by SM Reine
“Well, don’t get too naked now,” drawled a masculine voice I didn’t recognize. “I’d be excited to see me too, but let’s keep some mystery in our budding relationship, eh?”
I fumbled for my bent flashlight. Aimed it down the tunnel.
Two men were standing ankle-deep in spider guts, wearing extremely amused expressions and all-black clothing. And when I say they were wearing all black, I meant head to toe black-black. Combat gear. Flak jackets. Armored kneepads. Even the shotguns were black, aside from the white circle and arrow stamped on the side of the barrel.
That logo meant that they were from the Union.
The man who had spoken had his arm wrapped around Suzy’s waist. She was bleeding from her hairline and looking dazed, but she was alive.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“My name’s Malcolm Gallagher,” said the guy holding Suzy. He jerked his thumb at his companion. “This is Bellamy. We’re the cavalry.”
CHAPTER TEN
THERE ARE A FEW things more embarrassing than wearing another man’s clothes—the clothes of a man about seventy percent of my size—but I couldn’t think of any of them when I left Silverton Mine and dressed myself.
Malcolm Gallagher was a small guy. His waist and inseam were both thirty inches, which was the size I’d worn in junior high. Unfortunately, he was the only one of the Union guys that had a spare uniform with him. My borrowing options were limited.
I couldn’t button the fly on his slacks. It looked like I was rocking a pair of high waters. Don’t even get me started on the way his shirt stretched across my shoulders.
It was slightly better than being naked or wearing demon blood-drenched clothes.
But only slightly.
Suzy must have been concussed. She didn’t laugh at me when I climbed back into the helicopter after dressing, having abandoned my bloodied clothes among the sagebrush. In fact, she could barely focus on my face at all.
“Anyone home?” I asked, snapping my fingers in front of her eyes.
She shoved my hand away. “Fuck you, Hawke.”
All right, she’s fine.
Malcolm clambered into the helicopter with us, whistling a fast-paced reel with his shotgun propped against his shoulder. He slammed the door shut as soon as he was settled.
“Go ahead,” he called up to the pilot, who gave him the thumbs-up.
Bellamy sat in the front row as well, looking like a frowning Fritz-clone. He talked on a BlackBerry and held the hunk of white marble that we’d recovered in his lap.
It turned out that our helicopter pilot had dropped us off and then popped down to the nearest Union outpost to pick up help, at Fritz’s request. Good thing he had, too, because we’d have been dead if he had waited a couple more hours to summon assistance. I was too young and too handsome to die at the jaws of a spider. I hadn’t even finished watching the last season of the Battlestar Galactica remake yet.
Of course, my pride might have been in better shape if I’d died. I tugged down the hem of my borrowed shirt. “Thanks for the help,” I told Malcolm, who was seated across from Suzy and me.
“Any time,” he said, setting the shotgun beside him. “Really, any time. I’m contractually obligated to provide support to the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”
I caught myself smiling. This guy wasn’t like the other Union kopides I’d run into before. They were mostly baby-faced ex-military assholes that thought the circumference of their necks bestowed all kinds of special privileges on them. You know those guys—the ones who do bicep curls in the squat racks and grunt so loudly that you can hear them all the way across the gym.
Malcolm was older, grizzled, with no hint of vanity. He had an eye patch. His face was heavily scarred and pockmarked. Looked like he’d been to Hell and back in his time, maybe literally. And he had a sense of humor. I desperately needed to soak up the vibes of someone funny right about now.
The helicopter lifted off and Suzy swayed, pressing a hand to her forehead. She’d mopped up some of the blood while I was changing, so I could see that she had a huge gash along her hairline. Looked like it was from getting knocked around, not from daimarachnid pincers—thankfully. If either of us had been bitten, we’d have been dead by now anyway.
“You all right, beautiful?” Malcolm asked.
Suzy’s brow furrowed. She looked at her hand as if expecting to see blood on it. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a few years of sleep.”
“Can’t do anything about the sleep, but I bet a drink or six would fix you up right. As soon as we’re off-shift, I’m buying.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her. She seemed to be too exhausted to notice.
“Where’s my knife?” she asked, massaging her temple.
I’d picked it up for her, along with her empty Beretta. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”
“Good.” She sagged against the seat, closing her eyes.
“No sleeping,” Malcolm said. “You might not wake up.”
“I’m not sleeping. Just checking my eyelids for holes.”
“As long as you don’t die checking your eyelids for holes, that’s just dandy.”
I kept her in the corner of my vision. I wouldn’t let her fall asleep, but if anyone deserved a few minutes of rest, it was Suzy. “We’re real grateful for your help, Malcolm, but you want to tell me how you managed to save the day in the nick of time?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Fritz called the outpost this morning. Said you guys are fresh, need some training handling demons and casting advanced magic. Wanted to see if we could spare some guys for education.” He spread his arms wide. “Here we are. I’m all about demons, and Bellamy’s all about magic.”
Then it was lucky that I’d accidentally sparklebombed Fritz that morning. Otherwise, he might not have been annoyed enough to request a Union babysitter in time.
Was this the man that Fritz had said was trustworthy? The one who was safe to tell about our team?
“So you’re friends with Fritz,” I said cautiously.
“Friends? Aye, I suppose so. Enough that he told me about his unsanctioned team and consultant, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Trustworthy and perceptive. “Good to have you with us.”
“I tend to think so, yeah,” Malcolm said. Modest guy. He rubbed his hands together. “Right. So! Now that we’re mates, tell me what led to that glorious mess of a near-fatal disaster I found down there. I haven’t seen a daimarachnid nest that size in—oh, never, actually.”
I gave him the short version of the story. He would get more useful details once Fritz debriefed him.
“Nightmares and spiders and ethereal stone, oh my,” Malcolm said after I finished. “This is going to be a fun job.”
“Stone what now?” I asked.
“Ethereal stone. The white rock.”
Ethereal? Call it sleep deprivation, call it fatigue from a near-death experience, whatever—it took me a few seconds to remember what that meant.
If infernal was the tail on a coin, ethereal would be the head. One was demonic. The other was angelic. Two different kinds of very scary, very big power.
“You mean, angels made that stuff we found?” I asked. “What the hell would spiders want to do with ethereal stone?”
“Daimarachnids with a hunk of angel-rock? No idea what to make of that,” Malcolm said. “Probably not why infernal energy spiked this weekend, for obvious reasons. Also probably not high priority. You know what we need to do first?” He grinned. “We need to teach the bastard that sent you into the daimarachnid nest a lesson he won’t forget.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WE TOOK SUZY TO the condo and got her in front of a doctor. Then I cleaned and oiled and reloaded the Desert Eagle. By the time I was done, Fritz had debriefed Malcolm and Bellamy and formed a plan.
The sun was still high in the sky when we left to have a talk with David Nicholas.
This meeting was happening on our terms: unannounced and during daylight.
&n
bsp; Bellamy and I were dismantling the wards outside Craven’s by noon. Not my specialty, and not an easy job. We had to find the anchor points of the spell, probe for the weak spots, and open a hole that would allow us to enter without permission. Fortunately, it turned out that demons weren’t real careful about maintaining their wards; the quartz crystal forming the anchor point under the sidewalk was cracked. Had it not been for that, I’m not sure we would have been able to open it.
But open it we did. Bellamy pressed his hand to the concrete, forced his magic into the crystal, weakened the wards.
Then we moved into the casino using the side door in the alley. We weren’t touched by even the faintest trickle of defensive magic.
Malcolm kicked the front door next to the handle.
The lock shattered.
“Go,” he said, sliding a hand into his jacket, watching the surrounding street.
Bellamy took point. I was right behind him. We slipped through the kitchen hallways, drew our guns, and came out onto the gaming floor with our firearms raised.
The casino looked different in the morning. Most of the tables weren’t staffed, aside from the two nearest—Texas Hold ‘Em and roulette. Two dealers, six players.
“Freeze,” Bellamy said, and they did.
“You.” I pointed to a dealer with ruddy red flesh and four fingers on each hand. “Where’s David Nicholas?”
The dealer didn’t speak. Bellamy stepped forward, jammed the gun in a player’s throat.
I tried not to flinch. They were just demons, after all. This was the only way to communicate with them. But the player looked like a woman—a terrified woman, middle-aged and plump, indistinguishable from human aside from the nictitating membranes that flicked over her eyes.
Luckily, the red-skinned dealer answered before Bellamy had to squeeze the trigger.
“I just settled a debt with David Nicholas in his office ten minutes go,” she said. “He’s probably still there. I haven’t seen him leave.”
Malcolm sauntered in after us. “Where’s his office?”
I jerked my chin toward the back. There were still “Out of Order” signs on the escalators. “Upstairs. Ninth floor.”
“Hold everyone down here,” Malcolm told Bellamy, who nodded. “You’re with me, Agent Hawke.”
We hit the stairs together. Walking two steps below Malcolm, I noticed that he wasn’t as obvious about his kopis super-fitness as most of the Union guys were. They usually looked like their movements were choreographed. Like they were constantly pulling judo moves just by walking across a room. Malcolm, however, looked almost carelessly lazy as he headed for the ninth floor.
Somehow, the fact that he wasn’t showing off made him look a lot more dangerous.
Most demons would never even see him coming.
He talked as he climbed. “Union units are usually at least five or six guys. Makes it easier, yeah? Split up, cover the doors, monitor from outside—whatever you fancy. That’s the Union’s preference. But you don’t need ever need more than two people when fighting demons. Kopis and aspis. That’s the way God intended it.”
I’d learned about kopides and aspides when I’d been in OPA training. “Aspis” was another word for “witch”—a very special, specific kind of witch. A witch that was ritually bound to protect a kopis. When a kopis and aspis teamed up, it gave the two of them all kinds of special abilities, the most important of which was partial immunity to demon powers. Succubus thrall didn’t work on them.
Binding as aspis was a big deal, kind of like getting married. Most witches didn’t do it. I definitely wasn’t going to. And just having a random witch hanging around did no good for a kopis.
“If that’s the way God intended it, then why didn’t you bring Bellamy up with you?” I asked as Malcolm glanced through the second floor doorway then advanced toward the third.
“I’m here to be your bestest friend and teacher, mate,” he said. “You need training to fight demons. School is in.”
“I don’t think this is a great time for that.”
Malcolm grinned, stretching the scar along his cheek. He aimed his gun ahead of him on the stairs. “You kidding? There’s no better time than when you’re on the job.”
We reached the seventh floor without running into anyone. Malcolm steadily climbed the stairs without stopping.
“Getting an aspis, you learn a lot about partner tactics,” he said. “You learn that it’s not about who’s stronger in the fight, but who’s got the better position. Where your enemy’s attention is focused. Understand?”
“You don’t need to be a better fighter,” I said. “You need to be smarter.”
“Exactly. When your enemies are demons, you’ll always be slower, clumsier, weaker. You gotta outmaneuver them. ‘Kopis and aspis’ means ‘sword and shield’ in Greek, but that’s not really how it works. It’s not like I’m offense and Bellamy’s defense. We’re two limbs on one body. We’re twice as strong because we can rely on each other to be in the right place when shit gets real.”
“How romantic.”
I earned a good laugh out of Malcolm.
“I like you,” he said. “I hope you don’t die too quickly.”
With those inspirational words, he stepped out onto the ninth floor.
The high roller floor was unoccupied and dark. Nobody stopped us as we headed up the private staircase to the manager’s office.
Malcolm handed me a small piece of foam when we reached the landing.
“Is this an earplug?” I asked.
“It helps,” he said, popping one into his left ear, the side that wasn’t occupied by a Bluetooth earpiece.
My head was still aching from all the close-range gunfire I’d suffered through in the mines. Protecting what little hearing remained on the left side was probably a good idea.
I stuffed my earplug into place. It was uncomfortable, but everything went blissfully muffled.
Malcolm didn’t knock on the manager’s door. He tried the handle and it turned smoothly.
The door swung open.
I knew immediately that David Nicholas wasn’t there. Not because I could see the whole room—it was still a junky mess, blocking the rear half from our view with spires of garbage—but because the sight of the office didn’t scare me. It wasn’t a dark cavern. It was just a room with too much crap all over the floor that smelled like a spittoon.
“We missed him,” I started to say, but Malcolm cut me off with a slice of his hand.
He pointed to his ear, silently indicating that I should listen. So I did.
Even through the foam stuffed down my ear canal, I heard a weird noise. It kind of reminded me of tearing celery stalks in half, all wet and crunchy. Couldn’t see where it was coming from. Not through all the huge piles of trash.
Someone in the room groaned.
Maybe not someone, but something.
I wasn’t quite worried until I noticed that Malcolm looked worried. He put two fingers to his earpiece and whispered. “Bellamy?”
The response came over my line, too. “Yes, sir?” Bellamy asked. Awful formal way to address someone that he was basically married to, magically speaking.
“We’re going to need help up here.” Malcolm sounded calm, and that scared me even more than his worried expression did.
“Right away, sir.”
“What’s happening?” I whispered as Malcolm patted down his pockets.
“Don’t suppose you have any silver bullets, do you?” he asked.
I didn’t get a chance to ask why.
The tower of garbage behind David Nicholas’s desk toppled, scattering over the floor. Something big struck the back of his chair—something that definitely wasn’t human or a nightmare. It looked more like a huge, angry Chihuahua.
Whatever that thing was, its skin was rippling, bubbling, shifting. It seized the desk with hands that had shrinking human fingers, turning into splayed paws. Silver claws furrowed into the wood. It bared glistening white
teeth as its head shrank back against its shoulders. Ears slid into position on top of its head.
At least it wasn’t a daimarachnid.
But this probably wasn’t better.
Warning suspects before we engaged them violently was big in the OPA rulebook, underlined twice and highlighted in blazing yellow. We weren’t even issued guns. Shooting was a last resort, if used at all. And if so much as a single bullet left a gun we owned, we had to fill out enough paperwork to choke a herd of cows.
That kind of hesitance did not seem to be written into the Union’s rulebook.
Malcolm fired into the sliding flesh. Tiny injuries dotted the creature’s flank, but vanished just as quickly.
Massive jaws opened in a furious howl, and I got a great look at shining white fangs and a drooling tongue. Definitely not an overgrown Chihuahua. Now it reminded me of the time I’d been bitten by my former neighbor’s German Shepherd, but bigger. Much bigger.
Faster, too.
It hurled itself over the desk, smashing through the garbage to leap at us, paws outstretched.
Malcolm dragged me back. Slammed the door. The body hit the other side and made the whole wall shake.
“Well, today’s a red letter day, Cèsar,” Malcolm said. He was sweating. “Can I call you Cèsar?”
I didn’t care if he called me Annie Oakley. “What is that in there? Is it a—” I was interrupted by the beast hitting the other side of the door again. Hinges squealed. “What kind of demon is it?”
“It’s not a demon. Phase of the moon aside, I’m fairly confident that’s a werewolf.”
The door buckled under the third impact—then shattered.
Malcolm didn’t try to dive out of the way. He threw himself at the door, bracing his shoulder against it.
The thing pushing against the other side—the werewolf—was the size of two daimarachnids, covered in sleek dark fur, and slavering as it snapped wildly at Malcolm. It couldn’t reach him around the door. When its jaws failed to shut on his shoulder, it pushed a paw through the gap and swiped at us.
The claws got much closer. It tore open the sleeve of Malcolm’s shirt.
