As he went to dress, he was surprised to realize that he didn’t want to leave the mageblade behind. Even here, where he felt perfectly safe, he figured it was better safe than sorry.
With that thought in mind, he slung the knife’s concealed holster over his plaid shirt and slung his old leather jacket on. He gave his image in the mirror a lopsided grin. The federal agent of last week was gone, and the plaid-shirted country boy he was used to looked back at him.
The lopsided grin faded as he realized that the image in the mirror wasn’t familiar to him anymore.
#
Whistler’s was a low building, tucked in behind Charlesville’s scenic downtown region. The tavern was older than any of the new buildings in the downtown and almost as old as the originals. Built of solid stone, it loomed out of the darkness like a dank behemoth, modern gas-lamp-imitation streetlights casting it into gloomy shadow.
The line of cars shadowed by the building looked almost out of place, but there was a space for David to jockey his truck into a parking spot between an extended cab truck and a red car, both of which he knew belonged other cops.
He turned the truck off and stepped out into the shadowed parking lot. There was no visible security in the parking lot, but everyone in town knew this was the police bar. No one would ever try to steal from these cars.
His gaze ran along the line of cars, ticking off names on his mental list as he recognized cars. Most of the usual bunch, the same bunch that made up the hunting club, was here tonight.
With a grin, David stepped up to the double doors into the windowless building and slung them open, entering the brightly lit interior with almost a mental sigh of relief. It was familiar, and it was comforting to be home.
“David!” a voice shouted. “As I live and breathe, David White is back among the living!”
David turned slowly, looking around the room. The stone walls were covered in paintings and photos of old police officers, back to sheriffs who’d served the town in the eighteenth century. One wall was devoted to relics and photos from the Civil War, and the men who’d gone to fight in the South.
Half a dozen booths in worn black pleather lined the far wall, but most of the customers were at heavy circular tables, their surfaces carved from the trunk of one great oak tree. A similar tree had been carved down to make the bar from behind which Lester Whistler, multiple great grandson of the Bill Whistler who’d founded the bar after being crippled in the line of duty as a sheriff in pre-Revolution America, had hailed David. Like the picture of his ancestor on the wall behind him, the younger man at the bar was sandy-haired and tall. Unlike the picture behind him, he was only just beginning to have a mustache long enough to wax into the family’s trademark curls.
“Evening, Lester,” David responded. “I figured I’d stop by since I was in town packing up.”
“You’re leavin’ us forever, then?” the bartender asked.
“Haven’t decided yet,” David admitted. “I have a place to live near my new work, but I may end up keeping the house here, too.”
“Well, come on,” Lester said as the crowd began to leave their tables and gather toward David. “Say hi to folks!”
The former cop found himself deluged with one old comrade after another, and his arm almost wrenched out of its socket with handshakes. Eventually, the crowd died away, leaving him at the bar with Lester.
“Where’s Buckley?” David finally asked. John Buckley had been David’s mentor on joining the force, and he hadn’t noticed the tall Irishman around the bar at all.
“He had a later shift tonight,” Lester, who always seemed to know everyone’s schedule on the force, replied. “He should be joining us shortly. He should be here, actually,” the bartender observed, his waxed mustache flexing as he turned to look up at the clock above his ancestor’s painting.
David followed the bartender’s gaze, but his eyes caught something under the clock. Filling the foot or so–high gap between Bill Whistler and the clock above him was a large stylized sun—carved from obsidian.
Before he could control himself, his Sight flashed on, and he found his eyes locked on the strange black sun, drawn to its impossible aura of sheer darkness. Whatever that sun represented, it couldn’t possibly be here. Not in Charlesville.
A voice behind him broke the trance. “Hey, David!” Buckley shouted across the bar as the doors thumped closed behind him. “Good to see you, man.”
David turned to greet his old mentor, but his Sight continued to flare as he looked into his friend’s eyes. He finished turning, but his conscious motor control was gone as he looked into John Buckley’s eyes. Black and purple auras flared around the man like lightning on a stormy night, and David White knew, with the certainty only magic could allow, that his oldest friend and comrade was evil to the bone.
Chapter 16
David managed to control himself and not blurt out anything or go for the blade concealed under his jacket. Nonetheless, he knew he couldn’t stay there. Even as he forced himself to trade pleasantries with his old friends, his Sight refused to go away.
He could tell now how much uncertainty lay beneath most of their greetings. They hadn’t seen him in almost two months, and that was more than enough time for someone to slide out of a tight-knight group like a small-town police department.
Worst was the handful among the group touched with the black aura of that strange sun. Buckley was the worst, pulsing with it, but there were others. Most of them were men David had regarded as close friends until moments before. Until this strange revelation caused him to question everything he knew.
No one could have stayed in that room, with those thoughts in their head, for long. David made an excuse of his long flight and need to pack tomorrow and left the bar. He hoped that none of his old comrades realized he’d fled it.
His mind in turmoil, the ex-cop got into his truck and drove. Nothing in all his training had prepared him for this—for the revelations his abilities would give him about his home and his friends.
Part of him disbelieved what he’d seen. He knew those men; he knew they couldn’t be what he’d seen. But the rest of him knew that his Sight could be misinterpreted but it never lied. Little things he’d seen before, little hints suggesting an inner circle to the department’s social groupings and his own hunting club, struck home now.
The police officer he’d been refused to condemn these men—who were police officers—without any proof. The supernatural seer he had become knew that something was wrong in Charlesville.
He understood, now, why ONSET agents tended to live on the Campus. Not many had his abilities, but most had learned to read signs they didn’t before. Even if it was only paranoia, it would be too easy for a supernatural to read the worst into the most mundane things.
David knew he wasn’t being paranoid in this case. If that black sun meant anything, he had to warn the Chief. If a cancer was growing in Chief Hanson’s own department, then the man in charge of protecting Charlesville from both the mundane and the supernatural had to know.
With some resolution finally in his thoughts, he turned the truck from its random circling of the small town toward the Chief’s house.
#
It was late when David arrived at the Hansons’ house, and he hesitated for a long moment without ringing the doorbell. Here, in this pine-scented driveway far from the streetlights and shadows of Whistler’s, his fears seemed almost silly.
He sighed. He may have misinterpreted what he had Seen, but he knew that icon on the wall. He didn’t know what it was, but if the same symbol that was on a serial killer’s trophy book was on the wall of a cop bar, something was very wrong.
David rang the doorbell.
There was a long silence after he did, and he began to think that the Chief was very asleep and he should come back in the morning. Maybe sunlight would burn away these fears.
Then the door swung open, and David found himself staring down the business end of an exact duplicate of t
he gun he’d left in his house. Moonlight glinted off the polished steel of Darryl Hanson’s heavy silver-loaded automatic for a long moment before the police chief lowered the weapon.
“David!” he barked cheerily as he stood silhouetted in the bright light from the house behind him. “What are you doing here? It’s bloody late,” the chief, clad in a light blue bathrobe, observed.
“I know,” David said softly, his fears seeming silly in the bright light of the house. He knew, however, that they weren’t, and continued. “I needed to talk to you. You may have a problem.”
The Chief’s cheer diminished, to be replaced with an edged professionalism at odds with his bathrobe-clad appearance.
“Come in,” he ordered, his voice suddenly as soft as David’s. “Marge and I were just going to bed. I’ll make coffee.”
It turned out as they entered the house, however, that the thought was unnecessary. Marge, the silver-haired Mage clad in a light purple robe that matched her husband’s, was already laying cups and a pot of coffee on the heavy wooden table in the living room. She gestured the two men to the massively comfortable chairs with a smile.
“And here I thought I’d put the pot on by accident of habit,” she told David. “I should know better. I was never a seer or perceiver, but that doesn’t mean I don’t See on occasion.”
“Tell me about this problem,” Darryl ordered once David had taken a sip of the excellent coffee.
David took a deep breath and another sip of coffee, and then laid the cup down and explained what had happened at Whistler’s, and what he’d seen on the wall and in Buckley’s aura. He spoke quietly, as betraying the men he’d once trusted was hard. No matter what he suspected, they likely still thought of him as their friend.
“I never did like him,” Marge said into the quiet after David had finished. Darryl had returned to his feet and was now stalking back and forth like an irritated bear.
“I did,” the police chief rumbled. “Originally,” he added. “I liked the fact that he’d take the new officers under his wing. Then I realized he was collecting them all into his hunting club, and started to get nervous.” He glanced at David, and then glanced away and David knew he had been one of the “new officers” Buckley had collected until he’d been promoted past the Irishman.
“Police officers should have only one loyalty: the people they serve,” Darryl continued. “His hunting club and little clique of followers risk that, but they’ve never done anything untoward—they still haven’t,” he reminded David sharply.
“You can’t act on suspicion,” David said, his voice still quiet. “No matter what I’ve Seen, that’s all you have.”
“Oh, I know,” Darryl said grimly. “I know. But it whets a suspicion I already had. Suspicion of one’s officers is a bad thing for a Police Chief to have, as it suggests his officers are failing in their charge,” he continued, his voice suddenly soft and sad.
“But if they are failing”—the voice was suddenly sharp as ice—“then the Chief who isn’t suspicious has failed his charge.”
There was nothing David could say to that. For a long, long time, no one said anything.
“It’s late,” David said finally. “I should go back to my house. I have to finish packing up.”
Darryl grunted. “I guess this is the end of you living in Charlesville?”
David paused. He hadn’t even thought of that decision, but he realized now that the Chief was right. Charlesville had had a certain ideal to it to him until now. It had been a safe place, an ordinary place. Now he knew that the darker side of his job would stretch even here.
Being here would only bring back memories of good times, and memories of his father, and both of those would be only too painful. He now knew the good times had been at least partially false, and his father had been at least partially right.
“Yeah,” he said softly, looking at his former chief regretfully. “I guess it is.”
#
Majestic had actually missed David’s return to the house, as she had almost forgotten the bug she’d planted in his house. When she found the link again, it was to a half-expected sight: men packing up the house of the ex-police officer.
She wondered for a moment if she could get a bug planted on the furniture, but brushed away the thought after a second of consideration. Even if one of her contacts was close enough to sneak in before everything left, it was unlikely all of it was going to White’s new home, wherever that was. She also doubted anything would get into that home without being screened extraordinarily tightly.
Majestic needed, with all the drive of an addict whose fix was being denied, to know what was happening behind the reports she was tracking, and that black server she couldn’t crack.
For all that need, for all that desire and curiosity, all the hacker could do was sit and watch the feed from the tiny electronic camera as her last clues about this mystery vanished into the back of a moving truck.
#
Closing up a house was easier than David had feared and harder than he’d hoped. The local OSPI representative and his men handled the physical aspects of the move, but that was only one part of it. The apartment on campus could hold less than half of his furniture, and it fell to David to decide which half would go.
Once he’d separated out the bedroom and office furniture that he’d inherited from his parents, he knew there wasn’t much left he could bring. He marked one almost brand-new couch as a ‘go,’ and then told the OSPI men to donate the rest—none of it was worth transporting any distance, really.
Chief Hanson was a lifesaver, even more than the dozen or so burly soldiers who’d shown up to handle the move while treating David with an unexpected degree of respect. The police chief had volunteered to co-ordinate with the real estate agent who would handle the sale of David’s small house.
Once everything was closed up, David found himself standing once more at the base of his lawn, looking at the house he’d striven so hard to purchase and keep after he’d lost his parent’s home.
“It’s hard to leave,” Hanson said behind him, the chief’s massive hand descending on David’s own large shoulder. “I was born in a small mining town in North Virginia,” the chief said softly. “It was a shit hole I couldn’t wait to get away from, but the day I left I cried.”
A black government car pulled up behind David and its driver, another one of OSPI’s ubiquitous uniformed men, waved to David.
“You need to go,” Hanson told David, who nodded.
He knew he couldn’t stay. His Sight told him too many secrets for him to comfortably live among normal people. He wasn’t one of them anymore, and sooner or later he’d slip up and drive that home.
He sighed. He’d scrimped and saved since his parents died to buy this home. He’d worked hard to make himself a home and a place in Charlesville, and that single night in a warehouse had woken up something in him. That something had stripped his home away.
David touched the mageblade under his jacket and turned to face his Chief. “Goodbye,” he told the older man, his voice choked.
“It’s not goodbye,” the older mundane told the supernatural gently. “It’s only till we meet again.”
Chapter 17
By the time David and his furniture made it back to the Campus, ONSET Nine had disappeared on their one-week break. He and the men helping him move found the dormitory common room completely empty on their arrival.
“It’s the second floor, left room on the end,” David told them. He hefted a chair with an ease no mundane could have matched, and headed upstairs. The chair’s bulk provided more issue than its weight, as he hefted it one-handed to open the door.
As the door opened under his grip, he felt the chair begin to slip and half-panicked. Before he could turn to grab it, however, someone else’s hands were there. The chair stable and the door open, David regained his grip on the furniture and looked over the leather-clad arm at Ix.
“Thank you,” he told the demon honestly. H
e was still uncomfortable with Ix, but it made sense that the demon—who would have issues concealing himself as human—would remain on the base.
“Need a hand?” Ix asked. There was a sharp, gravelly edge to the creature’s voice, marking the speaker as something not quite human.
“Sure,” David answered, relaxing somewhat at the offer. Whatever his teammate’s actual species, he certainly seemed to be a decent person. “The truck is out front. A squad of OSPI troops is unloading it.”
The red-skinned almost-man nodded. “I’ll go help them,” he said briskly, and disappeared behind the black body of the chair.
#
With two supernaturals and a dozen competent young men working at it, it only took twenty minutes for David’s furniture to leave the truck and make its way into the second-floor apartment.
With that finally done, David opened one of the boxes and pulled out a case of beer. He gestured to the OSPI men.
“Not sure if you’re technically allowed,” he admitted, “but here, have one anyway.”
The Sergeant in charge of the squad laughed. “We’re technically not,” he advised the ONSET Agent, “but I believe it’s traditional post-move.”
Ix joined David and the OSPI men in the beer, and David was surprised at the men’s ease drinking with two known supernaturals. A few months before, the thought would have scared the bejeesus out of him.
When the case of beer was gone, the Sergeant rose to his feet and gestured his men up.
“Come on, boys,” he barked. “We’ve taken advantage of Agent White’s gratitude, but we do have to get the truck back soon. Let’s get a move on.”
He barely raised his voice, but his men were on their feet and gathering the empty bottles together into one place without a moment’s hesitation.
“It’s been a pleasure, sirs,” the man said to David. “I hope to see you about some more. I could use another free beer,” he added with a wicked grin as he and his men trooped out, leaving the two supernaturals looking at the mess of boxes and furniture filling the living room of David’s apartment.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 15
