The prostitute did not seem at all tired anymore. Her eyes were wide and her chest rose and fell as though she were breathing for two. She stared at Pete Landry for a long moment and he took a long drag on his cigarette, its tip burning red in the darkened bar. Jaalisa shook her head.
“No, sir. I don’t think I do.”
The Lieutenant cleared his throat again, drawing Brodsky’s attention. Clay watched as he took a step nearer the sergeant.
“Things ain’t never gonna be the same for you after this, Johnny,” Landry said, the words a grim promise. “Not ever. And this asshole’s not going to find the Quarter real hospitable either. You embarrass me like this? Make a fool out of me? You’re the damn fool.”
Brodsky’s partner, the only other cop still in the bar, had moved toward the door to watch Caleb and Gage. When he spoke it was so low as to be barely audible, and yet the words resounded through the bar.
“Son of a bitch, John. You might want to look at this.”
The moment Brodsky glanced over at him, the Lieutenant snapped the strap off of his gun and slid it out of the holster with swiftness borne of years of practice. He brought it up, taking aim at Brodsky’s temple. The sergeant was the nearest armed man. It only made sense that Landry would take him down first, Clay second, the cop at the door third. The hooker likely didn’t even enter into his homicidal logic.
Clay moved with stunning speed, putting himself between Brodsky and that gun. The Lieutenant fired, the report echoing through Charmaigne’s. The bullet tore through Clay’s chest and lodged in his vertebrae, trapped there. He winced at the pain but already he was changing again. This time, however, there was no cat. Not even the human face of the man the people of New Orleans knew as Clay Smith. He could have taken the face of any man in the bar just by touching one of them.
Instead, he showed Lieutenant Pete Landry his own face. His real face. His clothes were gone, save for a scarlet ceremonial drape around his waist that hung nearly to his knees. Clay towered over Landry, nearly nine feet tall and as broad as two men across the chest. His red-brown flesh, from hairless scalp to bare feet, was damp and soft and run through with cracks.
“Go on, asshole,” Clay rumbled, “shoot me again.”
Wide-eyed and hyperventilating, the asshole did.
Clay ripped the gun out of his hand, breaking three fingers, and grabbed Landry by the throat, trying his best to avoid meeting the grateful gaze of the murderer’s ghosts. He did it for them, but he could not withstand the sadness in those eyes.
He squeezed the Lieutenant by the throat until the man’s eyes rolled up to white.
“Step away from him,” Brodsky demanded.
Clay glanced over, saw that the sergeant had drawn his own weapon. He let Landry drop, gasping, to the floor and looked down at Brodsky. He smiled, and he knew it was a grotesque smile.
“John, my friend, you want to know how I track killers? I’ll tell you over a beer some time. If you want other answers about me . . .” Clay paused and took a long, calming breath, staring into Brodsky’s eyes. “Trust me when I tell you, you’re not alone.”
With that small, gasping noise he changed again, from towering clay figure to copper-furred cat. Brodsky shouted after him. The uniforms were all cursing, wondering what the hell was going on. Caleb and Gage had just stepped back inside with a small pistol in an evidence bag. One of them stooped and tried to stop the stray as it ran out the door, but he was too slow, too clumsy.
The cat darted into an alley, past a Dumpster, then along other streets until it came once again to Rue Dauphine. As it passed beneath the shading branches of a tree that grew up from the sidewalk, the cat disappeared and was replaced by Clay Smith once more. He had no bullet wound. Not even a tear in his crisply clean navy blue T-shirt.
He cut through to Bourbon Street and fell in amidst the swirl of tourists, the loud shouts of hucksters, the jazz band playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” on the corner. Clay hated Bourbon Street, hated the cheap, carnival atmosphere of it, but he had walked that street at least once every day since he had come to live here. It was alive and vibrant and filled with color and at least for a handful of minutes it could make him forget the things he could not remember.
As he passed by a restaurant that was serving breakfast he heard people hushing one another inside. There was something urgent about their manner and so he ducked his head into the restaurant and saw that everyone waiting for tables had stopped to watch the newscaster on the television above the bar.
The visual cut away to a scene of the New York skyline.
Blood was raining from the sky.
Though the subway tunnel was abandoned, the roar of nearby trains thundered throughout the underground. The air was dry and chalky and there on a platform unused for decades, Doyle felt the shimmer of magic, as though their every breath disrupted cobwebs of time. This was a sensation he had felt recently, in the foyer of the brownstone where Yvette Darnall and her fellow mediums had died to keep Sweetblood’s secret. This place had been frozen in time, had been hidden away from untrained eyes.
Until now.
“Doyle! Why don’t you get what we came for?” Eve snapped.
His gray brows knitted together as he turned to glare at her. Her jacket was torn: the demon’s claws had ripped through suede and cotton at her shoulder and blood was seeping into the fabric. The thing towered above her on the platform, its footfalls cracking the tile floor with every step. Even as Doyle glanced at Eve, the thing Sweetblood had set here to guard his hiding place bent once more and lunged for her. Distracted in that moment by her ire at Doyle, Eve could not avoid its ridiculously long arms and the demon snatched her by the throat, one of the sharp protrusions on its arm cutting a gash in her face that flayed her cheek to the bone.
She snarled in pain, latched onto its wrist with both hands, swung her legs up and braced them against its body, and then used that leverage to break its arm. The grinding snap of bone echoed across the platform. Eve dropped to the tile and rolled away from the guardian, then turned to glare at him.
“What the fuck are you just standing there for?”
Doyle smoothed his coat. His own wardrobe had thus far suffered only the veil of dust that hung in the air and covered every surface.
“Merely wondering if you might be bleeding less if you concentrated on what you were doing rather than policing my own actions.”
He raised an eyebrow as the demon raced at her again, roaring, cradling its shattered arm. Then he turned away, leaving her to the battle. Eve’s face would heal, as it always had. All of her wounds would disappear. That was the gift and curse of her immortality. In comparison, his own extended life was merely a parlor trick.
Since the moment they had left Yvette Darnall’s brownstone he had been trying to sense the power of Sweetblood. When they had entered Grand Central Station he had known they were on the right track. Had anyone but Sweetblood cast the glamour that hid the guardian’s true nature, Doyle would have seen right through it. Not that it mattered now. The trail had led him here, to this platform, to the door that now stood before him.
Or perhaps not.
Though to Eve it seemed he was merely standing there, Doyle was searching for the emanations of the magic Lorenzo Sanguedolce had used to hide himself away. At first it had seemed to lead through that door, but now he frowned deeply, knitting those eyebrows once again, and turned to focus upon the tiled wall to his right. A tremor went through him and he felt something tug him, as though he were a fish who had just taken the bait. Quickly he strode across the platform.
Eve hissed loudly and Doyle glanced over to see her on the demon’s back, her legs wrapped around it from behind. Its protective spines stabbed into her but she held on tightly as she tried to reach around to claw out its eyes. For just a flicker of a moment her gaze caught his but he ignored the continued accusation in her eyes as he approached the far wall.
Doyle felt his skin prickle and the hair rise on the ba
ck of his neck. His stomach clenched and he was forced to pause a moment to avoid spraying vomit all over the floor. With a flourish he crossed his wrists and then spread his arms in front of him and some of the magical seepage that had infected the air around him dispersed. Sweetblood did not want any visitors. It was too late for that.
“You must not disturb the mage!” the demon bellowed in its hellish, grinding voice.
Doyle whipped around to see it lunging for him, but in that same instant Eve plunged two long talons into its right eye. The sound was sickening and a spray of viscous gray fluid spurted across the cracked tiles.
“You’re missing the point, Fido. Someone’s gonna wake the old bastard up. Better us than the alternative,” Eve snarled.
The demon shrieked and tried to reach for her, then threw itself backward, crushing her between its own body and the floor, impaling her on those terrible spines. Eve screamed.
Doyle ignored her.
He reached out toward the tiled wall. His fingers traced lines in the decades of dust and grime that had accumulated there. Despite Sweetblood’s magic, this place had not been entirely untouched by time; not like the brownstone. Doyle thought this was all part of the ruse, part of the cover, in case another sorcerer should have gotten this far. He saw through the glamour as others might have, but he was skilled enough also to see past the diversion.
With a glance over his shoulder he saw that Eve was choking the guardian, though her own blood pooled on the subway platform. He saw the door that he had been about to enter and wondered what lay beyond it, what peril Sweetblood might have placed there to dispatch seekers who came too close to discovering his location.
With a blink of his eyes and a flick of his wrist, Doyle cast a spell that shattered the tiles on the wall. They showered down in fragments, revealing a stone wall behind them that he doubted had been part of the original plans for this location. A tiny smile passed over Doyle’s features and he laid his palm upon the stone.
“Lorenzo,” he whispered. “Can you hear me? Some choices are not yours to make. Your power can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.” Doyle closed his eyes and summoned magic from a well of power he had accumulated within him over the years. Images like shards of broken mirror glass tumbled through his mind, of family dead and friends left behind, of grief and the wonder of discovery, of a man he once had been, and the trifle his meager efforts at entertainment seemed to him now.
This work, laboring in the shadows between the darkness and the light, was what mattered.
“Tempus accelerare,” Doyle whispered, and his fingers went rigid as power surged up his arm. It ached to the marrow and he gritted his teeth. Friction heated the palm of his hand where it lay against the stone wall.
And the stone crumbled away to nothing in front of him.
There was an alcove behind it, a space in the wall perhaps ten feet high and equally broad. Within that recess was a block of amber, like a massive slab of rock candy. It was honey-gold with hints of red, and through it, Doyle could see a distorted view of the man encased within. Sweetblood’s eyes were closed, his expression peaceful, as though he lay in a casket rather than frozen in a trap of his own creation. Though dulled by whatever substance encased him, Sweetblood’s magic crackled like electricity in the air within that recessed chamber.
“Time to wake up, now, Lorenzo,” Doyle whispered. “No matter how reluctant you may be.”
The ground shook beneath his feet. He heard the sounds of Eve and the guardian in combat, the snorting, rasping of their breathing. He smelled Eve’s blood and the fetid ichor of the demon. Trains rumbled elsewhere along the New York subway system, their growling echoing in the tunnels. But Doyle had stopped registering any of these things as he stared through that amber slab at the features of his former mentor, the man for whom he had searched for decades. A mage with enough power to scar the face of the world.
It was only when Eve screamed his name that Doyle realized something had gone terribly wrong. On instinct, he manifested a magical energy charge from his fingers as he spun around to see what had alarmed her. Even as he did so, they were already leaping up onto the subway platform.
Corca Duibhne. The Night People.
They were lean creatures with taut, ropy musculature and skin the color of rust, shaped like humans but no larger than a girl in her early teens. The Corca Duibhne were stealthy and swift, able to merge with shadows and creep along seemingly sheer walls. All of them, male and female, had black and spiky hair and eyes so oily-dark that they seemed nothing but pits of shadow in their heads. They had been called The Night People in a time when the only stories about them were told in a fearful huddle around the village fire. Yet now they had adapted to the modern world. They wore human clothing and sported bits of silver in their ears and noses where ordinary people might have piercings.
But the Corca Duibhne were not ordinary. They were not human.
Doyle began to shout for Eve but his voice faltered as he saw the Night People overrun her and the demon guardian Sweetblood had chosen to protect his hiding place. Both had been weakened by their combat. The guardian had a shattered arm and had been blinded in one eye. Eve was bleeding from multiple wounds, her clothes sodden with sticky scarlet, and the Corca Duibhne were strong and fast and far too many. She was ferocious and nearly impossible to kill, but Eve would not be of any help to him at the moment.
“Damn you, Lorenzo,” Doyle muttered. “This is your fault.”
The Night People lunged for him, first three, then seven swarming over Eve and the guardian to rush at Doyle. But he knew they weren’t really racing at him. Their goal was behind him. Doyle placed himself in their path and he could feel the hole in the wall behind him, the magic that pulsed from the amber slab in which Sweetblood was encased. The Corca Duibhne gnashed their jaws, baring teeth that were jagged and cruel, and their oily eyes focused on him.
“Don’t be an idiot,” snarled the one in the front, its voice low and insinuating.
Doyle had waited long enough. He raised both hands, palms outward, and azure light flashed from his fingers throwing blue shadows on the high walls and a cerulean glow out into the tunnel. A wave of magic traveled with this light and the force of it slammed into the Corca Duibhne, cracking bone and ripping flesh, throwing the nearest of them sprawling across the floor in a tangled heap. But there were too many of them still swarming up from the subway tunnel.
The guardian demon was dead. Doyle saw one of the Night People greedily dragging its head away from the others as a keepsake. Eve fought alone, but she was not quite so buried as she had been in those rust-colored bodies. Her talons flashed and throats were torn and skulls crushed.
Still, there were too many.
Doyle inhaled deeply and rose to his full height, glaring down at the creatures that began to gather in a hesitant circle. They were wary of him now and he tried to adopt his most imposing air. Sparks still danced from his hands and his vision was tinted with blue as some of the magic contained within him leaked out his eyes. He focused his will and sensed the power of Sweetblood emanating from the amber slab behind him. I can feel it, Doyle thought. Perhaps I can siphon some of it.
He clawed the air in front of him, leaving shimmering streaks of light hanging there. The Night People hesitated once more, but only for a moment before they began slowly edging toward him again, closing in.
“Corca Duibhne. You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” he thundered, voice booming across the platform, echoing off the walls. “I am the only student Lorenzo Sanguedolce ever taught.”
One of them, a female whose form was almost elegant in comparison to the others, shuffled several cautious inches nearer. Doyle tried to count them. There were dozens.
“We’re not here for the student, but the master,” she said, upper lip curling back, nostrils flaring.
Doyle raised his hands again, quivering as he began to draw on the magical energies within and around him. “You’ll have neither!”
But even as he summoned the power to attack again he heard a click-clack from far above him. Doyle glanced upward in alarm, but too late. Corca Duibhne had skittered up the walls and along the ceiling and now they leaped down at him, limbs flailing so that he could not judge their number.
He released a wave of destructive magic from his hands and it burst upward, destroying those shadow-crawlers who had thought to surprise him. But the distraction was enough. The others on the platform leaped at him, talons tearing his clothing and his skin, preternaturally strong arms driving him down to the platform so that he struck the back of his head on the tile. For a moment he was disoriented and in that moment one of them pounced upon him. Its fetid breath was in his nostrils and its mouth gaped wide, jagged teeth dropping toward his throat.
“Ferratus,” Doyle muttered.
The sound that filled his ears was a keening, static buzz, a nighttime field full of crickets, but it accompanied a crimson glow that enveloped his entire body. The creature attempting to tear at his throat was burned where it touched him. All of them were. And yet the Night People did not stop. Doyle was protected within the magical shield he had woven around himself but they continued to attack him, those behind forcing the others to pile onto him, though it burned their flesh. The Corca Duibhne attacking him began to scream and though his magic protected him from harm, it did not keep out the acrid stench of their burning flesh.
Doyle slowly focused his will, steadying himself, healing the gashes he had received. He caught a glimpse past his attackers and saw that Eve was up on her feet now, hair and eyes as wild as he had ever seen her, covered not in her own blood but in that of her enemies. She was snarling, having sloughed off any pretense at humanity, and when one of the Night People came near enough she tore its head from its shoulders.
Then the melee of ancient horrors attempting to kill him shifted and he could see her no more.
“That is enough!” Doyle shouted.
The burst of magic that erupted from him then incinerated all of the Corca Duibhne that had surrounded him. Shaken and weak, he staggered to his feet amidst a shower of rusty ash that had once been the flesh of the Night People. For just a moment he looked to Eve, but she was already regaining some of her composure. The handful of Corca Duibhne who remained was fleeing back into the shadows of the tunnels, slipping along the walls with impossible speed. Eve looked in disgust at her ruined clothes.
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