A large overweight man spun away from the machines and ran into Curran. “Hey! Watch it!”
Curran sidestepped him and we kept walking.
“Asshole!” the man barked at our backs.
“I love this place,” Curran said.
“It’s so serene and peaceful, and filled with considerate people. I thought you’d enjoy the ambiance.”
“I adore it.”
We passed through the service entrance. One of the journeymen, a man in black trousers, a black shirt, and a dark purple vest rose from behind the desk.
“How can I help you?”
“It’s alright, Stuart.” A woman descended the stairway on the side, walking into the room. She was five two and looked like an anatomical impossibility created from adolescent boys’ dreams. Tiny waist, generous hips, and an award-winning chest, wrapped in dusky silk. Her hair fell down past her butt in red wavy locks, and when she smiled at you, you had a strong urge to do whatever she asked. Her name was Rowena and she ran the People’s PR department and piloted the undead for a living.
She was also in debt to the witches, which in a roundabout way caused her to be in debt to me. If I asked a favor, she had to grant it, a fact we both carefully hid from everyone.
“Mr. Lennart. Ms. Daniels.” Rowena fired off a beautiful smile. “Lawrence is waiting for you upstairs. Follow me, please.”
We followed, Rowena’s shiny perfect butt shifting as she walked up the stairs two feet in front of us. Curran heroically didn’t look at it.
She led us to a small room with a two-way mirror. One would’ve expected a table, severe gray walls, and chairs bolted to the floor in an interrogation room, but no, the walls were cream with a delicate pale lattice carved at the top and the furniture consisted of a modern sofa and two soft chairs companionably arranged around a coffee table. Lawrence sat on the edge of the sofa. He looked pale and his eyes were bloodshot.
We sat in the chairs across from him.
“Do you know who we are?” Curran said quietly.
Lawrence nodded. “I’ve been briefed. I’m supposed to cooperate.”
I pulled out a notepad from my pocket. “How long did you know Amanda?”
Lawrence swallowed. “Three years. She was admitted as an apprentice right after her high school graduation.”
“How long had you dated?” I asked.
“Thirteen months next week,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat.
“Tell us about her family,” Curran said.
Lawrence sighed. “She didn’t like them.”
“Why not?” I prompted.
“She said her mother was very cold. Aurellia would go through the motions, make sure that Amanda and her brother were fed and appropriately dressed. She was very specific about their schedule. The Steel Calendar, Amanda called it. If they had a doctor’s appointment or a school trip, it was put on the calendar and there was no deviation allowed from it. Amanda had perfect attendance her entire four years in high school. No matter how sick she was, her mother would send her to school. Never late. But there was no love or real warmth there.”
“And her father?” Curran asked.
“Colin worships the ground Aurellia walks on.” Lawrence gave a bitter laugh. “It’s like he is blind when she’s in the room. The only time Amanda could talk to him was when her mother was otherwise occupied. She couldn’t wait to get out of that house. She told me that’s why she enlisted with the People. The apprentices qualify for room and board in the Casino.”
“Was her mother upset because Amanda did this?” I asked.
“Aurellia doesn’t get upset. She’s like a pretty robot,” Lawrence said. “Never screams. Never loses her temper. I don’t think she cared one way or another.”
“Have you ever interacted with the parents personally?” Curran asked.
“Yes. We went to a dinner once. Colin seemed normal. Aurellia didn’t speak, except when she ordered her food. I got a feeling she does only what is required of her, and talking to me or Amanda wasn’t required.”
“What about the necklace?” I asked.
Lawrence took several shallow rapid breaths.
We waited.
“It was a gift,” he finally said. “It arrived at the house one Christmas, addressed to Colin. He took it out of the box—it was in a glass case—and tried to open it, and then Aurellia took it out of his hands. They put the necklace, still in its glass box, and displayed it on the wall in their foyer really high up. Amanda was about fifteen at the time. She loved it. She said she used to stand there and look at it all the time, because it was so beautiful. She was never allowed to touch it. They had a break-in six months ago. The burglars took some jewelry, money, and somehow got the necklace down and made off with it. She was really upset about it.”
Lawrence looked at his hands. “I saw it at a pawnshop a week ago. I bought it for her. I…I killed her. She was so nice, so beautiful. She would sing little songs sometimes to herself when she was thinking about something or when she made coffee. And I killed her. She put it on and she just…she just died. I was right there and I couldn’t do anything…”
We stayed with him for another ten minutes, but Lawrence was done.
Ghastek waited for us in the hallway.
“Please tell me he’s on suicide watch,” Curran said.
“Of course,” the Master of the Dead said. “He is under the care of a therapist, he’s given access to the priest, and he is watched even when he sleeps. However, if he truly wants to kill himself, there is nothing any of us can do. It is unfortunate. He is nearing the end of his five-year journeymanship. We’ve invested a lot of money and time into his education.”
Of course. How silly of me to forget: the People didn’t have employees, they had human assets, each of which came with a price tag attached.
“I’ve examined your drawing of the writing on the necklace,” Ghastek said. “You said it appears to be a runic script of some sort but the characters are unfamiliar to me. How accurate is this drawing?”
“As accurate as humanly possible,” I told him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you familiar with the term ‘human error’?”
Are you familiar with the term “knuckle sandwich”? “The person who copied the runes from the necklace is an expert at what she does. Just because you don’t recognize the script doesn’t mean it’s not runic in origin. The Elder Futhark alphabet has undergone many modifications over the years.”
Ghastek took out the copy of Julie’s drawing. “I’ve studied this subject extensively and I’ve never seen a rune like this.” Ghastek pointed to a symbol that looked like an X with a double left diagonal arm.
Well, of course. He didn’t know it, therefore it couldn’t possibly be a rune. “Both Fehu and Ansuz runes have double arms. Why couldn’t this rune have one? If you tossed it into a collection of runes and told a layman to pick out one that doesn’t belong, he wouldn’t grab that one.”
Ghastek gave me a condescending look. “The term ‘layman’ refers to a nonexpert by definition. Of course a nonexpert wouldn’t be able to single out this rune, Kate. We could throw stars and spirals into the mix and he would be unlikely to pick those out either.”
You conceited ass.
Curran cleared his throat.
I realized I had taken a step toward Ghastek. No killing, no punching, no destruction of property. Right.
“We’re taking this matter to an expert,” Curran said.
“I think it’s prudent, considering the circumstances.”
Oh, well, so good of him to give us his permission.
“Where is this expert?” Ghastek asked.
“At the Norse Heritage Foundation,” I told him.
Ghastek wrinkled his face into a semblance of a disgusted sneer, as if he’d just stuck his head into a bag of rotten potatoes.
“You’re going to see the neo-Vikings?”
“Yes.”
“They’re ignorant, lo
ud buffoons. All they do is sit in their mead hall, get drunk, and punch each other when their masculinity is threatened.”
“You don’t have to come,” I told him.
Ghastek let out a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. I’ll get my vampire.”
CHAPTER 5
I was riding a horse called The Dude. The Dude, who also answered to Fred if he was feeling charitable, was what the Pack stables had called a “Tennessee Walker Blue Roan.” The blue roan part was somewhat true—the horse under me was dark gray, with the colors nearing black toward the head and the ankles. The Tennessee Walker part…Well, some Tennessee Walker was probably in there, but most of it was definitely a coldblood horse. A massive coldblood horse, close to twenty-five-hundred pounds. I was betting on a Percheron. Sitting atop The Dude was like riding a small elephant.
The presence of a vampire presented Curran with a dilemma. He refused to ride a horse, but he refused to let me travel in the company of an undead without backup either, so a compromise had to be reached. We stopped by the Cutting Edge office to get Andrea. Unfortunately, she was out. Apparently some shapeshifters had been murdered and Jim had pulled her in to head that investigation, a fact that he, of course, had neglected to mention. We kidnapped Derek and Ascanio instead.
Derek was our third employee. Once my sidekick, then Jim’s spy, then a chief of Curran’s personal guard, he was now working for Cutting Edge to acquire experience and figure out what it was he wanted to do. When I’d first met him, he’d been barely eighteen and pretty. Now he was close to twenty. Some bastards had poured molten silver on his face. The bastards were now dead, but he’d never healed quite right.
Ascanio was our intern. He was fifteen, as beautiful as an angel, and a bouda or werehyena. Bouda children rarely survived adolescence, as many of them lost the fight for their sanity and went loup—so Ascanio was treasured, babied, and spoiled beyond all reason. Unfortunately, he’d gotten in trouble one too many times and was turned over to me to train, because it was decided I was least likely to kill him.
Derek and Ascanio rode their horses behind me, bickering quietly about something. Ahead of me, the lime-green nightmare that was Ghastek’s vampire trotted along the road in a jerky, looping gait. Most vampires eventually lost their ability to run upright, reverting to quadruped locomotion as the Immortuus pathogen reshaped its victim’s body into a new nightmare predator. I had come across very old vamps before. They didn’t even resemble their former human shapes. But the vamp Ghastek piloted was only a few months old. It loped forward, switching between scuttling along the ground one moment, and shambling two-thirds upright the next like some grotesque puppet on the strings of a drunken puppeteer.
Next to the vampire cantered a freakishly large black poodle. His name was Grendel, he was my dog, and while he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, he loved me and he was handy in a fight.
A few dozen yards behind us, an enormous lion trotted. When shapeshifters transformed, their animal forms were always larger than their natural counterparts, and Curran the Lion wasn’t just large. He looked prehistoric. Colossal, gray, with faint darker stripes staining his fur like whip marks, he moved along the road at an easy pace, seemingly tireless. Which was why I’d ended up with The Dude. I had walked into the stables and told them I’d be traveling between a vampire and a lion the size of a rhino and I needed a horse that wouldn’t freak out. True to the stable master’s recommendation, The Dude seemed unflappable. Occasionally, when Curran flanked us, he would flare his nostrils a bit while the other two horses shied and made panicked noises, but mostly The Dude just pounded his way forward in a straight line, convinced that the lion was a figment of his imagination and that the vampire ahead of him was just Grendel’s deformed mutant brother.
We were our own three-ring circus. Sadly, we had no audience: to the left of us the forest rose in a jagged line, and to the right a low hill climbed up, rocks and grass, before running into another line of trees at the apex.
“I’ve never met the neo-Vikings,” Ascanio said.
“A good portion of them are mercs,” I said over my shoulder. “They’re a rowdy lot and not really what you would call true to tradition. Some are, but most are there because they saw a movie or two in childhood and think ‘Viking’ is a noun.”
“It’s not?” Derek asked.
“No. Originally it was a verb as in ‘to go viking.’ The Norse Heritage guys wear horned helmets, drink beer out of a giant vat, and start fights. As neo-Viking communities go, they are better off financially than most, so they can afford to have some fun.”
“Where do they get their money?” Derek asked.
I nodded at the curving road. “Around that bend.”
A couple of minutes later we cleared the curve. A vast lake spread on our left. Blue-green water stretched into the distance, tinted with bluish haze. Here and there green islands ringed with sand thrust through the water. To the right, an enormous mead hall built with huge timbers rose from the crest of a low hill like the armored back of some sea serpent. As we stood there, two karves, the longboats, slid from behind the nearest island, their carved dragon heads rising high above the lake’s surface.
Ascanio raised his hand to shield his eyes.
“Lake Lanier,” I told him. “The Norse Heritage Foundation built a river fleet of Dragon Ships here. They’re not the only neo-Vikings in the region. There are several Norse groups along the Eastern seaboard and quite a few of them want to cruise up and down the coast in a proper boat. The Norse Heritage sells them boats and trains these wannabe raiders for shallow water sailing. They also give vacationers a ride for the right price. They’re kind of touchy about it, so I wouldn’t ask if they do children’s parties.”
Ascanio cracked a smile. “Or what, they’ll try to drown us in their beer vat? ‘Try’ being the operative word.”
We started toward the mead hall. Midway up the hill, the vampire paused when a man walked out in the middle of the road from behind a birch. Six and a half feet tall, he stood wrapped in chain mail. A cape of black fur billowed from his shoulders. His war helm, a near perfect replication of the Gjermundbu helmet, shielded the top of his head and half his face. The stainless steel had been polished until the sun’s rays slid off of it, as if he wore a mirror on his head. The man carried an enormous single axe on a long wooden handle. I’d tried to pick up the axe once and it weighed ten pounds at least. He was slower than molasses in January with it, but it looked impressive.
Derek focused on the big man. “Who is that?”
“That’s Gunnar. He’s the Norse Heritage’s idea of a security detail.”
“What, all by himself?”
I nodded. “He’s sufficient.”
Ghastek’s vampire stared at the giant Viking, motionless like a statue, while the Master of the Dead mulled the situation over. The bloodsucker turned, scuttled toward us, and fell back in line behind my horse. Apparently, Ghastek had decided that his vamp was too precious to risk.
We drew closer.
Gunnar took a deep breath and roared, “Vestu heill!”
Ow. My ears. “Hello, Gunnar.”
He squinted at me through his face mask and dropped his voice down. “Hey, Kate.” He sounded slightly out of breath.
“Good to see you.”
He leaned on his axe, pulled the helmet off, and wiped sweat from his forehead, revealing reddish hair braided on his temples. “You heading up to see Ragnvald?”
“Yep.”
“All of you?”
“Yep.”
“Even the lion?”
The lion opened his mouth, showing his big teeth. Yes, yes, you’re bad. We know, Your Majesty.
“Even the lion.”
“What about?” Gunnar asked.
“Dagfinn. You’ve seen him around?”
Gunnar took a moment to spit into the dirt, making a big show of it. “Nope. And all the better for it.”
Bullshit. “Too bad.”
“Yeah.�
� Gunnar waved me on with the helmet. “You’re good to go.”
“Thanks.”
We rode on.
“He lied,” Ascanio said.
“Yep.” Gunnar knew exactly where Dagfinn was. He took his cues from Ragnvald, and since he wasn’t talking, the jarl probably wouldn’t be talking either. This would not go well.
We rode up through the wooden gates to the mead hall. The rest of the settlement sat lower down the hill, past the mead hall: solid wooden houses scattered here and there. People walked to and fro, men in woolen tunics and cloaks, women in ankle-length gowns and hangerocks—woolen apron-dresses. They were an assorted crew: some were white, some were black, some were Hispanic. A couple to our right looked Chinese. Norse Heritage took everyone in. Viking wasn’t a nationality—it was a way of life. As long as you thought you were a Viking, you had a place at their table.
People gaped at Curran as we passed. The vampire and the rest of us got significantly less attention.
As we dismounted before the hitching rail, I saw a familiar black Shire stallion in the pasture, segregated by himself. The huge horse stood almost eighteen and a half hands tall, the white feathers at his huge feet shaking every time he moved. A pale scar snaked its way up the horse’s left shoulder. Hello, Magnus. Where is your master?
The stallion stared in my direction and bared his teeth. Now horses were giving me crap.
“Mind your manners,” I murmured.
“Best behavior,” Ascanio assured me.
Mentioning that I was talking to a horse who couldn’t hear me would’ve totally cramped my boss style, so I nodded and walked up to the mead hall.
A large, rawboned woman barred my path. A large gun hung on her right hip and a small axe hung on her left.
“Hrefna,” I acknowledged her. We had run into each other in the Guild before. She was good with both knife and sword and rarely lost her temper.
“Kate.” Her voice was quiet. “The lion has to stay outside.”
“He won’t like it.”
The lion shook his mane.
“I can’t let him inside,” Hrefna said. “You bring him in, someone’s going to make trouble just to see if they can put his head on their wall. I’ve got to do my job. It’s your call.”
Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels) Page 40
