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

by Ari Marmell

  What interested me even more’n the glyphs, though, was the collection of papers and notes and files in the bottom drawer of the desk. (It’d also been locked. I was done bein’ subtle, and fixed that with a sharp tug.)

  Copy of Pete’s personnel file from the clubhouse. Some hand-scrawled notes describin’ Four-Leaf Franky, Lenai, some of the others. Even a page on Baskin and Ramona.

  But those? Those were just a few scribbles, reminders and places to jot down random thoughts. The bulk of the material?

  That was on the Ottatis.

  And lemme tell you, it was pretty damn comprehensive. Names, not just of the family, but everyone in Fino’s crew, the priest and staff of Orsola’s old church, Bianca’s friends, Celia’s teachers, Adalina’s teachers up to the point they’d stopped sending her to school. A column for known allies, a column for known enemies. Addresses, not just of the Ottatis themselves but most of Fino’s covers and storefronts, legit or otherwise.

  If the cops’d had half of this stuff, they’da sent Fino up the river long ago.

  Only two things stood out as missing, really. First, anything much to do with Adalina for the past couple years. That made sense, since she’d been unable to pass for human during that time, and unconscious for most of it.

  And second, I found nothin’ about Fino’s hidden properties. Also made sense, since the whole point of those was that they were under false names and couldn’t be tracked back to him.

  But it was more’n enough to tell me this whole thing was all about the Ottatis. It’d always been about the Ottatis.

  Part of me already figured why, too, though I wasn’t ready to listen to that part. Woulda meant makin’ some connections and acceptin’ some truths I wouldn’t have cared for much.

  Opened my yap to say somethin’ to the others, start workin’ out our next steps, when the shadows in the doorway thickened with fog and he appeared again.

  “Oberon. Webb.” Dunno if his failure to greet Pete was a deliberate slight, or just ’cause he wasn’t accustomed to thinkin’ of humans as anythin’ more’n lunch.

  “Varujan.”

  “Is good you are here.” He stepped—I almost woulda said “slunk”—into the office, shoulders forward, sniffin’ around like some decomposing bloodhound. “This is source of call, yes? I feel it here. Very strong.”

  I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder. “Next room.”

  He drifted that way, stuck his head through but didn’t go in. I traded a quick glance with Ramona’n Pete, otherwise kept my peepers fixed on the vampire.

  “Yes. I see.” Then he was back. “Others are here, too. I sense them.”

  “Swell. Take us to ’em.”

  If he’d been an actual stiff, bits of lips and nose woulda fallen off when he shook his head. (I mean, leavin’ aside the fact that if he’d been an actual stiff, it woulda been weird for him to be shakin’ his head at all.) “Is not so easy, I fear, Oberon. Sensing other nosferatu is not… precise. I know they are near, but no more. Especially with so much blood seeped into mud and walls and the air.” He affected a deep sigh. “I think we have no choice but to search whole stockyards.”

  Uh-huh. And the fact that’d take all night—or longer—was just our own bad luck, right?

  Horsefeathers.

  “Help me out with somethin’ first, Varujan, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.”

  “You can’t have been followin’ us this time. We went to the morgue in daylight, and came here straight after. So how’d you find us?”

  The sudden tilt of his noggin was even more dog-like than the earlier sniffin’.

  “The summons is strong here. I told you this before.”

  “Yeah, except you also told me you couldn’t pinpoint it from across Chicago. That’s why you needed my help to find it. So unless you expect me to buy that you just happened to be waltzing by the stockyards close enough to feel it tug at you, right at the exact moment on the exact evening we found the place—and just to save you the time, no, I ain’t buyin’ that—it means you were either lyin’ before, or you’re lyin’ now.”

  Varujan was movin’ as I spoke to him. Not quick, nothin’ obviously hostile, just sorta idly shufflin’ to one side. By the time he stopped, he had a real good angle on me’n Ramona both—the two threats—just right so neither of us could try’n bushwhack him from behind.

  Wise. Not subtle, but wise.

  It also meant he couldn’t keep a line on Pete. Why should he, anyway? Wasn’t as if the mortal was any kinda danger, least not compared to the succubus and the aes sidhe with his trusty wand.

  I dropped my right hand down at my side, started movin’ my fingers and hoped my pal tumbled to what I was sayin’— and that the vampire didn’t.

  “I admit,” Varujan said, “I followed you. As bat, as mist. We are allies, but I know you do not trust me, so I do not know I can trust you.”

  Closed my hand into a fist, then straightened my pointer finger and brought my thumb down on it, like a hammer.

  “Strike two, bo. Sun wasn’t quite down yet when we left my office.”

  Reached up, scratched my noggin with that finger, let it fall again.

  “Been a long time since you hadda actually put one over on anyone, hasn’t it? You usually just grab ’em or mesmerize ’em. Afraid you ain’t a good liar, Varujan.”

  Guess he accepted that the jig was up. “So it appears.” He wasn’t in a hurry to start anythin’. After all, he could just turn to mist if Ramona or I made a move toward him, right?

  Clenched my fist again, then three fingers straight out.

  Varujan glanced at my mitt, but still didn’t seem worried. Why should he be?

  “And since you are a lousy liar,” I continued, “I gotta figure you were tellin’ me the truth when we first met. You really didn’t know what the summons was, who was behind it, where it came from. Since it was aimed at baby vampire spirits, not big-boy undead, you really were stumped. So what changed?”

  You ever seen a corpse shrug? Even talkin’ about the walking dead, it’s weird. “I am in Chicago long enough that I know the call better. I feel it more. I followed summons, flew over city until it grew strong. The occultist offers to teach me these magics, if I spy on you, report on progress.”

  Two fingers out now.

  “Yeah, I just bet the ability to conjure up and influence a whole clutch of brand new vampires would be valuable to you. Tell me, did Áebinn ever let you in on exactly what it is she’s tryin’ to pull?”

  That threw him. I didn’t even have to sense it in his aura— what little of one he had—I could see it plastered all over his mug. I wasn’t supposed to know that.

  But I had, since the morgue. Since I remembered the smell of animal blood on her, when we’d jawed outside the Ottatis’ place.

  I just hadn’t the foggiest idea as to why.

  One finger.

  “What does she want?” I demanded again, when Varujan said nothin’. “Why is she gunnin’ for the Ottatis?”

  “Mick,” Ramona said softly. “You know why.”

  Yeah, goddammit, I did. Adalina. I hadda stop pretendin’ it hadn’t always been about Adalina.

  Even if that meant that what Áebinn had sensed…

  Oh, fuck me.

  I’d gone back to their apartment, to tell ’em about Fino. I’d been so careful, takin’ false turns, checkin’ for a shadow every block.

  But I’d done it before dawn. And not even I woulda spotted a single bat, flitting and fluttering high overhead, watching and snickering with every detour…

  He couldn’t have reported back then. Too close to dawn; sky was already turning pink at the horizon when I knocked on their door.

  But tonight, before she’d sent him here—maybe because we’d tripped some psychic alarm, maybe just on a regular check to see if she’d been found out—yeah, they’da had plenty time to chat.

  I knew why Varujan was stallin’ us, and I knew I couldn’t afford to let it g
o on.

  My fist clenched. Zero.

  The vampire went taut, bracin’ himself. I mean, it was a pretty obvious signal, right? He was ready for either of us, me or Ramona, whichever one came at him first.

  In the tight confines of the dimly lit office, the bark of Pete’s .38 was a short, sharp peal of thunder.

  A chunk of Varujan’s face just went away, sprayin’ the floor and the wall between me’n Ramona—and both of us leapt aside with plenty of swift, lemme tell ya!—with a thick, clotted ooze that was too filthy and too glistening to be called black. Gobbets of decayed flesh slapped against the wood, wigglin’ like worms at the impact, and a yellow, tacky film that mighta once upon a time been vitreous fluid wobbled offa my coat sleeve.

  You can’t rub a vampire out with a bullet, of course, no matter how good a shot. But there also ain’t too many critters out there, nosferatu included, can just shrug off a slug through the skull. Varujan staggered forward, toppled to his knees, hands thrashin’ blindly out in front.

  I honestly dunno how long it mighta taken for him to recover from that kinda blow. Seconds? Days? Somewhere between?

  Didn’t matter, I guess, ’cause we weren’t inclined to give him either.

  Ramona lunged in, hard and fast, fingers sproutin’ those pitted black talons. She opened him up and scooped him out, the flesh and organs between the hip and ribs on his right side transformed into a massive handful of quivering rot. The nosferatu’s shriek was a damn railroad spike through the ears, set the cows to lowing in the nearest pen.

  I dipped down and caught him by the collar as he crumpled to the floor, hauled him upright with my left hand, L&G held not as a wand but as a stake in my right. I was already gatherin’ ambient luck from the room, ripping it from the vampire, more’n enough to make up for the blunted tip.

  The scream faded out and Varujan… chuckled.

  “The other… hunts you.” It was awful watchin’ his lips move beneath that twisted wreck of a mug, seein’ that putrid meat-rimmed hollow of shattered bone wobble along with the words. “Was easy to… find and coax him… to follow…”

  I mighta demanded more from him, then, but even in his broken condition he lashed out, tryin’ to grab my arm while I was puzzlin’ over what he’d said. Except I hadn’t let myself get too distracted, and what he got for his effort was the Luchtaine and Goodfellow, punched into his chest and through his sour, rotted heart.

  No dramatic death throes, no burstin’ into flame or crumblin’ to dust. Varujan just sagged, limp as fresh-boiled spaghetti, and slowly bits of putrefaction sloughed off as the state of his carcass caught up to him. I let the body drop, backin’ away from the sudden miasma. It hit the floor with a damp splat.

  “Shit.” I grabbed a handful of paper off the desk, crumpled it up and used it to wipe the gore from my wand. Whole point of takin’ Varujan by surprise was so I wouldn’t need to get caught up in some prolonged scuffle. I hadda get to the Ottatis, to Adalina, before Áebinn did, and she already had a solid head start. But…

  “If the bastard’s tellin’ the truth…” I began.

  “We can take another vampire, Mick,” Ramona assured me.

  I couldn’t help but glance Pete’s way, remembering the events of the morning. “That’s assuming,” I reminded them, “that it is just another vampire. But that spirit—”

  Then the cows weren’t lowing any longer. Then they screamed.

  And not just the cows. Hogs squealed, sheep wailed. Across the length and breadth of the Union Stockyards, the beasts gave voice to a terror beyond primal. Hooves launched geysers of mud to rain down in torrents. Several gates and even a wall or two collapsed as tons upon tons of animal flesh hurled themselves against the barriers, desperate to flee what now walked among them. Buried in the tumult, the voices of a few of the nighttime workers cried out in confused panic, wonderin’ what had set the livestock off, wonderin’ what the hell they could do about it if the entire yard turned into one big stampede.

  They were happier that way. Not knowin’.

  My hackles were already risin’, Ramona had dropped into a crouch, tryin’ to watch every direction at once, and Pete’d gone from green to off-white as old milk, both hands clenched tight on his heater to keep ’em from shaking.

  Outside the tiny office building, which sorta felt as though it were made of paper right now insteada wood, somethin’ roared.

  Or maybe, more accurately, it didn’t.

  We felt it, all of us. Like a gazelle on the savanna when the pride comes near, everything in us shook. Limbs went taut, ready to leap, to run, to do whatever it took to get away, to race toward the tiny flicker of hope for survival. Hearts pounded. Those of us who could sweat were drenched in it. Time slowed, every little sound magnified a dozen times over, every flicker of motion the end of the world.

  But we hadn’t actually heard a thing, beyond the livestock, as frightened as we were. We sensed that hunter’s howl, but it had made no sound.

  With the single exception of Sealgaire, who’d been a part of the goddamn Wild Hunt itself, I hadn’t felt anything even comparable to this in centuries.

  Pete fired a round into the shadows, spooked by a flicker of nothin’ at all. Ramona’n I both jumped, whirling to glare at him. His rictus grin was the best apology he could muster.

  The next movement we saw wasn’t nothin’.

  It slunk past the doorway on silent paws, barely even a shape in the heavy shadows, the growling end of that phantom roar trailing in its wake. Even with my senses, I barely saw it: a glassy glimmer, a creeping form, a twitching tail.

  And I knew. Even in that split second before the wooden doorframe splintered and scattered across the room like so much confetti, before it was in the office with us in all its impossibility, I knew.

  I knew what it was.

  I knew why my thoughts—thoughts that had developed and grown for a thousand years in the British Isles and Europe before comin’ to the New World, thoughts that shoulda run to wolves or bears when envisioning predators—had gone to the lions of the African grasslands.

  The wall exploded inward and it crouched in our midst, head raised in a fearsome snarl even though the maw was sewn shut, even though it was nothin’ but a wooden frame and fabric stuffing, wrapped in a pelt that died near thirty-five years ago, halfway across the globe.

  It roared again, that silent roar—not to us, but to its partner. Here are they are! I found them! Come and feast! And from somewhere beyond the yard, the other answered.

  Phantoms from Africa, by way of the Chicago Field Museum.

  The Ghost—so the locals had named them—and the Darkness.

  The Tsavo Man-Eaters.

  It prowled back and forth before the door, or the hole in the wall that had held the door. It was in no hurry, and why should it be? It could afford to be patient. The other would be here in moments.

  “Why is there a goddamn lion in the middle of Chicago?” Pete was clearly as put out as he was frightened; he’d had more’n enough surprises for the day. Ramona shook her head, in denial or confusion or just exasperation I couldn’t tell.

  He wasn’t about to wait for me to answer, though. Pete put three rounds into the dead thing’s side, sending up clouds of dust, and it didn’t so much as break stride.

  Me, I was tryin’ to shove the spiritual terror washin’ over me from this stalking monstrosity, tryin’ to think faster’n I ever had.

  How was this even possible? Between the two of ’em, the man-eaters had killed anywhere from thirty-some-odd to a hundred-and-thirty-some-odd people, so okay, that was enough violence to draw the vampire spirit. But so what? It shouldn’t be able to possess these; they weren’t alive, weren’t even corpses. Preserved and taxidermied pelts over manmade forms, these were no more “bodies” than a statue in a mink stole, so how…?

  Oh. Oh, of course.

  For a split second, I wasn’t in the office in the Union Stockyards anymore. I was back in the museum, a year or so ago. Runn
in’, divin’, dodgin’, doin’ whatever I could to keep from gettin’ croaked by the sheer magical power being fired my way.

  Fired at me by the traitorous sidhe, Raighallan, usin’ the goddamn Spear of Lugh.

  Again I saw the burst, saw the glass of the display window shadow. Saw the Ghost and the Darkness bathed with gods only know precisely what magic. And saw it not do a damn thing to ’em.

  At least, not a damn thing I could detect at the time. But it’d seeped in, hadn’t it? Seeped and infused the friggin’ things, priming them. And so they’d waited, and maybe nothin’ would’ve ever come of it, if it hadn’t been for one fucking witch who shoulda been dead and one vampire spirit she’d twisted to her own ends.

  The world sped back up, and I was back in the yards, and I had no more time to think or to wonder.

  More than a pounce, it just took to the air, crossin’ the tiny expanse of workspace faster’n a pixie’s wingflap. Hell, it barely had to cross the space; it coulda covered more’n half the distance with a stretch. Damn, but it looked a whole lot bigger out here than it ever had in the museum.

  I rolled aside, expending the last of the luck I’d drained from the twice-late Varujan, and even that barely did the trick. The creature missed by two fingers of whiskey.

  It hit the far wall, shattering the wood yet again, twisting to come back at me before it even touched the floor. Ramona moved to tackle it, talons on both hands extended. I think, even feeling the primordial dread in the back of her head, she underestimated the thing. I mean, it had no claws, no fangs, not even a mouth to hold ’em. What harm could it actually do?

  Plenty, it turned out.

  It twisted, a tawny blur of movement I couldn’t even follow, and swatted her outta the air. Fabric and flesh tore, I heard ’em tear, even over her agonized scream. No, this taxidermy monstrosity might not have claws, but it used to, when it lived. It remembered.

  And between the lingering magic of the Spear and the predator’s fury of the spirit, that was enough.

  Thick, ragged gouges marred Ramona’s chest. Blood pumped, hot and fast, but not enough to quite hide the pink tissue and glistening rib within. She clutched herself with both mitts, rolling, struggling to stand, to shift.