This demon of cold has struck the days previous without pattern or warning, once each in Northside, Hyde Park, and the waterfront. When Don Mateo and I headed out in the hearse, as a result, we proceeded at random, roaming from neighborhood to neighborhood, the old daykeeper on the lookout for any signs of disturbance, me searching not with my eyes but with my Sight for any intrusion from the Otherworld.
I glimpsed some evidence of incursion near the Pinnacle Tower, but quickly determined it was another of Carmody’s damnable “experiments.” I’ve warned Rex before that I won’t allow his Institute to put the city at risk unnecessarily, but they have proven useful on rare occasion, so I haven’t yet taken any serious steps to curtail their activities. I know that his wife agrees with me, though, if only for the sake of their son Jacob.
I caught a glimpse of the cold demon in the Financial District, and I shadowed out of the moving hearse and into the dark alley with a Colt in one hand and a fistful of salt in the other, ready to disrupt the invader’s tenuous connection to reality. But I’d not even gotten a good look at the demon when it turned in midair and vanished entirely from view.
The body of the demon’s fourth and latest victim lay at my feet. It was an older man, looking like a statue that had been toppled off its base. Arms up in a defensive posture, one foot held aloft to take a step the victim never completed. On the victim’s face, hoarfrost riming the line of his jaw, was an expression of shock and terror, and eyes that would never see again had shattered in their sockets like glass. But before I’d even had a chance to examine the body further I heard the sounds of screaming from the next street over.
There is a body, I Sent to Don Mateo’s thoughts as I raced down the alleyway to investigate. Had the demon retreated from reality only to reemerge a short distance away?
But it was no denizen of the Otherworld menacing the young woman huddled in the wan pool of the streetlamp’s light. Her attackers were of a far more mundane variety—or so I believed. I pocketed the salt, and filled both hands with silver-plated steel.
Eleven years writing purple prose for The Wraith Magazine, and it creeps even into my private thoughts. Ernest would doubtless consider his point made, if he knew, and that bet made in Paris decades ago finally to be won.
The young woman was Mexican, and from her dress I took her to be a housekeeper, likely returning from a day’s work . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY
Izzie left off reading as Joyce pulled the Volkswagen to a stop in front of Patrick’s house. The sun had nearly finished setting, and deep shadows pooled at the edges of the buildings.
“Do you believe all of that?” Joyce said, shouldering open the driver’s side door and reaching for her cane in the back seat. “That this Freeman guy really ran around the streets in a mask like some kind of pulp hero? And there were others who were doing the same thing in other cities?”
Izzie closed the journal, and opened the passenger side door.
“It makes a certain kind of sense,” she answered as she climbed out. “Hiding in plain sight, that kind of thing. And it could explain where the mask that Nicholas Fuller wore came from. We never were able to track down a source for it before.”
“And what was that about ‘sending’?” Joyce had a quizzical expression on her face. “Some kind of telepathic communication, sounded like?”
“I’m not sure.” Izzie nudged the door shut with her hip while Joyce came around the front of the car, her cane tonking on the pavement. “But in Roberto Aguilar’s journals there were mentions of ‘seeing’ and ‘sending’ in the belief system of the Mayan daykeepers. ‘Seeing’ referred to the ‘second sight,’ Jett’s ‘knack.’ But the ‘sending’? It wasn’t clear.”
“Hey.” Joyce looked first one direction up the street and then the other. “I don’t see Patrick’s car around anywhere, though, do you?”
“The lights are on,” Izzie said, nodding toward the front door of the house. “Maybe he parked somewhere else and walked back?”
“Hope so.” Joyce continued on up the front steps. “After what happened last night, I’m not too crazy about the idea of any of us being out after dark.”
The door was locked, but after Izzie knocked she could hear the sound of someone moving inside, and a moment later the door swung open.
“Hey, you.” Daphne smiled, her face sheened with a thin layer of sweat, with dark smudges on her cheek and forehead.
For a brief instant, an icy hand of fear gripped Izzie’s heart as she wondered if the black marks meant that Daphne had been possessed by the loa somehow. But then she saw that Daphne’s fingers were also stained, and there were similar smudges on the fabric of her white t-shirt.
“What have you been up to?” Izzie asked as she stepped past Daphne and into the house, with Joyce following close behind.
“I had an idea while you were away.” Daphne answered as she closed the door.
“Oh, yeah?” Izzie glanced back over her shoulder as she stepped into the living room. She stopped short when she heard a rustling sound under her feet, and looking down saw that there was butcher paper spread out on the hardwood floor, and bits of plastic and metal scattered in piles all around. On the low coffee table were bowls, scissors, knives, containers of different types of salts, and a myriad of plastic tubes that were each a bit over an inch long and as big around as a nickel. “Daphne? What is all this?”
“Well, remember last night, when I said that it might be handy to have some more weaponized silver on hand?” Daphne asked.
Izzie nodded, while Joyce slid down onto the couch.
“The Recondito Reaper used a silvered blade, right?” Daphne went on. “And that was a considerable amount of silver over a sizeable surface area. But that scalpel that Joyce stuck in the neck of that Ridden last night couldn’t have been more than a few ounces of silver, max, and not much more than a couple of inches long. So I got to thinking that maybe small amounts of silver would do the trick.”
She walked over to the low table and reached her hand into one of the bowls, scooping out a handful of glittering little spheres, each of them about the size of a peppercorn, or a ball bearing.
“Silver shot,” Daphne explained. “It’s used in manufacturing, and in the production of jewelry, that kind of thing. I got this for twenty bucks an ounce at a jewelry supply store up in the Kiev.”
“How much did you get?” Izzie stepped forward and prodded the little beads on Daphne’s palm with her finger tip.
Daphne groaned, and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Let’s just say my credit card statement next month is going to be less than fun.”
“Do you intend to throw it at them?” Joyce asked wearily, running a hand across her forehead.
“Kinda.” Daphne had a lopsided grin on her face.
Izzie crouched down and picked up one of the plastic tubes, which she now recognized as the hulls of shotgun shells.
“That could work,” she said in a low voice. Then she looked up and met Daphne’s gaze. “That could really work. Loading shells with the silver shot, and then blasting it into the Ridden at a distance.”
Daphne poured the silver balls back into the bowl, careful not to spill any of them onto the table or floor.
“Exactly. Only, there’s no way I could afford to fill the shells all the way up with silver. So I mixed it in with this.” Daphne picked up a box of rock salt in one hand and a jar of sea salt in the other. “I figure if they don’t like crossing salt when it’s on the ground, it’ll really mess them up if they’ve got a face full of the stuff.”
She put down the salt, and picked up an assembled shotgun shell from a cardboard box on the floor.
“We had the shells that we brought with the tactical shotguns from the RA offices, so I just cut those open, emptied out the shot, and packed the hulls with a mixture of salt and silver. Then I reassembled them with the original primer, powder, and wad, and there you go.” She held up the shell, a proud expression on her face. “Zombie-proof shot
s.”
Izzie rolled her eyes. “I wish you’d stop calling them that.”
Daphne blinked, deflating a little.
“But I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Izzie added with a grin, and leaning forward gave Daphne a quick peck on the lips. “How many have you put together so far?”
Daphne bent down and put the shell back in the box with the others.
“A little over three dozen. Enough for three full magazines, and a little bit left over.” She straightened up, and her grin widened. “I work fast.”
“What, was Patrick too worn out from cleaning the streets to help out?” Joyce asked from the couch. “Or did he spend all afternoon tracking down that kid in Hyde Park so he could scare him straight?”
Daphne’s smile fell as she looked from Izzie to Joyce and back.
“What kid?” she asked. “He wasn’t here when I got back from the Kiev, and I assumed he was still out teaching the neighborhood kids how to clean the marks.”
Joyce sat bolt upright on the couch. “You mean he’s not back yet?”
“No.” Daphne shook her head. “I’ve been here on my own the last few hours.”
Izzie and Joyce exchanged a worried glance.
“He should have gotten back by now,” Joyce said, her brow furrowed with worry lines. She fished in the pocket of her jacket for her phone.
Izzie already had her phone out, and after thumbing it on checked to see if she had any text messages or missed calls from Patrick’s number. She was already starting to thumb out a quick text to him when Joyce held her own phone to her ear.
“I’m getting his voice mail.” Joyce scowled, and stabbed the screen with her fingertip to end the call.
Izzie finished typing out “WHERE ARE YOU?” and then added “911” for safe measure. She would have added some suitable emoji for urgency if she had any idea which one to use.
As she watched the phone’s screen, the text was marked as “delivered,” and shortly after as “read.” But at no point did the scrolling ellipse show that Patrick was composing a response on the other end.
“He read it, but he’s not answering.” Izzie chewed her lower lip, thinking through the possibilities.
“Or someone read it,” Daphne said ominously.
Izzie knew that she wasn’t wrong. There was no way of knowing for sure.
“Where is he?” Joyce sounded increasingly worried.
“Hang on, I have an idea.” Izzie punched the home button on her phone, and then scrolled through pages until she found the icon for the “Find Friends” app that she and Patrick had used five years before. When Izzie had gotten to town earlier that week, Patrick had used it to know where to pick her up, so she knew that it was still installed on his phone. Provided he hadn’t uninstalled it in the last few days, which seemed unlikely.
Joyce levered herself up off the couch and came over to stand beside Izzie, while Daphne stepped closer on her other side. All three women watched as the app zeroed in on the location of Patrick’s phone, a broad blue circle gradually shrinking over a map of the city as it triangulated his position via cell towers.
“There,” Izzie said, pointing at the tight blue dot that had come to rest at the corner of Gold Street and Northside Boulevard.
“Pinnacle Tower.” Joyce covered her mouth with her hand, her voice breathless.
“The goddamned belly of the goddamned beast,” Daphne said through clenched teeth, uncharacteristically swearing.
“They must have snatched him up,” Izzie said, still staring at the screen of her phone, as if she could will that little blue dot to migrate to a safer spot on the map. “He wouldn’t have gone on his own without telling us.”
“Maybe the RPD is doing a raid?” Joyce lowered her hand from her mouth, a note of pleading optimism to her voice, a flicker of hope in her face. “They’ve established a link from the Ink suppliers to Parasol, and Patrick said that the taskforce was gearing up for a big push. Maybe this is it?”
Izzie shook her head. “Do you really think that Patrick would go off on a police raid in the middle of all of this—a raid on the Pinnacle Tower of all places—and not tell us first? He called you just to let you know he was checking on some neighborhood kid, do you think he wouldn’t call you about something as important as this?”
The fleeting expression of hope bled from Joyce’s face. “No,” she said, in a quiet voice. “Damn it.”
“So we’ve got to operate under the assumption that Patrick is not there of his own free will,” Izzie went on, “and that someone is holding him there.”
“Martin Zotovic, do you think?” Daphne asked.
Izzie stabbed the power button on her phone and jammed it back into her pocket.
“Probably,” she answered, after considering the possibilities for a moment. “Or else someone high enough up in the chain that they report directly to him.”
“Um . . .” Daphne held up her hand, like a student in a classroom not sure that they want to voice the question they’ve got in mind. “Do we need to consider the possibility that Patrick’s phone is there, but that he’s somewhere else? I mean, I’m not saying that they left him in a ditch somewhere, but . . .” She trailed off, seeing the stricken look on Joyce’s face.
“No.” Joyce shook her head quickly, as if to knock loose an unwanted mental image. “Patrick has thumbprint ID set up on his phone. And that text message that Izzie just sent was marked read. So he had to be there to unlock it.”
“Or someone unlocked it using his thumb.” Daphne stopped, and then seemed to consider how that might sound. “I don’t mean they cut off his thumb and took it with them, or anything,” she hastened to add, “just that they might have forced him to . . .”
“It’s okay,” Izzie interrupted, and put a hand on Daphne’s shoulder. “I think we both knew what you meant.”
Joyce gripped the handle of her cane in both hands, shoulders hunched defensively, a dark cloud of worry and anxiety on her face. Izzie got the impression that she was considering all of the worst-case scenarios, up to and including the idea of Patrick’s phone and his thumb being in a different location than the rest of him.
“We . . .” Joyce started, her voice like brittle glass. “We should call in the police. Maybe Patrick’s commanding officer, or the other detectives on the Ink squad. Get them to move now on that big push that they were planning, go in there and get Patrick to safety before those things do . . . something to him.”
“They’d need to get a judge to sign off on a no-knock warrant,” Izzie said, “assuming that they haven’t already, and by then it could be too late.” She was considering some of the worst-case scenarios herself.
“We could bring Gutierrez in on this,” Daphne suggested, but even as she said the words Izzie could tell she knew that the Senior Resident Agent would be unlikely to be of much assistance at this point.
“Well, we can’t just stand here talking about it,” Joyce said, pounding her cane on the hardwood floor. “Patrick’s life could be in danger.”
Izzie thought about what G. W. Jett had told them about Parrish and the Eschaton Temple, and about Alistair Freeman writing in his journal about the menace of the Guildhall cabal that he would one day bring down in flames. That same darkness that bubbled up time and again in Recondito had once more taken root, and Martin Zotovic was at the heart of it. If Patrick was being held there, and they weren’t able to rescue him soon, then death might be the least of his worries.
“We need to get him out of there, now.” Izzie bent down and picked up one of the shotgun shells that Daphne had packed, and hefted it in the palm of her hand. “Enough of these for three full magazines, you said?”
Daphne nodded. “Shouldn’t take but a couple of minutes to get them loaded.”
Izzie walked across the floor to the far wall where the tactical shotguns were sitting beside Patrick’s hardshell gun case.
“Wait,” Joyce said, “you’re going to go in yourself? Without backup?”
“Hell, no,” Daphne put in before Izzie could answer. She bent down to pick up the box of shells. “If she’s going, I’m going with her.”
Daphne turned to Izzie, who was kneeling down beside the gun case.
“You are going, right?” Daphne asked.
Izzie pulled out the stun baton and pistol-gripped Taser that Patrick had brought home from the station house the day before, and set them on the floor beside her.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” she answered, and reached into the case. “When Alistair Freeman brought the Guildhall down on top of himself and everyone inside, he ended the incursion of the Ridden for at least a generation. Then when G. W. Jett took down Jeremiah Standfast Parrish at the Eschaton Center, the Ridden were off the streets again for a good long while. If we can get in there and take out Zotovic, then maybe we can do the same.”
“You’re just going to kill him?” Joyce sounded shocked. Even as worried about Patrick as she was, there were some lines that she wasn’t comfortable crossing.
“Like I said, it was our fault that Nicholas Fuller didn’t finish the job five years ago,” Izzie said, her jaw set. “We have to finish it for him.”
“And any Ridden that we run into along the way, I assume?” Daphne shook the cardboard box so that the shells clattered inside of it. “But there have got to be employees in that building that aren’t Ridden. Cleaning staff, security guards, that kind of thing? How will we know the difference before it’s too late? Because while I’m all for taking out the undead monsters possessed by alien entities, I’m not crazy about the idea of shooting innocent bystanders.”
“For the bystanders, or even anyone mixed up in the Ink trade who isn’t one of the Ridden, we use these.” Izzie nodded to the stun baton and Taser. “As for the Ridden, your silver and salt shot should be enough to slow them down, and hopefully sever their connection to the loa. Whether they just fall down dead like the guy Joyce stabbed in the alley last night, or we end up with a bunch of formerly Ridden but still mostly alive people with shotgun wounds and a bunch of empty holes in their heads, I’m not sure. But either way, we take the shots and hope for the best.”
Firewalkers Page 21
