by M. R. Forbes
"I'm not sure. Runes are hard to translate when they're incomplete. It usually takes the entire thing to describe the meaning. It's intentional, an encryption of sorts."
She stared at it, tracing the lines with her finger. "Does it help us?"
"It might. Look at the last line. The shape." I reached forward and tapped my finger against her screen. "This should be the next point. Which school is it?"
She zoomed in until we could read the labels for the streets, and for the college.
Juilliard.
"I never liked drama students," I said.
Rose smiled as she closed the laptop and stood, slipping it back in her bag. "You're sure this is the place?"
"As sure as I can be."
She took a deep, nervous breath in. Her exhale was anxious. "Okay, we have a location. Now what do we do about the fact that we don't know what our target looks like?"
"You're Awake. You can See demons. So can I." I paused, considering. What if it didn't register as Divine? What if I was flat out wrong about it being a demon? We might only have one shot to catch it. "Just to be sure, we'll bring it to us." My eyes traveled from her brown hair, to her ample chest. "We already know you're its type."
She crossed her arms over her breasts. "You want me to be bait?"
"Isn't that what you've been waiting for? A chance to catch up to the demon that killed your sister?"
"Yeah, but we were twins. It knows what I look like. Don't you think it will remember?"
"Appearances are easy to change. A haircut, some dye, makeup and new clothes. Perfume, in case it has a strong sense of smell."
She stood and stared at me. I could read the conflict on her face. The desire for revenge, the fear of having the opportunity to get it.
"All this time... I spent over a year chasing it, and you figured it out in less than a day."
"You figured it out. You tracked it, collected the data. Without that, we have nothing."
"I would never have recognized a demonic rune." She shook her head, her body trembling. "We're talking about a demon. I knew it was real, and you're here, and real. I'm still having trouble believing it. I've wanted to catch this asshole for so long. I suppose it's as impervious to bullets as you are?"
"I'm afraid so."
She laughed. There was no humor in it, only nerves. "I can't fight a demon. Not on my own. Even if I had found it, even if I knew it for what it was. I would have shot it, and it would have killed me."
"You can fight it, just not with guns. All your research on demons, and you never learned about blessed and cursed blades?"
"Not directly. There was one guy online who claimed that King Arthur used Excalibur to kill demons."
"It was also known as the Redeemer. It did more than kill them. In any case, they're weapons, made by angels and demons and covered in runes and scripture. Other than cutting off the head, you can't kill a Divine without one. Don't worry, I have a collection." I motioned to her stuff. "Is that all you have?"
"Yeah. Kind of pathetic, right? I have to go to a laundromat twice a week."
"Have you looked in my closet? I don't have any clothes."
Her head tilted, and she smiled mischievously. "You mean you're actually naked right now?"
"Not quite." I grabbed the edge of the jacket. "This is going to sound really geeky, but the best way I can think to describe it is that I use my god-energy to manipulate the atomic structures, and change the molecules into whatever I want or need."
My explanation of how it worked was simple, because my own understanding was simple. I knew what was happening, though I didn't have all the details. In my mind, I only thought about the energy, and what I wanted to do with it. The reaction was literally magic.
"That is geeky. So, you could make your leather jacket into steel or something, if you wanted to?"
I looked down at the jacket, then at her, then back at the jacket.
"I never even thought of that."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We spent the rest of the day taking cabs around the city, collecting the things we would need for our inception into Juilliard. We went to Macy's to find some tight faux leather leggings and a body hugging sweater, hit up the Lance Lappin Salon to have Rose's hair cut and colored, and spent an hour wandering the aisles of Whole Foods, picking up some food fit for someone who still needed to worry about calories.
It was strange to move through the day in such a 'normal' fashion, and I felt myself responding to the simplicity of it as the day wore on. It was as though everything around me took on a new dimension, a rhythm and clarity that I thought I recognized, like an old song. I knew I had been too isolated and out of touch. I hadn't realized how much.
We brought our haul back to the apartments, and I opened the unit next to mine for her to call home. It was similar to my own, and furnished with seventies throwbacks that had been left by the prior resident. I thought the decor was tacky, but Rose loved it. Seeing the reaction made me happy in a way I hadn't experienced in years.
I almost felt human again.
"I'm having trouble getting used to this," Rose said, running her hands through her hair. The brown was now a multi-toned blonde with hints of strawberry, cut into fashionable pieces that fell lightly over her scalp.
It was morning. I was sitting on the couch in Rose's apartment, waiting for her to finish getting ready. Based on the timing of the prior attacks, we were expecting that the demon would be looking for his next victim today, and we had done our best to ensure that she would be the one it chose.
"It looks great," I replied. "It really suits your face."
She turned away from the mirror and smiled. "Thanks. What do you think of the outfit?" She spun around, showing off the clothes.
She really was an appealing woman. "I just hope you don't attract too much attention." I reached behind my back. "I have something for you."
"You bought me a present?"
"Sort of. I didn't buy it." I brought my hand out, holding up the blessed knife I'd recovered from my storage unit in the basement. It was long enough to kill a demon with, small enough to stick into the heel of the ankle boots she was wearing.
"How romantic." She laughed and took the knife, examining the scripture etched into the metal. "It's beautiful." She ran her finger along the edge, pulling back as it sliced easily through her flesh and drew blood. "Sharp, too." She sucked the blood from her finger. "What would happen if I stabbed you with it?"
"It would hurt. Give it a try though, you gave me an idea yesterday and I wanted to test it out."
"Are you sure?"
I nodded. "You can't do any permanent damage."
She took the knife and flipped it in her hand, putting the blade up against her wrist. She rushed forward and slashed across my chest.
I pushed the energy out along my shirt, changing it to something denser and more resilient, something more like spider-silk than steel. The knife started skidding off, and then sank through, cutting into my side.
"Oh, shit. Landon, I'm sorry."
I looked down at the wound, pushing the energy to it. It was harder to recover from Divine weapons than it was to bullets, which is why I had wanted to put the shield idea to the test.
"It's okay," I said. "I didn't make it strong enough." Both the wound and the clothes mended while she watched. "I didn't want to do something heavy, because it will pull the rest of the cloth down and move it off the impact point. I can't do the whole thing, or I won't be able to move."
"Maybe it wasn't the best idea."
"It has potential. I'll have to think about it some more."
She knelt down and tucked the blade into her boot. "Thanks again for the knife."
We left the apartments, deciding to walk the sixteen or so blocks north to Lincoln Center. The sun was out, and the weather temperate for the time of year. If it hadn't been for the map, the pins, the runes, and the demon, I would have enjoyed the chance to get to know Rose a little better.
Instead
, I was more nervous than I had been since my rebirth. I didn't like not knowing what we were walking into, or who or what we would find. It had been a long time since I had felt so clueless, so unprepared and vulnerable.
"There's the school," Rose said.
We had reached the intersection at Broadway and 65th, leaving the sharp corner of the school pointing at us like the tip of a dagger, though it bore a closer resemblance to the bow of a ship, or the mouth of a whale. I watched the people near the building with a close eye, searching for that internal sense that they were not what they seemed, and at the same time wondering which of the girls I saw entering the school today might not be coming back tomorrow if we failed in our plan.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," I said. "Which isn't much of a surprise."
"No. Let's find out where the library is."
We crossed the street and made our way towards the entrance to the school: a row of glass doors leading to a reception area and a set of stairs. I repeated my aging trick as we did, reversing myself back to my pre-death appearance.
"I still like you better older," Rose said.
"This is a little less suspicious. Are you ready for this?"
"I'm nervous, scared, angry. Yeah, I'm ready."
We didn't stop at the help desk, instead heading straight up the stairs together, laughing and making small-talk and doing our best to look like we belonged. There were a few other students around us, and I eyed each one carefully, making sure they were pure mortal. I knew Rose was doing the same.
It took a bit of wandering, a few missteps, and a couple of reversals, but we managed to locate the library without attracting the wrong kind of attention, and without spotting any demons.
We split up as soon as we got inside.
Most libraries had a similar setup, and despite housing one of the most complete collections of music related resources in the world, Juilliard's wasn't much different. An open space on the ground floor with tables for studying, bookshelves ringing the walls and aligned in columns, and two more floors of material rising above it. Rose kept to the ground floor, heading straight to a table to put her props down and act studious, while I hit the stairs and climbed to a vantage point that allowed me to scan anyone who entered.
After that, there was nothing to do but hope we'd picked the right place, and wait.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We were there for four hours.
Then five.
Then six.
Rose spent the entire time at her table, laptop open, a stack of books aligned around her. I spent as much time as I could near the steps where I could see the door, moving just enough to not look like a stalker. I wandered back and forth with a book in my hands, open to a random page, my eyes peering over the edge to the position below.
Seven o'clock came. The library was closing in a couple of hours, there were only a half-dozen people left milling around, and we still had nothing.
I had been wrong. That was the only way to explain it. Maybe the rune was a coincidence, or maybe I had picked the wrong school. In a city as dense as New York, the minor differences between the straight lines versus the actual sweeping curves of the shape could have brought us to the wrong place.
Didn't Fordham have a campus nearby?
Or maybe the demon had already come and gone, picking its victim and setting a date. Maybe it had gone against its penchant for libraries, choosing the stage or the orchestra.
I headed for the stairs, ready to collect Rose and try to figure out what to do next. If the demon kept up his killing pace, someone was going to die tonight, and it was my fault. Not that people didn't die every day. Not that demons didn't kill a fair number of them. It didn't usually bother me, except... Rose had come to me for help, and when she did, she came to me on behalf of every girl that either had been killed, or might be killed. She had jumped through my hoops, she had cut through my red tape. She had worked out the tough ciphers that Obi created, and believed strongly enough to come to my apartment to see if I was for real. No one had ever done that before, and the idea of that made it all the more meaningful.
It also made it personal.
I was halfway down when I noticed someone had approached her; a tall, skinny guy with shoulder length black hair in tight jeans and a leather jacket. Where the hell had he come from?
I went back up the stairs, going straight along the railing, trying to get to a spot where I could see his face, his eyes. Rose was talking to him, and she looked calm and comfortable, not what I would expect if she were face to face with her sister's killer.
I circled around behind her, finally getting a look at him. He had a narrow face, angled features, and dark eyes. I stared at him, expecting the alarms to go off.
Nothing.
He reached into his pocket and handed Rose a business card. He brushed a piece of his hair away from his face. He glanced up, his eyes passing over me for just an instant.
Then he left.
The place was almost empty, so I vaulted the railing, letting myself drop to the floor, pushing off with my power at the last second in order to land easy. I came up behind Rose.
"What do you think?" she asked me, holding the card up behind her head. It was glossy and colorful. I took it from her and scanned it. "He's a musician. His name is Peter."
The card was an advertisement for a club his band would be playing at in two hours. "Entropy?"
"Short and sweet, I like it. He gave a card to everyone in here."
"I didn't see him come in."
"He was here for a few hours, studying at the table over there." It was below the overhang. "You must have been sleeping or something when he came in. Anyway, he didn't register on my demon warning system, and if he already has a band and a gig, I doubt he's new to the school. I don't think he's our asshole."
She was right. There was nothing suspicious about him.
"Do you like rock music?" I asked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Entropy was playing at a club a few blocks away, a place called the Underground, probably because the entire thing was located in the sub-basement of a residential apartment building, a place that supposedly had once been anything from an upscale brothel, to an opium den, to a Mafia hangout.
Now it was a stage, a pit, and a bar. There were lots of multi-colored spotlights, lots of grafitti-coated bare cement and pipes, and lots of people.
They were dressed in an assortment of short skirts, blue jeans, and leather, and crowded into the place at least a few hundred strong, leaving little enough room to maneuver through the flesh, and little enough fresh air to breathe. They were mostly college age, though I could spot a few that were a bit too old to be there, and even more that were definitely too young. There had been a bouncer at the door up the steps, but apparently he wasn't very picky about checking ID, or actually preventing anyone from entering.
"Anita would have loved this place," Rose said. We were near the center of the space, halfway between the bar at the rear and the stage at the front. A DJ was spinning tracks from a cage hanging over our heads, and bodies pounded and shifted around us.
"What about you?"
"Back then, yeah. Life has made enjoying stuff like this a challenge."
"I'd love to say it gets easier-"
"But you don't want to lie to me. I know. I get it."
A girl came out at me from the left. She had tripped or something, and was on her way to taking a painful fall. I lunged forward and caught her, one hand resting on her shoulder, the other on her ass.
"Are you okay?"
She looked at me. A vampire.
"Landon, what the-" Rose had noticed. She could See the girl I'd caught well enough to know she wasn't human.
"Landon?" The vamp was scared. She squirmed in my arms, trying to get free. "Let me go. Please."
"I'm not here for you," I said. I lifted her upright. A young guy came out of the crowd and took her arm.
"What the hell are you doing, touching my girl?"
<
br /> "David-" She tried to intervene. I'd inadvertently walked right into her mark.
"Just trying to keep her from smashing her head on the floor," I said. "No harm done." I put up my hands.
"Yeah, right. No harm done? Your hand on her ass is no harm done?"
"David-" she said again, still trying.
David's hands curled into fists.
I took one quick step towards him, hitting him hard below the temple. He had no time to react. He dropped to the floor, the rest of the crowd making room for him.
"Sorry, you'll have to settle for frozen," I said to the vampire.
She looked down at David, and then back at me. Then she took off.
"Of all the stupid luck," I said, turning to Rose.
"She was a vampire," she said.
"Yes."
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. "I've never been that close before. What was she doing with him?"
"Vampires can't survive without human blood. Since she came to party with him, I'm guessing she was planning to keep him around as a source. She'd take him home, have sex with him, have a little drink, rinse, and repeat until his body couldn't take it anymore. Otherwise, she might have brought him somewhere and drained him out, drinking enough to be satisfied, and collecting the rest to either save for later, or put onto the exchange."
"The exchange?"
"Vampires have a global marketplace where they buy and sell blood, valued by the source."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. I shut it down temporarily a few years ago. It started up again while I was gone, and it hasn't been worth the effort to go after it again."
"They kill people for their blood, and that's not worth the effort?"
"You know the war on drugs?"
"Yeah."
"How well has that gone?"
She stared at me for a few seconds, and then accepted it.
We turned towards the stage, even as five guys appeared on it, walking out from the left. A drummer, a bassist, a guitarist, a girl in a tight cocktail dress, and Peter.
