Highborn

by Yvonne Navarro

  “Kwan Chul-moo is a very rich man in the neighborhood,” Brynna told them. “A businessman, very respected. He has a daughter named Jin-eun, the same age as Mr. Kim’s daughter, but Kwan cannot control her. She uses drugs and alcohol, and has sex with bad people. The things she has done have made her ill.”

  “In what manner?” Sathi asked.

  “She has a disease—”

  “AIDS?”

  Brynna shrugged. “He didn’t say—he might not actually know. Kwan has often tried to talk to Cho, to get her to work for him, to come to his jewelry shop or have lunch with him. Cho thought he was offensive and avoided him—she didn’t trust his intentions. Mr. Kim believes that Kwan has kidnapped Cho to use her as a substitute for …” Brynna hesitated, but there was just no other way to tell it. “As a substitute for the demons that are tormenting his own daughter. Kim believes that a very powerful witch doctor has been hired to work magic that will fool the demons into believing that Cho is Jin-eun, and as long as Cho is held, this frees Jin-eun to go back to living a healthy life.”

  “Aw, crap,” Redmond grumbled. “Now I have to deal with superstitious bullshit on top of a missing person.” He was silent for a moment, then he asked, “I don’t suppose Mr. Kim has any solid evidence that this guy nabbed his daughter?”

  Brynna knew the answer without asking the Korean man, so she shook her head. At least now Brynna knew where Redmond would stand on this type of thing. She turned back to Mr. Kim and pointed at the scarf. “May I look at that?” she asked in Korean.

  He pushed it across the table without comment, but Brynna paused before she touched it. This was a closed room, so the danger was minimal. Still, it was always there. If she did this, she would be opening herself, even if only for a span of seconds, to discovery. Redmond might think Kim was a crazy old Korean with Old World beliefs, but Brynna knew better. There were reasons the Korean people believed everyone’s life was ruled by demons, and several of those nasty, invisible little reasons were probably squatting on his shoulder right now. If Brynna put herself in a position to see them, they would see her too. And they were so very, very talkative.

  She reached out and laid her fingertips gently on top of the Thai silk. Her vision hazed over and she closed her eyes quickly, before she could meet the startled stares of—

  Saturday morning, bright sunshine, cloying humidity already. The launderette smells of heat and soap, washers and dryers making a steady, noisy thrumming. Clothes in the washer, restroom in the back. Finished now, no hot water in the faucet, coming out the door and something stings her on the back of her neck. She reaches for the spot—

  Blackness.

  She wakes in terror and pain. Her vision is skewed with firelight and shadows. Chanting, cold, then hot, burning, the smell of smoking human hair, the sting of a blade, another sting—a needle? Floating, then flying, spinning, terrifying. Force-fed, poked, prodded, cut, another needle. The cycle begins again,

  and again,

  and again,

  and again …

  Brynna opened her eyes and Mr. Kim’s two tiny demons were leering at her. They were small and fearful creatures with leathery black skin, drooling and chittering to each other as they constantly pestered the man’s subconscious with doubts and enticements. Nothing else could find purchase on this strong-willed old Korean, who was no stranger to the basis for his peoples’ faith and would fight their temptations with his dying breath. She should kill them before they ran and revealed her whereabouts to a Hunter—and they would—but this area was too small. To do so would probably incinerate everyone in the room but her.

  Brynna lifted her hand from the silk scarf and the demons disappeared from sight as if they’d never been there.

  “Her clothes are still in the machine,” Brynna said hoarsely. She didn’t know why that was the first thing to come out of her mouth. “At the washing house where she was taken.”

  Detective Sathi stared at her as if she’d grown a second head, while Redmond just looked flabbergasted. “What the hell— Now you’re a psychic?”

  “No, I—”

  “What washing house is this?” Sathi interrupted. “Where is it located?”

  Brynna frowned. “I don’t know the address, if that’s what you mean. It’s wherever she normally goes to do her laundry. Walking distance from her apartment, I think.” When she turned back to Mr. Kim and asked, he confirmed that there was a self-service laundry only a couple of blocks away. Most of the doorways off the alley hadn’t been marked, so he didn’t know how close he’d found the scarf to the place where Cho took her clothes.

  Redmond tapped his pen hard against the legal pad. “And you say she was taken from there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who took her?”

  “I don’t know. It was a surprise. She was coming out of the restroom.”

  Sathi came over to the table and leaned on it, peering down at her. “How is it you can see all this?” he asked.

  Redmond’s jaw dropped. “You don’t really believe this drivel, do you?”

  Sathi shrugged. “I am open to being convinced. There are many strange things in the world.” He glanced back at Brynna, and his expression made it clear he thought she was one of those strange things. “You have not answered my question.”

  Brynna tried to think of a way to explain. “I don’t really see anything,” she said. “Not actual images. It’s more like a … a feeling. I can pick up how the girl felt at the time something was happening to her. It’s kind of like being in her head during the moment.” She gestured toward the scarf. “I don’t know how that came off, but she was wearing it as a belt.”

  “Great.” Redmond grabbed the scarf before Mr. Kim could retrieve it, then thrust it at Brynna. “Take this. We’re gonna go find that laundromat.”

  Brynna jerked away from the piece of fabric. “You take it. I’m not touching the thing again.”

  “Great,” Redmond muttered again. Kim tried to reach for his daughter’s scarf, but Redmond wadded it up and stuffed it into a plastic evidence bag he pulled from one pocket. “Let’s go take some clothes out of the washer.”

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO WHICH Detective Sathi drove the four of them was an odd mixture of cultures—Korean, Swedish, Pakistani, and more. Brynna stared out the back passenger window, fascinated by the shops, the people, the peace. Humans living in the world today didn’t always see it the way she was perceiving it right now, of course; sometimes they focused only on the crime, fighting, wars, and plenty of evil. They thought the times were bad, and why? Because they had only a few hundred years of history to compare to their own short lives. It was too bad they couldn’t have seen what would have happened two thousand years ago if just three of these nationalities had met at the apex of some primitive mountain. Each would have immediately tried to exterminate the other two for no more reason than the belief that anyone outside of their own tribe was inferior. Yes, there was still plenty of that behavior in the world, and there were still wars and fighting and murder, but here, on this one sun-filled Chicago street, people at least seemed capable of coexisting.

  Brynna, however, did not blend in well.

  She was taller than almost everyone, and certainly all the women. Her face was long, almost wolflike, and her features were dark and sharp. Her pale brown eyes were rimmed in shadows and her gaze was a magnet for other people’s, especially men. The weaker the man, the more he vied for her attention—it was on this very weakness that the demon in her had preyed. Once upon a time, before she had grown weary of torment and fire, Brynna had walked the soil of this world as Astarte and hunted for just such souls, those ripe for corruption and the unknown lure of damnation. Now she just found that type annoying.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” An athletic-looking young guy of about twenty-five fell into step next to her, making a point of ignoring her two escorts. He was handsome and well-dressed; to Brynna he smelled like expensive aftershave and cocaine. His gaze swept Brynna’s face and form ap
preciatively, then he licked his lips. His sudden hot desire thickened the air between them and gave it a honeylike scent that only Brynna and her unwanted devotee could smell. He was pathetic and weak-minded; if she didn’t get rid of him fast, his lust would smother his reason and things would turn ugly. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. Let me buy you something beautiful.”

  Redmond frowned, but before he could open his mouth, Brynna’s stinging gaze pinned her admirer and her irritation found voice. “You have no idea what I am. Leave me be or I will rip your head off and throw it into Lake Michigan.” Something in her tone of voice—perhaps the unspoken potential for true malevolence—made her would-be suitor’s eyes widen. The man stumbled backward, then blinked and pressed himself against the side of the building as Brynna kept going.

  “That might have been a bit harsh,” Redmond said calmly.

  “He is a foolish man with a rotting soul and a polluted body,” Brynna said without thinking. “He’ll be dead before his thirtieth birthday.”

  Sathi’s gaze darkened and he automatically glanced back at the man on the sidewalk, who was already moving away from them. “What makes you say that?”

  Brynna started to answer, then just shrugged. She’d said too much already, and in the scheme of what was going on here, it didn’t matter anyway. She really needed to get a handle on the in-the-mind, out-the-mouth thing. “Here.” She stopped in front of a laundromat as Mr. Kim nodded. “This is where Cho was when she was kidnapped.”

  Redmond pushed open the door and went inside, his expression betraying nothing. Sathi motioned Brynna and Mr. Kim to go in next. Brynna was happy to oblige—being out in the open wasn’t good after this morning’s short mind-sink into the realm where she’d been seen by two minor demons. It wasn’t hard to imagine a Hunter shadowing her at every turn, just waiting for a chance to ambush and the approval that would come from returning her to Lucifer’s Kingdom.

  There was nothing special about the inside of the laundromat. Standard-issue industrial washers and dryers lined each side of the hard-used, narrow space, and half a dozen tables divided the room. A skinny young woman sat on a chair by the front window. Music leaked from her earphones and she barely glanced up from the People magazine on her lap. The space got dimmer toward the back, where the light from the front windows didn’t quite reach and two of the four overhead fluorescents were burned out.

  “So which washer are they in?” Redmond asked.

  Despite the blandness of his tone, Brynna heard doubt, perhaps a hint of derision. She brushed off her irritation—how could this human, born into modern times when the true roots of faith and fear had been all but forgotten, be expected to believe? Instead of answering, she walked slowly down the line of beat-up washing machines, lightly trailing her fingers along the edges. Two-thirds of the way back she caught a whiff of something sour and dry. “Here,” she said. She lifted the lid, then backed away from the heavy scent of mildew.

  Redmond stepped up and peered into the tub, then Kim reached around him and pulled out the topmost garment. Black spots of mold covered the still-damp underside of the pale yellow blouse. “This is my daughter’s,” the old man said in Korean. His voice was thick with fear. “A birthday gift from me.”

  Brynna repeated this to Redmond, who, with Sathi right behind him, was already moving toward the back exit. Brynna followed the two detectives and left Mr. Kim to stare morosely at the washer’s contents. Redmond still had Cho’s scarf, but Brynna neither needed it nor wanted to touch it again, especially in such an open and unprotected environment. When she caught up with Redmond and Sathi, they had pushed through the back door and were standing in the alley. There wasn’t much for them to see besides the overflowing Dumpster by the gyro place to the north and several precariously stacked piles of boxes behind the card shop to the south. They were in the middle of the block, so the alley, empty and smelling of decomposing food, stretched in both directions.

  “This is useless,” Redmond muttered as Mr. Kim wandered out to join them. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  Brynna eyed the alley, noting the doorways and alcoves, all the places a Hunter might hide. It wasn’t too bad since it was mid-afternoon and a bright day, and the presence of the two humans took the danger level down to almost zero. Funny how these men had unknowingly become her protectors. Although it was fading, the scent of the girl was still here—she had fallen at least once and been dragged—and after a few moments, Brynna turned to the left and began walking, following the thin leftover traces of scraped skin and blood, evidence that would be impossible for these detectives to detect. The men trailed her automatically, watching carefully to see what she would do. At first there wasn’t much to find, and Brynna wouldn’t have been surprised if it all disappeared in a sudden drift of old car exhaust and gasoline, very possible if Cho had been forced into a vehicle.

  But then the lingering smell of the Korean girl suddenly intensified, swelling into fear and sweat and more blood, mixed with—

  Corruption.

  Brynna stopped and looked around, careful to keep her face expressionless, working to make it seem as if she had nothing at all to give the detectives. It was stuffy and windless here, and the afternoon’s increasing humidity was making them all perspire. Beneath her feet, however, the concrete radiated more than heat, and it all led up to the metal door on which she had purposely turned her back. There was a sense of darkness here, of evil and magic and a kind of menace that these two Chicago detectives would never be able to fight. To the right of the doorway was a greasy window at ground level, but it was small, barely two feet long and less than a foot high. The girl was inside this building, and she was alive—Brynna could sense that much—but to try to rescue her now would be disastrous in more ways than Brynna could measure.

  Cho would have to wait.

  “I’m sorry,” Brynna said. “There’s nothing more I can do.”

  Sathi peered at her. “You’re not picking up anything?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “Excuse me, but what did you expect?” Redmond asked impatiently. “An excerpt from Psychics Today?”

  “This is the second time you’ve brought up psychics,” Sathi pointed out. “Let me remind you that you were the one who decided we should come out here.” Brynna thought he was doing a remarkable job of keeping his voice even.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes even I let myself get caught up in the moment.” Redmond shaded his eyes from the sun and scanned the alley, but there was nothing to see. “Let’s get Mr. Kim and head back downtown. We’ll write up what we found—not much—and take the two of them home.” He glanced at Brynna. “Or wherever it is they want to go.”

  THE HOLY MAN HAD come to him again this afternoon, and Michael Klesowitch was, as always, honored and terrified by His visit. Although His mission in this world was dark and unpleasant, was not the fact that He could walk in God’s beautiful, bright sunlight inarguable proof of His righteousness, of His right to demand unflinching obedience from one so lowly and insignificant as Michael himself? It had to be.

  An hour home from work, and Michael hadn’t been doing much of anything—just sitting around and trying to decide what to do to occupy himself. It might be nice to go to the lake, pack a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, a bag of chips and a diet soda, and trek down to Diversey Harbor, watch the boats come and go while he stayed safely in the shade (he burned easily). Mike had been pulling the jar of grape jelly from the refrigerator when he’d heard the front door open. Although he shouldn’t have been surprised—he’d given the Holy Man his spare key weeks ago—he didn’t think he would ever shake that sudden sense of anticipation, of nervous elation, that came with each meeting.

  “Hello, Michael.”

  “Hi, uh, H-Hank.” It seemed so strange to address the Holy Man by such a mundane, human name. Still, Michael understood—as Hank had told him, he would never be able to pronounce Hank’s heavenly name. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask,
but Mike forced himself to stay silent. It was not his place to know most of what he wanted. It had taken him awhile to understand that—after all, he wasn’t some sicko lead-me-around-by-the-nose idiot. No, he was an intelligent, fairly well-educated man in his midtwenties. He knew the difference between right and wrong, had a healthy sense of conscience and ethics, wasn’t paranoid, and could tell when he was being scammed. He also had enough religion in his upbringing to appreciate a miracle when he saw it, and Hank had shown him more than a few of those.

  “I have another task for you.”

  Michael swallowed and looked down at his hands. These tasks … he knew they were necessary. Hank had explained that to him, had been so patient each time as Michael struggled with his own instincts.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  Not one of the Seven Deadly Sins—most people didn’t realize that—yet still sixth on the list of those all-important Ten Commandments. Such an important rule in the game of life, and yet every time Hank came to him, he directed Michael to break it. But it was God’s work, was it not? Through Hank? Through Michael?

  “You should not doubt yourself and your role,” Hank said. His voice was gentle and full of compassion. “It is a hard one, but you fulfill your duties well.”

  His duties … yes. Five of those “duties” so far, and here was Hank again. Who, Mike wondered, was to be the next duty?

  As if Hank could read Michael’s mind, he held out a piece of paper. Mike took it, seeing his hand reach out of its own volition and feeling like he was dreaming, or maybe watching someone else who was wearing his face and body. So odd that Hank could make Michael’s sense of will and self-control just … evaporate.

  “The information is all there,” Hank said. The Holy Man actually sounded sad, and when Michael looked down at the paper, he immediately understood. It was a cheap, computer-printed image of a man who was about sixty years old. He had a soft, friendly face, and he looked vaguely like Michael’s grandfather. Next to the photo was the man’s name and address, plus a few sentences about his routine and where Michael was most likely to find him. He couldn’t help wonder what this guy had done to mark him for celestial assassination. But the question he would have asked skittered out of his mind at Hank’s next words. “You must take extra care not to be identified. The police would not understand your calling, or me, or the wisdom of eliminating those who would cause unwanted events before they have the opportunity to do so.”