After we ate, Göndul wanted to walk back to the hotel by way of the path along the Seine so she could see Notre Dame at night. It was out of the way, but not terribly so, and the evening was rather pleasant. After the long train ride, it felt good to stretch my legs.
What we didn’t count on was running into a brawl between a Werewolf pack and a nest of Vampires. One moment we were strolling along enjoying the scenery, and the next moment we were standing in the middle of two Vampires fighting for their lives against seven Werewolves.
I drew my sword out of reflex and heard Göndul draw hers. It took me a moment to realize that we weren’t being attacked, although a Were ran into my legs trying to dodge a blow from one of the Vampires. When I looked a little more closely, I also realized that all of the combatants were very young.
The sound of Cassiel spreading his wings was followed by him unleashing one of his lightning bolts into the ground in the middle of the melee. The sound of that was exactly what one would expect of a lightning bolt striking directly in front of you. Deafening thunder.
All movement stopped. The Weres and the Vampires all stared at the blackened spot on the ground, then gradually raised their eyes to the Nephilim looming before them.
In a booming voice, Cassiel said, “STOP!” Then dropping his voice to a level not quite so deafening, he shouted, “You two,” pointing at the Vampires, “get out of here. Now!”
He didn’t need to tell them twice. They took off. A couple of the Weres moved as though to follow, and another lightning bolt hit between them and the fleeing Vampires.
“NO MORE! Go on, go home. Git!” Cassiel said. The Werewolves tucked their tails and headed off in the opposite direction from the Vampires.
We watched them go, then Göndul started laughing. “Happy?” she asked as she sheathed her sword.
“Yes,” he said, folding his wings. “I’ve done my good deed for the day. Damned kids. Let’s go get a drink.”
The following morning, we showed up at Marcel’s shop a little earlier than our appointment and found the place closed. Although we were told that the Pigalle district had gentrified, I noticed that most of the tourist literature tended to confuse it with Montmartre. Most of the shops on Marcel’s street showed some connection with either the sex trade or gambling, which didn’t strike me as much of an improvement over my last visit to the area five years before.
I walked around the corner to see if there might be an alley behind the place. Halfway down the next block was an entranceway that led to an open courtyard. From the looks of things, it was used for trash bins and parking cars. Counting doors, I walked up to the one I thought might be Marcel’s and banged on it. No answer. I tried the knob, and the door opened.
Damn. I drew my athame and a paintball gun and crept inside. The room I entered was used for storage, along with hooks for coats and a place for wet or muddy boots. I couldn’t hear any sounds at all. The door to the next room was closed, so I pulled it open a crack and looked through. I couldn’t see any signs of mischief.
I cautiously backed out of the place and went around to the front.
“The back door is unlocked,” I told Göndul and Cassiel. “I sort of looked inside and didn’t see anything that looked strange.”
“He’s fifteen minutes late,” Cassiel said, “and the sign on the door says he should have opened forty-five minutes ago.”
I pulled out my phone and called him. We heard a phone ringing inside the shop.
“That’s helpful,” I said, just as someone answered it.
“Allo?”
“Marcel?”
“Ah, Miss Rogirsdottir. I am so sorry. Are you at the shop?”
“Yes, we are. We’re standing out in front.”
“I have the phone forwarded,” he said. “I think it would be better if we met elsewhere today.”
He gave me the address of a bistro in Marais, near our hotel. Before I hung up, I said, “Are you aware that your back door is unlocked?”
After a pregnant pause, he said, “That should not be. I suggest that you leave there immediately, and make sure you aren’t followed.” He hung up.
“Wonderful,” I said. Putting my phone away, I told my friends, “Come along. We need to get out of here and make sure we aren’t followed. Shall we find a quiet place to disappear?”
The next block over had a courtyard similar to the one behind Marcel’s shop, although not near as clean. Like his, it also had a fire escape leading to the roof. I leaped up, caught the ladder, and dragged it down to the ground. We clambered up to the roof, and I told Cassiel where we were going.
Göndul put on her harness, and I shrank to my smaller size. She picked me up and put me in her coat pocket. Before she zipped it closed, she asked, “How come your bag and clothes shrink with you?”
“I’m an Elf. We’re magic.”
“Of course,” she said. “Silly me.”
I knew when we took off because I could hear Cassiel’s wings beating. Other than that, all I could do was sit in Göndul’s pocket with my arms wrapped around my knees. At least it was warm, but I preferred being able to see when I flew with Cassiel.
Fifteen minutes later, I felt the jolt that told me we had landed. Göndul opened the pocket and set me down. I enlarged and looked around, finding we were on a different roof.
“Seriously,” Göndul said as we climbed down the fire escape. “How do your clothes shrink?”
“I don’t know. The answer I gave you was the one my mother gave me when I asked.”
We found Marcel in a booth in the back corner of the bistro. A thin, dark-haired man with a mustache, he looked to be Human and in his forties. Göndul slid in beside him, leaving Cassiel and me to sit across from him.
My French was adequate, although not as fluent as my German or English. “Good morning. What’s going on?”
“You’re sure you weren’t followed from the shop?” he asked.
Göndul cast a spell and said, “We’re sure.”
It took me a moment to realize she had used an illusion to make Cassiel and me disappear.
“Good enough?” she asked.
Marcel nodded. “Yes, I see.” He smiled. “Or rather, I don’t see.”
I felt the spell lift.
Marcell told us that a man who dealt in exotic goods had approached him about finding a buyer for a Dragon’s egg. He had asked around, primarily approaching his past customers who collected artifacts from other realms. At first, no one had shown any interest. Then he heard from Josef, and that same day a Vampire came to his shop to inquire about the egg. The following day, someone called asking about the egg, but refused to identify himself.
“Yesterday, after you called,” Marcel said, “and after I closed for the night, my burglar alarm went off. I met the police at the shop, and we discovered the back-door lock had been broken. Someone searched the place, but they couldn’t have had much time. The police showed up within fifteen minutes.”
“The door looked fine to me,” I said.
“It should. It cost me enough to get a new door at midnight. But you say it was unlocked? I guarantee I locked it and set the alarm when I left at two o’clock this morning.”
“No, no alarm. I opened the door and went into the back room.”
He shook his head. “When I showed up at the shop this morning to meet with you, two men were watching the shop. That’s when I ran and came here, hoping you would call. I didn’t have your number or Josef’s with me.”
I looked at Marcel’s flip phone and shook my head. Hell, even I had a smart phone.
“What happened to the men?” Cassiel asked.
“I don’t know,” Marcel said. “I don’t think they saw me.”
“One tall and thin, the other shorter and fat? The tall one had a hat?” Göndul asked.
“Yes, did you see them?”
“They were watching when we arrived,” Göndul said.
“What about the man who has the egg?” I asked.
“I talked with him yesterday,” Marcel said. “He said he would call me today, but I haven’t heard from him yet.”
Chapter 16
We decided to take Marcel back to our hotel and wait for the man with the egg to call. We exited the bistro and got about three steps down the street when a voice behind us said, “Don’t move and you won’t get shot.”
That was fairly scary because his French wasn’t any better than mine. He had a Romanian accent, which tended to rule out a standard mugging.
I caught a slight movement out of the corner of my left eye, where Göndul was walking a little behind me. A gun went off, and I heard Göndul grunt.
Not taking any chances, I dropped to the sidewalk and then looked around. Göndul fell beside me, a look of shock on her face. Behind me, I saw two legs in black trousers. I launched myself at them and heard a crunching sound when I hit his knees. He went down, and his pistol clattered across the sidewalk.
Another gun fired, and I felt a burning pain along my left bicep. That pissed me off, and my thrown knife buried itself in the gunman’s chest.
Cassiel stood with his back against a wall, faced with three men holding guns pointed at him. One of them noticed their friend making strange gurgling noises and glanced at him, saw the knife, and swiveled to bring his gun to bear on me.
I held my hands in the air, hoping he wouldn’t shoot. He didn’t. With one hand, I sketched a rune. The gunman didn’t seem to understand what I was doing, although he looked a little alarmed at the white glow that appeared in my hand. The energy lanced out like a silver mirror, slicing through the men and cutting them in half. I slumped, feeling as though I’d run a hundred miles. I didn’t use that trick very often because it completely drained me.
Cassiel rushed to Göndul’s side. She lay in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, her complexion even paler than usual and her breathing shallow. Her left side was soaked in blood.
He ripped her shirt off, and I saw the bullet had gone through her lower back below her ribs and exited to the left of her navel. I reached in my bag and pulled out two potions even as he put his hands on her wounds.
“This is a coagulant,” I said, as I pried her lips open and poured the potion in. “And this is a pain killer.” I poured the contents of the second bottle in her mouth. I rummaged around, pulled out a third bottle, and put it on the sidewalk beside them. “That promotes healing. Give it to her when you finish.”
He acknowledged me with a slight jerk of his head.
I looked around at the carnage. Four dead men lay on the sidewalk, and it would be difficult to explain to the authorities how three of them died. The man I had knocked down was gone, and so was Marcel.
The gendarmes came. Gunshots in the middle of the day on a busy street were bound to be noticed. They insisted on taking Göndul to a hospital, in spite of the fact that her wounds were only scars after Cassiel finished healing her. The cops just looked at all the blood and didn’t listen to a thing we said. It didn’t help that she was unconscious. A paramedic bandaged the graze on my arm, and I sweet talked him into declaring that I didn’t need a hospital. Sweet talk and a hundred-euro bribe.
As for Cassiel and me, we ended up at a gendarme station. Our passports got us a little bit of respect. I hadn’t noticed before that Cass carried a Vatican passport. I resolved to ask him about that when I got a chance.
They let me call the U.S. embassy, and I asked for the PCU agent. The operator transferred me to the FBI office, and they took my name, passport number, and a message.
The gendarmes questioned us separately, so I didn’t get a chance to see if Cassiel could lie. For me, I hit a point where I had to shut up and tell them I wouldn’t answer any more questions until someone from my embassy showed up. Thankfully, that happened about two hours after my call.
The door to the interrogation room opened. “Miss Rogirsdottir?” a woman in a business suit asked in an American accent. “I’m Janice Thompson with the PCU. How are you doing?” She was a witch, not a particularly strong one, but at least I didn’t have to worry that she wouldn’t understand what I told her.
“A lot better now. I’m really glad to see you.”
She smiled. “Dropping Dave Torbert’s name was a smart move. I talked to him before I came over here. He said you do some consulting for us. So, what’s the problem?”
I told her everything that had happened, including Marcel’s kidnapping, but omitting any mention of the Dragon’s egg.
“Okay,” she said when I finished, “you’re a United States citizen, is that correct?”
I told her it was.
“What are the nationalities of your friends?”
I stared at her for a minute, then said, “I really don’t know. Cassiel has a Vatican passport, and I’m not sure about Göndul.”
Thompson checked something in her notebook and said, “The hospital says she’s Swedish.” She looked up at me. “Were any of you born in this realm?”
I shook my head. “But my U.S. citizenship is legitimate. I was admitted as a war refugee and then naturalized.”
“I see. And which war was that?”
“World War II.”
She froze, then her eyes traveled over me. I judged she was in her late thirties, and I actually looked younger than she did. “How long ago was that?”
“Seventy years ago.”
Agent Thompson stared at me a while longer, then with a deep sigh said, “Fine. I’ll talk to the gendarmes and see about getting you out of here.”
“Would you also please talk to them about finding our friend, Marcel Matins. His shop was burglarized last night, and the gendarmes investigated. Then today he was kidnapped. Whatever all this is about, Marcel is in danger.”
Thompson got up to go.
“Oh, Agent Thompson? One more thing. Can you please check with the hospital and make sure they don’t try to give Göndul a blood transfusion? I told the paramedics, but I’m not sure they listened.”
“Okay. Is there a reason?”
“Would you believe me if I told you she’s a Jehovah’s Witness?” I asked.
Thompson barked out a laugh.
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “Shall we simply say that I don’t think they’ll be able to match her blood type.”
Agent Thompson was waiting for us when the cops turned us loose. Outside on the sidewalk, she said, “The gendarmes told me Matins’s shop was broken into again. This time it was tossed.”
“No sign of Marcel?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I learned something about your attackers. Three carried Romanian passports, and the other one was Bulgarian. I spoke with one of the agents with the French unit similar to the PCU. Hopefully he is able to explain to the gendarmes about those men who were cut in half. The lack of blood really bothered them for some reason.”
Cassiel went to the hospital to wait until Göndul woke up. I went by Marcel’s shop, donned a glamour that mimicked a gendarme, and went in. The shop had been searched, but the thieves had been kind. They hadn’t destroyed the place.
When I looked at his telephone, I noticed that the earpiece on the handset wasn’t screwed on properly. When I opened it up, I found a strange little box about half an inch square clipped onto a wire. I wasn’t an electronic genius, but I had watched a few cop and spy movies. It immediately became apparent how those thugs tracked us to that bistro. I wished Göndul was there. Such things were within her expertise.
I wasn’t sure whether I should take the bug out or leave it. In the end, I left it. I wished we had learned who the seller was.
We managed to check Göndul out of the hospital the following afternoon. She was pale and still weak, but said she felt fine. I pumped her full of healing and energy potions, and we took her to her favorite Paris restaurant. When we took her back to our hotel, she immediately went to bed and slept through the night.
Two days later, Thompson called me and asked to meet with me.
I found her standing on
a bridge near Notre Dame, leaning over the rail and staring at the water.
“The gendarmes told me they found Marcel’s body in the Seine,” Thompson said. “He was killed execution style, shot in the back of the head.” She gave me an appraising look. “The gendarmes tell me that they found another man nearby, shot the same way with the same caliber pistol.”
I took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t happen to know a good necromancer, would you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think we need one. The gendarmes are convinced both were killed and dumped at the same time. So, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
I watched a couple of ducks swim by. It was a pretty evening, chilly but no breeze.
“Do you know anything about the second man?” I asked.
Thompson nodded. “The medical examiner doesn’t think he’s human, or not entirely human. Interpol says he’s a known fence for antiquities and stolen art.”
Well, that fit in with someone who might be selling an egg, I thought. “There’s an artifact, something from another realm that shouldn’t be here,” I told Thompson. “Marcel had a contact who wanted to sell it. My guess is that someone wanted it but didn’t want to pay for it.”
“Do I have to guess what it is?” Thompson asked.
I thought about it. Dave Torbert was a good guy, and most of his people I had met were interested in doing the right thing.
“It’s a Dragon’s egg.”
“There are really dragons?” she asked, suddenly excited.
“Yes, and you never want to see one,” I said. “Think of our demon problem multiplied by a thousand.” I sighed. “That’s why I was thinking about a necromancer. I would like to know who the other man is. I think he might have had the egg and was trying to sell it.”
“Oh, I can tell you who he was,” Thompson said. “Paolo Salvatore. He’s Sicilian, and he drove here from Italy about five weeks ago. The French authorities have a record of his crossing the border.”
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