“Yeah, after Max got all legit and respectable, he’d be too high profile to rub elbows with the money-shot crowd,” Grinner said, “but his son, raised off the grid at various private schools, he could come back with a new identity and slip right in. I found payments to seven out of the nine victims from Red Hat, all paid out the money from Pentacle. I think we found your cult and your cult leader, bubba.”
“Keep the old slaughter house going,” I said. “How insulated is he, how connected? The Illuminati? The Benefactors? The Glass Gallery? God, help me, the Fae?”
Grinner shook his head.
“Nope. He’s nonexistent in the Life. No connections, no patrons or debts. Same with Brett. Looks like Roland Blue was their only exposure there.”
“Good,” I said. I rubbed my face, felt the stubble of a beard. I wanted a drink, I wanted several. But with the Nightwise on my ass and the Dugpa to hunt, I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. I still wanted that drink, bad. I thought of Caern tossing away that cigarette and it gave me a few breaths of reprieve from the screaming ache in my mind. I told Grinner about my phone call with Dragon, that I was now wanted for Roland’s murder.
“No fucking way!” he said, his massive fist striking the steering wheel. He hit it a few more times for good measure. “What is wrong with these fucking people!? We got to get the hell out of here now!” He closed the laptop. “I can get you a package, full identity, in less than an hour. That will buy you enough time to get out to bumfuck Egypt. Make it a little harder to track you.”
“I’m not going, not just yet,” I said.
“Ballard, this is as bad as it gets,” he said. “They will roast your ass if you look at them funny. The Nightwise make the LAPD look like the ACLU!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “I need to square up with Ankou, and I need to make sure these Dugpa bastards go down hard.”
“No way in hell I’m taking off and leaving you behind. What’s the plan?”
“The plan is you get on your fucking plane and go back to your family,” I said. “Don’t fucking argue with me. You know what Christine would do to me if anything happened to you?”
“I’ve already seen this movie,” Grinner said. “You piss off everyone that gives a shit about you, and they leave and you go do your lone gunslinger bit. Well here’s a news flash, desperado, you ain’t getting any younger. The Nightwise, they’re as sneaky as you, as skilled as you, younger and leaner and more full of piss and vinegar than you are, and they will kill you, and that will be the end of the legend of Laytham Ballard, capiche?”
“Not a bad way to go out,” I said. “As far as legends go. But I’m in no hurry to check out. I just need to close some deals and get the Nightwise off my ass.”
Grinner checked his smart watch. “I got a little under an hour ’til flight time. You sure you don’t want me to stay, man?”
“That baby is making you soft,” I said.
“Fuck you,” he grunted back.
“Yeah, you get all that foul language out before you get home, Daddy,” I said. “I need you to do a few things for me, but it shouldn’t be anything you can’t do and still make your plane.”
* * *
I told Grinner what I needed and he did it. We said good-bye and he shuffled off toward the terminal and I caught a cab out to Ankou’s mansion in Beverly Park. Two of Vigil’s security detail met me at the gate when I buzzed to be let in and they drove me up the hill to the house.
“Luuuucy, I’m home!” I called out in my most devastating Ricky Ricardo, my voice echoing off the Venetian tile. I walked into the huge foyer, fumbling in my jeans pocket for a cigarette and my Zippo. I heard the doors click behind me, locked. I heard the sound of oiled steel, bolts and slides snicking into place all around me, above me. There were about a dozen security men in the foyer and on the balcony to the second floor, above, all pointing guns at me. I hadn’t had a shiver in my chakras, hadn’t sensed the masking enchantments until now, until it was too late.
Lord Theodore Ankou stood before me and I understood why I had sensed nothing. The Fae’s magic was most powerful and subtle when it came to spells of misdirection, illusion, and concealment. Vigil stood behind his lord, to his left. He face was as unreadable as it had been the first time I met him.
“Welcome home, Mr. Ballard,” Ankou said. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
TWENTY-FOUR
They tied me to a very comfy chair in a conference room in the basement of Ankou’s mansion. There was no roughing me up, no threats, very polite, just lots of guns aimed at me in between the pleases and thank-yous. It was the classiest I had ever gotten jumped. Ankou dismissed the majority of his boys, leaving us with a cozy core of five of his men, all heavily armed, Sir Vigil, the Fae lord himself, and me, the center of attention.
“Those ropes, Mr. Ballard, are woven from the silk of goblin spiders from my homeland. They tangle any magic you may attempt to weave, and they glow emerald as they hinder your workings, giving my men more than enough time to put a rune bullet in your brain.”
“It’s very thoughtful of you to tell me that,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up. I assume this little rope party means you have no intention of honoring your word to me.”
“Oh, Mr. Ballard,” Ankou said, as he sat in a high-backed conference chair only a few feet from me, “my word is for those worthy of it. You are not. Your breeding, your race, your reputation all preclude you from worth. You are a knave, Mr. Ballard, a necessary evil that people of my station must traffic with from time to time, a means to an end, a tool, a rather blunt but effective tool.”
“Not gonna lie, I kinda feel like a tool right now,” I said, testing the silk ropes holding my forearms to the arms of the chair. “Tell me, Theo, did you ever even consider playing straight with me in this? Getting Torri out of her service, letting your daughter live in peace?”
“Did I consider if the amount of political capital I would have to invest to free the Lady Selene—your ‘Torri’—from her service was worth your efforts for me? No, never. Your ‘Torri’ is a shade, a puny human soul granted the glory and the privilege to serve the Fae. She too is a tool, Mr. Ballard. She serves her purpose where she is. Your nostalgic love for the memory of a rotting piece of meat in the earth made you agree to a deal your instincts told you was not to your benefit, as did your somewhat narcissistic feeling of connection to my whore of a daughter.
“Your selfishness, your desire to cling to something that had its time in the light and was gone, made your Torri into a slave, Mr. Ballard. You bargained with my people to keep her soul, to give her a life of a sort, instead of letting her depart for whatever ineffable halls human shades inhabit. You put her in chains, and this whole misadventure was predicated on the glimmer of a hope that you could free her from that existence, could be the hero of the piece.
“You can’t free her, you can’t bring her back, and I think the pragmatic part of you knew that, but you let your sentimentality guide you. It’s humorous; you pride yourself, the legendary Laytham Ballard, on your toughness, your shrewdness, how life has carved you into something hard, jaded, but I could see the moment we met just how soft you are, and how easy it is to manipulate you. You’re too selfish to be the hero, and too sentimental to be the villain. You are truly one of the most pathetic creatures I have ever laid eyes upon. I pity you.”
“I’ll take the pity,” I said. “I’ll belly-crawl out of here.”
“A flippant word to parry the truth,” he said. “You are as constant, as predictable as the tides, Mr. Ballard. You can go on your way. I will even pay you handsomely for your time. All I need is Caern’s location, if you please.”
“No,” I said. “Your word may not be worth spit, but mine is.” I looked over to Vigil. His eyes slid away from my accusing gaze. “You tried to fuck your own daughter, you sick son of a bitch. Use her like a breeding machine to keep your perverted bloodline pure. That’s some real hillbilly shit right there, Theo. Your wife woul
d curse your name, but, thankfully for her, she’s gone already, gone for good.” Ankou’s human guise shredded as he stood, like a sheet ripped from a clothesline in an angry wind. His totality was too much for my human mind to hold.
“You Fae don’t carry on after death, do you?” I said. “You just evaporate, like dew, like she did. You’re both lucky she didn’t live long enough to know what you were capable of, eh, Theo?”
Ankou struck my face with the back of his hand and I felt my skin numb as the force of it snapped my head to the side. When I opened my eyes, he was flesh and blood again. I could feel my eye swelling shut; the flesh on the right side of my face was too-tight pain paper. My head rang from what I suspected was a minor concussion.
“Well, now,” I said, spitting out a mouthful of blood, “look who decided to act like an ape. I know the score on you too, Theo. The only things you give a shit about in this world are your family’s reputation and your dead wife. Didn’t take much to push your buttons and use you either, did it, Lord Ankou?”
Ankou sat back down. He withdrew a silk handkerchief and dabbed his glistening forehead. “What a vicious little mammal you are,” he said, dabbing his upper lip and replacing the hankie. “I almost wish I could keep you as a pet. I have made a study of your race and I have to say, Mr. Ballard, you are a shining example of raw, unpretentious humanity. You should be in some gallery somewhere, perhaps a zoo.”
“Last chance, asshole,” I said. “Cut me loose.”
“Or what, pray tell?” Ankou asked, leaning forward in his chair. “You think your little display of common hustling there puts you in a position to demand anything?”
“No,” I said. “This does. I figured you’d try to track and trace my activity through that expensive secure cell phone you gave me. I was sure of it when Vigil ‘found’ me the night I got ahold of Luis Demir at the MS-13 crib. I knew if I ditched it, you’d know I was onto you, and find some other way to track me. So I had my hacker jailbreak it for me, so it was giving you false information on where I was and who I was calling.” Ankou glanced at Vigil, giving the knight a sour look. I kept going. “From there he was able to trace it back to your servers, use the phone’s connection to hack you.” Ankou gestured to one of his men to bring him something. The man pulled a plastic Ziplock freezer bag from under his coat. “So he now has access to your business, to everything. I figure the guys who sent that Carnifex to dust me, House Xana, right, they’d love to get their hands on your books. So if I don’t send him word by a specific time that I’m free and clear, he pushes a button and you lose everything you still give a shit about.”
Ankou nodded; he looked more amused than anything. “Well, then,” he said, tossing the baggie onto my lap, “I suppose it was fortuitous of me to see that your man couldn’t push that button.” The plastic was smeared with fresh blood, still warm. Inside the bag were eight fingers and two thumbs. I felt dizzy nausea swirl up in me, snowballing into panic. “Your Mr. Shelton, your ‘Grinner’ as his vulgar argot proclaims him, he never made his plane.”
The fear was thick in my mouth, fighting with rage, trying to catch and burn. “You fucking piece of shit, you’re dead.” I glared at Vigil, and his face was a screen of static. “Your bitch Vigil there, he pointed him out to you?”
“Quite so,” Ankou said, looking to Vigil and nodding. “Mr. Shelton has been quite resistant to divulging information. I had thought it best to use him as leverage to get you to tell me where Caern is, but Sir Burris assured me that you would not be moved by such threats. He said Shelton was merely a retainer of yours, a mercenary, and that you care only for yourself. I made Shelton a very generous offer to betray you; he declined. I repeated the offer after each snip. He refused until he lost consciousness from blood loss and shock. Unfortunate, but I thought this demonstration would clarify your situation for you, Mr. Ballard. I am not some common street hustler you are used to outwitting, some stolid mage you can bedazzle with your criminal acumen. Our kind was old when your world was a cooling pebble. In every possible way, I am a god compared to you. You honestly think you will win here, that you will taste victory?” He took the fingers out of my lap and held them before my face. “You will not; however, there may be an opportunity remaining for you to survive this.”
“Fuck you,” I said as I spat at him. Fear had turned my mouth into a desert. Ankou laughed as he tossed Grinner’s digits on the conference room table. It was one of the most horrible sounds I have ever heard, God laughing at your suffering, your fear, knowing how alone in this you really are. My heart was trying to tear itself out of my chest and acid was scratching my mouth and throat. I thought I might piss myself. This was real, this was it. Gun to my head, no way to bullshit my way out, no way to fight my way out. This was it.
“A valiant response,” he said. “The hero ascendant. I think it’s time I introduced you to yourself, Mr. Ballard. It’s a gift long overdue.” He turned to one of his men. “The manticore venom, Jammie.” The solider picked up a red-and-white Igloo cooler and placed it in Ankou’s slender hands. “I hope you appreciate, Mr. Ballard, the courtesy I give you in not resorting to torture. Your reputation preceded you and I know you have been interrogated by some of the best in the world, in and out of the Life, and that your fortitude is legendary. Also, torture is notoriously unreliable in extracting information.” He swiveled open the cooler and removed a hypodermic needle. It was filled with an algae-green substance.
“This,” he said, holding up the needle and tapping it lightly, “is the venom of a manticore, a creature of the First World, the land of Faerie. It cost the lives of a dozen of my knights to obtain this. The venom will quickly and effectively burn out the majority of your nervous system. It will render you forever unable to work magic, locking away those miraculous places in you from access. Your light will be hidden under a bushel, Mr. Ballard, for the rest of your life. It will also, I’m afraid, reduce your cognitive and motor abilities significantly. No more witty quips, no more, how do you say, ‘snappy patter.’ You will be a shambling, twitching, husk of a man. I also intend to make sure you are well and truly addicted to my finest, purest heroin before we release you into the wilds of this fine city.
“I will not kill you, Mr. Ballard. To do so would be to give you an escape. Humans like you often long for death as much as you fear it. Again, pathetic. No, if you do not tell me where Caern is, this is what will happen.” Ankou turned to address Vigil. “Burris, go to Mr. Shelton and await my word. If Mr. Ballard gives me the information I require, I want you to kill Mr. Shelton, do you understand?”
“What?” Vigil said, genuine confusion and disgust crossing his face.
“You heard me. If Mr. Ballard refuses to give me Caern’s location, then take his associate to a hospital, and perhaps they can still save his dwindling life.”
“Lord Ankou…” Vigil began. Ankou shut him down.
“You have your orders, knight. Go.” Vigil walked to the conference room door, opened it. He looked back to me. Burris and I held each other’s gaze for a heartbeat, then he walked out, closing the door behind him. My mind was dumb with fear. It swallowed my anger, swallowed everything.
“So the stage is set,” Ankou said, pushing up the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Keep the gun to his head, please. Time to look in a mirror, Mr. Ballard. The hero, the hero here would keep his mouth shut, not give me the morsel of information I require. He would save the whore he sees as a fair maiden, save his loyal manservant who refused to betray him even as he was maimed, and sacrifice himself for the good of others. But the villain, ah, the true villain would never have gotten himself here in the first place. He would have done his job and been on his way, richer for his treachery. But you, Mr. Ballard, you as a bumbling villain, have a choice now to salvage this mess you have created for yourself. Tell me where my daughter is, tell me and I will release you, unmolested, and let you go on your way in the world, free to make up any lie you need to tell yourself and the world to preserve the illusion tha
t somewhere in you is a good man.” He raised the needle, brought it toward my arm. “What will it be?”
No one was coming. I had worked hard for a long time to make sure everyone knew I didn’t need them, and now, at the end of it, I was going out alone. Ankou’s face was close to mine. He was smug and in control. He knew me, he knew the real me, and he loved the terror, the indecision in my eyes, like a trapped animal. The needle came closer, its cold steel touching my skin. Ankou’s thumb was poised to push the plunger once the needle was in.
I was going to lose me, lose all the parts of me I was proudest of, the things that mattered most, that made me special. Without them I would be nothing, no one. I could imagine the pity on my friends’ faces. I would exist at the kindness of others, and this world, even at its best was far from kind. And to have my story end this way? In a fight, in a blaze of glory, maybe, but not strapped to a chair, not a meaningless, common death, not me, never for me. I closed my eyes. I began to feel the needle rip into my skin. One second, one solitary second. It was the longest of my life.
“Stop,” I said.
The needle was taken away from my arm. I opened my eyes and looked into the prisms of Ankou’s. I told him, I gave him Caern’s address. He nodded, the arrogance slipped from his face like tension leaving, like he was forgiving a pet that shit on the rug.
“Now you understand,” he said. “You know who you are now, don’t you, Mr. Ballard?”
I began to answer him, answer myself, when the door exploded. Vigil, wounded, bleeding, pistols blasting, dove into the room. He shot one of Ankou’s other knights, a bloom of red spreading across the man’s chest as he fell and died. The other three were firing back almost at once; one of them pulled Ankou away from me and headed toward the back of the room.
Vigil took a bullet to the side of the chest as he tumbled into the middle of the knights, each trained as he had been, each equally as deadly. He drove a pistol’s barrel into one of the men’s faces with a crunch, and pulled the trigger. Burris fired at another of the shooters with his other gun, but the knight grabbed Vigil’s arm and jerked the gun to the side as it fired, blowing a big hole in the conference room wall. Vigil pivoted, bent his arm in and down, and shot the guy grappling with him in the side of the face. The third man, still standing, jammed his pistol low into Vigil’s gut and fired. The gunshot tore a hole clean through him, staggering Burris backward. Vigil returned fire as he fell against the wall and slid down onto his ass, winging his shooter in the shoulder.
The Night Dahlia Page 31
