by Rhys Ford
“Tam Lin. Johnson. Pousão.” Ari ticked a few off on his fingers. “The Courts do like their artists.”
“But not lately. Not like they used to. They haven’t grabbed anyone in decades.” Shifting forward, Min rested her chin on the mound of her palm.
“No Fae would be able to make him immortal. He’d have remained human. Just unseen. This is different,” Death said thoughtfully.
Ari stood, absently reaching for Death’s empty cup of tea. Ari grunted when the other Horseman nodded and murmured his thanks. His attention followed Ari’s progress to the kitchen, dragging reluctantly back to the others.
“Someone had to pull him across the Veil. Someone with power and probably wanting to do it again.”
“Did he say anything about someone else?” Ari asked from the kitchen.
“I didn’t talk to him,” Min remarked. “Pest did.”
“He doesn’t have anyone else.” Mal turned his mug in his hands. “I think he’s alone, but I can’t see him letting someone do something to him. He’s pretty strong willed.”
“Cooties, you don’t get out enough to know about humans,” Min muttered.
“How strong could his will be if he’s using drugs to run away from the shadows that can’t even hurt him?” Ari padded back, handing Death a refilled mug.
Death turned the cat’s face around until its nose rested against the crook of his thumb, then spoke. “Sometimes, humans use drugs or alcohol to numb themselves so they don’t see the Veil. It doesn’t mean he’s weak.”
“The wraith attacked him directly. It was standing over him and ignoring the other human.” Ari reconstructed what he saw when he pulled the Mustang up to the motel. “It saw me, but it didn’t even blink. It wasn’t going to let him go.”
“A summoned creature usually goes for a prey that someone’s cast for. So there’s someone who held its leash,” Death mused aloud. The boy was definitely prey for someone. “An immortal showing up should have drawn it away. You’d be a threat. At the very least, it would try to protect its prey, thinking you were the greater predator. It could be someone in the Courts wants him.”
“Or human,” Min pointed out. “There’s always a few out there that meddle in things they shouldn’t.”
“It was trying to drag the kid someplace.” Ari tried to reconstruct what he’d seen, the incident clouded from the adrenaline in his blood during the fight. “The wraith was hunkered down over him. Its feet were dug in and pulling on him. I think it was trying to take him elsewhere.”
“And since they’re not that smart, it would have to be given a simple command.” Death sipped at his tea, feeling the heat sink into the chill in his body. “It would have to take the boy someplace close. The wraith wouldn’t be able to drag the boy by jumping through the Veil. It wouldn’t have the strength.”
“I don’t know,” Ari said. “It was dragging him off, but it was having problems. Something powerful enough to affect the outside world should have been able to pick up the kid and fling him around like he was a rag doll.”
“So perhaps it couldn’t get a good hold on him? Maybe right then, the boy was between worlds?” Death set his mug down. “Whatever it was changing him could have finished the job by the time you two brought him here. You said he wasn’t conscious while you drove. Was he disoriented?”
“I’m guessing yes and with a big headache,” Min said, motioning toward Mal. “He woke up and asked Pest for some aspirin. I don’t think Mal pushed himself out of the Veil to talk to him.”
“No. I didn’t.” Mal realized he’d just sat down and started talking to the young man sprawled out on the couch. He hadn’t had to take the time or energy to pull himself into Kismet’s reality, using his will to force himself into view. “I didn’t even think about it at the time. I mean, I never do that at home.”
“You wouldn’t have thought of it,” Death assured him. “This is our home. Remember? The Veil doesn’t extend inside our home.”
“He said something to Mal after I got the wraith off of him.” The others looked at Ari, sliding off the arm and nestling into the space next to Death. “Spoke right to him. I didn’t think anything about that at all either. A lot of the crazies talk to us. Doesn’t mean they’re one of us. It just means they can see us.”
“But you carried him here,” Min pointed out.
“I’d pushed the Veil aside.” Ari shrugged. “Since I had to drive here, I kept it down until I came upstairs. Cops tend to want to pull over cars if it looks like no one is driving.”
“The question is, what do we do now?” Min asked, moving off the chair and next to Mal. “Do we go after him? And what do we do with him once we find him?”
“We have to find out what made him immortal,” Death said. “Someone did this on purpose, and I don’t think it was the boy. Whoever changed him probably wants him back to make sure it worked.”
“You think this someone will change more people?” Mal asked.
“Bet on it,” Min replied. “Damn. If the Veil snapped apart from one human, imagine what will happen with more.”
“I don’t want to spend the next century hunting down spooks and wraiths. It was bad enough when those damned priests kept bringing them over.” Ari shook his head. “I thought we left those days behind.”
“That’s what’s going to happen if we don’t stop this,” Death pointed out. “As for what to do with him, we bring him here.”
“Bring him here? What the hell are we going to do with a human here?” Ari turned sideways, amazed. “It’s not like he can live here.”
“Where else are we going to take him?” Mal moved to the edge of the couch, the cushions crimpling with his weight.
“This isn’t the Four Horsemen and their Little Pony.” Fuming, Ari gritted his teeth, Death cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “Come on! You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious. The discussion is over.” Death stood, ignoring Ari’s huff of anger. “We’ll split up. Two of us can start with the motel and the other two work inward from a few blocks out. If he’s out looking for drugs, we can hope he’ll probably go to someone close to where he lives.”
“It’s down by College,” Mal offered, gathering up the cups and heading into the kitchen, avoiding Ari’s hot stare. “I know where the motel is.”
“Lots of dealers down that way. It’s like a Chinese buffet.” Min stepped over Ari’s long legs, grabbing at the jacket she’d tossed over the back of the couch. “It might take us a long time to find him.”
“Should be easy enough. Find one drugged-out kid amid all the other drugged-out kids in the area.” Ari straightened up, resigned to Death’s plan. “Just thought I’d say this now, I think this is a bad idea.”
“It’s our only option,” Death replied. “Now who’s driving? I certainly can’t. Ari let a wraith eat my car.”
CHAPTER NINE
A WOODEN bookcase hid the staircase leading down to the basement. The swinging shelves were installed after a housekeeper stumbled on his workroom. She’d been the first person who died after coming into contact with the things he summoned from the Veil but by no means the last. The stairs were wide, accommodating for some of the larger arcane pieces he had collected over the years.
The downstairs space initially served as a fallout shelter in the paranoia of the midcentury. Over the years it served as a pantry or a wine cellar until Beckett purchased the oceanfront property. He’d immediately seen the windowless space downstairs as a place to conduct his experiments, which depended heavily on the presence of pitch-black shadows.
Divided into two chambers by a long wall, the shelter now boasted a comfortable library on one side of the landing’s opening. Beckett left the other chamber relatively unaltered except for wide surgical sinks and long tables against the wall. He’d paid for a stonemason to groove a permanent circle in the middle of the poured cement floor, its radius wide enough to hold the largest of shadow creatures.
Glass boxes holding his
most prized possessions lined the shared wall, curiosities he’d gleaned from his travels. Small dollops of mewling black dots climbed around behind one pane, their small maws biting and chewing off pieces of weaker wraithlings. A misshapen skull stared out into the room from another, its gummy, yellowing eyes darting about with frenetic movement. Beckett admired the frothy collection of minute glossy wings he’d gathered into a glass square, tiny drops of inky black blood splattered around the ripped ends of the spines.
Each box held something taken from the Veiled, anchored in the visible world by a whisper of power. Some he’d gathered himself, the cruder pieces that he could grab and pull over. Others he’d paid dearly for or sometimes stumbled upon without the owner knowing the article’s true worth. Just last year he’d come upon a man who was interested in selling off pieces his uncle left in a basement. Beckett nearly wet himself when he discovered the preserved skins of Veiled kept in a flat museum case, nearly perfect after years of storage in the dry darkness of a root cellar.
Taking a sharp scalpel from a table, he touched a length of muddied green skin he’d left out on the low countertop beneath the grisly collection. Beckett at first was horrified at the idea of cutting into the darkfae hide, but its precious flesh was key to summoning a powerful wraith.
“No matter.” Beckett stilled his fingers, slicing into the buttery soft flesh. “After I drain the boy of his blood, getting more components will be simple.”
The magus who had taken the skin awed Beckett with his mastery of preservation. As the blade cut into each layer of epidermis, a redolent stink rose as the fat was exposed to the air, the odor released from the darkfae’s musk glands. Using a pair of metal tongs, he plucked up a wide swath of skin, then placed the flesh in the middle of the lopsided star he’d poured out earlier. After filling the groove with coarse salt and gold filings, Beckett dusted off his hands and stood back, taking a deep breath into his lungs to steady his nerves.
Spitting directly on the piece of hide, Beckett invoked the first stage of the summoning, binding the creature to his will. He preferred Italian for his dealings with the arcane, feeling the language lent a smooth elegance to the arts, but the summoning language was clear in its demand for the harsh nonsensical words scribbled in the various books he’d found on the subject. It left his throat scratchy as he finished the incantation, the flesh nearly raked raw and bleeding from the strain of pronouncing the spell correctly.
The shadows along the groove thickened, gathering until the ring filled in and spilled over into the cement circle. Stretched too tightly, the Veil burst apart at the center of the circle, minute wraithlings drawn by the smell of darkfae flesh and Beckett’s spit. Falling upon their feast, they chewed off nibbles, growing larger with each bite. Soon the dried meat was gone, and the wraiths intertwined, beginning to form a larger creature, a dark, malevolent intelligence dimly flickering in their round crimson eyes.
Beckett ruefully sliced off more of the darkfae flesh, feeding the developing mass as the Veil’s edges buckled under the pressure of staying open. Struggling to reform, the shadowy curtain stretched to right the natural balance between the visible and the arcane worlds, held apart by the strength of Beckett’s will. Switching to Italian, Beckett laid down the groundwork for the summoned creature, letting it form from his thoughts.
Very few of the tadpole creatures remained, all of the others absorbed by the larger creature beginning to dominate the circle. Gaining power, the shapeless creature stretched and formed a head, then wings along its elliptical body, a sleek, glistening beak snapping at Beckett’s head. He jerked back, not at all reassured by the circle’s strength in holding the creature at bay until he finished the spell.
Beckett regarded his creation with satisfaction. Nearly the height of a tall man and heavy bodied, the creature’s enormous wings, sweeping leathery stretches, would carry it along the shadows of clouds and over buildings as it hunted. His texts warned of creating implausible creatures. Fanciful imaging would cripple any creation if certain laws of physics weren’t observed. The birdlike creature he formed fit those rules, its powerful body supported by two muscled legs bristling with talons and a raking spike along the back joint.
“Now, let’s see if I can get you on a leash.” Beckett walked around the circle, noting the sharpness of the creature’s gaze as it followed him. It was always a risk pushing a summoned creature into development. He could never be sure of its hunger and temperament until the final words of the binding spell and the creature submitted under him.
“Simple words, layered,” Beckett reminded himself. He started with the simplest of commands, his mastery over the creature. Tossing another sliver of flesh into the circle, the man wove the protections over the creature, invoking its hunger to protect Beckett’s prey and a clear missive to kill any who would defend the young man from being brought to Beckett’s side.
When he was done spinning his will around the summoned bird’s mind, Beckett sighed with fatigue, his clothes drenched through with sweat. A trickle of blood escaped from a popped cluster of cells in his sinuses, his concentration nearly breaking under the creature’s rush to free itself from the constraining spell. Beckett touched the splotch with his fingers, wiped the blood on a tissue, then tossed it at the creature’s snapping beak.
The blood seared the wraith’s tongue, burning along the length of its throat as it gulped the paper. Beckett pronounced his final invocation, calling the bird back to its creation point following the completion of its task. If successful, the creature would return to the circle, another tool in Beckett’s growing arsenal. While he regretted losing the darkfae skin, his creation would be quite useful in the future.
“There.” Beckett released the creature back into the Veil, watching the curtain seal up behind the slither of its wings. Turning the lights off behind him, Beckett climbed the stairs back up to the main floor, his stomach rumbling with hunger. “First a shower and some lunch. Then we wait for Frazier to return with our prize.”
“MAL LIKES this kid. That could be a problem.” Ari broke the silence in the Mustang, his eyes flickering off the road and onto Death’s chiseled moody face. The Horseman clammed up immediately after seeing the ruined Vanquish, a sure sign he had a temper brewing behind his hooded sooty eyes.
Not getting a response, Ari grumbled under his breath, then spoke. “You ever going to talk to me again?”
“Probably not,” Death muttered. “You’re a danger to anything I ride in or on.”
“The damned horse died centuries ago,” Ari pointed out. “And the car wasn’t my fault. I’d think you would be happy that I didn’t let Mal get killed. He seems to think that he can die.”
“Many of the Veiled can die. They’re just hidden from humans but still mortal,” Death clarified. “You seem determined to prove that we can as well.”
“Yeah, there are a couple of those others I’d like to kill,” Ari muttered, swearing at a car that swerved too close to his beloved Mustang. “These people drive like shit.”
Leaning over, Death punched on the stereo, switching the channel until he found a station he liked, a heavy bass thumping through the speakers. Ari sucked at his teeth, annoyed at the fiddling with his car stereo, but knew better than to press Death when he was in a mood. Ari debated leaving the argument alone for a moment. Then the niggling push of his irritation barbed his tongue.
“You telling me next time I should just let the wraith eat him?” Ari pulled the Mustang to a stop, catching sight of Mal and Min behind them in the SUV. “I’ll be sure to tell him that next time he’s screaming for help. Or maybe that’s your plan to toughen him up. Let him fight his own battles when we both know he can barely wield a knife to cut butter?”
“No.” Death reluctantly dragged the word out, sliding down in the leather seat. Slouching, he hooked his foot up over the dashboard, resting one arm on the door. Twisting, Death watched while Ari maneuvered around a slow-moving minivan. “I’m glad you protected him, and no, I
don’t know why he won’t defend himself.”
“You keep telling me Mal is different and that we need different. But we need him to be able to defend himself,” Ari reminded him. “Maybe he just needs to understand how damned serious this is.”
“The boy might help with that,” Death said. “Mal might need someone he feels responsible for.”
“Then we get Mal a turtle or something. Taking the boy on is a very bad idea.” Lines of cars slowly flowed around them, feeding into the concrete veins of the valley’s various freeways. Ari let a car into the stream, puffing his cheeks in frustration at the delay. “There must be a game or something. I’ve got to get off of the freeway, or you’ll be sifting through the people I’m going to kill. Hope they can keep up in that piece of crap Mal likes to drive.”
The freeway sliced through the city, striated concrete tunnels interspersed between tracts of greenbelt. Death missed the cobbled-together community gardens that once covered the stretch of street, a neighborhood casualty to the growing needs of the city’s traffic. While he preferred the quiet green of the Northwest, the high desert city certainly had attraction, at the very least, its nearly perfect weather and the preponderance of good, cheap Mexican food.
Mal’s SUV took the ramp right behind them, keeping a few cars’ distance. Ari resisted the urge to gun his engine and pull away, the Mustang growling under him. Pulling out of the off-ramp, Ari spotted the strip mall where they encountered the wraith, the decimated fire hydrant already removed and its empty space covered with sheets of plywood and traffic cones. Ari came to a rolling stop near the fire zone’s curb. A flickering Open sign hung in a Chinese buffet’s window, the red-and-blue neon reflection running along the chrome of a steaming food line.
“That wraith did a lot of damage,” Death remarked upon the torn-up concrete sidewalk and the gouges in the asphalt left by flying metal. Death unhooked his seat belt, ignoring Ari’s snort of derision at its use, then slid out of the Mustang, taking his katana from the car’s backseat. “Someone must have poured a lot of power into it. Look at this.”
