Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  Michael stiffened in place. Spotted Elk reared back in alarm, paling as his face settled into deep, hard lines. “Do you have proof of this?”

  I unzipped my jacket and took the folder out from its place under my shirt, flipping through it until I reached the correct page. “We were able to rescue this from the apartment. It’s a-”

  The office door opened behind us, and I turned to see Ayashe stalk into the room. She was still wearing her badge, and she did not look pleased to see me.

  “You,” she said to me. “You have a whole lot of explaining to do.”

  “Ah, Ayashe. Just in time.” Spotted Elk stood up to greet her.

  Ayashe circled around his desk and slammed her hand down on the desktop as she leaned down to stare me in the eyes. “So. ‘Kostya Kalikov’? Is that your real name, or am I going to have to keep digging until I reach the bottom of the pile of bullshit?”

  “I don’t know a Kostya Kalikov,” I said, scratching my familiar’s head. Binah stretched and yawned in my lap, and then curled back into an indolent ball.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Rex,” she said. “People were killed last night. Witnesses say they saw you and Jenny-fucking-Tran in a big blue car that just happens to match the description of Duke’s Buick. You don’t think I’d know this shit?”

  “You’re a Federal Investigator who is currently only cleared to advise the Bronx SSU on one particular case, and even if it were your business, it is currently out of your jurisdiction.” I held her furious gaze with my calm one. “I notice things, too, Agent.”

  Ayashe stood, straight-backed. “I’ve got more than enough circumstantial evidence to detain your ass right here and now under RICO.”

  “You don’t have anything you can arrest me for.” I forced myself to sit back. No point in looking nervous. “So what do you want to hear first? Do you want to know that the people who nearly killed me and hounded me out of my house are dabbling in child pornography with the Wolf Grove children, or you want to hear about how your exemplary Pathfinders were ordering large shipments of heroin from those same people?”

  The agent’s expression went from cold hostility to hot intensity in a split second. “Prove it.”

  I set the file down on Spotted Elk’s desk, and pointed at the relevant lines. “That handwriting belongs to the current Authority of Brighton Beach. It outlines the delivery instructions for ten kilos of black-tar heroin to dealers for distribution in exchange for an unnamed trade. Usually, deliveries like this one are sent to the head of a street gang. In this case, it was direct to Wolf Grove.”

  Ayashe fumbled back, pushing her jacket aside to reveal a gun in a holster and a small black pouch. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from it and picked up the file herself. “That’s a lot of information you’re getting from a little writing.”

  “Rumor has it the Avtoritet writes his directives in Russian military code.” I shrugged. “But the address is clear enough. It is dated for the 30th August.”

  “It’s not possible,” Spotted Elk said. “Neither of them would do anything like this.”

  “I agree. This is out of turn.” Michael’s voice was deeper now, more forceful.

  I didn’t like the way the room felt, so I picked up Binah and joined them on their feet. “What does initiation entail that makes you so sure? Because the evidence to the contrary is quite literally sitting on your desk.”

  “I have known them for years,” Michael said. “They were initiated eleven years ago, long before they became invested in their religion. They always honored the Ib-Int above all things.”

  Ayashe shot me a dark look as she picked up the folder and riffled through it. John Spotted Elk regarded me with a similar expression to the one I had worn before: the tight-lipped reluctance of someone being asked to betray an entrenched secret.

  “I told you about my encounter with the Stallion, Dust,” he said, haltingly. “Eight hundred years ago, he gifted me an elixir to induce awareness in Weeders on the cusp of sentience so that they might have control of themselves in combat. I have hidden that substance at the end every life I have lived, and recovered it on the next. One drop of it is enough to purge the Morphord’s influence. I gave it to them when I gave them honorary membership in my organization.”

  I sighed. “Trafficking in drugs doesn’t necessarily mean they were doing anything related to Morphorde. Just that they might have angered someone enough for them to take revenge.”

  “What purpose would revenge over such a petty thing serve?” Michael frowned.

  “I have heard from my friends that a bratva man stabbed someone because they beat up his friend at a club,” I replied. “Knifed him in the gut. His brother wasn’t even that badly hurt… but in that culture, if someone hurts your friend, it is as if they had hurt you ten times more.”

  Ayashe turned to look at me again. “Okay, so you got your hands on some instructions. Ten kilos of girl, I’ll take your word on it. Does any of this mention the children or the murder?”

  “No.”

  She reached back into her jacket and drew the pistol, and she was fast. It was in her hands and aimed before I’d done anything more than put the chair between her and me. “Then I’m arresting you under suspicion of trafficking narcotics and being involved in organized criminal activity,” she said. “You have the right to remain-”

  “Ayashe!” Michael barked, moving around the desk. “What are you doing?”

  “Hey. What’s all the shouting about?” Jenner’s voice rang out from the threshold of the doorway. She, Mason and Talya formed a wall just inside the room, blocking entry and exit. “I get nervous when someone screams and I’m not around. You won’t like me when I’m nervous.”

  “You can hold the litany, musor. You have no grounds to arrest me,” I said. “A file without any of my handwriting, without my fingerprints, that points to the murdered couple you’re investigating? The problem lies with your vaunted Elders – I’m just the messenger, and you know it.”

  “Get down on the fucking floor.” Ayashe swelled up on her feet, her lips peeling back in a silent snarl. I retreated as she advanced, holding Binah close to my chest.

  “Now you wait just a goddamn moment.” Mason said. He and Jenner pulled up on either side of me, Talya hovering anxiously to one side between the standoff. “What the fuck is going on, Ayashe?”

  “This guy is in the Russian Mob.” Ayashe wasn’t visibly angry now – she had taken on the cold brushed steel look of an experienced killer. “That’s reason enough.”

  “Your accusation is flimsy compared to the evidence of your own people being in the ‘Russian mob’ as you put it. The drugs weren’t addressed to me.” I hadn’t come armed. More’s the pity.

  Spotted Elk regarded us gravely. “In all honesty, I must agree with Ayashe. He admitted to us that it was his apartment.”

  My eyes narrowed. Michael’s face flickered with an expression that was difficult to read, but he glanced at me and I knew that he hadn’t intended to tell Ayashe anything.

  “Of course it was.,” Ayashe snapped. “You think it’s coincidence that he just shows up in our life and gets involved in this? That he starts off with our youngest member and manipulates her-”

  “Don’t talk about me like I can’t think for myself!” Talya bristled, swelling on her feet. “It was a chance meeting!”

  “What the fuck do you think he’s really doing here, Jenner?” Ayashe gestured at me with the muzzle of her pistol. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure I saw the black hole at the end of the barrel shudder and shiver like a liquid.

  “Seems like he was helping us,” Jenner replied. “Or trying to.”

  “I’m leaving. That is what I am doing.” I pulled my gloves up along my wrists as a deep tension wracked my stomach and tugged my stitches. “Go shove your badge up your ass.”

  You have three seconds to get down on the floor before I decide you’re too hostile to live.” The barrel was aimed right between my eyes.


  Mason put himself between me and the gun. “You and what friggin’ army, Ayashe? I can vouch that we found the damn film, that we got the motherfuckers who hurt Josie, that Rex honored his half of the deal. Or doesn’t the word of an Elder mean anything to you now you got a shiny badge and a pat on the head?”

  “Mason, silence. She has a point,” Spotted Elk said. “We were wrong to trust a criminal presence. No matter what I said about him or what you’ve seen-”

  “You came here alone, Ayashe, and I don’t think we give a fuck about what you say.” Jenner caught my arm and started me walking. “C’mon, Rex. Mason. Let’s go.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere!” Ayashe snapped around Spotted Elk, shoving him aside with furious speed and strength. He hit the edge of his desk with a cry of pain, eyes wide with hurt and confusion in the moment before Jenner interposed herself Mason and Ayashe and punched the taller woman straight in the mouth. Ayashe stumbled back and snarled, and Mason left me to go to his woman’s side as they faced off.

  “Stop this!” Michael raised his voice over the din. “This is crazy!”

  Talya ran to me and caught my sleeve, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. I nodded, and without a word, she ran with me and Binah out into the hallway, took another door, and steered us down the fire escape. We clattered down to the ground floor and exited out a different entry to the outside.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “Ayashe’s so stubborn, and I just know she’s going to register you as a fugitive, and… all you did was try to help us. Rex, I’m so sorry.”

  “Forget it.” I said. “If they cherish their pride more than the truth, they have no need for a mage. They need twenty-one caskets and a saddle for their high horse.”

  Talya dug her nails into the doorframe. “I know, but we can talk with the Tigers and work something out. Jenner holds her own against the other factions here. Please don’t go.”

  “If Ayashe’s serious, she will turn up at the clubhouse with a SWAT team. Jenner cannot prevent that.” I pressed my lips together. “I have spent my life outside of a cell. I want my freedom.”

  Talya’s nostrils flared, an odd moment of body language for a woman as small and prim as she was. “You know, John and Michael have been trying to recruit me ever since I started working here. This is my first time inside of the Cycle, my first lifetime as a shapeshifter. Someone like John or Ayashe, they might have had twenty, thirty lifetimes that they can remember, and they still act like children. If that’s all they have to offer, that’s not the person I want to be.”

  I regarded her in silence, unblinking.

  “My point is… I believe you. Whatever it is you and the Tigers found, I believe it. We won’t let them arrest you. You’re the only one besides us that cares about something other than themselves.” Talya smiled a grim, bitter little smile, withdrew back into the stairwell, and closed the door.

  Altruistic? Me? Perhaps I had stepped into a paradoxical other world, a world where I was something more than a bullet in Sergei’s gun. Perhaps she was full of shit, and I needed to leave before I was locked up for trying to impose truth on their unreality.

  I stared at the side of the building for a moment, ruminating on my decision, and then turned and walked away.

  Chapter 19

  I found the Tigers clustered around their motorcycles. Jenner was clearly furious, but physically no worse for wear. Mason was clearly as angry as his wife, though he was nominally less explosive. He was also far larger, and I didn’t know just how much control he held over his temper.

  When we arrived back at the clubhouse, a few of the other Tigers were playing pool and shooting the shit in the garage common room. They looked up as Jenner slammed the door behind us and stormed off across the floor, clinking on every step. Duke was at the bar, talking with a tall, ascetic-looking man who seemed to be equal parts bartender and mechanic.

  “Come on, Duke,” Jenner snapped. “We need to sort out a plan.”

  “Roger that, boss.” Duke pushed back, and fell into line as we passed through the red door and into the house. “What happened back there?”

  “The usual fucking bullshit. Due process, rule of the law, blah blah blah. Ayashe threatened to raid us. Good fucking luck.” Jenner went to the same sitting room where I’d first met the Weeders. “I’ve been heading up warriors since the Fall of Rome. And besides that, Strange Kitty is a hundred and ten percent legal.”

  “Talya says she will be here in the evening,” I said, taking the armchair that Spotted Elk had used. “She is not impressed by the actions of her Elders, and implied that she intends to seek admission to your club.”

  “About time. She’s made for this place. I’ll train her right up into a demon-fighting death machine.” Jenner flopped down onto the sofa, joined by Mason. She kicked a booted leg up into his lap as the rest of us found our places.

  Mason made a thick sound of agreement. “There’s a lot more to that girl than meets the eye, I can tell you that. I’m glad she finally realized that John is a limp-dick do-nothing. And then there’s Michael. Fat lot of use he is.”

  “You’d think someone as smart as John would be more useful,” Zane said.

  “If by ‘smart’ you mean ‘weak’. He should be the one sticking his neck out, not us.” Jenner made a face, leaning forward to shuck her heavy jacket. She lay it back over the arm of the sofa. “Wolf Grove is his fucking responsibility.”

  Zane quirked his mouth to one side. “Ayashe, Michael and John have a different way of seeing things.”

  Duke looked at me. “By that he means they’re prey animals that run the fuck away from everything.”

  “I see.” Ayashe did not strike me as being a prey animal, though Michael and John could pass. I eased back, aching with fatigue. “What are you intending to do now? If I understand correctly, Spotted Elk and Ayashe have withdrawn from the convention arrangement.”

  “The short version is that they refuse to accept that anything you and Jen saw, heard or found at your place is real, because it means that Lily and Dru weren’t the innocent lambs everyone thought they were,” Mason rasped. His heavy face was oddly reptilian, cold and dangerous. “They won’t accept the word of another Elder, let alone me, you, Duke or Zane, and they won’t accept the evidence we gave them.”

  “They want a scapegoat,” I said. “She tried to make an arrest. I doubt I can help you more than I already have.”

  “By herself?” Zane blinked. “Did you tell her to piss off?”

  “Jenner and Mason helped me, for which I am grateful.” I inclined my head to them.

  “So what now?” Duke asked. He had plopped down onto one of the bean-bags, his lean face drawn and sober.

  “John and Michael can have their circle-jerk. We’re taking this on whether they like it or not.” Mason shook his head.

  “Exactly,” Jenner said. “If we want to get to the bottom of everything, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. We’ve got something to go on, now. We know the Russian Mob is involved. We know Lily and Dru might have been up to shit involving them, so there’s a good chance that the Mob has the kids. You got other people you think we could wring for info, Rex?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied. “In addition to that, I remember that Lily and Dru have a retreat in the forest. Do you know what that was used for?”

  “It’s a changing ground. Territory staked out for hunting away from civilization. A place to teach the kids to change without people hanging around,” Jenner said.

  “That’s where they said the first spook disappeared,” Zane said. “Maybe whoever hit Wolf Grove was camping in the cabin when he went there.”

  “Maybe.” Mason rubbed his jaw, thick with graying stubble. “First things first. I want to talk to the Pathrunners alone, Jen. They need to know what we found. Michael looked like he was willing to listen to it if it comes from either of us.”

  “Did Lily or Dru answer to him?” I asked.

  “Sort of. The Pa
thrunners are pretty secretive. Loners, you know.” Jenner jerked her shoulders, relaxing under Mason’s hand. “Michael is the ‘leader’ of the New York assembly, but he’s more like a spiritual leader than a leader-leader. Anyone who carries the Pathrunner name has to pass all these trials and tests, have a pretty rote understanding of the Laws and Weeder history, and be able to rule by them.”

  “I see. And how do the Twin Tigers relate?”

  Jenner thoughtfully chewed her nail, which was already bitten down to the quick. “We’re really a totally separate group. Traditionalists, funnily enough. In every century but this one, Weeders formed like-minded packs and small militias under the Ib-Int, with Elders and lawkeepers passing on the basic traditions and laws. All of the groups get together in a type of tribal council once a year to exchange news and business. This whole factional thing is pretty new. I think John has a Batman complex.”

  “Nah, man. X-men,” Duke said. “He totally thinks he’s Professor X.”

  “I see. He and Michael articulated the origins of shapeshifters somewhat,” I said. “And your purpose.”

  “I’m sure he missed the most important part: the part where the preds have been doing the fighting and the dying for years, while the prey animals try to integrate themselves with a sick society. Every city in this country is full of pedos, demons, psychos, freaks.” Jenner leaned forwards, wiry and intense in her t-shirt and jeans. “The Four Fires fancy themselves to be like army officers, you know – all learned and tactical. I can tell you now, it doesn’t mean shit to the Big Black Nothing. You dig it out as you find it and you fucking kill it. That’s the only thing that works.”

  “We’re neck deep in the Third War,” Mason added. “John says he used to be in the Navy way back when, around about the time that me and Jen were in ‘Nam. He’s planning a Naval battle… he sees a board with a bunch of positions written on it. I see a jungle full of mines and foxholes. The Third War is a guerilla war, and he doesn’t get that you can’t just wait for the Devil to show itself.”