Wrong Side of Hell (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  There was one call I’d return right away, though. After we climbed the stairs leading to the main level of the dilapidated building, I dialed Rufus.

  He answered on the first ring. “Where the hell have you been, Black? I got bodies piling up all over this city. Get your ass over to Times Square, Seventh and Forty-Fifth—”

  “Rufus.”

  For the first time since I’d known him, he actually stopped talking.

  “I’m not going to Times Square,” I said. “Because I quit.”

  “You can’t quit.”

  “I just did.” Another first—he didn’t break out a string of curses at me. “You can keep my last paycheck. Call it a trade for not giving you notice.”

  There was a long pause on his end of the line. Finally, he said in less-abrasive-than-usual tones, “What happened to you, kid?”

  I couldn’t help a grim smirk. “A lot,” I said. “Sorry, Rufus. I gotta go.”

  When I hung up, Sadie was looking at me curiously. “Did you just quit your job?”

  “Well, not all of my job. Just the part that’s a pain in my ass.” It was the right thing to do, but quitting my gig with Rufus made me uneasy as hell. It meant I’d crossed a line. I’d accepted that my reality was no longer the same, and I was at least as much a part of the Other world as the regular one. Quitting made the impossible a priority in my life.

  Now I’d have to find a new normal. Hopefully, one that didn’t include taking on an evil cult every night.

  I looked out at the space of the theater, where we’d come in behind the tattered remains of the big screen. Half the seating rows had been ripped out and tossed in random, jumbled piles. Of the ones still standing, quite a few were covered with dust or mold, or leaned crookedly to one side. Crude graffiti decorated the platform in front of the destroyed screen. But I could see a few hints of velvet and polished wood here and there, the suggestion of an intricate pattern in the smashed floor tiles. This place had real class once.

  The others had plopped down in the front row of seats. Denei sat in the middle between Zoba and Murdoch, laughing at something the bogeyman was telling her. Grygg stood in the aisle next to Zoba. Probably a good idea, since he’d crumple those chairs like tissue paper if he tried to sit down. “Where’s Taeral?” I said.

  “Here,” he said from behind me.

  I only flinched a little. “Christ. What are you trying to do, Murdoch me?” I stepped back so I could see both of them. “Okay, so I head outside, and…what, stand around in the moonlight? How long should I wait?”

  “I’ll come with you,” Taeral said. “I can tell you when it’s fully charged.”

  Sadie cut a glance at the front row. “I’m going, too. Don’t really want to hang around with these clowns longer than I have to.”

  “I’d like you to stay.” Taeral held up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. “Please. I trust none of them, and I’d prefer you were here to keep an eye on them. In case they decide to launch the assault without us.”

  “In other words, you want me to babysit.”

  “No.” He smiled faintly. “In other words, I’ve faith in your ability to put any one of them in their place, should they attempt to stray.”

  “Uh-huh.” She returned the smile. “Well, I guess flattery works pretty well on me. Go on,” she said. “I’ve got this.”

  “Thank you, a’ghrael.”

  Taeral and I headed for the back of the theater. “You sure you want to do this?” I said as we moved through a hallway and into the trashed former lobby. “I know how much you love the surface.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  He didn’t seem in a talking mood, so I dropped out of sarcasm mode. We stepped outside in silence, into a darkened pocket of Manhattan with almost no traffic and zero pedestrians in sight. The creepy husk of the theater behind us probably kept most of them away.

  I moved to a low concrete barrier wall along the buckled walkway and sat down. Taeral hesitated before taking a seat beside me. The moon seemed almost too bright here without a lot of competition from the surroundings, and the pendant already reflected its light. “It’s not going to start glowing like crazy while it recharges, is it?” I said.

  “No. That happens only when it’s activated.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Listen, I have to make a couple of phone calls.”

  He shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “Won’t take long.”

  I called Abe first. It rang six or seven times, but he didn’t pick up. Frowning, I pulled up the address book to try Viv—but before I tapped her, the phone buzzed and the screen flashed with Abe’s number. “Hey, Detective,” I answered. “Everything okay?”

  “Not exactly. You wanna tell me why the chief’s got your van down in impound?”

  “Um…no,” I said. “I don’t want to tell you.”

  “You said you’d stay away from him, kid. What’s going on?” There was a lot of worry in Abe’s voice, and I felt terrible that I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Look, be straight with me. Are you doing something illegal? Selling body parts on eBay or something? Because if you need money—”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I cut in. Black market organs, no. Something illegal…well, technically. Murder was illegal. But they deserved it. “Honestly, I wasn’t even with the van when it got hauled,” I said. “I don’t know, I think he’s gone kind of crazy. Maybe he’s looking for evidence of whatever he thinks I did. Maybe he’s trying to pin the wolf murders on me. I’m an expert on wolves, remember? I totally could’ve faked it.”

  That got a laugh from Abe, and I managed to relax a little. “Right,” he said. “You’re a violent killer. And I’m Mother freakin’ Theresa.”

  I felt bad all over again. I actually was a violent killer, and telling myself it was for a good cause didn’t change the facts. But that was something I definitely couldn’t share with Abe. “Exactly,” I said. “Do me a favor and keep an eye on my van, will you?” I said. “I’ll get it back soon. There’s nothing to find, so he can’t hold it long.”

  “Yeah. Just make sure you don’t have a bunch of unpaid parking tickets or something,” Abe said. “Don’t know where Foley got this bug up his ass, but I hope it dies soon.”

  “Me too. Hey, I’ll check in with you later, all right?”

  “You’d better.”

  I hung up and sighed. “If I make it through this, I think Abe’s gonna kill me.”

  “Your detective friend?” Taeral said.

  “Yeah. I’m kind of making his life miserable right now.” I shook my head and swiped back to the address book. “One more call,” I said.

  He nodded.

  The medical examiner answered pretty fast. “This is two nights in a row you’ve stiffed me, you know,” she said. “On the plus side, I don’t have as much work. Did people stop dying?”

  I smiled. It was good to hear Viv’s voice. “Didn’t you hear? They found the Fountain of Youth in Madison Square Garden,” I said. “So, you found something for me?”

  “I found…something, all right. First, the Scrolls of Gideon.” She paused, and I got worried until she said, “It’s still so weird, isn’t it? I mean, your name isn’t all that common.”

  “Yeah. Didn’t think I was important enough for scrolls,” I said. “What about them?”

  “No one knows where they are, or if they actually exist,” she said. “But the legend—yes, there’s a legend—says there are nine of them. Leather scrolls, made from the skin of the nine founders of the Order of Gideon and written in their blood. This order was said to be the precursor of Milus Dei, formed in the Dark Ages somewhere around the year 1400.”

  “Jesus.” For some reason, I had no doubt the scrolls existed. “What’s supposed to be written on them?”

  “There’s a lot of debate on that. Some say it’s the group charter, or a set of rules, or a prophecy. Some say spells or hexes. And there’s a theory about alchemical equations.”

  “Alchemy?” I
only had a vague recognition of that word. “Isn’t that to make gold or something?”

  “I guess alchemy in general could be. But this one’s supposed to be for creating something perfect.”

  I frowned. “Any particular thing?”

  “The legend doesn’t say.”

  “Huh. Okay,” I said slowly. “Thank you, Viv.”

  “Hold on. There’s one more thing, about Milus Dei.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, supposedly they went around capturing things that weren’t human,” she said. “So it’s said they had this machine that puts out sound waves, and it affects the brainwaves and higher functions of…um, paranormals. Like a giant dog whistle. Puts them out of commission or something, or possibly explodes their brains. The information isn’t real clear on that.”

  Okay, this was not good news. Especially if they actually had the thing, and it worked. “Did you happen to find out what this machine looked like?” I said.

  She gave a nervous laugh. “You sound really serious about this. I mean, it can’t be real, right? Werewolves and vampires and stuff? That’s crazy.”

  For a second I wished it was a few days ago, back when I didn’t know all this was as real as death and taxes, and I could actually agree with her. “Of course it’s not real,” I said. “Just humor me, okay?”

  “Okay…well, it was supposed to be big. Like they hauled it around in a railcar big, with dials and switches and lightning rods,” she said. “You know. Old Frankenstein movie stuff. I guess they traveled around the country with it for a while back in the early 1900s, showing it off. But they stopped because people got scared of it, and then the cult pretty much disappeared.”

  Great. There was plenty of room for something like that in their warehouse. We’d have to keep an eye out for it. “Thanks. You’re awesome, Viv,” I said. “Give me a couple of days, and I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Something in her tone stunned the man part of my brain. She’d wanted me to ask her out? Christ, I was an idiot for never doing that. But I couldn’t worry about it now. “Better late than never,” I said, hoping I sounded more interested than I managed to feel. “I gotta run, but I’ll see you soon.”

  “Okay. I’ll send you all the links I have, so you can check it out more if you want,” she said. “Goodnight, Gideon.”

  “’Night.”

  Once again, I ended the call with something less than enthusiasm. “They may have a machine that can neutralize us, or possibly explode our brains,” I said to Taeral. “You hear anything about that?”

  His jaw twitched. “I had not,” he said. “But that means little, considering we’ve known next to nothing about them for years.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

  I slid the phone back in my pocket and stared at the sky, where the moon was just a sliver away from full.

  Our chances were getting about as slim as that missing sliver.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Is it done yet?”

  Taeral shook himself and glared at me. We’d been sitting around for twenty minutes, waiting for the moonstone to charge. Things were starting to feel awkward out here. “No, it is not,” he said. “I’ll tell you when.”

  “Sadie’s going to strangle you for leaving her in there so long,” I muttered.

  “She will get over it.”

  Okay, I didn’t get the relationship between those two at all. Half the time he acted like she was the love of his life, and the other half like she was the world’s most annoying little sister. And she seemed to mostly hate him, except when she didn’t. If we weren’t about to battle Milus Dei, I’d be irritated. Mostly because I liked Sadie more than I was willing to admit.

  But now wasn’t a great time, so I’d talk about something else. “Hey, Taeral,” I said. “I never got a chance to ask before. How are you doing with…uh, being shot all those times?” And being carved up like a turkey, but I’d rather avoid discussing that part if I could.

  For a second I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he gave a one-shouldered shrug, and said, “Healed, for the most part.”

  I frowned. “How much is the most part?”

  “Enough,” he said shortly, and shook his head. “Fae heal faster than humans, of course. The ability to heal ourselves through magic is limited, but available, so that’s helped. Unfortunately, wounds inflicted with cold iron…behave differently.”

  Without thinking, I glanced at my wrists—and did a double take. They were still slightly reddened, with light scarring along the bulk of the damage where I’d shoved out of the cuffs. I remembered the stuff had done a lot worse to him. “So what, it just doesn’t heal?” I said.

  He sighed. “Much of it heals, eventually. But with magic-inflicted wounds—cold iron, hexes and the like—there is always scarring, at the least. And in some cases the injury can be permanent.”

  “Great. When is it permanent?”

  He stared at me with hollow eyes. “When a hundred cold iron nails are driven into your arm, and held in place with cold iron bracers, and shackled with a cold iron cuff, simply to find out whether you’ll survive.”

  “Jesus…” I trailed off, unable to manage another word, and deliberately avoided looking at his metal arm. Just a bullet-sized amount of cold iron had started cooking his flesh. “Shouldn’t that much have killed you?”

  “Aye, it should have. Which is why I cut the arm off.”

  “You cut it off?”

  He nodded. “The hand had gone black with the poison. One of their researchers came with a bone saw to remove it, study it. I feigned unconsciousness and took the saw from him. Opened his throat.” He spoke in a dull monotone, like he was reciting a grocery list. “And then I sawed myself free and escaped,” he said. “They’d not expected that.”

  A hard shudder went through me. “I’m sorry, man,” I said. “But…damn, that’s hardcore. You’re a certified, grade-A badass.”

  His brow lifted. “A what, now?”

  “Means you’re really tough.”

  “Ah. Yes, perhaps I was…once.” He focused on the sidewalk for a moment, and then looked at me. “But you’ve not been shot at all, have you?” he said. “Twice now you’ve tangled with Milus Dei soldiers, and not a single bullet to show for it.”

  “Yeah. I don’t get it, either,” I said. “I mean, they really had me a few times. Shots fired, dead-on accurate. But they missed. Just like the last time—”

  The last time my brothers tried to shoot me.

  “You’ve thought of something,” Taeral said. “What is it?”

  My first instinct was to close the subject, quickly and decisively. I didn’t talk about this to anyone. But he’d just told me something he obviously didn’t want to disclose, and I felt like I owed him. Trauma for trauma. Besides, he’d seen my scars already.

  What the hell. Maybe it was time I let someone in, just a little.

  “My brothers…the Valentines, I mean. Hodge and Morris. When I was a kid, they liked to play this game. Target practice.” Even now, the words tasted sour. “They’d make me run off into the woods, or the mountains, or wherever we were. And they’d track me down and shoot me. Kept score, too, the bastards.”

  Taeral blanched. “They did this to you as a child?”

  “I was eight or nine when it started. They used .22 cal for a while, to make sure I didn’t die, and kept graduating to bigger ammo.” Things I’d avoided thinking about for years flooded to the surface, like how I could eventually tell the difference between a .25 and a .32 by the way it hurt. “Anyway, those two were crack shots. They’d take me down the first time, every time. Until one night, they didn’t.”

  “How so?”

  I held up the moonstone pendant. “I was fifteen, and I’d just gotten this,” I said. “Orville, that’s the man who’s not really my father, tried to take it from me. I got pissed off. So he called target practice.” I swallowed against the lump of remembe
red fear in my throat. “Hodge and Morris chased me into the woods, but I stopped running and called them out. Dared them to shoot me. And they missed a completely clear shot.” I paused and shuffled through the rest of my life in my head. “That’s the last time I ever took a bullet, so far. Just a few grazes since then.”

  “Incredible,” Taeral murmured, and cocked his head slightly. “It’s possible that you have…” He squinted a little, and then his eyes widened.

  “What?” I said. “What do I have?”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “This is not your true form.”

  “What’s not—”

  Before I could finish the question, I answered it myself. The not-exactly-me I’d seen in the mirror when I was practicing Foley. That was me…the real me.

  I’d been projecting a glamour my entire life.

  “Your glamour is slightly off,” Taeral said. “You are not quite where you seem to be. That is why they miss the shots. You’ve developed a kind of natural defense, likely in response to…the horrors you were subjected to.” His face reflected sheer misery. “The horrors I subjected you to, by placing you with those foul creatures masquerading as humans,” he whispered. “I am so sorry, brother. I never meant—”

  “Hey. You were protecting me,” I said firmly. “If you hadn’t done that I’d be dead, or controlled by Milus Dei. I’m not going to blame you for the Valentines being bastards.” I flashed a slanted smile. “Actually, I like your description better. What was it…foul creatures masquerading as humans?”

  Taeral nearly smiled. “I assure you, I can think of something far worse to call them.”

  “Great. We’ll have a name-calling contest once we get out of this.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And speaking of our impending endeavor, I believe the moonstone is ready.”

  “About time.” I took a minute to stretch, and then tucked the pendant inside the body armor. Didn’t want any Milus Dei goons trying to steal the shiny object—I’d only take it out when I needed to use it. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

  I only wished I felt as confident as I sounded.