by E. A. Copen
I unscrewed the cap on the water bottle sitting in the cup holder and chugged half of it. “He was here.”
“What?” Emma crossed her arms.
“Yeah. What happened earlier wasn’t random. He hit me with a wallop of magic that somehow sailed straight through my mental shields. Some kind of curse. I shouldn’t have come back from it.”
Samedi stroked his chin with two fingers. “The Horseman mantle should’ve protected you from an assault. It makes your magic stronger.”
“What are you saying exactly?” Emma asked.
I met Samedi’s bloodshot eyes. “He’s saying whoever did this is at least as strong as me, if not stronger.”
Emma chewed on her bottom lip a moment before asking, “So are we dealing with another Horseman? Famine?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t Beth. Or Felicia. The shadow didn’t look like Haru, either. And this isn’t Haru’s style.”
I chugged more of the water, creating an excuse to be silent a moment. There were other mantles in the world. I’d been the Sandman for a bit, and I knew there was a Devil mantle for the ruler of She’ol. There were also gods and angels out there, the latter of which Emma didn’t know about yet. Any of them could match my power. If it was another Titan, he could beat me easy, but Titans fed on magic. They didn’t raise the dead, and they didn’t waste their time toying with people. Titans killed without hesitation. Whoever this other necromancer was, he’d released his curse on purpose. He didn’t want me dead, but he wanted me to know he could kill me. Why?
“It’s not a Horseman,” I said. “It’s not anyone with any kind of mantle, I don’t think. The man controlling the last zombie, he felt human. I don’t know how to explain it, but he was... familiar. Like I knew him.”
The Baron leaned forward on his cane. “Do you know of any other necromancers, Lazarus?”
“It’s not like there’s a guild or anything, Samedi. No. If I could guess even remotely at who was behind this, I’d tell you. Believe me.”
He pursed his lips and grunted before lifting his cane. “Well, I have work to do. Ms. Knight.” He tugged on the brim of his top hat. “I will ensure your officers find the remains. However, there’s no way to leave them without making it suspicious in some way. I foresee a busy few weeks ahead for the homicide department.”
Emma sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
After Samedi swaggered into the abandoned park, Emma got into the Escalade and we drove across town to pick up my daughter from the sitter.
Nate Frieder was the night shift coroner for New Orleans Parish and it was a few hours past the beginning of his shift, which meant his wife, Leah, was watching Remy. They lived in a little two-story yellow house with red shutters near the lake. It looked like a house straight out of a children’s story book.
I knew something was wrong when we pulled up and found Leah’s Kia missing. The front door was wide open, and the doorknob lay in pieces on the ground. I threw open the door and was halfway up the walk before Emma got the Escalade stopped. The front room was even more of a mess with overturned furniture, blankets tossed in piles, and a broken vase on the floor.
“Remy? Leah?” Cold panic gripped my chest and I rushed for the stairs, pulling magic into my fist. “Leah?”
Silence answered me.
Emma slid through the front door, her gun drawn and pointed at the floor. She met my eyes and gestured for the stairs, then toward the kitchen, silent for, “You check the upstairs. I’ll clear the kitchen.”
I nodded and climbed the stairs, trying to keep my emotions in check. If anything happened to either of them, I’d never forgive myself. Dammit, nothing supernaturally bad should’ve been able to get in. I’d talked Leah into letting me put up some wards around the property. I should’ve known about it if anyone but me crossed them while Remy was there, yet I hadn’t been alerted. Either whoever had done this wasn’t supernatural, or something even worse was going on.
The carpet sloshed under my foot. My breath froze as I looked down and realized I stood in a puddle of blood, enough to soak the carpet. A muffled groan made me turn my head. The blood trail led to a closed door. The linen closet.
I gripped the doorknob and pulled. Leah rolled out, her wrists and ankles bound with plastic zip ties. Someone had stuffed a dirty sock halfway down her throat as a gag, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Shiny red blood glistened on her chest.
“Call a squad!” I shouted and dropped to my knees. “Hurry!”
Emma’s footsteps thundered up the stairs behind me. “Jesus, it’s Leah!”
“Call them, Em!” I yanked the sock out of her mouth and put my hands over the bleeding wound in Leah’s chest and tried not to let myself think about what might’ve happened to Leah and Nate’s baby girl, let alone Remy.
Emma put the phone to her ear and relayed the situation to dispatch.
Leah’s eyes fluttered open. “Don’t hurt her. Please.”
“EMS is on the way. Don’t talk. You’re going to be okay.” I added more pressure. She was bleeding everywhere. How could she have lost so much blood and still be conscious?
She blinked, letting tears fall. “Don’t hurt my baby.”
I gritted my teeth. “Where is she, Leah? Where are Remy and Jessica?”
Whatever Leah mumbled in response was incomprehensible. She slipped into unconsciousness.
“Emma.” I twisted, giving her a pleading look. “Find them.”
She nodded once, raised her gun, pointed it down the hall and went to search the nursery.
What if she’s gone? I squeezed my eyes shut. What kind of monster would hurt unarmed women and children? I hoped it was a literal monster. When I found out whoever was responsible for this, I would take my time killing them. If Remy was hurt... No. That wasn’t possible. I couldn’t even let myself entertain the thought. My daughter had to be alive wherever she was.
Emma came out and ducked into the second bedroom quickly before returning. She tucked her gun away. “They’re not here.”
I stared at her, trying to process what she’d just said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the kids aren’t here, Laz. Someone took them.”
Chapter Three
An ambulance came for Leah and the cops came to talk to me. Somehow, I’d found my way down to the kitchen table and sat with my head in my hands, trying not to snap at the police.
“When was the last time you saw your daughter, Mr. Kerrigan?” He looked up from the notes he was writing.
“After dinner,” I said in monotone. “We went out to catch one of the parades and then all six of us went to dinner.”
“All six?”
“Me, Emma, and Remy plus Nate, Leah, and Jessica.” I lowered my hands. “Do we have to do this now? Shouldn’t you be out looking for her? Putting out a BOLO or whatever on Leah’s Kia?”
“Try not to panic, Mr. Kerrigan.” He scribbled something in his notebook.
I balled up a fist and struck the table hard enough it made the glass of water in front of me jump. “Try not to panic? Are you shitting me? My daughter’s missing! My best friend’s wife could be dead, their kid is gone too, and you want me to calm down?” I pushed up from the table. “Let me tell you something, buddy—”
“Sit down, Lazarus.” A tall guy with slick hair in a suit muscled his way into the room and flashed a badge at the officer. “We’ll take it from here, officer.”
“Detective Drake,” I said through clenched teeth as I sat. Just who I didn’t want to see. “Didn’t realize this was your beat.”
“Special case. Now, let’s start from the top.” He clicked a pen, licked a finger, and flipped open a notebook of his own, thumbing through the pages. “You said you went to dinner. But you and Detective Knight went off on your own afterwards, huh? Dumped your kid on your friend’s wife? Why? Go out to party? Bourbon Street?”
“Do I look like a fucking tourist, Brad?”
“I hear you like the bottl
e. Files say your old man did too. What else do you two have in common?” He lowered the notebook. “Right. You both have a record. Violent records, if I recall. You ever hit a woman?”
“No, but I’ll make an exception in your case.” I stood up fast enough that the chair toppled over behind me.
Drake’s eyes widened, and his arms tensed. His eyes snapped to my clenched fists resting on the table and back to my face. “Where did you and Detective Knight go?”
“For a walk by the river.”
“And she’ll vouch for your whereabouts under oath?”
“Ask her yourself.” I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair. “I’m done letting you bust my balls.”
Detective Drake stepped in my way. “Maybe you’d be more comfortable talking about this downtown in a very small room?”
“That’s enough, Brad.” Emma stopped in the doorway and crossed her arms. “I was with him all night. I called it in. You want to grill someone, I’m right here.”
Drake clicked his pen and turned. “You know the D.A. can poke holes in that kind alibi like Swiss cheese, Knight. If I don’t get the details, and that kid turns up floating in the river tomorrow morning—”
He never saw the slap coming, but from the loud crack of her palm against his cheek, he felt it. Drake’s head jerked the side, eyes wide. Every muttering voice in the house went silent. Drake’s partner, Detective Codey leaned in from the stairway to survey the scene.
“You just assaulted a police officer,” Drake sneered.
Emma raised her chin. “Fine. Run me in. Then, when I tell my side of things to the chief, I’ll get the chance to tell him about all the harassment and inappropriate comments that’ve come out of your mouth the last few months.”
He rubbed his face and stared at her.
“Or you can pull your head out of your ass and we can do some real police work and save lives. That is what you signed up to do, isn’t it, detective?”
Before Drake could answer, every police radio in the room kicked on, dispatch relaying the same message. “All units be advised. White Kia Optima, plates Adam Henry Robin fifteen seven has been located at Magazine and Cadiz Streets.”
Leah’s car. They’d found it just up the street from my office. Why there?
I shrugged on my coat. “Don’t just stand there. Someone find out if the kids are there!”
Emma grabbed a radio from one of the nearby cops. “Dispatch, who’s responding?”
“This is Officer Gordan,” came the crackly voice of another cop over the radio. “Who’s this?”
“This is Detective Emma Knight. There are two missing infants connected to that car, Gordan. Tell me they’re in the back seat.”
“Negative, detective. I don’t see any—”
There was a sound, a booming crackling sound like fireworks going off, and then the radio died.
Emma hit the talk button on her radio frantically. “Officer Gordan. Gordan!”
Other voices quickly drowned her out, shouting over the radio.
“Officer down! Officer down!”
“—Explosion! The fucking car exploded!”
“Dispatch, get the firetrucks out here now! And get the fucking bomb squad!”
Emma lowered the radio and met my eyes. “I’m sure the kids weren’t in the car, Laz.”
I barely heard her. My whole head felt like I was under water. I needed to get there, see for myself. Just in case. Numbly, I staggered past Detective Drake.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” His hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I spun around on him without thinking and punched him right in the jaw, realizing too late that it was a mistake. Drake teetered like a tree and fell to the floor, dead weight. The house sprang to life with officers everywhere scrambling to tell me to keep my hands where they could see them. Shit. I raised my hands in surrender.
Someone grabbed my wrists and twisted them behind my back. “Once a criminal, always a criminal,” Codey spat as he cuffed me.
“Hey, he put his hands on me. Damn, man. That hurts. Easy on the shoulder.”
“Codey, don’t,” Emma said as Codey tightened the cuffs until they bit into my wrists.
He spun me around. “Stay out of this if you want to keep your badge, Knight.”
Emma met my eyes and sighed.
I nodded. “Find them. This is nothing. I’ll be out in no time.”
“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.” Codey gave my shoulder a shove. “Walk, felon.”
CODEY TOOK ME TO THE station where another cop took over and walked me to an interrogation room rather than booking me. For all his talk, it turned out Officer Drake decided he’d overstepped and deserved to get hit. Well, he wasn’t pressing charges anyway. They decided to detain me, however, for questioning.
What that really meant was that they wanted to grill me. Why they were so fixated on pinning Remy and Jessica’s disappearances on me was the real mystery. So far, there was no evidence of foul play other than the exploded car. That could’ve been a mechanical malfunction.
Who was I kidding? Someone had blown the car on purpose, just like someone had dropped all those zombies off at the theme park. But how were the two events related? Maybe they weren’t. One thing was for sure. Someone was dead set on screwing up my life and hurting people close to me. Stabbing Leah, kidnapping my daughter... Who had I pissed off enough to have them come after my kid?
Loki, most of the gods in the underworld, various Titans. Wow, that was a little too long of a list, Laz. You need to stop making enemies and gather some allies, especially if you want to take out Loki. Wasn’t much I could do about that locked in a dirty interrogation room in NOPD.
The door creaked open and Drake stepped in holding two cups of coffee, a thick file folder tucked under his arm. He was sporting a brand-new bruise on his impeccable chin and bags under his eyes.
I crossed my arms. “You look like you need a few more hours of beauty sleep, Sleeping Beauty.”
Detective Drake put a coffee in front of me and sat down in the other chair. “Always with the wisecracks. Does that ever do you any favors, Lazarus? Seems to me it just gets you in trouble.”
“I’m not the one who got all touchy-feely back at the house.” I nodded to the one-way window on the wall. “Assume your partner’s watching from in there?”
“He’ll be along shortly.” He dropped the file folder on the table with a loud thud.
I stared at it. “Is this the part where you pretend that’s my record and issue me some veiled threats while you pretend to look through it?”
Instead of answering, Drake slid the folder across the table to me. “In April of last year, you were named as a person of interest in a murder case. Then your girlfriend went missing. The city goes nuts with chatter for a bit, and suddenly everything’s fine. Case closed, but no resolution. They pinned the murders on a guy in a coma, but no one seems to know who put him there.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that what this is about? Gaston was a prick. Whatever happened to him, he probably deserved it. Not saying I did it, but if you knew the guy, you’d understand.”
“Then, couple of weeks later...” Drake flipped open the file folder and moved a few pages, pointing at a page of autopsy photos. “Bunch of bodies show up in the morgue missing organs. No formal case gets opened, but there’s something weird going on. It just goes away, too, but not until after police resources get wasted. Then, we find a bunch of kids buried in a shallow grave.”
I cringed and turned away. That was one of the toughest cases I’d ever dealt with, even as the Pale Horseman. Dead kids were always difficult, but that case was too close to what had happened to Lydia, my kid sister. “What’s your point, Brad?”
“These cases all have one thing in common, Kerrigan. They’re weird. No one on the force knows what to do. Then you show up and make it go away.” He ground his pointer into one of the photos. “I want to know what’s going on. What the hell are you
up to? What do you want with Detective Knight?”
I stared at Drake across the table. He really had no idea, did he? My life was so steeped in the supernatural that sometimes I forgot there were people out there who didn’t know what was up. Not those who chose not to believe; they were a whole different animal. People like Detective Brad Drake just didn’t see it. He’d likely never seen anything paranormal. Lucky bastard.
I put my hands on the table on either side of the coffee cup and leaned forward. “Listen closely, Detective, because I’m only going to make this offer once. I know you want answers. Honestly, I don’t think you deserve them. Even if you did, you couldn’t handle them, but your mental health isn’t my problem. My problem is, my little girl and my best friend’s daughter are missing. Instead of looking for them, I’m in here because I punched your dumb ass. You help me find those kids, you can do whatever you want to me after they’re safe, including grill me about all the weird shit in this city.”
Drake pressed his lips together, considering. Silence passed between us, the only sound the ticking of the clock on the wall and the beating of my own heart in my ears.
The door clicked open and Detective Codey poked his head in, gesturing for Drake to come to the door. Detective Drake collected the file folder, closed it and went to whisper to his partner at the door. They exchanged a few quick words before Drake handed the folder over and Codey passed it to someone waiting outside the room.
He unhooked the cuffs from his belt as he came back. Codey stepped in, making a show of keeping his hand near the gun on his hip.
“Lazarus Kerrigan,” Drake said, slipping behind me to cuff my wrists again.
“Hey, what gives?” I tried to pull free but stopped when Codey gripped the butt of his gun.
Drake tightened the cuffs. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Jessica Frieder and Remy Kerrigan.”
A cold chill worked its way down my spine to settle in my stomach. “Murder?” I choked the word out. For a moment, I entertained the image of two babies burning to death in the back of a bombed-out Kia Optima. The scene was too horrific, and I nearly lost it just thinking about it.
