Downpour

by Kat Richardson

  I forced my way back up the slope toward Quinton, buying time to get a better look at the situation. The things moved slowly, but with the mindless implacability of idiot machines, each one powered by a core of magical impulse and an unreeling tether to the nearest source of power—the lake. So long as there was water, they’d keep coming.

  I couldn’t make the lake dry up or set fire to the scraped, hard ground on the hilltop. I’d have to sever their connection to the lake and hope the rain wasn’t enough power on its own. That meant giving up the hill, but not yet.

  I kept backing up, stepping out of the Grey so I stayed on top of the land, not risking sinking into it.

  Quinton was level with me now, still shooting at the oncoming zombies, but he fired off the last of the HK’s rounds as I watched. He turned his head as he dropped the smoking automatic into one of his own pockets. I couldn’t hear, but I knew what he said: “Out of ammo.”

  Hoping he could understand what I was saying in my deafened state, I yelled to him, “Draw them into a cluster uphill. I need to get below them, near the water.”

  I had to take them out in one big push if possible—or at least thin their numbers considerably. I wasn’t sure I could gather up the individual threads of energy that pulled from the lake and break them apart, especially not once they’d been bundled together. The combined rope of magic might be too powerful for me to hold and breaking it might not even destroy the power that animated the dead creatures, but it was all I could think of.

  Quinton and I fell back together for a few more feet. The undead followed us, packing together into a dense clot of moldering bodies. The rain was slacking off a bit and the zombies seemed a little slower. Maybe there was hope.

  Quinton grabbed me and kissed me hard and then spoke against my lips: “Move fast. I don’t want to die.” He pushed me a little and I ducked into the Grey as he started to swing the butt of the shotgun into the head of the nearest dead thing.

  I practically tumbled down the slope to the water, sliding through the mist and cold of the Grey as fast as I could, hoping to avoid the horrors clustering around Quinton long enough to get behind them. A few turned, but most concentrated on him.

  As I neared the shore, the gleaming threads connecting the undead to their energy source were bright blue in the ghost world. I grabbed the first one I came to and ran along the water’s edge, gathering up as many of the tendrils of colored light as I could. Each one burned with cold that cut into my hands. With each one added, the burn worsened and the racket in my ears grew beyond the ringing caused by the shotgun blasts and into a buzzing howl that rang, not in my ears but in my bones and skull, and riffed through my blood like heroin. Each thread weighed me down, gathering in my arms like fiery lilies from a ghostly bride’s bouquet.

  It felt as if the power ran through my arms and into my spine. When I snatched up the last visible line, I had to drop to my knees, but I remembered the way Jin had stood with his toes in the water when he raised the car and I put one foot into the lake.

  It was like standing on a live wire. Power flowed up through my limbs, but it didn’t go into the threads I was holding; it just roared through me and throbbed into my head as if my skull were exploding. I yanked on the gathered threads, twisting them hard together, hard enough to break, and then shoved with all my will, one hard, concussive thrust of the power that flowed in me against the taut rope of energy that ran into my arms.

  Magic boomed against the surface of the lake so loudly I could feel it in my chest as if someone had slammed an electric pole into a whole orchestra’s worth of bass timpani. Sparks erupted from the lake and it exploded into light that flashed like a mirror in the sun. The rolling sheet of white illumination shot up the hill to Quinton, throwing the shambling dead down like sticks before a hurricane. I could see Quinton drop to the ground and cover his head as it hit.

  And it rolled away, leaving the lake black and still, the shore littered with putrefying dead, animal and human. There were no more small blue lamps in purple fog—the lights had gone out.

  I crouched, shuddering, on the shore for a few seconds, catching my breath as the broken threads of power faded from my grip and my eyes readjusted to the night.

  Rain dripped and pattered lightly on the ground, leaving nothing but ordinary puddles. Even the wild pools of magic that had oozed on the surface like oil were gone, burned away in the outrageous pulse of energy.

  Quinton picked himself up and stumbled down the makeshift stair to the water, to me, picking his way as best he could through the swiftly decaying mess that had been an army of animated corpses.

  I half expected the ringing deafness in my ears to have magically gone with the flash of energy, but when Quinton tried to say something to me, it sounded as if he were underwater, or as if I were. He gave up and put his arms around me to haul me to my feet, but as soon as he tried to move me, my muscles and joints gave up and dumped me onto the shoreline and into the water.

  The icy water of Lake Sutherland made me gasp and thrash, but my movements were feeble. I’d put too much into that last push and I was too weak to help myself. I was also soaked, bloodied, and partially bare from having most of my shirt and sweater ripped away by the claws of undead beasts.

  Quinton was only a little better off, but he was able to pull me out of the lake and help me onto the deck of Leung’s house. He put my coat over me and bent down, pressing his lips to my ear to tell me he’d be right back. Then he went away.

  I looked over my shivering shoulder at the lake, wondering if there was anyone around to have heard the gun battle. The lake was a dark mirror, streaked here and there with light from the moon as it tore a slit in the clouds for a moment before being sewn back into its shroud of rain. Far across and down to my right, I could see a gold rectangle of electric light from an open door, weirdly magnified by the water as the light fell on it. Then the light narrowed and vanished.

  In a moment, the storm door to the deck opened up and Quinton dragged me inside, locking the heavy door behind us.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Quinton, adept at getting what he needed while staying off the grid, had turned the water on, but it wasn’t warm. There was a generator off the kitchen, but it required gasoline and we didn’t have any handy short of a wet slog back out to the Rover. The propane tank for the stove and refrigerator was equally empty. The undead had ripped my clothes, so I was half-naked and I’d lost the packet of yellow silk. I was so cold from exposure, exertion, and the icy water of the lake that I couldn’t stop shivering. But I had mud, blood, and bits of dead things smeared all over me and it was too disgusting to leave there, so we ended up washing under the icy tap. Quinton had pulled the old couch up as close to the stove as he could and we snuggled naked together in the blankets to warm up. Quinton curled himself around me and his body seemed to burn my deeply chilled skin. It would have been much more erotic if I hadn’t been shaking so hard.

  My hearing was still full of low buzzing that made everything sound distant and crackly, like an old radio with a bad antenna, but it was improving slowly. I filled him in on what I’d been pursuing since I had arrived at Blood Lake and what had come hunting us.

  “Why haven’t the cops shown up about the shooting?” I stuttered between chattering teeth.

  “Maybe no one heard it,” Quinton suggested. “You said there aren’t many people up here this time of year.”

  “No, but there are a few.”

  “And most of them probably don’t want the local sheriffs to come around and interrupt whatever magical nastiness they’re up to.”

  I frowned over that and wondered who’d been at the door that had cast golden light onto the lake.

  “How did they know we were here?” Quinton asked.

  “Who?”

  “The zombies. You haven’t stayed here before and you said Newman only gave you the key Monday. You didn’t use the place last night or the night before, so how did Costigan know to send the corpse brigade ove
r here to attack you?”

  “That’s a good question. I’ll have to ask the Newmans that tomorrow. I was given the impression they didn’t talk—at least not civilly—to Costigan, who seems to be in charge of the zombies around here. I need to talk to him, too. I haven’t done anything to attract his ire, that I know of—we’ve never even met.”

  “Yeah, but you did tell the ley weaver that Costigan couldn’t be trusted, and that might have gotten back to him. And I don’t suppose Willow and her pet demon are the most honorable spell-flingers in the area, either.”

  “More than you might imagine.” I paused, thinking, and feeling a little less like a human Popsicle. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You said you had to make a deal with the FBI to get their help. What did they want you to do?”

  “Oh . . . I can’t really discuss it.”

  “Will they be coming back for more? Are you stuck on their hook?”

  “No. Part of the reason I cut my hair—well, it’s a little complicated, but I wanted them to think I’m not a good risk. The FBI doesn’t use the same kind of people as other agencies. They’re really cops at heart and they have less tolerance for rogues and lunatics than, say . . . the CIA does. It doesn’t mean my dad won’t come after me, but I think I’m done with the Feebs.”

  “Your dad—he wouldn’t turn you in to the NSA, would he?”

  Quinton snorted. “No. It wouldn’t suit his agenda. I’m an embarrassment that could ruin his career at this point. He’s just as glad to have me stay missing.”

  “Do you despise him?”

  “Not really. I just know I can only trust him to do what’s best for his career at any given moment. No person is ever going to come ahead of his job. I think that’s what made my mother leave him. She said it was the general stuff—the secrets, the tension, the absences—but I always had the impression there was a specific incident that broke them apart. Mom wasn’t an angel, either. She had affairs and she ran her life as if the rest of us weren’t important most of the time. Not that she made bad, selfish decisions all the time; she just didn’t feel the need to discuss them first. She looked after my sister and me all r—”

  I shook my head and turned in his arms to put my hand over his mouth. “You have a sister? You’ve never mentioned that before.”

  He shrugged and chafed my upper arms, ostensibly to keep me warm, but I thought he just wanted a moment to think before he answered. “She’s in Europe, somewhere.”

  “Just ‘somewhere’?”

  “I know where, but it’s not important. She’s married and has kids—none of the family business for her. I think she still writes to my mom and calls her, but she’s making her own life without the rest of us and it’s probably safer to leave it that way.”

  That I understood. I also sensed that her decision had hurt Quinton in some way that he didn’t want to discuss. I let it slide and leaned against him. “You never told me Solis knew who you really are.”

  He kissed my temple. “Nope. He swore to tell no one, and that included you.”

  “So . . . should I start calling you by your real name, now that you’re in from the cold?”

  Quinton laughed. “What, as if I were someone out of a John le Carré novel? You do, and I shall be forced to take drastic measures.”

  “Oh? How drastic?”

  “Like this,” he said, and swooped his head down to blow a loud raspberry against my belly.

  I squealed and wriggled around in the blanket as he tickled me and made more ridiculous noises against my skin. It was silly and it hurt a bit from the pulling of my scars and unevenly healed muscles, but I was more than just warm now and I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

  In a few minutes he stopped tickling and began stroking and kissing my skin instead. It felt strange without the soft rasp of his beard and the silky trailing of his hair, but the heat of his mouth and tongue still wrung a gasp of pleasure from me. He moved lower, sliding his hands and lips down between my legs.

  He licked and nibbled, his fingers sliding over moisture, then pushing deep. I put my hands on his head to pull him into me and was frustrated by his short hair. I felt him chuckle against my hot, wet flesh, and the sensation made me moan. He continued, without remorse, building a scalding tension in my body with every touch, driving me tighter, higher, until it burst apart, pushing outward on my cry of ecstatic release.

  Liquid and hard, he slid up and into me as I was still gasping. He groaned and buried his face in my neck, biting lightly as he thrust and then licking where he’d bitten. He nipped at my earlobe and then pressed his lips against my ear. “I love you.”

  I shuddered under him, arching into his movement, and turned my head, capturing his mouth with mine. I didn’t need to hear what I knew. I loved the feel of him, the touch and the taste and the depth of his motion inside me, drawing me tight again. I only wanted to feel, without words, to come with him in that breaking, crystal instant.

  He gave me my way, making love with only the conversation of our bodies and the upward-spiraling cadence of our gasps and moans, the depth and speed of his thrust and my response. I felt the tension in his body snapping as he groaned and shuddered. A wave of awesome sensation burst into me, like a million sparks dancing over my skin, igniting something that burned across us both. I clenched my eyes shut against the brightness of it through the Grey as I shattered and came with him, feeling our energy twine together, blazing into a circle encompassing us alone and illuminating the world within, then fading softly, slowly. . . .

  He laid his head against the crook of my neck once again, breathing deeply, slowing, until his body eased and he slid over to lie beside me. I watched him and smiled until he fell asleep. Then I laid my head down and stared into the dark, feeling his contentment and my own anxiety winding over me. How could I feel warm and fuzzy while I also felt like a lying bitch? I didn’t know how I was going to protect him, or how I was going to live up to him. What Quinton feared most, what he had given up his freedom and anonymity for, was all too possible. When my father’s ghost had gone, he’d taken away the thing that made me nearly immortal: my deepest kinship with the Grey, the growing inhumanity that had enabled me to hear the song of the energy, to change the structure of the grid and kill a god. That was gone and I had lied to Quinton: I was no longer bulletproof; I could die as easily as anyone and leave him forever.

  We got up while the sun was still low and went out to search for the yellow silk banishment and see how much mess the creeping dead had left behind. We had no luck with the missing spell, and I guessed it had probably been carried off by a bird that was now living in the silkiest yellow nest in the world. The remains of the zombies weren’t very identifiable except that most weren’t human. The stink of decomposition had already attracted scavengers that had done a good job of carrying bits away and spreading the rest around. It was a pain in the ass to scrape up the glop and parts left behind and bury them, but at least none of these dead would be walking again.

  Over a cold breakfast afterward, I looked over the lists I’d gotten from Faith. I swore and laid the papers aside. “Useless. The people on the list are the people I already know about. There used to be more full-time residents, but now there’s only a handful and they’re all accounted for. I’m still looking for someone who’s here, but not here. It’s not seasonal renters or even the nonresident owners, because most of the overt violence has happened in the late winter and early spring before they come up here.”

  “What about Ridenour?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t seem to have any magical power. He doesn’t seem to even see the magical things going on.”

  “He could be acting. He was married to a demon for a while, after all.”

  “But he didn’t know what she was until Willow told him. And the huli-jing is gone now, so his connection to the grid through her was cut.”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t have started to play
with it on his own, if he was so desperate to get his wife back or take revenge.”

  I nodded. It fit to a degree, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with it. Still, it would explain Ridenour’s not coming to find me after Willow had escaped from the greenhouse, since he’d have gone after her himself. I respected Ridenour enough that I wanted more proof before I accused him of bashing in Strother’s head and killing Leung. Ridenour didn’t seem to have any Grey abilities of his own, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have borrowed some. After all, whoever had moved the Subaru into the lake had needed help. If the killer wasn’t very good at magic, it would explain why the crimes themselves were sudden and violent and why only the aftermath and cover-up had the tang of the Grey. Ridenour didn’t live at the lake, but he was around constantly. . . .

  Quinton pointed at the other list. “What about that one? Anything there?”

  I picked it up and scanned it. “List of what was found in Leung’s Subaru.” I shook my head. “They’re going to have a great time trying to figure out what’s significant in this bunch of rotting junk. Not a lot survived the fire in the front of the car, but the stuff in the back was mostly intact until it hit the water. Leung was a real pack rat,” I added. Then I summarized the list: “A big lump of wet paper—probably maps—that started to rot as soon as it got into the air; pocket change; keys; a rifle and a box-worth of unfired cartridges to match; a large rock; the remains of what was probably a pair of boots—in addition to the pair he was wearing at the time; a tire iron and jack, badly rusted; a spare coat that was mostly rot and guesswork; a plastic crate of rusted canned goods; a surveyor’s transit in a waterlogged wooden box; two baseball caps in dubious condition; the remains of two blankets—”

  “Sounds like the back of your truck,” Quinton interrupted, “only wet.”

  That gave me pause. The house was neat, orderly, and prepared for a stint of bad weather—if we’d had some gasoline, we could have had the generator running, which would have given us plenty of power to run the water heater as well as the lights. If the propane tank hadn’t been empty, we’d have had heat, a working stove, and a refrigerator, all without main power or a gas line. I’d assumed the house had been cleaned and closed up, but Leung’s clothes were still in one of the closets and the shotgun hadn’t been locked up, but left standing beside the kitchen door in case of aggressive wildlife. Except for removing the gas cans that must have been around and having the propane tank drained and purged, Geoff Newman hadn’t done anything to the house but shutter it up and lock it. Leung hadn’t been a hoarder; he’d been ready.