Instead of punching him, I put one hand on his throat and one on his upper thigh and heaved him up into the air. Like so many things in a fight, this was way more difficult against a guy now made of granite. He was heavy as fuck, but I managed to wrestle him up and over my head.
The wizard thrashed around, but I got him to the edge of the roof before losing my grip. I tossed him over and turned back to the witches, who were no damn help whatsoever. At least Arianne had the courtesy to stand up and look like she thought about helping.
“Thanks for nothing, assholes,” I said, clapping my hands together and walking over to the table. I sucked back the last of my sweet tea and glared at Tara.
“Now I definitely don’t want to work with y’all. You didn’t even…” My words trailed off as I noticed how wide her eyes were. “He’s back, huh?”
This time all three of them sprang into action. Arianna moved over in front of Marcus and conjured a pair of short swords from pure energy that sprang from her clenched fists. Tara strode across the rooftop to stand toe to toe with Barathan, who was back on the roof and appeared to no longer be made of stone. She threw punches like a Jackie Chan movie, and Barathan dodged like he was the only one who knew how to control The Matrix.
It was fun to watch, but it really made me wish for my pistol. Of course, it was locked in the glove compartment of my car because that’s where it was going to do me the absolute least amount of good. I watched them try to fight for a few seconds, then pointed two fingers at Barathan and shouted “torporus!”
A green ball of energy flew from my fingertips and struck him right in the chest. He never stopped dodging, but his movements slowed, then slowed some more. Tara landed one punch, then another, then a knee strike, then another punch. She took a sidestep to create some separation, then drew back one leg for what looked like a devastating roundhouse kick.
A kick that sliced through empty air as the necromancer back-flipped out of range. He was slower, but still quick for a normal human. I threw a few blasts of energy at him, just to keep him off-balance, but never came close to hitting him. My slow-down spell wore off after just a few seconds, and he smiled as he drew a pair of curved knives from his belt.
“I will enjoy slicing your souls from your bodies and adding you to my reserves of power. You will help me draw nearer to my ultimate goal,” he said.
“Which is?” I asked. I pulled my own pocketknife and clicked it open. It wasn’t nearly as impressive as a twelve-inch curved dagger, but it’s what I had. I settled into a fighting stance and stalked forward, moving left while Tara came at him from the right.
“I’ll pass on the soliloquy, thanks.” He clapped both hands together and set off a blinding light and a minor thunderclap on the roof, the mystical equivalent of a flash-bang. I closed my eyes and clapped my hands over my ears, but the sensory overload to my half-vampire senses still drove me to my knees.
When I could blink my eyes clear of tears, Barathan was gone, and so was Tara. I looked around the roof, and she was nowhere to be found. Arianna was still by the table, shielding Marcus with her body from any threats, but no necromancer and no high priestess.
“Well, fuck,” I said. “I guess now we’ve got a rescue mission on our hands.”
12
“Well, now what?” I asked Arianne.
“What do you mean, now what? Now we go get her back!” Marcus almost shouted.
“Sounds great,” I said. “Where are they?”
He at least had the good sense to look chagrined. I turned my gaze to Arianne. “Any ideas, sunshine?”
“Not right offhand, no.”
“Well, let’s see what we can See.” I walked over to a clear spot of roof and sat down cross-legged, my boots under my knees. I closed my eyes and opened my Sight, scanning the surrounding area for any magical hot spots. Trifles & Folly glowed like a fireworks display in the supernatural spectrum, all the artifacts lying around that place making it a beacon in the Otherworld. Farther away, I could see Cassidy’s house, the residual magic that suffuses a place when a major Talent lives there making it glow like a gentle nightlight. There were several other shops that had a strong aura of magic around them and a few bright dots moving around downtown as several practitioners walked the streets. Nothing had the reddish-green tint of the necromancer though. I tried looking for Tara’s aura, which I assumed would be a lot like Arianne’s, only stronger. Nothing. No matter how far I ranged out of downtown, I could find no hint of her.
“Nothing,” I reported. “Wherever he took her, he’s got her hidden.”
“We have to find her!” Marcus looked on the verge of tears.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” I growled at him. “I’m dancing as fast as I can here.” I pulled out my phone and tapped the home button. “Dennis, you there?”
“I’m everywhere, my cracker,” Dennis said over the speaker.
“Dennis,” I said, pitching my voice low, “you’re as white as I am.”
“I’m dead, man. I have transcended race. What do you need?”
“I need you to find someone for me. He goes by the name of Barathan.”
“I’m pretty sure Robert was murdered, and that tall blond chick killed Tanis in the woods in season five.”
“Everybody’s gonna make the same Game of Thrones jokes, aren’t they? Barathan, not Baratheon.”
“Tomato, to-mah-toe. What else can you tell me about this Barathan?”
“He’s a black necromancer, and he’s kidnapped a witch named Tara.”
“Is Willow pissed?”
“Are you just going to make TV references, or are you going to help me find this guy?”
“Pretty sure I can do both. By the way, I think necromancy counts as black magic from the jump, so your description was a little repetitive.”
I looked at the phone, more puzzled than usual by Dennis’ weird leap of logic, then it hit me. “No, dipshit, he’s an African-American necromancer. I thought that might narrow the field a little.”
“Oh! Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Yeah, that might help, especially in South Carolina. I’ll poke around and get back to you.”
“Fine.” I put the phone in my pocket. One bonus about having a friend who’s basically a mystical pile of electrons, getting in touch with him doesn’t use up my minutes. I turned to the two witches who just stood there staring at me.
“Don’t you two have something to cast or something?”
“I’m a healer, man. That’s pretty much the only magic I have,” Marcus said.
“I’ve got a couple of ideas, but first I want to see how many of the coven I can pull together in case we need to throw down with this asshole,” Arianne said.
“That makes sense,” I replied. “I’m going to poke around a couple of the hot spots I saw in my Sight, but I’ve got a feeling we’re going to end up back at the Market late tonight.”
“What makes you say that?” Arianne asked.
“It’s the first place I saw any activity from this dick,” I said. “Plus, there’s a lot of magic running around that place, thanks to years and years of people traipsing through there. It’s past noon now, so midnight is the next strong time for magic, and the Market should be deserted then. Makes it prime time for nasty magic.”
I handed Arianne a card with my cell phone number on it. “Take this and call me if you find anything. Otherwise, let’s plan to meet up at my hotel at eleven. That should give us plenty of time to gear up and stop whatever this asshole has planned for your boss-lady,” I said. It would also give me a little time to look around the city for Gabriel, my real reason for coming to Charleston in the first place.
The witches both nodded and headed off to do whatever it is witches do in the daytime, while I gave the city another quick scan with my Sight. The guy at Trifles & Folly, Teague, had mentioned a bookstore down on East Bay that might have something useful, so I peered over in that direction. I spotted a small place giving off a faint blue glow a half dozen b
locks or so away, so I headed inside and took the stairs down to the street.
Twenty minutes of leisurely walking later, I stood in front of one of the very few businesses in the exclusive section of Charleston known as South of Broad. This part of East Bay was home to the famous Rainbow Row, the pastel houses that faced the waterfront, all with the long porches running perpendicular to the street to catch as much of the ocean breeze as possible when the ridiculous summer heat blanketed the city like a hot, damp towel.
Harbor Books was a converted house, probably worth north of a million bucks on the real estate market, but it certainly didn’t seem to do very brisk business. In the ten minutes I watched the entrance, not a soul went in or out, and I only saw one old coot puttering around inside. I walked up the creaky wooden steps and looked at the sign on the door. “Open, mostly” it read, listing hours from noon until seven p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays. “CLOSED SUNDAYS” was written in large letters along the bottom of the page.
It being Tuesday, I turned the knob and stepped inside. I was instantly assailed by the papery dry smell of old books and almost knocked down by the magic in the place. The last time I was anywhere near this many magical tomes, there was a guy summoning demons for kicks who threw me out a window later that night. I hoped history didn’t repeat itself. Although in downtown Charleston, there weren’t any buildings nearly as tall as the one I went out of in Charlotte, so that was fortunate.
The inside of the shop was a mecca for readers and a nightmare for a fire marshal. I couldn’t tell if I was in a bookstore or a documentary on book hoarding. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined every wall, many of them double-stacked with tattered paperbacks from Ludlum, Clancy, Robb, King, Sanderson, Patterson, and the like. One entire shelf was dedicated to used copies of Twilight.
Every shelf was full almost to bursting, and hardbacks, encyclopedias, and coffee table books were stacked two and three feet high as endcaps on every aisle. The books were like multicolored literary kudzu, overtaking every inch of available floor space.
Floor lamps and tall windows provided the illumination, so there were some spectacularly shadowed corners, and as I meandered through the stacks, wandering semi-aimlessly and counting on my intuition to lead me to the most interesting texts, I uncovered various pieces of furniture scattered throughout the rooms. I felt like an urban archaeologist, unearthing settees and armchairs unseen for generations, tucked into corners with lamps behind them to provide little reading nooks all around the shop.
I saw fiction, nonfiction, memoir, biography, self-help, romance, thriller, fantasy, science fiction, science science, textbooks, comic books, manga, graphic novels, children’s books, Bibles, Torah, Qur’an, and The Book of Mormon, both the religious text and the Broadway libretto. What I didn’t see was a proprietor, unless you count the overweight and fluffy black and white cat who lounged on a chest-height stack of Fifty Shades of Grey paperbacks.
I reached out and scratched the cat behind its ears, and it looked up at me with a sleepy “Mrrrr?” before putting its head back down and starting to purr.
“How dost thou, sweet lord?” asked a voice from behind me.
I turned, my hand drifting to the small of my back where my pistol should have been, but wasn’t, cursing myself for leaving it at the hotel. I relaxed when I saw the kind-faced old man who I’d watched through the windows standing there. He smiled at me, a little vacantly but pleasant enough, his head bobbing like a dashboard doll. He was a slight man, stooped with age and wearing a truly bizarre getup. His shoes were mismatched, one brown loafer and one white sneaker. He wore jeans, but they looked like they were patched by a psychotic clown with big fabric swatches of red and yellow sewn over the blue. An untucked dress shirt hung out lower than the pin-striped jacket he wore, and a brown tweed English driving cap sat on his head. His round face was smiling, and his deep-set eyes were rimmed with crows’ feet, but his full beard was dark, and the stringy hair that I could see was brown, not gray.
“Hello,” I said. “Are you the proprietor?”
He smiled at me and bobbed his head. “I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it.”
Okay, not exactly what I was asking, but I guess it’s close enough. “Can you help me find something?”
“Wise men never sit and wail their loss,” he said, then turned and toddled off back into the stacks.
“Hey, wait,” I said to his retreating back.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow!” he called back over his shoulder.
Is he answering me completely in Shakespeare quotes? Even for my life, that’s pretty odd. I followed the old man through the winding stacks, past the armchairs, past piles of paperbacks that threatened to topple onto the floor at any moment, past the cat, who raised its head and meowed at me for once again disturbing its rest.
“Nice kitty,” I said.
“A harmless necessary cat,” the man replied. Okay, maybe we’re getting somewhere. That actually seemed to connect to what I said.
I decided to push my luck. “Do you have any books of magic?” I asked.
“‘Tis true; there’s magic in the web of it,” he said.
I shook my head. Nope, back to nonsense. I just kept my mouth shut and followed the old man until he stopped at the end of a long row of bookcases. I would almost swear that we had walked farther than was possible in the medium-sized house, but since we wove in and out of rooms, hallways, and stairwells, I wasn’t sure.
The strange little man stood, looking up at a bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes. Some of these books looked old, and some looked downright ancient. I opened my Sight, and the entire wall glowed with a rainbow of colors. Red, blue, green, yellow, and white attacked my senses, and I staggered a little.
The little man heard the floor creak under me and turned to me, holding out a hand to catch my arm. When I caught a glimpse of him in my Sight, I saw through his mortal masquerade. Overlaid on top of the five-and-half-foot-tall human with as much curly brown hair coming out of his ears as was on his head was an ethereal image of a being wrapped in light with golden wings on his back. This batshit crazy little old man was exactly who I was looking for. This was the Archangel Gabriel, scribe of God Himself.
When I switched my vision back to the mundane world and took a good look in his eyes, I realized something else about my newfound divine entity. He was one hundred percent. USDA Grade A batshit crazy.
Now I’ve got a kidnapped witch and an angel with Alzheimer’s. Some days I really hate my life.
13
I looked from the shelf, to the disguised angel, and back again. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said.
“There are stranger things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he replied, waving an arm at the books.
I let out a sigh. I couldn’t read the titles with my Sight active, and I couldn’t tell which ones were divine in nature with my normal vision. So I opened my third eye and pulled down all the books that glowed white, golden yellow, or pale blue. Those were usually the aura colors of positive or protective magic, the kind typically associated with the divine. I handed about ten volumes to Gabriel, who bobbled off to the front of the store in his odd little short-legged rocking gait. I took another ten and carried them myself, noting their weight.
“If anybody ever realized how strong the little bastard is, there certainly would have been some questions,” I muttered as I followed him. He stopped at a large table and with one sweep of his arm knocked dozens of paperbacks to the floor. I dodged a couple, let a couple more bounce off my shins, and set my load of books down on the table by his.
“Is the information I need in here?” I asked, hoping against hope that I might get a reasonable answer.
“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
“Of course it is,” I said. I looked over the spines of the books and was able to immediately discard four of the two dozen as books I recognized. I
set aside eight others that had titles on the spine and pulled up a chair to examine the last half more closely.
The first one was a French summoning text from the seventeenth century. Valuable, certainly, but far from the Word of God. Next was a three-volume set of spell books from the library of someone who called himself Alric the Grand. Judging by his spells, grand was not a word often used to describe him. He had spells for the shrinking of warts, spells for the reduction of passing odorous gas, spells to make himself seem more attractive, and a spell to summon a wood nymph to do his bidding.
Knowing what I do about the sexual proclivities of wood nymphs, I shuddered a little to think about him summoning one for a rent-a-date. There was no way a hornball wizard calling up a mischievous and powerful forest elemental was going to end well for the wizard. No wonder that was the last entry in his spell books.
When I whittled the pile down to three books, I turned to Gabriel. One of the books was from his stack, so I thought it was unlikely that it was his book. If our time with Michael was any indicator, as soon as he touched the book, it would manifest some outward sign, and so would Gabe. At least, I hoped Gabe would be coherent enough to do something.
That left me two books, both looking very old, and both radiating power like a mystical Chernobyl. I pulled the first one to me, and Gabe frowned, shaking his head. “Not to be,” he mumbled. “Not to be, not to be, not to be.”
I pushed the book away, and he relaxed. I stood and picked up the second book. He didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t look like I was about to shoot his puppy, either. I turned the book over in my hands, honestly a little nervous about opening the thing. If it worked like the sword, I could read it like a Stephen King novel and it wouldn’t do anything in my hands. Of course, there was also the chance that it was the handwritten Word of God and would burn out my brain like an overused lightbulb if I opened it.
The book was big, encyclopedia-sized, and thick. It certainly looked old enough to have been around for hundreds of years, but it looked and felt professionally bound, so I couldn’t tell if it was the original book or if it was a replica, or a manifestation, or what. There were some markings on the spine, but they looked like no language I’d ever seen before, and I can, at least, struggle through in most of them.
Devil Inside: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Urban Fantasy Novella Page 7
