What’s another vice when you’re already drowning in them.
“Fuck,” he muttered, after dropping his lighter. He stooped to pick it up off the grass. His candle and the stupid plastic thing to protect it from the wind lay on the ground besides him. Thrown there as soon as Logan got away from everyone.
What’s the point of all of this? People die. It’s sad. Ok, we know that. Let’s not waste time and find the black magic fuck who did it.
No one else agreed with Logan. Not that he’d heard, anyways. After making a girl, who’d lost her boyfriend, cry from his gruff remarks, Logan had buttoned up. Hardly said a word to anyone but Maggie.
She looked her normal self again. Her fake self.
Logan watched her raise her arms and bless the gathering. She still wore her battle robe. The holy mace still hung at her side, from her brown leather belt. The message was loud and clear to all of the gifted: ‘this thing isn’t over yet. Make ready for war.’
Fifty-four coffins. The cathedral was big enough to get them all in and still have room for the crowd of gifted.
Logan came inside after the others, flicking his cigarette over his shoulder. He sighed deeply when he saw the coffins. He was no stranger to death, but seeing them all laid out like that, in one room…It took a while just to count them all. So let’s do something about it.
The vigil continued under the arched, stone ceiling. Logan was beginning to lose his patience. When Maggie stepped down from the front of the cathedral and offered the place to anyone who wanted to share something with the others, Logan was the first to step up.
“I do!” he called, from way in the back.
Everyone turned, hundreds of grief-stricken faces to see who it was. Logan shouldered through them, made his way to the altar at the front. Maggie gave him a small nod and a smile that said, ‘stay calm, Logan.’
Everyone waited in silence. The magi enforcer stuck his hand into the pocket of his new jacket. It fit him well. Too well. And the leather was too smooth. He looked up to the statue of the Virgin Mary, trying to read the secret hidden on her face. Then he turned back to the crowd. Not a word of what he said was planned.
“Aren’t you all happy with yourselves,” he growled. “I’ve never seen such a selfish group of yuppies in my life.” It was the ghost of old Arkansas controlling his tongue, thanks to the helping hands of whisky and a devil-may-care attitude that had entered his soul when he realized that he had lived, and so many kids had died.
A hush fell over the crowd. More silent than the silence that had come before. The calm before a storm of self-righteous anger.
“Pray before the Lord Our God!” Logan said, mockingly. He clasped both hands together and turned his shoulder to the crowd. He looked up at a stained glass on the wall, high behind him at the front of the cathedral. The face of Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns. Drops of blood ran down his forehead. He looked down on pity at the congregation of mourning gifted.
Is it pity, or indifference?
Logan’s mother would have given him a good smack if she’d seen him act this way. She had tried to raise him right. That’s usually how the bad ones get started.
Logan sighed. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Yea, bet it doesn’t feel good for them.” He pointed at a coffin. “Don’t fool yerselves.” His voice took on a deep timbre. “All this,” he said waving an arm through the great cathedral hall, “is to make ya’ll feel better. The dead don’t give a damn.” He laughed. “Hell, you lot ain’t even religious.”
It was too much. He’d gone too far. Four angered gifted, in the nearest row of the crowd, started towards Logan.
About time, he thought. But he could still get a few more words in, before they gave him the boot.
“What’s more important?” He was shouting now. “This gushy, stand-around, feel-good bullshit? Or hunting down every last black magic user in this city and putting them to the fire?”
The four gifted grabbed Logan, securing his arms and shoulders and steadily walking him down from the front of the cathedral. He didn’t fight them. He kept shouting, though, as they took him past the edge of the crowd, to one of the three large front doors.
“The longer we wait, the more people will die! The council isn’t coming! It’s us, and them!”
Then he was out the front door, the four gifted closing it shut and turning the lock quicker than Logan finished tumbling down the front steps.
He lay on the ground for a couple of seconds. It was a good position, just right for the misery he was feeling. But the sidewalk smelled. Ungifted were giving him strange glances as they walked around him. So Logan picked himself up, never liking to be a spectacle on anyone’s terms but his own.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Licked his lips. The taste of whisky was almost gone. “I need a drink,” he muttered.
His phone rang.
Lee.
Logan picked up, answered the call with, “We’re going drinking.”
“I don’t drink,” said Lee, in his heavily accented English. “I told you this.”
Logan snorted. “Everyone drinks,” he replied. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” Logan started towards his old beat up car.
“Come to my restaurant. Soon as you can.”
“On my way,” said Logan, and hung up.
His car screeched out into San Francisco traffic, leaving twin skid marks on the pavement. Three parking tickets fluttered under his windshield wipers. A thin crack ran from the top of the corner of his windshield, stopping about halfway down. Logan had forgotten about it years ago.
He drove through the big, red archway and entered Chinatown. Parked at Lee’s, ignored the ‘closed’ sign hanging on the inside of the door and went inside. Stupid bells. Does he really think someone’s going to sneak inside and steal something?
“You’re drunk,” said Lee. He had seen Logan for all of one second. The vampire informant stood in his usual place behind the counter at the back of the restaurant, sleeves of his white chef uniform rolled up. Exposing the black and indigo tattoos covering his forearms, and half of both hands.
The place had cleaned up nicely. The front windows had been replaced, the floor cleaned of blood and glass. A new, slick black kitchen counter had been put in to replace the one riddled with bullets. The red booths at the front, where Logan and Suri had sat by the window that night, and dived away from when the drive by happened, were the same. Lee had patched up the holes in the plastic with the closest to the same shade of red that he could find.
“What have you got for me?” Logan asked, and settled himself into one of the booths.
Lee came over and set a plastic cup next to one of Logan’s hairy hands. It was filled with a bitter, nasty smelling brown liquid. “First you drink.”
Logan frowned, but grabbed the cup and gulped it all at once. He almost choked on it. The taste was that terrible. Twigs and burnt bark. Whatever Lee has to tell me, it better be worth it.
He still didn’t know if Lee’s homemade hang over cure was all natural, or enchanted. But, thinking about it, Logan realized that he had never seen Lee cast a spell. Being a vampire, Lee certainly did have a magic well, and the ability to tap into it. So far, all he did was use it to enhance his physical attributes. Maybe he never found someone to teach him.
“Maeve is coming.”
A chill went down Logan’s spine, waking him up from his drunken stupor.
“How do you know?” he asked, in a low tone.
Lee tapped his ear. “I know. I hear things. She’s moving West. For the ocean. It’s what they are saying.”
Logan slowly turned the glass in his hand. Stopped, straightened his posture. Fished out his lighter and a pack of smokes. Took a cigarette out of the pack, put it in his lips. Picked up the lighter. One move at a time, as much as his free hand could manage. It was only after he took a long drag and blew the smoke at the ceiling fan that he looked
at Lee. The Chinese vampire, the person Logan had worked with for over ten years to rid San Francisco of black magic, looked back at him solemnly from where he stood at the end of the booth.
“What will you do?” Lee asked.
“I don’t know. She hasn’t put out the call yet.” He touched the vampire’s Mark on the back of his neck. Ran his fingers over the burn marks forming a small trident.
Wet.
Hand shaking, he took it away and held it out in front of him.
His fingers were red with blood.
16
Logan made a strange, moaning sound from the back of his throat. Coughed to clear it, and wiped the blood from his fingers onto his jacket.
Is it my imagination, or is the Mark itching now? After all these years, it’s finally happening.
“Get me a bottle,” he said, to Lee.
“No.”
“Get me a goddamned bottle. Whatever the hell you’ve got. I don’t care what it is.”
Lee disappeared, moving silently across the floor. Back behind the counter, and through the swinging door that led to the room where he prepared ingredients.
He always looks like he’s gliding, Logan thought. Lee’s torso hardly moved when he walked. Never wasting energy. Never moving a muscle unnecessarily. Total control. A wonder he hasn’t killed himself yet. Guy needs to let loose.
Logan pushed aside the empty plastic cup. It smelled of Lee’s nasty concoction. Wished he hadn’t bothered with it, now that he was going to start drinking again.
Lee emerged from the back room with a large, expensive bottle. It had one of those corks that is fastened with wire. A pair of thin, blue ribbons were tied around the bottle’s midsection.
Logan licked his lips, hoping it was over 35%.
“From my cousin,” said Lee, stopping to stand at the head of the booth. He held the liquor bottle low for Logan to see. “He gave it to me on his wedding day, twenty-one years ago.”
“Huh,” said Logan. Pour it, pour it!
Lee untwisted the wire, set it on the booth table. Four twists of the bottle opener, a hard yank, and the cork popped out. Logan shifted his nose just to smell it. Building anticipation for the bliss he would experience once the liquor hit his tongue, and he sucked it all down.
This whole time his legs had been tense under the table, knees pressing up against the wood.
He furrowed his brow. “You forgot the glass,” he said.
Lee smiled, and poured the liquor down the back of Logan’s shirt. Over the vampire’s Mark that was bleeding freely.
“Fuck!” Logan roared. He leaned away, feeling the sting.
“That’s all you get,” said Lee. He snatched up the cork and pushed it back in with his thumb. “Get hold of yourself. You’ve been drunk, how long? Three days? There is more. Not only Maeve. There is another vampire in the city.”
Logan shrugged off his new leather jacket, took off his tee-shirt and threw it on the other side of the booth. “I know that, you bastard,” he said, grabbing a napkin from the table and patting a sticky shoulder.
Lee threw a clean rag at him. “He likes to visit Brexly,” he said. “I heard he is one of Maeve’s brood. Sent here ahead of her, to prepare the city.”
Logan wiped himself off as best he could. Wincing when he touched the trident burned into his flesh, and now weeping blood. He put his jacket back on and threw the dirty rag at Lee’s face.
Lee caught it without flinching. “Are you good?”
“Yea, I’m good,” Logan grumbled. He slid out of the booth. Stood, and ran and hand over his face, down his beard. He knew by touching it that it had grown long and scraggly. He didn’t care how he looked anymore. “You’re driving,” he said.
“Now?”
“Place is closed, isn’t it? You have a date, or something?”
Lee frowned. ‘Date’ was a codeword that vampires used when talking about their victims. Going on a ‘date’ meant going out prowling for a person to feed on.
“You know I don’t do that,” he said, holding the door open. Logan went out, and Lee locked up. They went around to the back of Magic Dragon Noodle. Lee climbed the ladder onto the roof while Logan waited below, leaning against Lee’s blue pickup truck.
The night darkened considerably as Lee pulled the plug to the large neon sign, of a winking dragon, on top of his restaurant. He jumped the distance to the ground, landing next to the door of his truck. He unlocked the door. Paused. Went back inside his restaurant and a moment later returned with his pump-action shotgun. Stuffing extra ammo into the deep pockets of his white chef’s jacket. He kept it buttoned up all the way. No fashionable top button left undone. Not for Lee. ‘Why have the button if you’re not going to use it?’ he’d say. Besides, it was sloppy.
No wonder he’s not married, Logan thought. It would take one hell of a woman to get this one to loosen up.
Lee got behind the wheel. Logan got in the passenger seat.
As Lee drove for Pier 39, Logan loaded his Anaconda revolver with hollow-point silver bullets.
Lee parked by the pier twelve minutes before 1AM. “I don’t see it,” he said.
“It’ll be around,” said Logan, looking at the streets as Lee gazed up at the starry sky. “We wait.”
Lee hated the smell of tobacco, so Logan got in the bed of the empty pickup truck and started to smoke. He thought about Club Noir, Maggie, and the cathedral. Recent events that, terrible as they were, kept him from remembering Maeve. The night when everything in his life went wrong.
The gifted of this city need to chin up, Logan thought, as he leaned against the metal and back window of Lee’s pickup. One leg was up, bent at the knee, the other flat against the grooved, metal bed. His black jeans were thick enough that he didn’t feel the cold. His one arm rested useless. The other held a cigarette between middle and index fingers, moving up and down every few seconds for Logan to take a puff.
In time, his thoughts turned to McNautly. With everything that had been going on, Logan hadn’t had the chance to confront the chief of San Francisco’s magi enforcers. Not that calling him out would do anything but get me killed.
First, he needed solid evidence of corruption. Then an authority to bring it to. The only authority able to replace a chief was the local magi councillor. And ours is missing. Convenient.
An alternative was to go to the Academy and make his case to the Masters. They could contact councillors from other parts of North America, bring them in to settle the matter while they found a replacement for Boyde Weathers. Also not happening. This string of events is too convenient, by far. Someone is pulling the strings, and I’m willing to bet that McNaulty knows who it is.
The enforcer chief had never been kind, nor fair to Logan. Logan had come to the city as a rare honey badger shifter with the recommendation from his chief in Arkansas. A young kid eager to do his duty. But also Marked.
One glance of the trident, the thin black lines burned into Logan’s neck, was all that it took for McNaulty’s eyes to darken with contempt.
“Only a loser would let himself be marked.”
“I’d rather die than be a vampire’s cattle.”
“What’s he even doing here? Doesn’t he have any honor?”
Those were some of the lines that Logan had heard in his first months in San Francisco. McNaulty had fostered a different kind of culture on the West Coast. In Logan’s mind, they weren’t welcoming of people who came from hard times because they’d never had any of their own. San Francisco was one of the safest places for gifted in all of North America, which meant in all of the world. It had made them arrogant. Until now.
For the first time, San Francisco’s gifted community had been hit with a real disaster. And, like an earthquake building up over a long time, it was a big one.
“Might be time to move,” he said, loud enough for Lee to hear. Logan had only come to the coast to get away from Maeve. It was an fine area. Nothing as special as the tourism agencies want you to believe.
Too many hills. Logan liked it flat, where you could see for a long ways out. Now that Maeve was coming, and everything was going to shit…
“It’s here,” said Lee, ignoring what Logan had said.
Logan couldn’t see Brexly Hall moving across the water, but he could see the ripple of water it left behind. Barely, only because of the full moon. He was back in the passenger seat, listening to an ’80s rock station on Lee’s radio by the time the barge was docked. A pile of cigarette butts left in the back. Tobacco wasn’t as good as liquor, but it had done the trick. Calmed Logan’s nerves, and smoked out the taste of Lee’s brown beverage.
The patrons began exiting the barge. They appeared one at a time from the moment they crossed the plank, stepping back into the world of the ungifted.
It was only one stop of many. Most of the passengers would stay on, continue the ride all night and into the next day. But many got off, and Logan and Lee were counting on Maeve’s underling to be one of them. He should have work to do.
“There.” Lee pointed at a tall figure, who was stopped and talking to what looked to be teenager dressed in a dark green poncho. “He fits the description.”
The vampire wore a black, wide brimmed pilgrim’s hat and a black suit with a bright white dress shirt underneath, partly covered by a thin ribbon that was tied into a loose bow at the front of his collar.
He finished the conversation and made his way quickly down the pier. A golden cross dangled out from within one of his sleeves, attached to a golden bracelet on his left wrist.
“A religious vampire,” Logan noted.
Lee exhaled sharply through his nose. “No.” He shook his head. “Disguise.”
“Let’s hope we can keep up.”
No sooner had Logan said it, the vampire turned into a massive bat and beat its leathery wings, heading into San Francisco.
Logan glanced at Lee. It was up to him now. “You got him?”
Faerie Empire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 2) Page 10
