Ashburn_A [Sub] Urban Fantasy Novel

by Michael W. Layne

The paper was filled with rows of words in several languages, the majority of which I didn’t recognize. I did, however, see a piece of a song lyric from a tune I knew about a future where music was forbidden and the ultimate act of rebellion was playing the guitar. More than the lyrics, I also recognized the color and weave of the paper. When I pulled out the scrap of paper Abby the imp had given me, it was an exact match, although the words and symbols were different.

  I set the paper down and placed the scrap from Abby back in my pocket.

  “I want to help you, if you’ll let me,” I said to the writer, letting out a heavy sigh as I bent down to examine the manacle that held his ankle.

  When I touched it, he kicked frantically, grunting, and choking. His reaction startled me, and I fell backward onto my butt. As soon as I wasn’t touching him, he calmed down. The whole time, he never stopped writing—never even paused.

  “Do you at least have a name?” I said.

  As expected, he didn’t answer.

  “I’ve got to call you something—maybe just The Writer for now,” I said, looking at the stacks and stacks of pages he’d penned. “Or maybe Writer of All Things? That sounds much cooler and a lot more accurate.”

  I paused, giving the old man a chance to comment.

  “Yeah, I see your point,” I said, pretending he’d answered me. “Writer of All Things is more of a job description than an actual name. How about I call you Walt? It’s a name and an acronym, all in one.”

  Walt paused for a second and turned his head slightly toward me before he went back to his paper to write some more.

  I shrugged and left my newfound tenant to his scrawling as I stepped into the hallway to check out more of the room.

  After a few minutes of exploring, I reached a wall lit with a row of fluorescent lights that illuminated an antique wooden desk similar to Walt’s.

  The desk was overflowing with random items—bottles of glue, empty glass jars, and pairs of scissors. Much of the desk was covered with scraps of paper that looked like they’d been cut from some of Walt’s sheets.

  I rifled through the items on the desk, hoping to find something useful or at least understandable I could use.

  After a minute of searching through scraps of paper filled with words from unintelligible languages, I uncovered an iron dagger with an ornamental, rippled blade hidden under an old notebook.

  It didn’t have as much gravitas as Miguel’s wooden sword, but it glowed crimson when I held it, and I could feel its power. Nodding, I slipped it between my belt and my jeans and continued looking around.

  Above a globe on the edge of the desk, John had tacked up three maps of Ashburn to the wall. One showed a topographical representation of the area. Another showed the locations of giant caverns and lakes under the town. The third map was a simple street layout with a red line drawn on it to show the borders of Ashburn proper. I examined the last map the hardest, but I didn’t see anything that looked like it represented an exit or a portal leading out of town.

  I shook my head and realized how tired I was, as I vowed to revisit the maps later when I had more time and energy.

  As I made my way to the exit, I noticed a cape draped over a coat rack that stood to the right of the door. The cape was black with gold edges and inlay, and it glowed red, alive with power. For all I knew, it held the secret to undreamt magical energies, the key to escaping Ashburn, and a way to defeat Ahriman. But I left it there anyway, mostly because I was pretty sure I’d look ridiculous wearing it. And given the next place I was about to visit, laughter was the last thing I wanted to elicit.

  Chapter 30

  I CHECKED the address twice.

  Turned out, Marco and his gang hung out at a flower shop—or shoppe, if I took the sign literally.

  Night had fallen, but the store was still lit up, even though the neon sign in the window said it was closed for business.

  With a slight turn of my wrist, I pushed open the locked door and stepped in, goggles on, glowing dagger tucked into my belt, and Gus gripped tight in my fist like an ax.

  Inside, the store seemed legit—filled with flowers and the heady scent of roses. Julio stood behind the counter, clipping rose stems and wearing an apron with the store’s logo on it—a drawing of three green flowers held by a cartoon hand. He didn’t look very fierce in his uniform, and judging by the scowl on his face, he knew it.

  “We don’t have any more business with you today,” he said.

  “There are a few things I forgot to ask Marco about,” I said.

  Julio glanced down at the jagged guitar neck in my hand.

  “That what you used to take down that big guy outside the bar?” he said, pointing at Gus with his chin.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And I still need to speak to Marco.”

  Julio shook his head.

  “It’s after business hours, jefe. Come back tomorrow if you want to talk to the man. And call before you come next time. Marco doesn’t like surprises.”

  Julio was flexing his perceived power since he was in his nest, but fortunately for me, he wasn’t wearing his silver pendant.

  I approached him, gripping Gus tight enough that my knuckles went white.

  “I need to speak to him now.”

  “What you need to do is put that away,” he said, pulling out a Glock and holding it up for me to see. “Or I’ll put a hole in your chest.”

  Before I knew what I was doing, I closed the distance between us and my hand went for my dagger. Through the lenses of my goggles, I could see my blade glowing bright red as I sliced through the barrel of Julio’s gun like it was a stick of butter.

  “Consider this your last chance,” I said, touching the dagger’s point to the soft part under his chin.

  With eyes wide in fear, he pointed to a door at the rear of the store.

  “He’s in the back, chilling with some of our people. But you go in there and interrupt him and there’s gonna be trouble.”

  I grinned.

  “Your concerns have been noted,” I said as I tossed Julio into the wall with a thud and a cloud of drywall dust.

  Turning my back on him, I walked to the rear of the store and kicked open the door.

  When I stepped into the hall, Santos was sitting on a metal fold-up chair, smoking a cigarette outside another door that must have led to Marco’s office. When he saw me, he dug into his pocket for something, but I moved with supernatural speed and introduced the magic-laden Gus to the top of his head in a single, fluid motion. I helped Santos slide to the floor, unconscious, then reached into his pocket. Sure enough, it was another one of the silver pendants with the stylized demon face. The instant I touched it, I felt my power drain away. I had no idea what kind of magic the pendants carried, but the fewer of them the Olmecs had, the better off I was going to be.

  With no good options for getting rid of the damn thing, I stood on the chair, pushed up one of the ceiling tiles, and hid the pendant there. Once I stepped down to the floor, I felt better immediately. I got ready to bust in the door, but I heard Rose’s voice in my head, telling me to think before acting rashly.

  I won’t lie. It had felt good to take out my frustrations on Marco’s underlings, but I was there to see Marco and to ask him why he’d broken into my house and taken my blood and my bathroom trash.

  Taking a deep breath, I reigned in my anger and steadied myself before trying the doorknob. When I stepped into the room, Marco was sitting behind his desk, slouched in a chair, with a string of drool hanging from his lip. His right arm was stretched out in front of him with a hypodermic needle hanging from where he’d injected himself. The vial from the day before was on the desk, now only half-filled with my blood.

  Miguel sat in a chair on the other side of the desk, his arm in a cast. That made me grin. A short but muscled man I didn’t recognize, with a shaved head and a goatee, stood next to him.

  Before either one of them could react, the skin on Marco’s face started to ripple and spasm as his
skin turned a deep purple-red and his mouth bled from razor sharp teeth growing from his gum line. At first, I wondered if it was a hallucination or an illusion, but Miguel and the other guy saw it too, and it was clear they were more worried about Marco than me.

  I braced myself, holding Gus and my glowing dagger in front of me, just before Marco stood up, almost flipping his desk over in the process. He jumped into the air and landed on top of his desk, reaching out for me with hands that ended in three-inch long talons. Miguel pushed himself away, his mouth open and showing his missing teeth, but luckily for him, he was just out of his boss’s reach. The new guy didn’t move fast enough, though, and in a flash, Marco raked his claws across the man’s neck, splattering fresh, bright red blood all over the room.

  “Damn, man!” Miguel shouted as he scrambled away, trying to get to his feet. For a second, Marco glared at Miguel with the cold eyes of a reptile, and Miguel shoved his hand down his front pocket, probably trying to find his pendant.

  Marco turned and focused on me again. He leapt toward me from the desk but slipped on the blood-slick floor when he landed.

  While still on the floor, his face changed into a human’s for a few seconds before morphing back into something that was part demon and part human.

  When he looked up at me from the floor, tears were running down his disturbing visage.

  “Tu sangre,” he growled in Spanish. “Your blood is…beautiful.”

  I glanced over at Miguel, who was pressed up against the wall on the other side of the room, eying the exit.

  With caution, I slipped the dagger back under my belt and lowered Gus to my side. Marco sobbed with joy, and to say I was confused would have been an understatement. I’d seen friends and groupies go crazy on mind-altering drugs, but nothing like that before.

  “Is that what you do with my blood?” I said. “Is that why you broke into my house tonight? Why did you take my trash?”

  Marco looked up, crinkling his eyebrows, confused.

  “Did Marie hire you to steal my stuff,” I said. “So she could make a soul jar for me?”

  I stared down at Marco, waiting for his answer. Instead of responding, he passed out, and my window for getting information out of him closed.

  With Marco out of the picture for the night, I turned to Miguel, who looked at his unconscious boss, then me, and held up his pendant in his clenched hand.

  “Why’d you guys break into my house today?” I said, keeping my distance.

  He shook his head back and forth sharply.

  “That wasn’t us, man,” he said. “After we left the bookstore, Marco took a hit of your blood, but he said there was something different about it this time—something better—like it was pure. He said we were going to get more of it, but we didn’t do nothing to your house. Not yet, at least.”

  I shook my head.

  “When he wakes up tomorrow, tell him if he messes with my house or Sybil or anything that’s mine, he’ll be sorry. And tell him he needs to find Marie Lacroix and bring her to me, alive.”

  “That Voodoo chick?” he said. “Word is she’s gone. Left town, man.”

  “I know, but she had to go somewhere, and your gang has connections outside Ashburn. So check around, and tell Marco if he brings her back to me before Sunday, he can have more of my blood—a lot more. If he doesn’t find her, he’ll never see another drop.”

  “He ain’t going to like that.”

  “If you don’t tell him what I said, I’ll make sure he knows you’re the reason he won’t be getting any more of my blood.”

  “Damn, John,” he said, but he nodded slowly. “I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  I reached into my back pocket, pulled out the folded-up list of orders for the next week, and let it fall so it landed on Marco’s unmoving body.

  “Make sure you have everything ready for next Friday,” I said as I turned to leave.

  On the way out of his office, I glanced up at the ceiling tile where I’d hidden the pendant without pausing. When I opened the door and stepped into the main store, the place still smelled like flowers, but there was a new scent in the air and a dozen angry gang members waiting for me.

  I sighed and drew my dagger again, ready to fight my way out and hoping none of Marco’s boys had any more of those damn pendants.

  From behind me, Miguel spoke up.

  “Everybody chill out,” he said. “John and the boss just had a conversation, and now John’s leaving. Ain’t that right?”

  I nodded slowly as the gang members parted to make a path for me. As I walked through them, I dropped my human illusion enough to let them see my fiery red eyes and the sharp horns protruding from the front of my head. I did it partly for effect but also to give them a good reason not to mess with me.

  A few of them mumbled while others sent up whispered prayers to gods I’d never heard of. I ignored them, and within seconds stepped into the cool air and took a deep breath.

  Then I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Standing no more than six feet in front of me in a thin, floral print dress, Marie looked at me with blank, milky eyes.

  “Do you know where I live?” she said, straining with every word. Before I could answer, she collapsed in my arms.

  Chapter 31

  I SET MARIE in the Audi’s passenger seat, then took a quick look at Marie with my goggles. She was human, or at least she had been, but purplish-gray residue wafted from her body, like supernatural steam.

  Halfway to her house, she came to and turned her head toward me, her eyes still mostly closed.

  “Did you kill Laura Henders?” I said.

  “I can’t remember anything,” she said. Her words came slowly and with effort. “I was making lunch, and then I was outside the flower shop, and I saw you.”

  I reached over and placed my hand on top of hers. Her flesh was cold.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know how,” she said, struggling to answer my question.

  She was hiding something, but I decided to give her a break for the time being—after all, she’d been through enough already. We drove the rest of the way in silence, not speaking again until we pulled into her driveway.

  I hit the button to unlock the car door, but she reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “Please don’t leave me,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

  The digital clock in the dashboard said it was around nine at night, and it wasn’t like I had anything else to do other than go back to the house and watch Shadow poop in the back yard.

  There was a slim chance Sybil would be home, but given her lifestyle and the fact that it was dark already, she was probably out having her version of fun.

  Besides, Marie was in need, and just because she was a zombie and I was in a demon’s body didn’t mean I didn’t have a heart. I got out of the car and walked around to the other side to help her. Up in the yard, her merry band of undead gardeners worked on the same areas of grass they’d been tending since the first day I’d seen them.

  We walked up to her front door together. Instead of opening the door, she stood there, staring at the doorknob. At first, I thought she’d noticed the broken lock, but then she turned to me.

  “This is where I live,” she said, but I couldn’t tell whether she was asking me or telling me.

  “This is your house,” I said as I pushed open the door, and we stepped into the foyer. While she used the powder room, I pulled my goggles off and sat on the bottom of the stairs, rubbing my eyes. As I scanned the lifeless house, I was drawn to the illustration of the Baron as it seemed to stare at me from across the room.

  Without realizing it, I started singing a tune in a hushed voice. It was an old song about a guy having a hole where his head was supposed to be, and hearing it made me feel better.

  “Was there music just now?” Marie said as she stepped out of the bathroom and staggered toward me.

  Before I could a
nswer, she plodded up the stairs, and I followed. The strong smell of sandalwood and jasmine assaulted my nostrils as we entered her bedroom.

  “Did you say you would stay?” she said, before shuffling off to the bathroom without waiting for my reply.

  I sat on the edge of her bed and shook my head. I hadn’t known Marie very well, but she was disturbingly different from the woman I’d met a few days ago. As much as I didn’t want it to be true, she looked like and was behaving like a zombie, with only slightly more personality than her gardeners. If what she had told me about her religion was true, someone had taken her ti bon ange. And if I was going to help her, I was going to need assistance from someone who knew a lot more about the undead than me. All I could do was hope Sybil or Rose might know how to save her, if that was even possible. The only person I wasn’t going to ask for help was Oizys.

  Marie returned a few minutes later, her mocha brown skin shining in the candlelight as she walked toward me, naked.

  For a second, danger, danger signs lit up in my head. I wasn’t sure how to politely decline advances from a dead person, but thankfully, she ignored me, slipped under the sheets, and rested her head on the pillow.

  “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

  “You are a good person,” she said in a throaty whisper, barely moving her lips.

  I nodded and crawled up the bed, until I was lying next to her, on top of the covers. Hesitantly, I reached one hand over and touched her neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there, but barely.

  I pulled my hand away and lay very still, staring at the ceiling.

  When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it was still dark, and Marie was asleep next to me. Even with the pallor of death on her cheek, she was still beautiful.

  As I quietly picked up my goggles from the end table, she rolled over, still asleep, so that her back was to me. I watched her shoulders, but they barely rose or fell.

  Then I heard a loud creaking noise from downstairs.

  I got up, slipped on the goggles, and made sure I had both of my weapons before investigating the noise.

  When I made it to the ground floor, I crept into the kitchen. Through a crack in the curtains, I saw the silhouette of a woman standing on Marie’s deck.