appeared to be a number of pins from a pocket.
I watched, impressed, as Lyanne expertly picked the lock. “How long have you been capable of doing that?”
She winked at me. “You learn a few things over the years.”
We went inside and passed several doors that struck me as odd: blank steel with no lock, no handle, and no notable way in besides a bulldozer. I considered that perhaps they had converted some of the apartments into multi-floor layouts with front doors on higher floors, but as I took a stroll up and down the stairs to confirm this all I was met with were the same steel doors.
Maura’s apartment was back down at the first floor, and was the only door in the entirety of the building that seemed to be made of wood. It was a heavy door and bore many scars from the years, but otherwise was not notable. Lyanne made quick work of this lock as well.
“It’s strange to be home.” Maura stepped in cautiously ahead of us, with an expression much like a child who had just returned to their childhood home and saw how much had changed. “I swear, this place used to be much less … oppressive.”
I could see what she meant. It was har
d to tell exactly what about it gave that impression. There were minimum furnishings, though what there was all exuded the kind of quality that only came with great cost. Every piece served a function: a table with a single char, and a single seater sofa with a small desk on one side and a half-sized bookcase stocked with a few paperback fiction books on the other. It felt like a place to sit and wait, not a place to live.
My suspicions were confirmed in the bedrooms, which were completely bare. There were enough signs of someone being here recently, but unless whoever was staying here slept on the floor, they were not living here.
In the second bedroom we found something odd: a square column in the wall nearly six feet across. Maura approached it curiously. “I don’t remember that there.”
Lyanne ran her hands up and down the column, then pressed her ear against the wall and started tapping. She was muttering something I could not make out. Swiftly, she pulled out a small knife, which I wasn’t sure where she had stored, and started cutting into the drywall. She was met with a metallic clinking, then turned to us and smiled.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“They covered over an elevator, probably original to the house, when a single, wealthy family lived here,” Lyanne said, pulling thoughtfully at her lip. “I wonder if it goes down to an access tunnel, connecting to old New York. Maybe something even older.”
I thought of Pembroke and how he dressed, his manners, his entire persona, and then I considered how Benazir’s goons looked with their crisp suits and sculpted beards. “No, that’s not what I’m wondering.”
“You’re not?” she asked, and I borrowed the knife to cut away at the drywall, peeling off a large sheet in one slash. It revealed the grate of an antique lift, dusty with years but still elegant.
I tore away the entire sheet of drywall and slid the grated doors open with a squeal. The lift might not work, but there was a hatch on the top, and we could climb. “I’m wondering what’s up, not down.”
Succubus Hunter 2 (The Succubus Series) Page 11
