The vortex moved in, snatching Talbot's body from the entrance of his house and tossing it back into the street. It picked him up and shook him like a dog, bouncing him from the street and wall. With a final heave it gave up and moved off, heading toward the darkness at the end of the street, toward the river and the waterfront.
* * *
"Two nights in a row," cursed Sergeant Sebastian Montoya as he parked the police steamer down the street from the scene.
Jude nodded his head and trying to keep from puking, looking with red eyes at the world after midnight. That world was losing focus in front of his eyes. With force of will he ordered his eyes to focus and tried to still his stomach.
"What have you been drinking tonight?" asked Montoya, putting a hand on his partner's shoulder and looking into his eyes.
"Nothing," said Jude, shaking his head, then wishing he hadn't as the nausea returned. He forced down his gorge and shot a glance at his partner. "I'm on the wagon. That's why I feel like shit."
"Better have a doctor look at you," said the Sergeant, getting out of his seat and closing the door.
Jude nodded, then got out of the passenger side and closed his door. He willed himself to be calm, saying the words of a fortifying spell that masked some of the ill feelings, then stepped ahead, his heels striking hard on the stone sidewalk. It seemed as if the entire force was on the street ahead. Flashbulbs lit the night, photographers taking pictures of everything that was standing still.
"Who is it tonight?" asked Jude as he walked up to the body, which was still lying in the street according to police procedure, surrounded in a chalk outline.
"His name was Mark Talbot," said a tall man with long black hair going to gray. "He was a Senior Transfer Chief with Daemon Corp."
Jude looked at the man, realizing that he was not with the police, sensing the power in him. The command of the arcane that he had felt in senior battlemages in the Army. Just like those son of bitches, he thought, remembering how several of that ilk had torn through a town that was revolting against the legal authority of the Council of Mages, smiles on their faces. He had been a junior mage at the time, but had been just as guilty.
He looked again at the face, taking a closer look. He had seen that face before, from the covers of newspapers.
"I am Lucius Daemon," said the man, holding his hands close to his body, not offering one to the Detective. "This man was my employee, and I want his killer brought to justice."
Jude felt a chill of fear run down his spine. Not like the trepidation he had felt in dealing with the man from the Magara. That was a minor thing, compared to this. This was the most powerful man in the world, both in magical power and financial clout. If he was watching the case, Jude would be under pressure like never before. Not something to inspire self-confidence, but enough to make the paranoid more so. Jude forced himself to think of business, and only business.
"Have you examined the body, sir?" asked Jude, nodding at the broken doll of a human lying on the ground. "With your ability maybe you could see something the rest of us have missed."
"That kind of magic is beneath me," said Daemon, looking along his nose at the Detective. "Though I understand that you are very good at this low level diagnostic stuff."
The leader of the Mages' Council looked at Jude for a moment longer. Jude felt as if his soul were being dissected by the man, then cataloged and put away for further study.
"Is it true that Sondra Mangonel's soul was gone?" he finally said, looking off into the night.
"Yes sir," agreed Jude, following his gaze to nowhere. "There was no trace of it in the building. Something ate it."
"Then you will probably find no trace of one here either," said Daemon, turning away and walking up the street, to where several men dressed in expensive suits stood by a limousine.
"What the hell did he want?" asked Montoya, coming up after the big man was out of earshot.
"He's taking a personal interest in this case," said Jude, staring at the Mage as he got into his car and the doorman closed his door. That man walked around the car and got into the passenger’s seat while the driver got in his.
"I don't like the sound of that," said the Sergeant, making the open sign of the hand. Jude knew that his partner was saying a prayer of protection against evil. He hoped that it would do both of them some good.
"Here," he said to his partner, reaching down to turn the body over. "Help me here so I can get this done."
* * *
"What in the hell is that?" called out Able Seaman Joshua Benning, standing his watch on the front bow of the Bellerophon. It looked like a waterspout, but with a red glow like nothing he had ever seen.
"General quarters," called out the voice on the large speaker mounted over the bridge. Within moments the twenty-five thousand ton ship was swarming with men like an ant nest that had been kicked over.
Benning ran to his own station, on the forward starboard five inch barbet. He started getting the gun ready while the rest of the crew staggered in. Most of them were in various stages of undress. But they were awake and ready. Not even the port of the largest city in the world was really safe, and the ship was always lit up at night and ready for action.
“Load the gun,” ordered the Gun Captain, Petty Officer Theodus, while the last of the sailors came running into the station, earning a harsh look from the NCO.
Benning stood by with the lanyard, waiting until the round was slammed in and the breech closed. He had control of the gun, but only after the PO ordered him to use that control.
"Fire," ordered the Petty Officer, and Benning pulled the lanyard.
The gun went off with a loud bang, recoiling on its springs. Benning looked up over the barbet and saw the round strike the water, about fifty yards in front of whatever the thing was. Water fountained, and the thing turned toward the ship. Benning wondered about the wisdom of shooting at something they didn't know about, especially when it hadn't been heading for them.
The other seven starboard five inchers opened fire from one to three seconds behind Benning's gun. The shells bracketed the thing, and one hit dead center. Water spouted, tinged red by whatever made up the thing.
The five inch fired again, then once again, and there were several more hits, none of which seemed to bother it in the least, while the thing closed to within a thousand yards of the ship. Suddenly the entire world seemed to explode, and Benning clapped his hands over his ears as the concussion wave hit the deck. The two twelve inch shells hit on either side of the thing. The world erupted again, only this time worse, as the other two forward turrets sent four shells at the thing. This time there were two direct hits, and the thing seemed to fall apart in the splash of water. When the drops of liquid came down the creature was no longer there.
"I guess we got it," said Petty Officer Theodus, a smile on his broad face.
Benning wasn't so sure about that. He had been on a couple of convoys and had seen some of the large shadow creatures that inhabited the oceans. This hadn't looked like a shadow creature. And it had just dissipated when hit, leaving nothing behind.
"We got it," said the Captain's voice over the intercom. "The ship is released from general quarters."
Benning wasn't going to argue with that. The rest of the crew went back to their bunks and hammocks, while Benning went back to his watch, his eyes open even wider than before he had seen the whatever it was.
Chapter Seven
The head of Sondra Mangonel stared back at him, sitting on his bedside table. The mouth started to form words. He couldn’t make them out. There were no lungs attached to the head to propel air from the mouth. He looked closer, seeing the mouth moving, making out the words from the shape of the lips.
“Daemon,” said the lips. “Daemon.”
The view panned away and showed the entire room covered in blood. An orange tabby walked along the floor, blood dripping from his coat. Santana, thought Jude as he focused on the cat.
Then he was out in
a street. Several homeless men stood looking down at a broken body. The windshields of the nearby cars were splattered with red liquid. Several orange cats walked along the sidewalk, coming from the darkness of a near alley, blood dripping from their coats onto the untouched sidewalk, leaving a pattern of splatters. The homeless men looked at him, their hollow eyes reflecting their horror. They looked straight at him and their lips began to shape the words.
“Daemon,” they said, their eyes growing wider. “Daemon.”
The red vortex came from the alley, following the cats, who scattered out of the way. The head of Sondra Mangonel spun on the outside of the vortex, her face looking at him every couple of seconds. The vortex moved over the body of Mark Talbot, lifting it into the air and spinning it around, directly opposite of the woman’s head. It moved closer and closer, the wind of its passing whispering the word over and over.
“Daemon. Daemon.”
Another face looked out of the vortex. A broad face, long black and gray hair swirling around it. Burning black eyes looked out from the face, the mouth moving with the words.
“Daemon. Daemon.”
The vortex sprang at him, becoming a small blue figure, big blue eyes hugely opened. A feeling of fear and sadness radiated from the little figure. Its face contorted, changing into the face of a demon. The hand reached for him, the ends of the fingers tipped in rending talons. Suddenly there were hundreds of the creatures, thousands, all running at him, their lips moving. Saying the word.
“Daemon. Daemon.”
Jude screamed out, sitting up in bed, taking in deep breaths and trying to calm his beating heart. It was just a dream, he thought, even as some deeper part of his mind knew that it was something else. He looked over to the other side of the bed, where Santana lay on the covers in a beam of light coming through the curtained window, wide green eyes looking at his master. Jude wiped his sweaty hand on the blanket, then reached over the scratch the cat behind the ears, eliciting a deep purr.
“I don’t know how you got in that dream,” he said to the cat, who just closed his eyes and continued to purr.
Jude gave the cat a last rub and sat up, putting his feet on the floor. His skull felt awful, a splitting ache that made him want to lie down and pull a pillow over his head. But looking at the clock he saw that it was time to get up. The alarm would go off in a couple of minutes, and Montoya would be there a half an hour after he was up.
Damned alcoholic dream, he thought as he reached for the bottle of Phenobarbital the doctor had written for his withdrawals. This wasn’t the first time he had tried to detox from the volatile liquid. He hoped it was the last.
Was it a dementia expressed dream? he wondered as he forced himself to stand so he could get something to wash the pills down. He walked to the kitchen and got a glass of water, then started coffee going while thinking about the dream. He had been told in the past that he had the talent of connective dreaming, and that his dreams might contain some information about his cases. The faces made sense. The faces of the victims, witnesses and the man who was most interested in the case. The vortex made sense. That was what had been described by the witnesses, and the last visions of the two victims. But what in the hell were the little blue people? And the cats?
Jude tried to juggle out the meanings of the images while he took a hot shower, then wolfed down some coffee and cereal before he got dressed for another day.
Montoya was just a little bit late, which was OK with Jude, as he was also running just a bit late. He made it down to the sidewalk outside his building just moments before the Sergeant pulled up in a police steamer. He stopped in the middle of the street, eliciting honks from other drivers, and Jude walked out to the car and got in the passenger seat.
“You look better today,” said the Sergeant, glancing over at the Lieutenant while pulling forward into the slowly flowing traffic.
“I feel better,” said Jude, looking out the window at the people moving up and down the sidewalk. “Had a hell of a dream, but I feel better this morning.”
“I thought you were going to drink yourself to death,” said Montoya, honking his horn at a jaywalker, then looking back over at his partner.
“That was the plan,” said Jude, nodding. “Just takes too long, and you don’t know what might come along before you get there.”
“I think that God has plans for you,” said Montoya with a smile.
“He hasn’t told me those plans,” said Jude with a frown. “He told you something I should know.”
“Only that he loves you,” said Montoya, waving a woman with a baby carriage across the street. “And your life has purpose.”
“I’m not sure about either of those,” said Jude, looking out the window at a woman walking her cat on a leash. He thought that might be a good idea for Santana. To give the cat a bit of outside time without having to worry about it getting lost, or taken by something.
“Where have all the cats gone?” he said under his breath, looking down a garbage filled alley where in years past rats would be feeding, and cats would be feeding on the rats.
“What did you say, Jude?” asked Montoya, glancing over toward that alley.
“There used to be cats all over the place when I was growing up around here. And more rats than you could count. Big ones that took a big cat to bring down. Where the hell have they gone?”
“The world’s dying partner,” said Montoya with a sad expression on his face. “Dumb animals lived and worked in the shadows. Now the shadows are not a healthy place to be.”
Jude nodded, thinking about what Sarah had said. The world was dying. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Just a person willing to look at what was going on around him. Not something that most people were willing to do. The population was smaller than when he was a child. The dead zones in the city, the part with no permanent population and no access to the magical net that protected people from the shadows, were larger. They were driving out to the waterfront to go aboard a battleship, a vessel that had been built almost two centuries before to deal with similar ships from other countries. But there were no other countries. Instead the ship was used to protect them from the spawn of their own magic. They had been backed into a corner, with no way out, and the Shadows were closing in from all sides. Unless Daemon Corp had come up with a solution.
“Do you know that social worker we saw the other night?” he asked his partner as they moved down a hill. The waterfront was maybe ten blocks ahead, seen down the street. The fishing docks were mostly empty. There was still some fertile ocean around the city, and on the coast fronting arable land. But long range fishing was a thing of the past. Boats went out to the deep seas at their own risk, and seldom returned.
“I’ve seen her in church before,” said Montoya after a moment’s thought. “Very attractive, if you like blue eyed blondes with athletic figures.” He said this last with a smile. Jude knew that Montoya’s wife had very close to the same figure, though her hair was long and dark, and her eyes a Latin brown.
“She goes to your church?” asked Jude with a start.
“Nah. She goes to the Cathedral uptown. But she has been to my church to speak about the shelter and donations for the orphans. She caught your eye, huh?”
“She caught my eye, huh,” agreed Jude, a smile on his face.
“You could do worse,” said Montoya, a smile on his own face. “Of course she could do better.”
Jude shot his partner an aggrieved look, and Montoya laughed. Jude couldn’t help but join in, and people at the docks were staring at the black, unmarked car with the two goons in it laughing uproariously as it pulled into a parking place near a warehouse.
Jude waved his badge to a beat cop who was walking over to tell them they couldn’t park where they had. The man nodded his head and walked off, and Jude and Montoya walked down to the dock where a steam launch was tied up, a couple of marines and a pair of sailors standing watch under the command of an Officer who looked young enough to h
ave been learning how to read not too many years before. Smoke rose from the stack, indicating that the vessel was ready to move.
“Officer Parkinson?” asked the young Officer as Jude led the way to the launch.
“Detective Lieutenant Parkinson,” said Jude as he held out his hand to the ensign. “And this is Detective Sergeant Montoya.”
“Welcome, sirs,” said the Officer. “I am Ensign Gregory Stephens. It is my pleasure to conduct you to the Bellerophon. Would you please board the launch, gentlemen.”
Jude waited for a moment, letting Montoya go first so he could watch another land lubber puzzle out the procedure. The sailors helped him aboard with offered hands, while the two marines looked on with stony faces that Jude was sure would break into laughter at any moment. Then he remembered his own time in the Army, and how the threat of discipline could make a trooper keep control no matter how funny the incident. He was then helped aboard and shown the flotation device he had to don, before sitting in the middle bench of the launch.
One of the older looking sailors actually controlled the launch as it made its way out into the harbor, much to Jude’s relief. He wasn’t sure he wanted the boy/officer conning the boat.
The launch chugged out into the harbor with the characteristic sound of a steam engine. There were several large vessels in the harbor. Jude guessed they were getting ready to convoy with the battleship out the next day. To work their way down the coast to cities that were still alive, surrounded by their limited living lands. Bringing and picking up passengers and goods, including coal from the mountains inland of the capital. He could see that several of the vessels were colliers.
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