Flesh and Blood_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  4

  “This is a mistake,” Diane Freeman said as Renee pushed her through the doorway of the hotel room I’d rented earlier in the morning. When I’d taken the key to room 319 from a perky redhead named Alyssa, my plan was to get Diane to do her reading, get the information we needed from her, and send her on her way.

  I certainly hadn’t expected my girlfriend to guide her toward the king size bed in the center of the room with a gun hidden beneath her jacket. That was for protection. In case something went wrong, I wanted Renee to be able to protect herself. I was supposed to be the strong arm, to get what we needed out of Diane regardless of the cost. Life’s like that though. It twists and turns itself until you can’t recognize where you are or who you are. That’s how mine is, anyway.

  “Get on the bed,” Renee said flatly. There was steel in her voice, steel others who didn’t know her might think was natural or second nature. I did know her though, and I knew just how hard it was for her to back Diane into this corner.

  She wasn’t this type of person. She didn’t like guns. She didn’t carry them if she could help it, which was laughable given the fact we basically traded warning shots the first night we met. Unfortunately, like that night her back was pressed firmly to the proverbial wall.

  “You’re really going to let her do this?” Diane Freeman asked, looking back at me. “You’re just going to let her blatantly hold a gun at me like this?” Her nose scrunched up disgustedly. “Some police officer you are.”

  I blanched, wondering how she knew that about me since my badge had stayed hidden under my jacket, and I hadn’t done anything to betray my occupation.

  “One of your ghost friends tell you that?” Gary, my best friend, closest confidant, and the only imp who was allowed to sleep under the same roof as me, asked as he marched toward Diane on short green legs.

  Diane didn’t seem surprised to see him. Of course, the fact that she registered him at all meant she was aware of the existence of imps. Otherwise, he’d have been as indistinguishable as a fart in a dairy farm. She barely blinked, keeping her cool as she took in the short scaly, green monster with jagged fanged teeth, spider eyes, and pointed ears.

  “My friends often tell me more if I ask them nicely,” she answered. She didn’t even try to hide the threat in her words.

  “This should be easy for you then. Now get on the bed,” I said, my voice lower, calmer, and hopefully less jarring. This wasn’t how I wanted things to go, and I was hoping I could turn this thing around. A lawsuit from a world famous medium and television star wasn’t something I needed in my immediate future.

  Diane glared at me as she realized I wasn’t going to fold, regardless of the fact she knew my occupation. I didn’t care if she knew my shoe size. We were up shit creek, and I needed her help to find a paddle. That was all that mattered.

  “This doesn’t have to be hard,” I said as the well put together woman sat on the bed and placed her hands firmly against her legs palms down.

  “It’s a little late for that,” she scoffed, her eyes flitting from me, to Renee, and finally to Gary. She was sizing us up, very possibly trying to figure out which of history’s mass murderers would be willing to take us out.

  Part of me wanted her to try to whip up a herd of Viking ghosts, just to prove to her those little tricks of hers wouldn’t work in here. The Himalayan salt might have been failed around the perimeter of the hotel, but I had taken extra precautions inside this room. While I was sending Genghis Khan’s shiny blue ass off into the netherworld, Gary was busy creating a barrier within these four walls that would stop any malicious spirit from gaining corporeal form. Thanks to an incantation from me on the way in, this place was tighter than my budget back in school.

  “Yeah, and who’s fault is that?” I asked, sitting on the chair across from her. I looked over at Renee and motioned for her to lower the gun.

  “No way in hell. This gun stays where it is until we get what we need.” She shook her head, careful not to take her eyes off Diane.

  “Renee,” I said, my voice falling a full octave as I glared at her. “That’s not necessary anymore.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” she said, moving closer. “She could have killed you back there.”

  “Actually,” Diane chimed in. “It would have been Khan who killed him. I’d have just watched from a safe distance, and maybe laughed.” She shrugged. “Okay, definitely laughed.”

  My teeth ground together. This bitch was working on my last nerve.

  “Shut up!” Renee growled, inching forward, the gun steady in her hands.

  “Stop,” I said as I stood and walked to Renee. I placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her toward the far end of the room as I motioned for Gary to keep the medium where she was. Then, lowering my voice so Diane wouldn’t hear me, I spoke. “What’s going on? This doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I just want this over with,” Renee answered, her teeth ground together. “I want to hear what my brother has to say about all of this.”

  I looked at her for a long minute, trying to crack my way into that beautiful skull. She must have been in a lot of pain. Not only had she lost her brother, but he had made a mess before rushing off and leaving her to clean it up, even if it meant her death. That sort of thing would leave anyone with a lot of questions. I just didn’t want her putting too much importance on trying to find answers that would bring her peace because-if what I knew about the horrors that could surround someone in the afterlife was true- the likelihood was they wouldn’t be very good answers.

  “I’m not sure he’ll be able to explain himself, Renee,” I answered, swallowing hard. “People do strange things sometimes, especially when they find themselves in weird situations. He probably wasn’t thinking when he-”

  “No,” Renee said sternly, the steel in her voice surprising me. She grabbed my hand with her free hand and moved it off her shoulder. “You don’t understand. I don’t give a damn about why he did what he did. I know what happened. I was there. He was scared. He was selfish. He was also a kid, barely in college. I don’t blame him for falling victim to a goddamned monster.” She pulled away from me, putting distance between us. “Listen to me, Roy. I blame the monster. What I want to know is what happens next. You heard what Fulton said, right? They’re after Cypress blood, and since my brother’s body was completely drained of that substance, I’m pretty sure he can tell me what the big deal is.”

  Nick’s dead body crashing against the windshield of my car had left a thousand questions for all of us, the least of which was what had happened to him and why. But Renee brushing past what happened to her and how that might affect her didn’t seem healthy to me.

  “You can’t bottle all of this up, babe,” I said, shrugging as I turned back toward Diane. The quicker we got through this, the quicker she’d get over it.

  “Who the fuck are you, Dr. Phil? We got trouble here, Roy boy. We don’t have time to go deep in our psyches and all that shit. The Benefactor sucked an entire building into the bowels of the Earth and made it so none of the hundreds and hundreds of people walking by even noticed. You’re a warlock. At least the boring half of you is. You’ve got to know how much power that takes and what we’re dealing with. So unwad your panties and man up already.” The proximity of Gary’s voice startled me. The green bastard had snuck between us while we were talking and now he was looking up at me, all spider eyes and two cents. “And when did you start calling girls, babe? It’s so douchey.”

  “Shut up Gary,” I shot back, but Renee didn’t take to dismissing him as easily.

  “He’s got a point,” she said, her eyes moving past me and settling on Diane. “I get that you want me to own what happened, but I’m Greek, Roy. I was raised by Greek parents who themselves were raised by Greek parents. Let’s just say overt vulnerability never came easy to us, and even if it had, we don’t have time to indulge it now.”

  She pushed past me and moved toward Diane, who was now leaning back, her e
lbows bracing her against the mattress.

  “Look at me,” Renee said as she tossed the gun on the chair where I was sitting. Well, that was interesting. I just hoped it wasn’t interesting in the horrible car accident sort of way.

  Diane flinched as she stared wide eyed at the thrown gun. “Are you insane?” she balked. “You can’t toss around a firearm. Do you have any idea how unsafe that is?”

  “You can if it’s not loaded,” Renee answered, settling in front of Diane and crossing her arms over her chest. “I was never going to shoot you. It’s not my style. I should have never put you under the impression I was, but I was pissed off. You almost killed my boyfriend. You would have killed him if he hadn’t stopped you, and that makes us the opposite of friends. It doesn’t mean your life is in danger though. At least, not in the physical sense.”

  Diane’s eyes narrowed, as did mine. Neither of us were quite sure what sort of game Renee was playing or what she had up her sleeve. Still, it surprised me. I hadn’t realized the gun was unloaded. Even still, she probably shouldn’t have thrown it. After all, you were always supposed to treat guns like they were loaded.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Diane asked, sitting up straighter.

  “I graduated first in my class, Ms. Freeman. I worked under one of the most prestigious and cutthroat lawyers in the Southeast before I got sick of the corruption and decided to join the District Attorney’s office instead, and from there, I’ve successfully prosecuted nearly thirty cases.”

  Diane rolled her eyes so hard, it nearly caused her permanent visual damage. “Now that I have your resume, would you mind getting to the point?”

  “The point is I’m good at what I do, you bleach blonde, made up piece of television trailer trash. I have investigated more criminals than I can count on both my hands and feet. I know what they look like, I know how they act, and you, Ms. Freeman, fit the mold: speak like a criminal, act like a criminal, and I’m betting that if I dig long and hard enough, I’m going to find proof you’re a criminal.” Renee leaned in closer and exhaled hard through her nose. “Let me guess, is it tax evasion? Do you have a secret account in the Caribbean Uncle Sam doesn’t know about? Or maybe it’s in your past. Maybe you did something to make ends meet before Hollywood came calling.”

  Diane looked away and pulled nervously at her fingers. She had the look of a person who had done what she had to when her back was against the wall. I recognized the hard edges on her face, the worn look in her eyes. I’d seen things very similar to them in the mirror everyday.

  “Rest assured, Ms. Freeman, I will find out what you’ve done, and if it falls out of my jurisdiction, I’ll make sure the proper authorities are given all they need to throw your white collar ass in a prison for so long Martha Stewart will feel sorry for you.” Renee pursed her lips. “I don’t have to do any of that though. I can walk out of this room and forget you exist. All you have to do is play ball. It’s easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

  Diane looked up at Renee for a long moment- her eyes icing over and her facial expression tightening into a defeated mask- before turning to me and splaying her hands out in front of her in a sign of defeat. “That’s how you negotiate, Mr. Morgan.” Looking back up at Renee, she continued. “I’ll need a candle, a handful of sage, and a bottle of rum to do this.”

  “You didn’t need any of that before,” Renee answered, narrowing her eyes at the medium.

  “Because that was a simple conjuring before,” Diane answered, standing to meet us. “You need something more, something bigger.”

  “What are you?” I started to say before Diane cut me off with a wave of one hand.

  “The truth is,” Diane said with a smirk. “Someone has been trying to communicate with you since the moment my car pulled up outside this God forsaken hotel. They’re practically screaming into my ear, begging to talk to you.” She shook her head. “And it’s not your brother, Madame ADA.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, instinctively walking up to Renee and taking her hand. I didn’t like the direction this was going or the sort of ominous air permeating the room. “Forget all the overture and supplies.”

  “If only I could,” Diane Freeman said, shaking her head in a way that almost made me believe her. Almost. “You see, the voice is distant, little more than a horrid and haggard whisper. I need to pull it closer. I need to free it from the shackles binding it. To do that, I need the supplies.” She shrugged. “Unless, of course, you happen to know a better way of communicating with a soul that resides in the lowest pits of hell.”

  5

  “We’re really doing this?” Gary asked, looking up at me as I walked back into the hotel room with my arms full of Diane’s supplies.

  “We’re really doing it,” I said, pushing the door closed behind me with my foot and looking down at my green, scaly and, at the present moment, scared as shit best friend. I had seen this look on him before though perhaps not to this extent. Delving into the lower pits of Hell wasn’t an easy thing, and speaking to someone who ended up there might not have seemed like a smart idea looking at things from the outside.

  He shook his oblong head, his spider eyes blinking up at me as he sighed heavily.

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Roy boy,” he said, nervously tapping a long foot against the floor. “People you want to talk to generally don’t wind up in the lowest pits of Hell. It sounds more like the kind of place where homicidal lunatics who liked to eat children or set off anthrax bombs in the middle of convents go.” He grabbed my pant leg and pulled at it hard. “It sounds like the kind of place Genghis Khan should have gone, and you remember how close to dead you came when we dealt with him.”

  I shook my leg, freeing my pants from his grip and glaring down at him. I didn’t need this right now. Things were scattered enough. I had no idea what we were dealing with because the Benefactor could be anyone or anything. Whoever he was, he was scary enough to leave a batshit crazy and nearly all powerful fae shaking in her heeled designer boots.

  Worse, he wanted to drain my girlfriend’s blood, just like he’d done to her little brother, Nick. He obviously wasn’t afraid of me since he’d literally thrown Nick’s body on top of us.

  He wasn’t trying to keep it a secret. He didn’t want the element of surprise because he didn’t think he needed it. That meant he was one hell of a badass. The fact that we’d have to go through Hell to find answers not only didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t trouble me either.

  After all, you don’t get that strong without pissing off really bad people. The weird thing was, it shouldn’t have troubled Gary either. It was concerning, but since he hadn’t told me why other than his generic fear of people who resided in Hell, I needed him to get over it. We needed to be a united front. If we weren’t the chances of us surviving this were going to drop in a hurry, and they weren’t exactly high to begin with.

  “This room is spelled, warded, hexed, and enchanted up the wazoo, Gary. You know that,” I answered, my agitation with him spilling into my voice as I spoke. If he was going to act like a little pansy, then I was going to treat him like one. “Nothing can go corporeal in here. We’re perfectly safe. That said, if you wanna hide in the bathroom until the scary parts are over, be my guest.”

  “That’s not how it is at all,” Gary sneered at me, which was something to behold given the sheer number of teeth shoved into his stretchy, oblong slit of a mouth. “I’m ride or die, womb to tomb. You know that, Roy boy. It’s just, I don’t think you’re looking at this flaming mess of dog shit we’ve gotten ourselves into objectively.”

  My eyes flickered up to Renee. She stared out the window in the far corner of the room with probably a million things running through her mind. Gary was right. I was absolutely not looking at this objectively because the logical choice would be to split and let the chips fall where they may.

  Instead of doing that, I was looking at this through the eyes of a guy who was crazy about the girl it was happening to
, which was about as far from objective as you could get. Seriously, you couldn’t throw a stick to objective from where I was standing, not that I was going to admit it to Gary or anything.

  I needed Gary to at least partially believe I had my head on straight and wouldn’t have gone careening headfirst through that window if I thought it might help me save Renee from whatever was going on here. Otherwise, he might think my judgment couldn’t be trusted.

  “You know me, Gary,” I said, hoping he’d drop it. Hey, miracles happen sometimes.

  “I do,” he answered, looking over at me sternly. “That’s the problem. The you I know wouldn’t like this either.”

  “Just go with it, okay?” I said, walking past him and tossing the supplies on the bed in front of Diane Freeman. “Sage, a candle, and a bottle of whiskey.”

  “I said rum.” She looked up at me, her eyes rolling back sarcastically in her head in a way that made me think it was her default gesture.

  “Dollar store didn’t have rum,” I answered with a shrug. “Can you make do with that?”

  She picked it up, popped the top off and brought it up to her lips and took a swig that would make Jack Sparrow blush. “It’s not my preferred drink,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of one hand as she sat the bottle on the counter. “But it’ll do in a pinch.”

  “You just wanted to get drunk?” Renee asked, turning from the window and resting

  “Of course,” she answered, pursing her lips at Renee. “You try communicating with pure evil sober.”

  “Just get it over with,” I said, motioning to the candle and the sage. I was assuming that, unless she wanted to make drunk potpourri, it was needed for the ritual. “The sooner we get through with this, the sooner you can go back to being snooty to fifty thousand people on stage.”

  “The trials of the rightfully famous,” she purred. “Got a light?”

  “Ignitey,” I snapped my fingers and energy sparked up in me, taking the shape I commanded it. It pooled inside of me and then poured from my fingertips. It wafted in the air like smoke before it solidified. A flicker and then a flame took its place on the candle’s wick.