Harsh Gods

by Michelle Belanger

  She crimped her lips, biting back some comment.

  Roarke hunched his shoulders like a kid caught spray-painting the neighbor’s poodle. He sidestepped our little greeting party as he slipped from the elevator. Potts huffed through her nose and gave immediate pursuit, leaving just Bobby and me.

  “Zack. What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Uh, a friend called me to pick him up,” I lied.

  “Hell of a night to play Good Samaritan,” he said. I stepped the rest of the way out of the elevator just as the doors started closing again.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “What’s going on? It looks like the whole station is here tonight.”

  Keeping his back to the chaos in the lobby, Bobby restlessly dashed fingers through his mussed hair. He grimaced as he flicked off styling-gel-laced meltwater. It landed on the tiles.

  “A real mess,” he sighed. “I’ve got six in the parking garage and a partner who didn’t show for the call.”

  “Six?” I echoed, scanning the crowd over his head for any sign of Father Frank or Lil. There were cops and security personnel everywhere.

  “No survivors, no IDs, and no witnesses,” he said sourly. Following my gaze, he frowned as an orderly began shouting with one of the uniforms near the hospital’s front doors. Park hovered on the edge of striding over to break it up, but they quieted. Turning back to me, he continued, “Jimmy thinks it’s drug related. Lyds disagrees. With what I’ve seen, I’m siding with Lyds. It’s not your standard shoot-out.”

  “Oh?” I asked, not daring to offer anything further.

  “If all we had were gunshot victims, Roarke might have a point. The hospital’s right here, and we found oxy on one of them. But the violence done to these bodies…” A shadow of revulsion twisted his features, and he rubbed his eyes as if the gesture could somehow erase the memory. “We found guns and some casings, but bullets didn’t kill these people. One guy’s head was twisted all the way around on his neck, and his back looked like someone had folded him in half.”

  I winced, recalling the sound.

  “All the cameras out there were down during the power outage and lightning blew out a transformer, so not even the back-up power kicked on. Now we’ve got squat to go on, and I heard on the radio some kid’s gone missing from the children’s ward. I was just heading up there,” he explained, stepping past me to hit the call button on the elevator. With a plaintive note, he added, “I hope it’s a mix-up. I can’t handle any more dead kids this week, Zack. I really can’t.”

  That makes two of us, I thought.

  “Hey, flyboy—what are you standing around for?” The distinctive sound of Lil’s heels crescendoed in swift approach. I whirled in time to ward off her hand as she slapped at my shoulder.

  She’d lost the harried nurse outfit, trading the lab coat for her recently reclaimed brown leather jacket, zipped snug. Her hair hung loose again, spilling wildly across her shoulders. Bobby’s eyes cut from me to the Lady of Beasts, taking in the whole of her appearance.

  “This your friend?” he asked uncertainly.

  Her lips pursed for some sharp-tongued answer—then his suit jacket shifted to reveal his badge. She switched personas so fast, it gave me whiplash.

  “I’m so sorry for snapping,” she said in a meek voice that belonged on somebody else. Drawing back a step, she tipped her face to the floor so all her hair swung forward. It was a perfect imitation of Remy at his most obsequious. The russet tresses obscured her features, further muffling her voice so I had to strain as she muttered, “You know how I can be when I’m worried.”

  If her swift change puzzled Bobby, he buried it under polite professionalism.

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but we have to keep everyone a little while longer for questioning.”

  “Zack, tell him,” she whined. “The poor man’s nearly seventy. He needs to be home, where he can sleep. He’s been through so much already.”

  “Who’s she talking about, Zack?” Bobby asked.

  I almost didn’t tell him—Father Frank’s connection to Halley was too direct. We needed to divert Bobby and get the hell out so we could start tracking the girl. Under her lashes, Lil shot me a look. The hand nearest to me twitched, the nail of her middle finger jerking once in a direction back and to my left. I flicked my gaze that way.

  Father Frank was already walking toward us, his knotted fingers firmly gripped around a steaming cup of vending machine coffee.

  “Father Frank,” I said, both in answer and salutation. Bobby tilted his head as he studied the rangy old Marine.

  “Hey, I know you,” he said. “You were the guy who broke up that scuffle during the Feast of the Assumption parade, last August. You say mass sometimes at Holy Rosary, right?”

  “Not if I don’t get some sleep real soon,” the padre responded, flashing a smile that was equal measures apology and chagrin. He hefted the coffee cup like a talisman. “Been a long night of praying by the bedsides.”

  Without a word, Lil shifted to stand beside the taller man. She slipped one hand through the crook of his elbow, clinging like a frightened toddler. Father Frank stared at his arm as if it had suddenly sprouted a grotesque tumor.

  Lil didn’t budge, ducking her chin so any portion of her features not hidden by hair was angled away from Bobby behind the priest’s shoulder. She strained toward the main doors, tugging hard enough that the padre had to struggle not to spill his coffee.

  I took the hint.

  “We really need to go,” I said.

  Bobby scrubbed his palm against the back of his head, looking miserable. At his hip, fragments of harried voices crackled from his two-way. His name stood out in the jumble. He ignored it for the moment, staring pensively at the call buttons for the elevator.

  “I don’t suppose you can help much in this chaos,” he sighed.

  “We showed up after the cops did, Bobby,” I said. “What could I possibly offer?”

  Dark eyes sought my own and lingered, beseeching. I knew what he was hoping for—though he was careful not to say it in front of either Lil or the padre. I shook my head once, firmly. Bobby’s shoulders sagged further and I looked away, sickened by the way I misdirected the earnest young investigator.

  Halley’s safety made it necessary.

  I’d just keep telling myself that.

  Park unclipped his walkie. “I’ll tell the guys at the door you’re clear. No point in everyone having a shitty night.” When he realized he’d sworn in front of the padre, Bobby actually caught his breath.

  “Sorry for the language,” he muttered.

  Father Frank offered the tightly wound detective a rueful half-grin.

  “Son, in your shoes, I’d be swearing, too.”

  “I’ve had better nights,” Park admitted. As he arranged things over the walkie, we started heading for the doors. Relinquishing her death-grip on the padre’s arm, Lil pulled ahead, the keys to my car already jingling in her hand.

  “We could have been out and tracking him by now,” she grumbled.

  I jogged to catch up. “You have a lead?”

  She pushed past the two uniforms standing at the main bank of doors. The orderly who’d been yelling earlier started up again the minute he realized they were letting us free ahead of him. I dodged that train wreck, leaving the whole mess for Bobby and his co-workers to sort out.

  Once we stood on the sidewalk out front, I asked the question again. Lil shook her head irritably.

  “Not Kramer,” she said. “Malphael.”

  “Malphael?” Father Frank echoed.

  “The Gibburim,” I supplied. Lil rolled her eyes at the two of us, then made a beeline for the car. I grabbed her by the elbow and turned her back toward me. “Malphael’s no good. By the time he gets to Halley, she’ll already be—”

  “Don’t say it,” Father Frank interrupted. “Please. I can’t bear to imagine a world where that’s true.”

  “Sorry, padre.” To Lil, I demanded, “And how exactly are you tra
cking Malphael? You didn’t get within five paces of the guy back at the house.”

  “You don’t think I gave up that rosary for nothing, do you?” With a grin of triumph, she held up a single bead of green ceramic.

  “He told you to destroy that,” Father Frank spat. He lunged, and I stepped between them before things got out of hand. Most of the police were in the lobby, but there were officers visible out here, too. Roarke and Potts stood within earshot, the blonde Amazon clearly dressing down her hill-giant of a partner.

  “Is that how this monster found his way to Halley?” Father Frank strained against me, cords standing out along his neck. “I told you, you couldn’t trust this woman, Zack.”

  “Cool your cassock, priest,” she responded. “I broke everything that was important.” She dropped the gleaming bead into the depths of her bottomless handbag. “No way I was running around with a direct pipeline to one of the Rephaim. That’s just asking for trouble.”

  Father Frank ground his teeth in aggravation. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Lil myself.

  “You were going to tell me about this when?” I asked. The wind teased the hair back from her face, revealing her Mona Lisa grin.

  “Whenever I decided it was time.”

  The padre hissed a curse beneath his breath and tore away from me, pacing a length of sidewalk while he shook aggression from his hands. Lil shot him a contemptuous look.

  “While you two dicked around in the girl’s hospital room, I worked up a spell to trace it back to its source,” she explained. “I didn’t have time to finish but I’ve got enough to—” Abruptly, she stopped, nostrils flaring wide. “Do you smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “Calvin Klein Eternity.” She pronounced it with all the gravitas of a sentencing judge. Her gray eyes settled onto Roarke like a lightning stroke. It took McMountain several heartbeats to realize she was staring at him. He glanced up from his tête-à-tête with Potts.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  Ignoring the “ma’am,” she marched right over to him and stabbed a shamrocked fingernail in his chest. I tried to be invisible.

  “You’re wearing Calvin Klein Eternity,” she accused.

  His pale brows furrowed. “So?”

  Potts just stared at the smaller woman.

  Lil tipped her head back, minutely studying McMountain’s rough-hewn features. Her lips twisted with distaste.

  “It won’t last.”

  With that, she whirled on her heel, leaving both Roarke and his partner staring after her.

  “Of course he’s a redhead,” she growled as she stomped past me toward my car. Taking advantage of her distraction, I plucked the keys from her hand. She punched me in the arm as an afterthought.

  “Did you know?” she demanded.

  “We’re going now,” I reminded her.

  “How long did you know?” she pursued.

  I slipped the keys in the lock, opening her door without really thinking about it.

  “Didn’t you divorce my brother?”

  “I died,” she snapped. “There’s a difference.”

  Father Frank observed this exchange with an air of baffled exasperation.

  “We need to head back to Holy Rosary,” he said, pulling up his coat collar against the stinging cold. “Then you should drop me at Tammy’s place.”

  “We’re going after Malphael,” Lil insisted.

  “Kramer, you mean,” I corrected. “We find him, we find the girl.”

  “I don’t have a tracking spell active on Kramer, you idiot,” she argued. “Mal will find the girl for us. We focus on him.”

  “And I’m telling you, if we focus on Malphael, we run the risk of losing Halley. You heard him back at the house.”

  Father Frank strode up and closed his hand around my keys. A tingle of power arced through the contact, followed by a wash of frustration, anxiety, and steely-edged will.

  “We are going to my church,” he said, “and then you are driving me to the Davis home. No arguments.” There was power in his words.

  “Praying’s not going to help anything,” Lil spat back, “and you’ll waste precious time at the girl’s house. Neither Kramer nor Mal are going to head back there. There’s nothing there they want.”

  Father Frank rounded on her, condemnation whittling his features.

  “A deranged child-killer just kidnapped her daughter. I need to tell Tammy in person. That’s not something a mother should hear on the news.”

  44

  Lil refused to get in the car.

  “Quit fucking around,” I snarled. “Every delay costs us.”

  “Which is why I’m going after Garrett.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, chin jutting stubbornly. The lights in the parking lot picked out a scattering of perfect snowflakes trapped in the waves of her hair.

  “Leave her behind,” Father Frank growled. He ducked past me and slid into the passenger seat, slamming the door after him. I marched over to the driver’s side, glaring at Lil across the roof of the car.

  “You pick the worst possible times to be a brat.”

  “You think that’s what this is about?” she shot back. “You don’t even know where Tarhunda is located, and if he pulls things off with that girl, we are all completely screwed.”

  “Rub it in a little more,” I said.

  “You’re chasing ghosts, Anakim. I’m going after the sure thing.” She turned smartly on her heel and started across the lot.

  “At least let me drop you off at your car,” I called after her.

  “The way you drive?” she replied. “I’ll get there faster if I walk.”

  Roarke tracked her progress from where he stood beside his partner. Shifting his attention my way, he shot me a quizzical look. I held my hands up in a gesture of frustration. If he wanted insight into the mysteries of Lil’s behavior, he was looking at the wrong guy.

  “Come on, Zack.” The driver’s-side door bumped against my stomach as Father Frank pushed it open from the inside. “It’s better if she doesn’t tag along. There are some things at Holy Rosary you need to see.”

  “What are you even talking about?” I asked.

  “Get in.” He nudged me with the door again, every line of his face telegraphing his urgency. “You’ll understand once we get there.”

  Lil was already at the far end of the main lot. No one stopped her, though Roarke continued to stare at her retreating form—probably committing her details to memory. I wondered if he would ask Remy about her later.

  That would be an awkward conversation.

  I hesitated another moment, squinting as a gust of wind scoured my face with ice crystals. Then, muttering unhappy things about the tactics of splitting the party, I ducked into the Hellcat.

  The hospital’s lot had been plowed and salted since the storm, no doubt a fringe benefit of an early morning visit from a battalion of cops. Snow was still coming down in swirling flurries of white, though it was nothing like the flash-freezing blizzard that had pummeled the city earlier. I hit the ignition, cranked up the defroster to clear the scrim of ice forming on the windshield, and headed for Euclid.

  It was a short drive to Holy Rosary, but I found myself glaring at the clock every thirty seconds. Time sped faster than I could urge the Hellcat on these roads. The plows had been busy clearing snow and spreading salt, but the pavement was slick with melt and little patches were already freezing over. We practically crawled up Mayfield, and I resisted the urge to pummel the steering wheel every time the tires struggled for grip.

  “Ease up on yourself, Zack,” the padre said. “You’ll find her in time.”

  I loosed a string of curses as the light ahead of us went from green to yellow in record time. Father Frank didn’t even twitch. When I hit the brakes, the Dodge started to fishtail, so I laid on the horn and just coasted through. The horn was more reflex than necessity. No one was going to broadside us—they weren’t stupid enough to be on the roads at
this hour.

  “I wasn’t swearing at you,” I said by way of apology. “Lil’s right, though,” I continued, shoving the hair back from my eyes. “I have no idea where Kramer’s taken her. I don’t even know where to start.”

  The old priest stared out the window at the passing buildings, their eaves and every lintel lined with fine traceries of snow.

  “That’s why we’re going to Holy Rosary before anything else,” he responded. “You need access to your supplies.”

  “I’ve got supplies stashed at the church?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I did, back at the hospital,” he said. “At least I tried to. Didn’t want to say too much in front of Ms. Gibson.”

  It took me a moment to realize he meant Lil.

  “Before that, I left a bunch of messages on your cell—lot of good it did me.” He fixed me with a look of reproach that felt distinctly paternal. “You still haven’t given me the new number, by the way.”

  Unlocking the screen one-handed, I held my current phone out to him.

  “Text yourself or something. With everything going on, I’ll forget again.”

  He snorted. “Same old Zack.”

  The road dipped to go under the train tracks, both lanes narrowly girded by stout pylons of concrete. Both hands went on the wheel—it felt like I was threading a needle. Even without the road conditions, it wouldn’t have been fun squeezing the Hellcat through the abbreviated lane.

  As we emerged on the other side, the retaining walls blossomed with a vibrant mural celebrating the history of Cleveland’s Little Italy. The domed spire of Holy Rosary rose in the distance above the slumbering neighborhood, the arms of its cross bearing a rounded mantle of white.

  “What kind of things are we talking—weapons?” I asked hopefully. “A Rephaim-sized bazooka would be great about now. Or a magical tracking device. I really could use one of those.”

  Underneath the jokes, my mind raced through possibilities. Tools and weapons for the current crisis would be handy, but what I longed for—and truly needed—was knowledge to fill some of the holes in my existence. The journals in my apartment were crammed with tons of general information on wards and energy and theories about the tribes, but they were frustratingly sparse when it came to personal details.