by Rob Cornell
Lockman climbed into the car, slammed the door shut. He focused on the center of the steering wheel. Breathed in. Breathed out. In. Out.
“Are you all right?” Vera asked.
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”
He started the car and backed out of the alley. Two black stumps that used to be the vamp’s legs stood before the Dumpster. Their oily surface glimmered in the headlights.
Once clear of the alley, Lockman jammed the car into drive and squealed the tires pulling away. He could sense Vera surrounding him, wanting to say something. It was an unsettling feeling, like being spied on by secret cameras.
First chance he got, he was going to ditch this car and head home. But not until he had a talk with a big, friendly ogre.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Where’s Marty?” Lockman stood at a payphone in a gas station parking lot. It had taken him almost an hour to find a working one. The whole time he searched, his blood boiled hotter and hotter. Now he squeezed the phone so hard, he wasn’t sure he would leave this one in working order when he was finished.
Eliza’s voice sounded like sand in a blender over the phone. “Who the hell is this?”
“Craig Lockman. Put Marty on the phone, now.”
Her throat clicked. She hesitated. “Marty isn’t here.”
“Well, where the fuck is he?”
“I’ll have to call you back.”
“You can’t call me back. I’m at a payphone.” He gripped the top edge of the phone kiosk and squeezed till his knuckles turned white. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“I don’t get involved in Marty’s business.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Another hesitation. “Call back in fifteen minutes.”
“Eliza—”
“It’s the best I can do. Fifteen minutes.” The line went dead.
Lockman slammed the phone onto the hook and stalked away. He paced by Vera, looked at the black char the vamp had left behind.
Big, friendly ogre.
What the fuck was Marty playing at?
Fifteen minutes passed no quicker than a lifetime.
He used his credit card again to pay for the long distance call. The process felt like it took longer than the fifteen minutes he’d already waited. Finally, the phone rang. Eliza picked up on the second ring.
“He wants to meet you.”
“I don’t have time to meet him. I’m in New Orleans for Christ’s sake.”
“Marty is there, too.”
A block of ice dropped into Lockman’s stomach. “What?”
“There’s a café in the Quarter. It’s open twenty-four hours. Café Magique. He’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”
“An ogre is going to meet me in a fucking café?”
“It’s supernatural friendly. Just ask to be seated in the private section. Tell them you’re with the Gulogich party.”
“Cute.” Gulogich was the native name for ogres in their home dimension. The only reason mortals called them ogres was because that was the closest thing on this plane to describe them. In fact, most supernaturals on the mortal plane got their names from human mythology, though which came first was hard to tell. Most of the mythology had probably evolved around the reality. “What’s he doing here, Eliza?”
“I told you, I don’t get involved.”
Before Lockman could press her, she hung up.
His head spun. He gently placed the phone back on the hook, backed away from the kiosk as if it might come to life and bite an arm off. The pieces of this puzzle knocked against one another in his mind’s torrent, but none of them fit together.
He climbed into Vera. “What’s Marty up to?”
Vera remained silent.
Lockman pounded the steering wheel and the car’s horn honked. “Speak up, Vera.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to remain quiet.”
“How come you only do that when it’s most convenient to you?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
Lockman gripped the steering wheel and squeezed. He could feel the tension growing in his neck and shoulders. “No more games. What is Marty doing in New Orleans?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Have you been reporting to him? Psychic link or something?”
“I do not have that capability.”
All his time on the field, dealing with all sorts of supernatural phenomenon—he never imagined he would get the run-around from a fucking car. “Tell me what you do know?”
“I was given one directive from the Gulogich. Protect you at all cost. I know nothing of his motives or plans. And I have not, in any way, been in contact with him since leaving Detroit.”
She sounded sincere enough. But, then again, how did you know when a car was lying? It looked like the only way he would get to the bottom of this was to meet with Marty. It went against every instinct in Lockman to enter a situation he knew so little about. One thing was for sure, he would go in prepared.
Lockman tapped a panel and opened another compartment, one of the bigger ones in the car. The Uzi 9mm and four extra mags lay inside.
“Isn’t that a bit overkill?” Vera asked.
He drew the Uzi from the compartment, checked the load, snapped the mag back in place. “Day I’ve had? No such thing as overkill.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
From the outside, the café looked so normal amongst the other establishments in the Quarter it bordered on cliché. Every bit of décor reveled in its utter Frenchness. From the espresso cups on the tiny outdoor tables to the Parisian music floating from the open door. A kid with the wisp of a goatee and wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses hunched over a notebook, scribbling with a fountain pen, a practiced look of angst on his face as he wrote. He looked like an actor pretending to be a writer and Lockman wondered if he was part of the décor as well.
Inside, more small round tables with tiny cups before the patrons, the patrons themselves caught up in conversations about Jazz and the true meaning behind Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Lockman had never stood among such forced sophistication before. They all felt like players in an experimental theatre troop.
What a great front for a supernatural friendly establishment.
Lockman approached a barista behind a counter filled with glazed and gooey pastries. The barista wore his hair long, one lock expertly draped down the center of his face, the rest combed neatly behind his ears. When he spoke he sounded like a Frenchman who had swallowed a surfer dude. “What can I get for you, bra?”
It took Lockman a second to realize the kid hadn’t called him a piece of woman’s clothing, but rather a “bro.” “All these people on the payroll?”
The French Surfer squinted, mouth hanging open. “Say what?”
“Never mind.” He tried to tone down the contempt in his voice. “I’m here to see the Gulogich party.”
The dopey surfer expression lifted from the kid’s face and he smiled, sudden intelligence in his eyes. When next he spoke, he sounded neither French nor totally stoked, dude. “You must be Lockman.” Then he gestured out at the café. “Not all of them.”
Lockman cocked an eyebrow. Then he got it. “Just enough to draw the right crowd.”
“A place like this, you want to keep up the right appearance.”
“You one of us or one of them?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“It’s never obvious.”
The barista narrowed his eyes. “You’re prejudiced, huh?”
“You know my name. You know what I used to do for a living?”
“Like the cop who thinks everybody is a criminal.”
“Not everybody,” Lockman said, his ire burning as he thought more about Marty’s role in all this. “Just them.”
“Well, don’t worry about me. I’m a one-hundred percent genuine native.”
“Okay, native. Show me to the party.”
The barista gestured Lockman to foll
ow. They went through a curtain into a back hall. The hall had a couple rooms off of it. Maybe a storage closet and a bathroom. The barista led the way to the back of the hall which opened up into a small room, almost like a foyer to the back entrance. No other doors here besides that entrance, though.
“Your supernatural guests hang in the alley?”
The barista rolled his eyes and didn’t bother with an answer. Instead he reached into a pocket of his apron and pulled out a silver metal disc, about the size of his palm, shaped like a pentagon. The disc had something etched on its surface, but Lockman couldn’t make out any details from where he stood. His gut tightened a bit, though. Little trinkets like that meant only one thing.
Mojo.
Lockman took a step back.
The barista noticed and laughed. “You are phobic, aren’t you?”
“Whose blood you gonna use to charge your little doohickey?”
The barista held out one hand, palm facing Lockman. Scars crisscrossed his skin, making his hand a nightmare for any palm reader.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m helping people who don’t get it from anywhere else.”
“They’re not people.”
The barista shrugged at that. He pulled a pen knife from his apron and cut another line in his palm. Then he pressed the disk against his bleeding palm. The air around them smelled like a coming storm. The disk glowed a bright blue.
A couple seconds later the wall to the left wavered like a disturbed pool of water. The paneling disintegrated before Lockman’s eyes, revealing a metal door with a keypad by the knob.
“Just a glamour?”
“Does the trick.” The barista put the disc and knife back into his apron and flexed the hand he had cut. The blood was gone, the wound closed. He shook the hand and winced.
“Is it worth all that?”
The barista gave Lockman a serious look. “Think of it this way. How would you feel if someone pulled you out of this dimension and into another so completely different from your own you were viewed as a monster? Not all supernaturals are here to eat mortals you know.”
“Doesn’t mean they belong here.”
“You’re right. They don’t. But unless you’ve got a way to send them all back, we’re stuck with them. And they’re stuck with us.”
Lockman had heard of supernatural sympathizers. He’d never met one before. As far as he was concerned, anyone who “befriended” supernaturals intended to use them in some way. But he didn’t have time to discuss paranormal politics with the kid. He pointed to the metal door. “Can I go in?”
The barista nodded and moved in close to the door, making sure he stood between the keypad and Lockman. A series of tones sounded as the kid entered a code. The lock clicked when it opened.
The barista stepped aside. “Go ahead.”
Lockman nodded his thanks and opened the door.
He didn’t know what to expect, but what he walked into would have never crossed his mind. First glance, it looked like an extension of the café up front. The main difference was the seating. Sure, it had the same small round tables and wooden chairs. But gravity was a myth in this space. The tables stood on the walls as well as the floor. And hung from the ceilings. Patrons sat at these tables as comfortably as if their side of the box-shaped room was really the bottom. M.C. Escher would have felt quite at home in this café.
It made Lockman dizzy.
He turned back, but the barista had closed the door. He heard the tones from the keypad on the other side. Then the lock snapped home. Staring at the door, his vertigo faded. He couldn’t very well stand there all night, though.
“Lockman,” a voice called through the normal din of any standard café. Only here there was no talk of the struggling artist or philosophical debates on literary masterpieces. Most of the conversations he could pick out revolved around mundane topics like menu choices or recounting of a day’s events. “Come on, Lockman. Don’t be such a pussy.”
Marty’s voice.
Lockman pivoted slowly back to the café. The view made his head spin again. A few of the patrons now stared at him—from the ceiling, the walls, the floor. He recognized some of the supernatural breeds. A nymph in one corner on the ceiling sat alone sipping espresso and eyeing him as if he were a rack of lamb. A stone-faced golem shared sorbet with some furred creature with feline eyes. A few human-like faces also stared. Some supernaturals did look like humans—certain varieties of fey, shapeshifters who took human forms, and Doppelgangers who had human doubles on the mortal plane.
There was no way to tell the difference between these and real humans.
Lockman hated that.
He tried to scan the café for Marty’s face without puking. Finally, he spotted the ogre waving an arm, though to Lockman it looked like he was dangling an arm. Of course the ogre had to take a table on the fucking ceiling.
Lockman threaded through the tables on the floor until he stood underneath Marty’s table. He craned his neck back to look up. Marty had a cup of coffee on the table before him. From this angle, Lockman could see the black liquid, which by all rights should have poured right out of the cup and into Lockman’s face.
Marty grinned down at him. “Pretty sweet place, huh? Not too many like it.” He waved a hand. “Never mind that. Come down here and take a seat.”
“Down? You mean up.”
Marty laughed. “Guess it looks that way to you.”
“How the hell do I get up there?”
The ogre shrugged. “Walk.”
Lockman lowered his gaze to the “wall” before him. More gravity defying tables with drinks that didn’t spill like they should have, and tables that looked glued in place. Walk. For the first time, it occurred to Lockman how little he truly knew about the supernatural world. He always knew there was more to it than what he’d seen. But his time with the Agency had introduced him to all manner of the inexplicable. His training demanded that he know more than any average mortal about the paranormal. He had even considered himself an expert on the subject. Now he came face to face with an unnerving truth.
He didn’t know shit.
Lockman watched a waiter carrying a tray of pastries and espresso walk up the wall and set the tray down at a table between two squat trolls—the small kind, not the giant mothers. Just like that. Up the wall. Like that Fred Astaire number in Royal Wedding. Like it’s nothing.
He took a deep breath and started at the wall. He thought he would have to take a large step, basically bracing a foot against the wall before he could walk up it, but the moment he lifted his foot to take that step, gravity seemed to shift. The wall became the floor. The floor became the wall. He stepped forward with ease, just as if the room turned with him.
When he stood straight, the only hint that he stood on a wall instead of a floor was the door he’d come in through. Since it was on the opposite side of the room, the door now appeared to be built into the ceiling. The vertigo struck him again. He focused on the hardwood panels between his feet. Once the feeling passed, he crossed the room and walked up the next wall. Again, the room seemed to flip with him. Now he stood beside Marty’s table, feeling a little peaked.
Marty slapped the table and laughed. “I’ve never seen you so pale, brother.”
Lockman willed his head clear. The blood started flowing in the right places again. The dizziness waned. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Niall sipped from the neck of the young, virgin boy draped across his lap. He had grown accustomed to savoring the blood of some mortals. Especially the young. This boy could have been no older than fourteen in mortal years. His blood tasted like nectar. But it had already started to coagulate in the hole Niall had chewed into the boy’s throat. He could create a new wound and suck from there, but he didn’t really need the blood. Just something to pass the time.
He shoved the boy’s limp body off his lap. The boy’s skull thunked against the marble floor. Bloo
d pooled out from under the boy’s head.
“Oops.” He gestured to one of his human turns who stood guard to the side of Niall’s throne. “Clean up, aisle one.”
The freshling hurried over and dragged the body out of sight. The streak of blood left behind on the floor added a nice touch of color to the room. Niall still needed to decorate his new seat of power. The musty lobby of a derelict hotel didn’t quite have the flair Niall imagined a king should have surrounding him. He had enough freshlings now. It wouldn’t take long before this hotel was transformed into his very own vampire hive. What mortal would dare confront a community of loyal vampires that could fill nearly every room of a five-story hotel?
The question no sooner crossed his mind when the hotel’s front doors burst open and a trio of Niall’s followers rushed into the lobby. Niall watched them from his throne—an ornate chair meant for a priest and stolen from a crumbling Catholic church. He thought it amazing how mortal religious symbols lost their power when mortals no longer treated them as holy.
Niall recognized the eldest of the vampires who knelt before him when they reached his throne. He couldn’t recall a name, but his loyalty was unquestioned. He lived among those who had moved into the community center to the south.
“My master,” the eldest said. “I have grave news.”
Despite the follower’s urgent tone, Niall smiled. The formal way they chose to speak to him always amused him. He knew they did not talk that way amongst themselves. Another sign of the respect Niall had gained among his kind. Respect that continued to grow as more and more vampires chose to follow him.
“What is it, my son?”
“Our day guard was killed. Now, one of our community members has gone missing.”
The last of the virgin boy’s blood turned bitter in Niall’s mouth. “A guard? Killed? How?”
“A strike to the heart, my lord.”
One of the largest insults carried out by mortals. Piercing a vampire’s heart was a painful death that came second only to seeing the light. A death in flames would be better. “And the missing one?”
