In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  I did notice a sorta sweet aroma, not floral.

  I reached into my coat, brushed a finger over the wand and wove a little ambient luck into my aura. Not enough to gum things up for Pete or change the room’s general auspices, just a tiny extra oomph. I could tell ya it was to help me hunt for clues, and that’d be part of the truth, but mostly I just didn’t wanna bump into anything while blundering around and embarrass myself in front of the mortal. Pete’s a pal, but I got my pride.

  So, what’d we have? A busted lamp, for one thing—looked to have been one of the first casualties of the baseball bat—which explained why the switch on the wall did bupkis. A sofa with blankets and a few extra pillows, now heaped in a pile on the floor, where I guess the girl’d been bunking. Curtains, hanging unevenly where the rod had been partly pulled down. Table, undamaged, lying on its side. An array of scattered and partly smashed fruit: couple apples, a partly squished cantaloupe, a watermelon with a big honkin’ gash in one side. Least I knew where that smell was comin’ from.

  This was just the one room, too. Still hadda half-sized kitchen and a closet-sized bedroom to check after here.

  Well, since nothin’ interesting had jumped out at me, I figured I’d start with the sofa. I knelt down, idly pokin’ at the sheets to see if anything’d gotten wrapped up in ’em…

  And somethin’ interesting did jump out at me.

  No clue what it was. Something slammed, hard, into the calf I was resting on. Quick, tearing pain raced up my leg; my whole body tensed, from surprise as much as the hurt, and I felt blood pooling, sticky and wet, in the ripped leg of my trousers.

  “Mick!” I could make out from his silhouette in the gloom that Pete had skinned his revolver, but all he could really do was sorta wave it around. No way he could see well enough to even have the faintest notion where to shoot, let alone actually hit a target. “Mick, what the hell’s going on?”

  I stumbled upright, hissing at the pain in my leg, and drew the L&G. “I dunno! Get your back to something solid! I—”

  Something tore the hem of my flogger—I go through more coats!—and I half-stepped, half-fell forward, yankin’ myself from the grip of whatever it was. The table thumped as something careened into it before vanishing back into the darkened corners.

  Dark, but no longer silent.

  A wet, trilling noise—a sorta brrl! brrl!—like a cooing dove and a purring cat makin’ whoopee on a rip-saw.

  It was movin’ again, I could tell that much. I put myself in front of Pete, not knowin’ what else to do, and I caught just enough of a glimpse through the shadows to realize what I was tusslin’ with.

  “You have got to be—”

  I probably woulda finished that up with kidding me or somethin’ equally clichéd, but I went with a pained shout instead as the thing smashed into my foot and proceeded to chew on me through my Oxfords.

  I kicked it away, just a few paces, and then dropped to my knees, stabbin’ at it with the L&G, not only piercing it physically but ripping away some of the animating power from its aura. It slipped from my grasp—brrl! brrl!—and started to slide away.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!”

  I jumped up, stomped on it—and it was, despite the holes I’d just put in it, still a lot harder’n I expected. It went spinning one way and I toppled the other, crackin’ my noggin against the wall before landing in a heap.

  The momentum of that stomp propelled it into the kitchen, where it bounced off the counter and came right back at me.

  What had I heard about killing these things? Dump it in boiling water and then… brush it? With an old broom?

  Nuts to that!

  I shot back upright, wand gripped in my teeth. I reached down, lifted the fallen table by its legs, and—shoutin’ past the hardwood of the L&G—toppled forward onto the thing right as it neared me, tabletop first. We rolled for just a heartbeat and then it gave, bursting under the surface with a gooey splat.

  I just lay there for a spell, waiting for the bleeding to stop. Pete came over, and I think I’da preferred panic or confusion to the plain blank mask he was showin’ me. “Should we check?”

  “I fpupofe…” I took the wand from my trap, reholstered it, and tried again. “I suppose we’d better.”

  Now, look. I know what some of you are gonna think. I get it. I’ve told you some real weird stuff before, but nothin’ as whacky as this. I mean, I’d heard the legend, but even with all I’ve seen, I didn’t suppose for one second it was real. You wanna figure this is all bunk, that I’m pullin’ your leg, I can’t blame you. But it’s what happened. Whaddaya want from me?

  Gingerly, we lifted the table, and examined the red pulp and green rind smashed into paste beneath it.

  “Mick?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know what I was gonna ask!”

  “Doesn’t matter. The answer to every possible question is no.”

  “Were you… just attacked by a watermelon?”

  “N—actually, yeah. Yeah, I was. Vampiric, if you gotta know.”

  “What?”

  “Look, there’s folklore about it. Among one particular bunch of Romani in, uh, somewhere in Serbia. Vampiric watermelons. And pumpkins.”

  Damn, I was glad it hadn’t been pumpkins. I got a bit of a problem with pumpkins, since your Revolutionary War—first time I ever came to this continent—and that whole nightmarish mess with the Jack-o’-Lantern Gate…

  Sorry. Rambling. And yes, I know you’re just as disbelieving as Pete, and yes, you can look the damn stories up for yourself if you want. I ain’t makin’ this up.

  And yes, this means that “gash” I’d seen in the rind was where it’d split into “teeth” to slash at people’s skin so it could feed itself. Have I mentioned that I’d never for an instant considered the possibility that these things were real?

  As for Pete, he’d gone from slack as empty suspenders to laughing so hard I thought his fool head was gonna pop off and go rollin’ around in the mush.

  I’da glared, but he wouldn’t have seen it. “You about done?”

  “I gotta tell you, Mick,” he began, struggling to breathe.

  “You really don’t, and I can’t say I recommend it.”

  That just set him off again. I wondered if slapping him would help.

  I thought about doing it even if it wouldn’t.

  “Whaddaya think?” he finally asked, still chucklin’. “Blood-sucking fruit. This the big deathly danger your friend was yammering about?”

  I knew he was joshing, but… “No. It’s connected, though.”

  That sobered him. “It is? How do you know?”

  “Because in thousands of years, I ain’t ever seen this before.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  I moved forward with deliberate steps, until we were damn near beak to beak. “Because I just fought a vampiric watermelon. A vampiric frickin’ watermelon, Pete!”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “And even in my absurd life, I refuse to entertain the notion that a fight with a vampiric frickin’ watermelon is a goddamn coincidence!”

  With that, and what tiny slivers of dignity this whole damn affair had left me, I made for the door.

  * * *

  I can only imagine what the small crowd gathered in the hallway musta thought when I stepped out, covered in blood and various sticky juices, trousers and coat torn all to hell. They drew breath in unison to start shoutin’ questions, and deflated in unison when I raised a finger, backed up by the meanest glower I could muster.

  “Not. One. Word.”

  Then, when I was sure the nice peace’n quiet wasn’t gonna burst any time soon, “Pete, gimme your nightstick.”

  “Mick, you know I can’t just—”

  “Nightstick.”

  He sighed and handed it over.

  Now that I knew what I was dealin’ with, and had time to draw a lot more luck my way before gettin’ into it, the other lurking, uh, enemies weren’t too tough to han
dle. Billy club in one hand and wand in the other, it only took me a few minutes to go through the other crime-scene apartments and deal with the lot.

  Turned out one of ’em was a pumpkin, but I handled it.

  “You’re safe,” I told the starin’ victims as I wiped the club clean on my flogger—might as well, I was gonna have to replace it anyway—before passin’ it back to Pete. “Don’t ask questions. Just accept it. If you really gotta know, feel free to request an official police incident report.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Pete groused as we headed back downstairs. “How the hell am I supposed to write this up?”

  “Say it was a raccoon.”

  “Mick…”

  “Whaddaya want from me? I solved the damn case, and got nothin’ to show for it. Nothin’ I can say that anyone’s gonna buy. You think I’m gonna get paid for this? I’ll be lucky if I can squeeze a few ‘expense’ bucks out of the department for dry cleaning. Today was a bust, so if I’m a little short on sympathy, you’re just gonna have to put up with it.”

  Was it a bust, though? I’d been serious when I told Pete this hadda be connected with whatever Áebinn was investigating. The timing was just too hinky not to be, and so was the nature of the situation. Even if the tainted spiritual essence that’d been drawn here had taken a human corpse instead of, uh, bad produce, had become a genuine vampire… Well, Chicago woulda been in for a bad time, but it probably wouldn’t be nasty enough to have snagged the bean sidhe’s attention. But they were spirits of corruption and death, like she’d said, so there hadda be a link, right?

  Too many questions. They gave me somethin’ to ponder on the L, which was a nice distraction from the stares I was attractin’ with my new bloody hobo fashion, but they stubbornly refused to match up with any answers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was ruminatin’ over all of it, and still no closer to connecting bloodthirsty ground fruit to Áebinn’s worries, when the blower rang.

  Again. Two days in a row. I coulda done without that.

  “Yeah, what?” Maybe not the most courteous greeting I coulda led with, but between the itching and the general frustration, it was all I had in me.

  “You say hello to all your pals that way, amico?”

  I actually stopped to think on it. “Yeah, I really do. What’s the rumble, Fino?”

  “Figured we’d let you know we got settled, finally. And give you the number here. I wanna know what’s what every step of the—”

  “Fer cryin’ out loud, we been through this! I can’t know anything about where you are!”

  “It’s a new fuckin’ line, Mick. Nobody knows nothin’ about who it belongs to or where it’s hooked up.”

  “The exchange tells me what part of the city you’re in, babbo!” Maybe if I threw some Italian back at him, he’d start payin’ attention.

  “We’ll chance it,” he answered, stubborn and just a little cold. “I wanna be kept in the know if you learn anything about my daughter or the fuckin’ Unseelie, and that means you gotta be able to fuckin’ reach us, capisce?”

  I gave some consideration to just hangin’ up on him, but… The Ottatis were only half-convinced that hidin’ out was the right play as it was. If I isolated them, kept ’em in the dark, or didn’t give a little here and there, Fino was just mule-headed enough to throw the whole idea over and try somethin’ dippy.

  I tried one last time, though. “You know this ain’t just the Uptown Boys or Bumpy’s crew you’re hidin’ from, right? That these bastards already got ways to dig you up that nobody else—”

  “Yeah, I got it already!”

  Wasn’t sure whether the blossoming headache was more from the phone or from him. “Fine. Gimme the number.” Maybe I’d even bother remembering it.

  He rattled it off, I repeated it back. “Got it. Nothin’ to tell you so far, though. Lot goin’ down, but I ain’t tumbled how much of it’s connected to Adalina or the Unseelie. If any.” Then, really more outta habit than anythin’, “How is Adalina, anyway? Handlin’ the excitement okay?”

  “She’s… fine.”

  “Fino?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know I can hear it when you hesitate like that.”

  He growled a whole string of Italian that I ain’t gonna bother translatin’, mostly because half of it was variations on the word fuck. “I don’t wanna pester you with nothin’ while you’re trying to find out what the fuckin’ stronzi want with her…”

  “Why don’tcha spill, and let me decide if it’s nothin’.”

  “I… Yeah, okay. She was all right the first night, but since then? She’s been havin’ nightmares, bad fuckin’ nightmares. Wakes up screamin’. Just the thought of goin’ to sleep’s got her crying, now.”

  Not good. I mean, sure, it coulda just been bad dreams, girl had plenty of bad on her mind to dream about. Or it coulda been more of her turnin’ into whatever it was she was turnin’ into. But when she’d been completely unconscious, she’d still sensed that the Spear of Lugh was in town. Whatever she was—oracular, psychic, what have you—you don’t ignore the dreams of someone, something, like that.

  Besides, even if it was just a young girl or a young Fae havin’ night terrors, maybe I could help.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said.

  “Appreciate that, Mick. You want I should put her on the horn, or—?”

  “No! Uh, that is, I don’t think that’s a great idea. You know it makes me uncomfortable, it probably don’t feel too great for her, either, and I can’t really see her reactions or get into her head if I gotta… No, bring her by. Just make sure—”

  “Make sure we ain’t shadowed, yeah, yeah. I’ve done this before, you know.”

  Figured it’d take some time, even if they left immediately. I got my coat—then remembered what shape it was in, tossed it across the room, and pulled a far more worn and generally uglier one from the back of the rack. I think the original hue had been a sorta rich brown. Now it was just old-colored.

  If things were gonna keep up the way they’d gone the last couple years, I needed to start buyin’ in bulk.

  Moseyed outside far enough to pick up a rag from the newsie on the corner, then ducked back in before the rain soaked it through. Dropped back into my seat, tossed my heels up onto the desk, unfolded the paper…

  Huh. Wondered if that was one of the murders the coppers had been tryin’ to keep outta the press. If so, there’d be a lot of steam and profanity at the clubhouse today.

  The story didn’t have a lotta detail, since they’d never gotten close to the stiff and so far everyone who needed to stay clammed up had stayed clammed up, so they hadda go real salacious with what they could. In other words, I couldn’t tell just how nasty or messy the crime mighta been, only that it was ugly and violent. Mostly, it was a whole bunch of alarm about the possibility of this bein’ the start of another gang conflict, with a lot of implied “Buy the evening edition or tomorrow’s paper and hopefully we’ll have found out by then!”

  And yes, despite what Áebinn said about “mere” mortal deaths, I was wonderin’ if this was linked to what she’d been sensing. I’m not completely dippy; you dangle somethin’ like that in front of me, I’m gonna question it.

  Nothin’ I could do from here, though, so I kept on flippin’ pages and reading until, finally, I heard a heavy knock on the office door.

  “It’s open!”

  Adalina, I was expectin’, but I’d thought it’d be one of her folks accompanying her. Instead, Archie walked through the doorway beside her.

  “Oberon. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine. Fighting watermelons. You?”

  “Fighting wat— What?”

  You know, I don’t recall ever stoppin’ him cold in the middle of one of his “echoes” like that before. Couldn’t help but smirk.

  Only lasted a second, though. “Please tell me Fino didn’t tell you—”

  “Get a load of this guy!” Archie barked at Adalina. Guess he’d decid
ed not to follow up on the watermelon. “C’mon, Oberon. Whaddaya take us for?”

  Uh, humans?

  “Boss knew you were gonna blow your wig about this. He called me up. We met on a random street corner. I got no more idea where they’re holed up than you do.”

  “Huh. All right. So how come Fino or Bianca didn’t play taxi for Adalina? Not that I ain’t overjoyed to see you as always, of course.”

  “Overjoyed to see me. Right.” He shrugged. “Boss’s got a lot on his plate, tryin’ to run a business entirely over the blower. Besides, he figured, anyone’s keepin’ watch on your office for him or Mrs. Ottati, they’re a lot less likely to recognize me.”

  Well. I guess Fino did have some idea how to lie dormy when necessary.

  So, that rigmarole over with, I hung up chairs and offered coats—or somethin’ similar, anyway—and went for the milk. Archie passed, as always, but Adalina accepted a glass. She was quiet as a sleepin’ snail, and her hands were even clammier than usual. Those nightmares had her shook up bad.

  And then Archie surprised me. He snatched the newspaper off my desk, announced that he’d be out in the hall if we needed him, and vamoosed. Dunno if that was his own idea or if he’d been told to give us some privacy, but it was a stand-up gesture either way.

  “Okay, doll. Let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t… I don’t want to talk about it, Mick.” If she’d fiddled any harder with the crease in her skirt, she was gonna rip the fabric. Funny that she even fidgeted at all, come to think; guess it was ’cause she was raised human. “I’m only here because Papa said I should be.”

  “He’s right. You know you can talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

  “I don’t want to!” She was real near to the full waterworks, those huge fishy peepers shimmering in the lamplight.

  I waited, just watchin’. She fidgeted some more, sobbed once. Stood up, wandered around the office, absently sliding drawers open and closed. I let her work through it, though I’d have had to stop her if she’d gotten near my drawer of special knickknacks and doodads. Some things are private.