“I’m not entirely sure it does,” Torbert said. He put a thick file on the table. “You two are the ones who said you wanted to recover the artifact. Here is a copy of everything we know about him. He’s originally from Finland but has been living in Romania for at least the past fifteen years. We’ve put out an all-points bulletin for him. What we do know is that he hasn’t taken a plane or train out of this area since the event in Arlington.”
“Do you have a record of him coming here?” I asked. “Or a record of where he’s been staying?”
The look I got from Torbert wasn’t kind. “No, we don’t.”
“So, if his teleporter is working, you won’t know when he leaves, either,” Isabella said with an innocent smile.
After the PCU people left, Isabella took her laptop and the dossier to my sitting room and started going through it. I went back to trying to catch up on my work. When my crews came back that evening, she was still deep into it. I figured that she was the academic type, so I let her have it.
“You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast,” I said as the sun started to sink behind the trees. “Are you planning on fasting until you have an epiphany?”
She looked up, and I could tell it took a little while for her eyes to focus on me. “Yeah,” she said, “let’s go get something to eat. And then let’s go hit a couple of nightclubs.”
She stood, holding a palm-sized picture of Nieminen. “He seems to have some interesting pastimes. Perhaps someone here in town has seen him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so what are we doing tonight?”
“There are a bunch of clubs in a part of town called Ivy City,” Isabella said. “Some of them sound like the kind of thing Nieminen likes.”
Aghast, I turned to her. “Are you out of your mind?”
She chuckled. “We’re tough. No one will mess with us.”
“We’ll end up littering the streets with bodies,” I grumbled. “I hate Vampires.”
Gentrification had come late to Ivy City, and the area still had its run-down rough spots. Because old warehouses could be had for cheap, a number of nightclubs had opened in the area. Some of those nightclubs were run by non-Humans—Vampires, demons, and shape shifters, mostly. But the majority of the clientele was Human.
We picked up some take-out sushi on the way. The first club we visited, Sensuous Labyrinth, had a quiet and sensuous feel, and it scared the hell out of me. The demons running the club weren’t interested in blood. In private rooms, succubae and incubi drained life essence from their victims. I sensed a couple of greater demons somewhere on the premises, and what they fed on, I didn’t want to know.
We didn’t stay long and were headed toward the exit when a succubus stepped in front of us, hand on her hip and a sneer on her face. Several other succubae and incubi crowded around us, watching.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, obviously talking to me.
“Just slumming a bit, but we’re leaving now.”
“How unfortunate. I’m sure some of my regulars could give you a ride you wouldn’t forget.”
One of her regulars pressed against my back and butt while his hand slid around my chest. Isabella’s low growl attracted the succubus’s attention, but I didn’t need any help.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to disappoint them,” I said, lifting my athame to where the incubus holding me could see it over my shoulder. “We’re sort of in a hurry, but I could come back another time. Do you have a lot of regulars who want to become eunuchs?”
The guy behind me jumped away as though I’d hit him with an electric shock. “The thing is,” I told the succubus, “I have to dance to get in the mood. You do allow dancing here, don’t you? I like to sing, too.”
Her eyes widened, and then narrowed. Her face took on an ugly expression. “Get out.”
I smiled at her and patted her on the cheek as we walked by.
“What in the hell?” Isabella asked when we were outside.
“Demons don’t like the way Elves dance,” I said as I headed to the car.
Isabella trotted ahead and jumped in front of me. “Oh, no, you don’t. Explain.”
“I was just playing on an old stereotype, that’s all.”
“What stereotype?”
I could see that she wasn’t going to let it go. “Old tales about Elven women tell of us luring men to their doom by dancing and seducing them. We’re supposed to be sirens, the ultimate in femme fatales. I guess our hostess is rather insecure. She didn’t seem to like the idea of competition.”
“You’re joking.”
I laughed. “Carolyn showed me a passage in an old book of hers. It’s in the library at the townhouse. ‘The women of the Folk are to be avoided. When they sing and dance, no man can but go to them, but to lie with them is to surrender your soul. Their skills in the arts of love are so intense few men can survive it, and those who do pine away and die,’” I quoted. “It’s very flattering, but I have a hard time reconciling it with my lack of a love life.”
Isabella’s expression was skeptical, but she relented.
“What I can’t figure is why Nieminen would be attracted to that place,” I said as we drove to the next place on our list.
“They say that sex with a succubus is addictive. We know he’s pretty twisted if he’s into death magic.”
Vampires ran Fang, the next nightclub we visited, and they didn’t try to hide it. Young Humans dressed in goth attire swarmed the place, while a death-metal band attempted to deafen everyone. The vamps didn’t need to pretend, so they were dressed to impress. I hadn’t seen so much glitter since I did the flowers for a kindergarten party.
I adopted a light glamour, changing my hair to black. With my pale complexion and wearing black, I fit right in. I quickly noticed dozens of small private rooms along one of the walls, and further exploration revealed more such rooms on the second floor. The smell of blood made it evident what the vampires were doing with the customers they seduced.
I felt exposed. It felt like every vampire, male and female, noticed me. Not only noticed me but followed me around. They kept whispering, “Sweet blood,” which made me extremely uncomfortable.
The bartender brought me a glass of wine and stood staring at me, long after Isabella paid him, breathing deeply as though smelling me. When he finally turned away, I cast a purification spell on the wine. It flashed bright orange for an instant, confirming my suspicion that it was drugged.
Nieminen wasn’t there, either. We asked one of the bouncers about him, and the guy said, “Yeah, he comes in sometimes, but I haven’t seen him tonight.”
“So, he’s a blood whore?” Isabella asked, referring to Humans who became addicted to the high they received when a Vampire fed on them.
“Naw. He’s what we call a scavenger. He picks up the girls after a vamp has had them.” The bouncer shrugged. “They’re pretty out of it after a good ride and drain.” He leered at me, then continued. “It’s not like he’s Prince Charming, so I guess he takes what he can get. But what the hell, everyone has their kinks, ya know? He tips well and doesn’t cause any problems.”
In both clubs, as far as I could tell, the management rigidly enforced a policy of limited dining. We watched a couple of college-age girls in spiked heels and tiny miniskirts teeter out and practically fall into a cab, the bruising on their necks and wrists starkly visible.
“Yeah, I guess they are out of it,” I said.
“At least they still have blood in them,” Isabella said. “I’m not sure they do when Nieminen gets through with them.”
“So, where to?” I asked as I climbed behind the wheel of my van the following evening.
Isabella named a restaurant in the southeastern part of town. “PCU’s dossier says that when Nieminen is in DC, he eats there all the time, like three out of four nights.”
“Call for reservations,” I said. “It sounds like we’ll be fighting for a table with Torbert.”
She laughed but called. When she h
ung up, she said, “They have a cancellation if we can get there in forty-five minutes.”
Because of all the road closings, I had to take the long way around the metro area, and it took over an hour to get to the restaurant. Being late turned out not to be an issue. They had a lot of empty tables, and I wondered how many of their customers had lived in Pentagon City.
The white linen tablecloths, crystal glassware, and elegant menus gave me pause even before I saw the prices. Something must have shown on my face, because Isabella leaned forward and said, “My treat. Just order what you want. You’re saving me a fortune in hotel bills.”
She ordered an enormous steak intended for two people. “Rare. Just sear it on both sides,” she told the waiter.
The lobster I ordered was less than half the price of her meal, so I didn’t feel too bad. I tried to remember when I last ate in such a place, and the only memory that surfaced was Carolyn’s last birthday. The night she handed me the deed to the townhouse in Georgetown.
“Are you okay?” Isabella asked.
I forced a smile to my face. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a memory that made me sad for a moment.”
After dinner, we approached the maître d’—a striking blonde in her thirties with ‘Jennie’ on the badge pinned to her blouse—and showed her the picture of Nieminen.
“Has this man been in recently?” I asked as I handed her the picture.
She froze for a moment, then said, “No, not recently. I believe it’s been some time since he was here.”
“So, you know him, then?”
A hesitation. “Uh, yes. He comes in sometimes. I believe he’s a foreigner.”
She handed back the picture, and I brushed her hand in taking it.
“Thank you,” I said. “I heard he is in town, but we haven’t managed to connect. I hope he wasn’t caught up in that unpleasantness over in Virginia.”
The woman gave me a horrified look, then tried to cover it. “Isn’t that terrible?” she said.
When we got outside, Isabella said, “I don’t think she was telling us the truth.”
I laughed. “Humans lie about everything, but an Elf can’t without harming their aura and diminishing their magic. She is some kind of witch, or maybe a low-level mage. I’m sure she has seen him recently—not only seen him, but she knows him as more than just a customer.”
“If she knows who he is, and she’s a magic user, then she may think of him as a kind of celebrity,” Isabella said.
“She may see him as her tribal chieftain.”
Isabella gave me a sideways look. “Si, maybe something like that.”
“Which means she may be calling him right now, telling him about us.”
“I’m sure Torbert’s men have asked about him as well,” Isabella said.
We parked down the street and waited. At about ten o’clock, Jennie left the restaurant, got in a car, and drove away. We followed her. She drove about thirty minutes to a residential neighborhood in a Maryland suburb, parked her car in the driveway of a house, and went inside. A couple of lights went on in the house.
We got out of the car. Isabella stood in the shadow of a tree a few houses down and across the street. I shrank down to my smaller size and sat under the woman’s car. Both of us had far better night vision than a Human.
About twenty minutes later, a man in a long black hooded cloak walked down the street. I had to fight a giggle. If he was trying to look inconspicuous, that cloak wasn’t the way to do it.
Jennie answered the door and let him in. I looked around but couldn’t see Isabella any longer. I walked over to a place where bushes concealed me from the street, grew back to my normal size, and called her phone.
“Where are you?” I asked when she answered.
“In the alley behind the house. There are only two doors.”
“What are we doing now?”
“Waiting,” she said. “He doesn’t have the statue with him, but maybe he’ll lead us to it when he leaves.”
“And how do we know he doesn’t have it?”
“It weighs over three hundred pounds.”
“Oh.” I could carry the thing, but not easily. I couldn’t see a Human carrying it at all. “I thought you said it’s small.”
“Gold is damned heavy.”
I took her word for it. I had no idea how large three hundred pounds of gold would be. Not for the first time, I wondered why she had hooked on to me. She said she knew Elves in Colorado. Maybe I was just the dumbest Elf she could find.
An hour later, a sudden burst of magic grabbed my attention. The house I was watching took on a glow.
“Isabella, something is happening. Someone is working some potent magic in that house.”
She cursed, then said, “Santa madre. He probably killed that poor woman.”
I shuddered. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know. I think we stick to our plan. We follow him when he leaves.”
“If he doesn’t have the statue, why would he kill her?” I asked. “Wouldn’t he take her where the statue is?”
“Oh, shit,” Isabella said. “He has the statue here.”
“I don’t feel it. I don’t think it’s been here. I think we should interrupt him.”
Pulling my bow and quiver out of my bag, I snuck up to the house. If Nieminen was working in a protective containment area, sticking a sword into it would be stupid. But the Fairies’ wooden spears had penetrated Crocker’s pentagram, so I hoped I would get the same result with a wooden arrow I fired at Nieminen.
The blinds were closed, so I couldn’t see through the window. To my surprise, the front door wasn’t locked. When I cautiously pushed the door open, the force of the magic being used hit me at the same time as the smell of blood. I backed out and called Isabella.
“I think you’re right,” I said when she answered. “I’m going to confront him. A distraction from the rear of the house would be appreciated.”
“That I can do,” she said. “Be careful.”
I edged back into the house, an arrow nocked. A sitting room to my right and a dining room to my left were empty. The back door crashed in, and a jaguar stood in the kitchen. She cocked her head at me, and I motioned to a door.
“I think they’re in the basement,” I said, going over to the door. Turning the knob, I pulled the door open. Golden light almost blinded me.
Before I could start through the door, Isabella pushed by me and flowed down the stairs, her belly brushing the treads. I followed her, my bow ready and the arrow half-drawn.
A man in black stood inside a pentagram with his back to us, and his red-stained hands raised above his head. Past him, Jennie lay naked on an altar inside a second pentagram. Her eyes were open, and her face wore a serene, almost worshipful expression as she stared up at him. Blood covered her breasts and the inside of her thighs.
The golden light pulsed, and I realized it had a pattern that matched a beating heart. That’s when my view of his hands came into focus, and I realized that he held a human heart. A beating human heart.
The air shimmered past the altar, and a demon appeared, its image flickering like a bad hologram. Without thinking, I raised my bow, pulled, and loosed the arrow. I fired a second arrow even before the first bounced off the containment field. Isabella roared.
The mage whirled about, his chant faltering, and the demon faded a bit. Seeing the mage’s face confirmed he was Nieminen. He was naked under the cloak and his genitals were covered in blood.
My second arrow hit the containment field, and the field flared. I pulled my athame and threw it. It passed through the field and imbedded itself in the mage’s left shoulder. He screamed, dropping the heart. When it hit the floor, Jennie screamed.
The demon coalesced, staring down at the woman on the altar with an expression that combined a sexual leer with a cruel hunger. It thrust its hand into Jennie’s chest, pulled out red, bleeding flesh, and stuffed it in its mouth.
The two pentagrams flared red, and t
hen dissolved. A strong wind blew into my face, and I barely had time to raise my arms and block the blow Nieminen aimed at me as he knocked me into the stair rail. And then he was past me, rushing up the stairs.
Isabella and I had a larger problem than the mage. She leaped to the side, and the demon’s swipe with its four-inch claws narrowly missed her. I fired an arrow, which almost found its target, cutting a bloody line along the side of the demon’s head, less than half an inch from its eye.
I drew my sword and braced myself as the demon lunged toward me. Its hands reached out to me, but I leapt forward, and my sword found its mark, plunging through the demon’s left eye and into its brain.
It tried to grasp me in a bear hug, but I dropped to the floor and shrunk to avoid it. I slipped between the demon’s legs even as Isabella landed on its back and bit its head. Growing back to my normal size, I watched her ride it to the floor.
Pulling my sword out of the demon’s brain, I raised it in both hands, and brought it down, cutting off its head. The head bounced away and landed upright on its neck. It grinned at me, sticking its tongue out and licking its lips. It laughed, then both the head and its body faded, leaving only a few gallons of demon blood to prove it hadn’t been an illusion.
Jennie’s heart lay on the floor, its beat slowing. I watched her face, and she watched me. When her heart stopped beating, I saw the light go out in her eyes.
Chapter 13
We sat outside while we waited for Torbert and the local police. The locals got there first. Isabella, of course, looked as pristine as she did when we left home. Damned shape shifter.
I, on the other hand, needed a brush. And some fresh clothes. My shirt hung in charred tatters with red flesh and blisters showing through the holes. Though I hadn’t seen any flames, there certainly was evidence of a great amount of heat. The mage felt like he was on fire when he ran into me. Then there was the demon blood, which had eaten holes in the shirt, my jeans, and my boots.
At least I had recovered my athame. I found it lying in a large pool of blood on the floor by the front door. Damned fool should have known better than to pull the knife out.
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