He’d made himself a sandwich. Maybe I’d get lucky, and the son of a bitch would choke on it.
“You don’t have any iced tea,” he said.
I would strangle him. “That’s just one of the things I don’t have.”
Derek sliced the sandwich in half. “Oh?”
“I also don’t have any patience for people stealing my food.”
Derek picked up half of the sandwich, bit into it, and chewed.
Food held a special significance to the shapeshifters. When a shapeshifter offered to feed someone, he communicated willingness to protect and take care of them. A shapeshifter who couldn’t protect his meat was weak. Derek broke into my house and ate my ham, and now he was rubbing my face in it.
Just you wait. You’ll regret it.
I sat across from him. “Is it good?”
He licked his lips. “Delicious.”
I’d negotiated peace agreements with people I hated. I would not give him the satisfaction of slapping the rest of the sandwich out of his hand. No matter how satisfying that would feel.
I pulled a pad of paper toward me, wrote $20 on it, and passed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“The bill for the sandwich.”
“A twenty-dollar ham sandwich?”
“You chose to eat here. You should’ve asked about prices in advance.” I pointed at the doorway. “The door is that way. This restaurant is closed. Take the rest of your meal to go.”
He finished the first half of the sandwich and leaned back with a kind of languid grace, a wolf in repose. “Let’s be adults about this.”
“That would be a refreshing change.”
“Several years ago, I was in a bad place in my life. I came to Pastor Haywood for guidance. He helped me.”
When did that happen? What bad place? I opened my mouth to ask and clamped it shut. He was a stranger, and I had to treat him like one.
“I told him that if he ever needed help, I would return the favor. He called me on the night before he died. He told me that he was worried and asked for my help. He sounded scared. I left an hour after that phone call, but unfortunately, I was across the country. I didn’t make it in time.”
Oh damn.
“I’m here to find out who killed him.” Moonglow flashed in his eyes and died. “We’re on the same side.”
“I doubt that.”
“Tell me why you’re investigating this murder and what you found, and I will tell you why Pastor Haywood was scared that night.”
Every crumb of information could mean the difference between Kate dying and living. Was there any harm in sharing with him? I searched for the downside and didn’t see one. After all, I didn’t have to tell him everything.
“Deal. You go first.”
“No.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t. You’re a liar.” He picked up the rest of the sandwich and took a nice big bite.
“How am I a liar?”
“You pretend to be a knight of the Order.”
I took the badge out of my pocket and put it on the table. “Feel free to clear it with Nick Feldman.”
“Your badge is real. Your knighthood isn’t. I’ve got two words for you. Jaiden Higgs.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Seven years ago Knight-Defender Jaiden Higgs suffered a psychotic break. He thought he was possessed, and demons were talking to him. He took three people hostage and barricaded himself in an elementary school on Jefferson Street. Jaiden was sent to Atlanta after he had some issues, and Nick Feldman took him under his wing.”
I could guess where this story was going, and the end wouldn’t be happy.
“Nick did everything he could to get Jaiden out, and when that didn’t work, he called Pastor Haywood. The pastor went into that elementary school and came out sixteen hours later with Jaiden and the hostages unharmed.”
“Was Jaiden possessed?”
“Nobody knows. He hung himself a month later in the psychiatric ward.”
Yes, just another sunshine and rainbows fable of post-Shift Atlanta.
Derek pointed the remainder of his sandwich at me. “Nick Feldman owed Pastor Haywood. He held him in the highest regard. Right now, Feldman should be tearing this city apart looking for his killer. Even if he received a direct order from the Preceptor himself, he wouldn’t let this go. Instead he gave it to you, a knight nobody knows who’s been in the city for five minutes.”
Two could play this game. “You seem to know a lot about me. Here is what I know about you. You’re an alpha. You have your own pack. You aren’t a member of the Atlanta Pack, nor are you affiliated with them in any way. If the Beast Lord finds out a foreign shapeshifter is running around in his territory, the entire Pack will hunt you down. You seem to already have some kind of beef with Ascanio Ferara, whose boudas your people are right now trying to evade. Why hasn’t he turned you in? Do the two of you have some sort of history?”
Derek raised his eyebrows half a millimeter.
“Maybe we should stick to the facts of the murder,” I suggested.
“Yes. That would be best.”
“Tell me about the artifact,” I said.
If Derek was surprised, he didn’t show it. “It’s a box of some strange material, two feet long, one foot wide, and about one foot deep. It has a cross engraved into its lid.”
“What kind of cross? A Christian cross?”
Derek shook his head. “Pastor didn’t think so. He said it emanated magic. Trying to probe it was like holding your hand to a spraying fire hydrant. The magic felt old. He said pre-Hellenistic. It disturbed him.”
“In what way?”
Derek frowned. “He said it was like looking at a radiant diamond. It had complexity and facets on a level he hadn’t encountered before.”
Sounded like an object from the old ages. Never good. “Did he say who hired him to authenticate it?”
“No. Your turn.”
“Someone hired Pastor Haywood to authenticate a magical artifact. The next night the pastor was murdered. The killer broke through the skylight, ripped out his heart, and left the same way. Last night Professor Walton, an expert in early Christian history, was also murdered. The killer came through the third-floor window, ripped out her heart, and left through the same window.”
He focused on me with single-minded intensity. It was slightly unnerving. “It’s a creature.”
“I believe so. It’s highly likely the artifact is bound to a guardian. That guardian can track anyone who touches the artifact and will continue killing until it’s able to regain its treasure.”
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
My heart squeezed itself into a tight, painful ball. This was us. This is how we used to do it when we were solving a thorny problem together: we would sit down some place with food and bat theories back and forth until we decided what to do next. Dear gods, it hurt. Oh wow.
I made my mouth move. “Something with wings and claws. Any beast with sufficient magical power can be bound. Could be a griffin. A manticore. A zilant…”
“Not a griffin. They have a distinctive stink.”
That’s right. I was sitting across from one of the best trackers in the entire Pack. “What did it smell like?”
He shook his head. “Not anything I’ve come across.”
Derek remembered thousands of scents. Worse and worse.
“What’s the deal with fire?” he asked.
“That’s a personal matter. It doesn’t concern you.”
“I’ll decide what concerns me.”
I burst out laughing. He looked just like Conlan when he’d said that, too.
“Did I say something funny?”
I waved my hand at him. “No.”
The other shapeshifter reappeared, hovering in the doorway. I turned and looked at him.
The other shapeshifter raised his hand and gave me a small wave. “Hel
lo. I’m Zahar.”
“A stoat?” I guessed.
Zahar shook his head.
“What is it?” Derek asked.
“He’s brought in a second crew. Females.”
The bouda females were larger and stronger than the males.
“Looks like our charming chat is coming to an end,” I said. “You’re clearly needed elsewhere. Let’s not do this again.”
Derek reached into a hidden pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and put it on the table.
Zahar’s eyes widened.
“The sandwich bill,” I told him. “One last question. Why is Ferara chasing you anyway?”
Derek rose smoothly and came around the table. “He has a score he wants to settle.”
“What kind of score? Why?”
He took a step toward me, leaned forward, and smiled at me. It was a sharp wolf smile, and the impact of that smile resonated through me. For a second, I forgot I could move.
“That’s a personal matter. It doesn’t concern you,” he murmured close to my ear, turned, and walked out.
That bastard.
12
Regeneration made me hungry. I had to regrow several pounds of skin, as creepy as it sounded, and my stomach was screaming for calories. If I didn’t give it some, it would shut me down.
I ate the rest of the ham with the bread I made last night. The clock told me I had slept till noon, almost six hours. It cost me a good chunk of time, but it couldn’t be helped. My body ached now, the familiar post-healing pain that felt a little like waves of shallow muscle spasms rolling through me. They would stop once I got moving.
The herb mix was an emergency measure. It was expensive and took a long time to produce. I’d had one bag, and that was it.
He who consumes the heart of the beast will be given a brief glimpse of the true future. No wonder Moloch had dispatched a high priest to handle it. Now that his attack dog was dead, Moloch would send another heavy hitter, if one wasn’t in Atlanta already. If I were him, I’d send more than one. I couldn’t let myself be caught again. I didn’t have another herb bag handy.
The examination of my doors didn’t yield any clues as to how Derek had gotten inside. None of the locks showed any sign of tampering. If he had tried to break through my wards, the impact would’ve woken me up. He must’ve done it during tech, but how remained a mystery. That was an unpleasant development. From now on I would have to engage the siege bar on the door every time I locked it from the inside.
While the food settled, I needed to make some calls. The phone worked, which was a minor miracle, or as my grandfather would explain, the direct result of all my magic having been drained below any reasonable threshold by the process of regeneration. I was so tired and sleepy, I needed little toothpicks to hold my eyes open. Too bad I wasn’t a cartoon cat.
I called to the Methodist hospital first.
“My name is Aurelia Ryder. I’m calling about Douglas.”
“Please hold.”
I held. Please be alive. Please be alive…
A different female voice came on the line. “This is Carol Wood. I’m the ICU nurse. The medmage team worked on him during the wave. He is hanging in there.”
Hanging in there wasn’t “making progress” or “feeling better.” A slick nauseating worry squirmed through me.
“Can I see him?”
“Yes, but he is heavily sedated.”
“Thank you.”
The Order was next. Stella answered on the second ring. “Atlanta Chapter of the Order of Merciful Aid.”
“I see you survived.”
“That’s still in doubt.”
“Did anything from Biohazard come for me? Paperwork, a file?”
“Big ass envelope?”
“Yep, that’s it. I’ll come and get it.”
“I’ll be here.”
I bet she would. “See you in a few.”
If a magical artifact with that amount of power had gone on the market, people would know about it. I called to Nader Youseff, who acted as New Shinar’s buying agent when we wanted to purchase something magic-related. I explained what I wanted, and he told me to sit tight.
Next, I took out the list of Jasper’s known associates and compared it to the list of the relic hunters the bishop’s people had passed to me through Stella. No matches.
Someone had sent Jasper hunting for Marten and me. That someone had deep pockets.
I called to PAD, used my badge and Luther’s name, and got contact info for the four people on Jasper’s list. Four calls later, I learned that of the Jasper-connected associates, two were dead, one was incarcerated, and the fourth had moved out of state, abandoning his spouse and three children. I got a five-minute rant from his wife detailing the shortcomings of the relevant parts of his anatomy and his moral character.
A dead end.
The phone rang. I picked up.
“They’d fixed the line and put traps around it,” Conlan said quietly. “I cut it again last night and threw the traps into the Gap.”
He hung up. Conlan Lennart, master of covert ops. I laughed a little and made myself a venison sandwich.
Once the sandwich was gone, I pulled up a piece of paper, wrote Potential employers, and underlined it.
First, the current owner of the box. Perhaps they got alarmed when Pastor Haywood was murdered and hired Jasper to clean up any loose ends that could lead the investigation back to them.
Second, the original owner of the box. If the box was stolen, the old owner might have been looking for clues of who had taken it.
Third, someone who wanted the box for themselves.
So far all of my suspects pointed back to relic hunters or collectors. Anyone working for any of the churches was out. They had their own way of dealing with things, and they kept that sort of thing in house. If they wanted the box, they wouldn’t have hired Jasper.
The phone sat in front of me. It had been almost a month since I last talked to Kate. I really wanted to call home.
No.
The phone company assured me that reverse dialing no longer was an option, but the risk was too great.
I had to go back to Honeycomb. Jasper had taken two people with him on his little outing. He would’ve told them about the job. Someone in the Gap knew something about it.
Getting dressed was an effort. I powered through it on sheer will and went to the stables. Thick clouds pregnant with rain crowded the sky. The air was still and humid, baked in oppressive heat. It would storm before long.
Tulip was in her stall, but her mouth was bloody again, so she had clearly gone out this morning.
“See this? This is perfectly fine feed. Premium quality oats. Delicious hay. Would it have killed you to stay put?”
Tulip snorted at me. I cleaned her up, saddled her, and we were off.
My buddy the homeless man was back at his post at the intersection, looking starved and pitiful. I rode by him, bought two oversized kolaches from a stall again, and brought one to him. He eyed me as if I were Sophia’s cobra but took the hot pastry.
“It’s going to rain,” I told him. “You might want to get inside.”
He ignored me.
The Methodist hospital was my first stop. I sat by Douglas’s bed, held his limp hand, and watched the liquid slowly drip from his IV bag.
He was a good kid. Brave. Kind. He tried to protect someone who was smaller and weaker than him even knowing he would get hurt. He tried to protect me, even though he didn’t know me, and he owed me nothing. He had so little in life.
I wanted him to survive. But all I could do was sit by his bed and stare in helpless rage. I remembered sitting just like this behind the bars of Moloch’s cages inside his citadel and watching people around me rot slowly. Beaten, exhausted, filthy, they had given up. They had no names. They had let go of their memories. They didn’t live, they existed in agony waiting to die.
It was almost impossible to pummel hope out of human beings. It was an irrepres
sible part of our spirit. Hope kept us going, but as I’d sat in the middle of that sea of human bodies, I knew with absolute certainty that their hope was dead. I’d watched them suffer, and I’d cried to keep the helpless blinding fury from tearing me apart.
It didn’t matter how powerful you were. Life always found ways to stab you and twist the knife in the wound. Nobody was immune.
I chose the long route to the Honeycomb Gap. It took an extra ten minutes, but it let me ride by Galina’s Bakery. The little shop was still there after all these years. I bought a strawberry hand pie, munched on it while Tulip carried me through the streets, and thought about the box, the divine beast, the weird color of yellow that someone had painted the car forcing its way down the street in front of me... Anything to avoid thinking about Derek.
I had many failings, and the overwhelming need to be in control of myself was one of them. I didn’t care about controlling other people. I didn’t micromanage, and I delegated when someone else was better suited for the task, but I had to maintain an iron grip over myself at all times. There was probably a host of deep-seated psychological issues behind that urge that would take a dozen psychiatrists ages to sort out, but it boiled down to one thing: I kept my emotions divorced from my actions. I hid my weaknesses. Even when anger crested in me in a hot, red wave, I surfed it to my goal. I never lost my hold in front of other people unless they were family. If I screamed, it was calculated. If I wept, I did it for impact.
Derek made me lose it. I kept going over our conversation in my head. It was the way he had looked at me. The way he sat, the way he smiled, the way he spoke. Everything he did reminded me of what I’d left behind. Somehow, he bypassed my armor and got an honest, instinctual response out of me. I hated that so much.
He was one of the reasons I’d learned to control myself. Not the main one, not even close to the most important, but still one of them. Even as a kid, I recognized that if I openly threw myself at him and told him how much I loved him, how happy I was to see him every day, it would make things irreparably awkward. I didn’t want him to avoid me.
Blood Heir Page 18
