by Thomas, Ian
She touched his arm, feeling everything he had felt. Not quite in the same context, but she had been rebuffed before and knew how it stung. “I’ll find him. He’s…going through stuff.”
Saying anymore and she would have felt disloyal to Jason. Besides it would mean bringing up John. And Jason didn’t deserve having his dirty laundry aired so publicly.
XXVII
A little after midnight McLachlan stood across the street from the Daily Grind. The coffee shop was almost full. Mostly with college students finding it more conducive than the library or where they lived. McLachlan wasn’t sure how true that was, but he had eyes on Jason behind the espresso machine.
“He’s at the coffee shop!” Rebecca shouted.
“I know.” McLachlan winced at her volume. “I just told you that.”
“Sorry, not you, I was telling Mouth.”
“So he’s alive then?” McLachlan heard her co-host ask, hurt.
“Apparently so,” Rebecca replied, her voice quieter.
“Want me to see how he’s doing?”
“No, we know where he is. His shift’ll finish after us so we’ll head there,” she replied.
“Think Eddie said he was going to stop in and check on him.”
“And that’s not going to look obvious at all.”
“I don’t know. We keep some pretty odd hours.”
“No, that’s just you.”
“And you,” he laughed.
“True,” she replied. “You gonna stop in here later?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Depends how successful I am tracking Ben down.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“And stay dry.”
“Sorry, what now?” he asked, looking at the phone.
“I just did the weather and it’s gonna rain most of tonight. Pretty heavily apparently.”
“I’m dating the weather girl,” he teased with a smile.
“And I’m withholding sex,” she said flatly. “Talk later.”
“Grump,” he said as she hung up.
McLachlan took one last look at the coffee shop, debating whether to go and talk to Jason despite what Rebecca had said. But she was already withholding sex. Besides, McLachlan knew from past experience when it came to personal, non-supernatural matters, he was likely to do more damage than good.
Withdrawing the occult-o-meter from his pocket, he looked at the surface to see it still worked. Neither he nor Rowan nor Matteo had any idea how it worked, it just did. Whenever a supernatural was present a dark, narrow triangle would appear on the surface in the direction of whichever supernatural kind it was. The darker the triangle, the closer the proximity. Between them, they had struggled to determine the range of the device.
Presently, there was one triangle on the surface pointing toward ‘demon’, yet it was faint, barely a shadow. That, they had come to decide, was McLachlan and his demonic stain.
There were twelve supernaturals around the device, depicted in rough etchings and named in runes. The typical ones were there – vampire, wiccan, werewolf, demon, and ghost – and other more esoteric ones as well – siren, incubus, succubus, and cambion. The last three he had roughly translated as ‘elemental’, ‘celestial’ and ‘horror’. He really didn’t want to find out what a ‘horror’ was, hoping it was a general term for beasties that weren’t easily categorized. But from his studies, he knew there were ancient, malevolent beings of great power.
Feeling stifled on the street, he ducked down the side alley behind The Daily Grind and climbed to the roof. From what Mouth said Ben had been prowling rooftops. Otherwise, because he felt freer up there. The press of the city fell away and a sense of calm and clarity swept over him.
Life had gotten pretty interesting of late. Between the Cult, Ben’s betrayal, starting this thing with Rebecca, and Dylan back in his life, he hadn’t properly taken stock of where he was at. Usually that was the sort of thing he did with Matteo.
Standing on the roof of the Daily Grind, the night sky thick with rain clouds overhead, he knew where to head first. South to TriBeCa. He’d made the journey many times before and soon found his preferred route. Necessity saw him drop to street level on occasion. Mainly when he hit the major crosstown streets like Houston or Canal. With Broadway off to his left, McLachlan made for Duane Street and Matteo’s large brownstone.
Initially he realized he had gained a better sense of himself since The Ordeal. He wasn’t sure if it was facing down the demon, understanding his stain a little better, or how he had come out of it relatively unscathed. Not that he could talk for those around him, his guilt rampant in these quiet moments. But he felt he had a better handle on his life.
Then he would be haunted by the false memories, and his sense of self wavered.
Memories of the life Mammon had offered him. For the most part, it was like recalling a favorite film or book. Then he would realize they didn’t belong to a film but his life. Or rather one he had never lived.
But he had lived it.
Richer than any film or book, McLachlan would occasionally think his actual life was false and he’d wait to wake up. Over the past weeks, he’d found himself planning for class or hunting for lost essays, only to remember he wasn’t a high school teacher. Absently, he’d even caught the train to Brooklyn, found the house he and Rebecca owned, wondering why his key didn’t fit in the lock. It became hard to think that he was just starting something with Rebecca when he had vivid memories of their wedding, their honeymoon, and their children’s births.
Strangely, he felt the loss of that life, that family. While it had never existed in the first place, Mammon’s gift was more a curse. Granted he wasn’t too upset about not being a high school teacher, though it did give him a sense of doing some good in the world. More than can be said about his actual life.
The closest he’d come to discussing it with anyone had been over the phone to Dylan.
“I feel cheated,” he said.
“Because you can’t have the perfect life offered to you by a hell demon?” Dylan asked, his tone heavily rhetorical.
“No,” McLachlan said almost petulantly.
“Really?” Dylan asked. “Really?”
“I’m serious. It’s like I know too much about Rebecca. Where on her neck she likes to touched. How she likes to be kissed. What gets her–”
“Okay.” Dylan cut him off. “I get it. Poor you with your amazing girlfriend and hot sex.”
“Why did I think you’d be a good person for this?”
“Because Matteo’s gone to ground, you’re dodging Rowan’s calls, and I’m your next best option?”
McLachlan didn’t want to admit the truth in Dylan’s words. He hated his brother being right. Only made him more insufferable.
“Just,” Dylan said, then paused. “Be present with her. Us. This world. That other life, that promise, was a construct. A pretty convincing one from all accounts but hopefully it fades. And as it does, she’ll be new to you again.”
McLachlan paused before answering. “Oh that was beautiful.”
“Shut up.”
“No really, this law thing doesn’t pan out, I’m seeing a huge career in greeting cards.”
“Screw you.”
“Please tell me this whole time with Julie you weren’t writing tortured, purple poems as an emotional outlet.”
“I asked for a puppy,” Dylan exclaimed. “But oh no, my parents had to go and get me a brother.”
“You love me really.”
“In small, infrequent doses.”
“Sorry bud, got a decade to make up for.”
“Shit,” Dylan said.
“In a word.”
Click!
So yeah, life had gotten pretty interesting of late, he mused, standing on a roof-top a block from Matteo’s place. Taking out the occult-o-meter, he studied the surface. As expected, his demon stain registered faintly. However, a werewolf was also indicated. Matteo was home. Good.
> McLachlan was about to put the device away when he spied another marker on the surface. A siren.
In his time dealing with the supernatural, McLachlan had only a handful of experiences with sirens. His first had been in college with Matteo. The siren had attacked a small wolf pack, killing most of them save one. Learning what sirens were and their ill-fated origin was one thing, being near one was another. McLachlan had never known such hatred and hunger at once. The extent to which he was susceptible to sirens frightened him. He posed as much danger to Matteo as the siren.
If one was nearby, he wanted to be elsewhere.
But sirens favored werewolves as their food of choice, settling for mortal men as a close second.
Matteo.
He wouldn’t know until she was upon him. Wolves had a blind spot when it came to sirens.
Leaping across Duane Street, McLachlan clung to the side of building opposite. Then dropped down onto the fire station and up again to the uneven roofs, heading for the corner of Duane and Church. The markers indicating ‘werewolf’ and ‘siren’ darkened as he neared them. Was she already at Matteo’s? Already inside? Desperate, his eyes flicked between the device and the skyline and back again. That was when he noticed a second marker pointing to werewolf.
Another wolf?
Scanning the buildings nearby, he saw Ben above him on a roof across the street. If he dropped from that height, McLachlan knew Ben would easily cross Duane and pummel him in the process. There was no chance of him outrunning Ben either. Even with the present distance between them.
Hoping the siren was just out for any old werewolf soul and not specifically Matteo’s. He wondered if Ben knew she was nearby. Unlikely given their blind spot.
McLachlan watched as Ben made the leap, dropping through the stormy night to land in front of him. The roof cracked from the impact.
“I would’ve made the climb,” McLachlan said, “but well then you wouldn’t have been able to do that. Impressive.”
“Never fought you before. Guess the talking’s gonna be pretty insufferable.”
“Oh but we have so much to catch up on,” McLachlan said. “Namely, when did you move from regular douche to evil douche? Was it something I did?”
Ben didn’t engage. Instead he lunged at McLachlan. The wolf’s fist caught him square across the jaw. His head feeling like it was going to come off. Why hadn’t he moved? Because he taught classical history and coached peewee football.
“Wait, what?” he said aloud.
“This because I won’t talk?” Ben rounded on him. “This talking to yourself bit.”
“No.” McLachlan shook it off, his head throbbing. He righted himself and faced Ben with no idea what to do next.
Ben kicked him in the gut, sending him up and back on the rooftop. With the roof only having a finite surface, up and back were not good things, McLachlan decided, struggling to catch his breath.
“You’re not gonna fight me?” Ben mocked, starting to pace excitedly his clawed fists balling.
“No, no.” McLachlan got to his feet unsteadily. “Just getting my bearings is all.”
Seeing his opponent weak, Ben ran at McLachlan, right fist swinging up. McLachlan tackled him, throwing him backwards across the roof.
Out of sorts and out of sync with himself, McLachlan kneed Ben in the gut and then recoiled. The only fight he’d ever been in was sophomore year in high school. No, that was wrong. He’d never fought in high school. Actually, he’d been in more scraps than he liked to admit, most swinging in his favor, and none of which had been during high school. Mostly due to Matteo’s training. But Matt taught Italian, he was confused.
“Snap out of it,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Me?” Ben getting up, ready for another strike. “This isn’t a phase I’m working through. This is me. Finally letting everyone know the emperor has no clothes on.”
“And the emperor’s supposed to be me?”
“It’s an allegory.”
“A bad one.”
“Just pitching it at the right level.”
“I get it, you’re angry that Matteo and I’re friends. Maybe if you’d talked to me, we could have sorted this out rather than you joining up with the Evil League of Evil.”
“And your ex.” Ben circled back and forth anxiously. “Julie says ‘hi’ by the way. No, wait, she says ‘die’.”
“And this is why I do the banter,” McLachlan muttered. “Ya know casually dropping Julie’s name in the mix isn’t going to piss me off. I don’t really care if you’re her great-great-great-grandfather, schtupping her, or playing out some weird fantasy where you’re me and you have her call you ‘Rus’. Whatever gets you off man. Each to their own. Hopefully not all of the above though. As you know that’s just wrong.”
“What does the talking get you anyway?” Ben asked, still pacing.
“And hey, you know I don’t take it personally.” McLachlan ignored him. This was gonna hurt but Ben was reacting just how any of his opponents did. Agitated. Which made them sloppy. “I’m better than that. You’re clearly not but hey learn something new every day. I do have a couple of questions though.”
“Why’d I do it? Why do I hate you?”
“Hello, I’ve met me,” McLachlan replied. “Kinda surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. No, I’ve just been curious how you could let the people down you supposedly care about? Like Rowan. You owed her way more respect than that.”
“Leave Rowan out of this.”
“You didn’t. Or somehow in that twisted head of yours did you compartmentalize it all? Like going after me, betraying Matteo, siding with the Cult wasn’t going to drag her into this? I never knew you to be stupid.”
“She would see you for the threat you are.”
“I’m about as much a threat as – ya know, I’m not much of threat to her or Matteo. Or you even.”
“Aren’t you?” Ben demanded. He stopped finally, anger fixing him in place. “Your soul is tethered to ancient evil. How long was it going to be before that evil seeped into our world?”
“Pretty much kept a stopper in for twenty-three years without incident.” Stain aside, very little had actually come of Mammon’s influence in the world.
“You can’t be sure of that forever though. That was your biggest fear. You told me that once.”
“It is my biggest fear and each day I push through, hoping it never happens.”
“That’s gonna change one day.”
“Yeah, the day you sold me out to the Cult. Ultimate dick move by the way. As in of all time.”
“Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
“Oh my god, you’re a Trekkie?”
“You weakened Matteo.” Ben spat. He was back to pacing angrily. “With your banality and filth. He used to be great. A legend in his own right. He slew the dark mage Waleran in the sixteenth century. Ended the scourge of Colton the Black not long after. Brought down the Revenants of Marburg, brokered peace between Isabeau and Igraine, and slew the Manticore of Hastings. You made him less. You treated him like a sidekick.”
McLachlan stiffened. In jest he’d used the word outside Aubrey’s when they attempted to retrieve the Cups of Alniyat. But he never saw Matteo as a sidekick. Quite the reverse. Matteo was everything McLachlan wanted to be as a supernatural – calm, confident, engaged with humanity, not burdened by his affliction. Just not the werewolf part. If anything McLachlan had seen himself as the sidekick, lacking experience and eager to be trained.
Was Ben right though? He had uttered the word so easily. Admittedly, McLachlan said a lot of things he regretted. But for Ben to see this, maybe there was a grain of truth in the matter.
“Yeah well that was all before he sired you,” McLachlan threw back weakly.
“Always with the deflection,” Ben sneered. “Anything to protect that fragile ego of yours. Ever the little boy trapped in his parents’ death.”
“I’m not deflecting,” McLachlan replied.
It’s guilt though. All of this, all of Ben’s actions were because of him. “I just wish you’d talked to me.”
“What good would that have done? You would have made some sarcastic retort and sulked. Or did you forget how old I am? Been around long enough to become a good judge of people.”
“Then Matteo. He’s older, your sire. He would’ve listened.”
“Bullshit! He was so enamored with playing human he’d lost touch with who he was. What he was.”
“So leaving bodies at Vinaio and the coffee shop was a reminder? Hey guys, let’s go kill some folk.”
Ben eyed him venomously. “You really think that was me?”
“Given what you did with the Cult and handing over Matteo, I don’t know what to think about you anymore.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Oh because you say so? Now I call bullshit,” McLachlan said coldly. “You were a friend. Now you’re a killer.”
A menacing smile crept onto Ben’s face. “You think I’m a killer, then that’s what I’ll be.”
He dashed forward and grabbed McLachlan. Lifting him into the air as the rain started to fall, Ben threw him over the edge of the building.
XXVIII
Death awaited him inside.
Or rather, the dead.
The frozen ground unnoticed beneath his bare feet, Matteo regarded the stable with dread. He knew what was in there, the slaughter staying with him across the centuries, yet he continued forward.
A dream, he thought. I’m home. In bed. Not here, not now. Annah is beside me. Wake up!
Not a dream.
A nightmare.
In truth, a memory.
Copper stung his nostrils. Blood. Bloodline.
Waleran’s blood dripped from Matteo’s hand. The dark mage had fought bitterly. Only through sheer desperation and will had Matteo survived the magical onslaught. Ultimately, it had been worthwhile. On two counts. Waleran was dead and he knew where Colton was.
Here. In this stable. Isolated in the French countryside.
Wake up damn you, he thought. It’s only a dream. It’s not real. Not anymore. This place happened. It is not happening now. I am home, Matteo railed. I am safe. I’ve locked this away.
