The Stars Never Rise (The Midnight Defenders Book 2)

by Joey Ruff

  She stood on the edge of her stool and bent over the counter. Somehow, she managed to open the little fridge there and pulled out two cold bottles. She handed me one. “Not all is wasted.”

  She touched my arm, and I winced. The pain was a blinding burn.

  “You are hurt.”

  “I’m okay. I ran into this bloke out front.”

  She eyed me curiously. “Let me see your arm.”

  I shrugged out of my jacket and rolled up my sleeve. There on my bicep, as if tattooed in red ink, was a tribal pattern that looked like a cross between barbed wire and violent waves. The mark was about as long as my finger and not very tall.

  “You’re branded,” she said. “You made a bargain.”

  I didn’t say anything. Instead, I rolled my sleeve down and opened my beer.

  “What did you agree to, Jono?”

  “Nothing I wasn’t going to do already,” I said and drank.

  “Which is?”

  “To take care of the gargoyles.”

  “And what was promised you?”

  “He said he’d help me get my daughter.”

  “All you had to do was ask…”

  “While I appreciate it and all, Anna’s been dead for twenty years, love. I’m not sure how much help you could be.”

  She closed her eyes. “Foolish.” By her tone, I couldn’t tell if she was sad or angry.

  “Do you know who he was?”

  She laughed and the sound she made was nearly hysterical. “You make a deal with one of the Fallen and you do not even bother to learn his identity?” She shook her head. “The mark is Aegir’s design.”

  “Aegir?” I thought about it for a second. The name was familiar, but it took me a minute to place it. “The sea.” I nodded. “Makes sense. He kept talking about the waves and storms.”

  “Yes. The storms lately have been his doing.”

  “You said it was a thunderbird.”

  “I have since learned otherwise.”

  “You should’ve told me.”

  “You have had enough to occupy yourself with.”

  We were both silent a minute, and then I said, “Look. You don’t know what it feels like…”

  “It matters not your reasoning. How do you feel?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t dizzy anymore, which was good. As I thought about it, I realized I wasn’t nearly so damn tired, either. “Fine. I’m alright. Maybe you’re making a bigger deal of this.”

  “You do not realize what the extent of this will be.”

  “Tell me then.”

  Her smile was weak. “I cannot know it either. Only Aegir knows. Now that he has you on his leash…”

  A cold chill rushed through me, and a voice in the back of my head said, “What have you done?”

  “Wait,” I said. “I agreed to the gargoyles, and that’s fucking it.”

  “Today. He has his hook in you now. He will not be inclined to let you go willingly.”

  I drained my beer and set the bottle on the counter. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we? Right now, we’ve got gargoyles and a fucking troll to worry about. I’ve gotta confront Rino about the firebreeds, and Ape’s waiting for me at the house because apparently now, after twelve fucking years, it’s sharing time.”

  Noelle, one of the dancers came running out of the back hallway. Her dark eyes were even darker with bruises, and her magnificent figure was scraped to hell. She ran all the way to the bar and stopped before Kinnara. “Victor is back,” she said.

  Kinnara got up without a word, and I followed her to the front door and out into the sun. A black Hummer came barreling into the parking lot, bobbing across the broken pavement and pouncing into a parking place.

  Victor stepped from the driver’s seat, his tiny sunglasses blacking out his eyes. He stood menacing in his tight, black tee and combat boots. If it were possible, he looked bigger than the last time I’d seen him, and his fists were the size of footballs.

  A much smaller man came around from the passenger side. At five-foot-eight, the man had a stringy, wiry physique and facial piercings with long, greasy black hair and a scruffy patch of brillo-like hair on his chin. Menkh. The apron that hung around his neck was a dirty, treated leather, and the straps hung limply at his sides.

  “We got ‘em,” Victor said.

  The back doors of the Hummer opened, and three other figures climbed out. The first was a goblin of average height with bulging eyes and green, lumpy skin. Where his right hand should have been was a metal stump and a large, s-shaped blade, no doubt made of titanium like most other goblin weapons.

  The second was a Halfling called Tots that I knew from my time hanging around the club. He was a cook, like Menkh, and mostly appeared to be an African-American man aged about forty years. The only thing that gave him away as being something different were his yellow eyes and the patches of lizard scales visible on his face and arms.

  The third was another of the club’s bouncers, also a Gorgon. He was dressed like Victor and built just a little smaller. Above his sunglasses, however, he wore a bleach-blonde mop of hair.

  The blonde bouncer and Tots moved to the back of the Hummer and opened the door. Three gargoyles tumbled lifelessly from the back. Each of them was smaller than a normal man, somewhat squat and dwarfish in appearance, and they ranged in color from algae green to slate grey and sandstone brown. While all of them were beaten severely, slashed, and bullet-ridden, dripping with thick, sticky, black syrup, the brown one was missing an entire wing.

  Before they could close the back door to the Hummer, a candy-apple red, ’57 Chevy convertible stole quietly up the road and slid into a parking space beside them.

  I recognized one of the men in that car as the third Gorgon bouncer, this one with long, black hair. He was dressed identically to the other two. A handful of dwarves tumbled out of the back seat.

  The trunk popped, and the black-haired bouncer pulled pieces of gargoyles, limb after limb, from its depths. Just guessing, it seemed to equate two more of the creatures. But it was hard to tell as they were all the same color and roughly the same size and shape.

  The bouncer tossed them onto the pile and moved to stand beside his brothers. Kinnara scanned the assembled militia and said, “Where are Tonias and Ficas?”

  The Chevy’s driver came around with a grim expression. “They didn’t make it,” he said. The man looked human, almost model-like in his features, the hewn jaw, the dark eyes. He wore a backwards ball cap and a bomber jacket. While I didn’t know the man, I recognized him as a club regular. “We tried to bring back their bodies,” he said, but there wasn’t enough of Ficas to fill a shoebox. We stashed Tobias in the Underground. We’ll go back for him later.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, stepping forward.

  “Call me Cassiday,” he said, nodding. He brushed gun oil against his pant leg and shook my hand.

  “Swyftt.”

  “I know you.” His eyes were brilliant sky blue, his smile warm. “You’re somewhat of a legend, I hear.” He winked at me. “Good to meet you officially, though.”

  “How are the girls?” Victor asked Kinnara. He didn’t look at me.

  “The wounded have fed and are healing. There are no new casualties.”

  He nodded.

  “Swyftt shouldn’t be here.” He didn’t even look at me, but I could feel the hatred pouring form his eyes.

  “I was just leaving,” I said.

  “He is here as my guest,” she said.

  He looked at me. I shrugged. He was hostile enough with me under normal circumstances. The last thing I wanted was for him to discover what Kinnara and I had done.

  “Your sister’s not gonna be pleased,” he said. “You were forbidden.”

  Fucking hell.

  “That matters not,” she said. “He bears Aegir’s mark now.”

  All of the fucking brutes and uglies gathered in the parking lot turned to me at once. They didn’t try to mask their surprise or con
tempt. The dwarves broke into roaring belly laughter at once, but no one else said a word. Cassiday eyed me sympathetically and nodded.

  I stood there for an uncomfortable minute before trying to change the subject. “So what’s the plan?” I said. “Is that all the sodding gargoyles or what?”

  “We don’t know,” said the blonde bouncer.

  “It was all that attacked us,” said the goblin.

  “We rest,” Victor said. “Then we break into teams and scan the coast.”

  “We need to find the hive,” Cassiday said. “If we can do it before nightfall, so much the better.”

  Victor turned to Menkh and Tots. “Go prepare food.”

  Without word, the two men moved past us into the club.

  “Build a pyre,” Victor announced to the others. “Stack the bodies and burn them.” He turned to the impaled, larger gargoyle and said, “Not this one.” He looked at Kinnara. “Where is its head?”

  I pointed to the ground nearby where it had been squashed like a gourd. “Aegir,” I said.

  “Victor,” Kinnara said. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

  He eyed me suspiciously and said, “Speak.”

  “We need to know how to kill a troll. Would you be able?”

  He seemed to consider it a moment. “I’m able. I’m not willing. Not for Swyftt. I don’t clean up his messes.” He suddenly grew very solemn and tense and he bent low to look at Kinnara. “Any of his messes.”

  “We got it,” I said.

  He snorted and turned away from me. As he stalked off towards the gargoyle corpses, I said, “Then tell me how to kill it.”

  He laughed gently, and said, “Get yourself some better ammo.”

  28

  “What will you do now?” Kinnara asked.

  “I know a guy. Looks like I’m gonna have to pay him a visit, but I have to stop by the house first.” I took a deep breath. “I feel a little overwhelmed at the moment.” I started to walk towards my car, and she fell into step beside me. “What happens here?”

  “The Korrigan will go home to rest while the others gather their strength. They will meet back here before dusk and search for the hive. Things will be slow for now, as gargoyles only hunt at night.”

  “Are you going with them?”

  “The hunt would be exhilarating,” she said. “But my sister instructed I look after you, the girls, and her club.”

  As she spoke, I turned and began to watch the gathered militia stacking the bodies while Cassiday soaked the carcasses in gasoline. “I thought gargoyles turned to stone when they died?”

  “Not the freshly dead,” she said. “By nightfall, they will. That is why they act fast. Stone gargoyles are harder to kill. As you know, their flesh is weak against fire. Once they become stone, they reanimate and fire cannot kill them.”

  “Wait,” I said, remembering the dumpster in the alley. “The gargoyle that the troll killed…?”

  “It was collected and burned.”

  Cassiday pulled a shiny metal lighter from his pocket, flipped open the lid, and sparked its flint wheel against the denim on his leg. He lit a cigarette at his lips and then tossed the lighter onto the lowest of the gargoyles. His eyes gleaned brighter as the hungry flames evenly clothed the scaly bodies and reached to the sky.

  “Jono,” Kinnara said at my side. I glanced at her. “Have you not faced gargoyles before?”

  “Not directly. A few months after I joined the Hand, I was brought in as part of a clean-up team. I watched the more experienced agents take one down. The only other gargoyle we’d found had turned to stone. My mentor, Huxley, cast a spell over it. He said it was so it stayed dead. I guess now I understand what that meant.”

  She nodded.

  “A few months ago, we fought a manticore,” I said. “Now, gargoyles. I’ve been told countless times that dragons were all extinct, hunted down by worshippers of the Fallen or brave medieval knights influenced by dark forces.”

  “It has been told to me that the surviving dragons went into hiding. They have slept for hundreds of years. Most sleep still.”

  “Why are these waking now?”

  “The only guess we have is that the gargoyles sense Aegir’s presence in the city.”

  “Right.” I turned towards the El Camino and said, “I gotta get back. I’ll check in with you later. Just let me know if you…need me for anything.”

  “Like sex?”

  “I…hadn’t really meant that,” I said, but at the mention, I felt my body respond and images of the previous night flickered across my mind like a slide show. “Not sure we have time for that.”

  “I feel the need to clarify something,” she said.

  “Really? You wanna have that talk right now? It was a mistake, it won’t happen again, blah blah.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Is that how you feel?”

  “What? No, I…”

  “I made no mistake,” she said. “I saw something I wanted, and I took it.”

  I glanced at Victor. “Even though you were forbidden.”

  “Jono,” she said. “Do you regret it?”

  “I…don’t really know, honestly.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Fucking you?” I asked. “Best night I’ve had in a while, love.”

  Her eyes ogled me while her lips broke into a mischievous grin. “If we had the time, I would take you inside right now.”

  “We’ve already violated one of your sister’s houses….”

  “You let me worry about my sister.”

  Easier said than done, I thought. My insides felt hollow.

  “Too bad we don’t have time,” I said. “What was it you wanted to clarify?”

  “Having fought at your side and shared your bed, I understand what my sister sees in you. For a human, you are quite exceptional. Most would run from the perils you face, yet you run to them, both guns blazing.”

  “Why clarify that?” I said and couldn’t help but grin a little.

  “There may not be a tomorrow.”

  I didn’t have a chance to say anything more. Kinnara spun on her heels and marched back into the Song without so much as a backwards glance.

  I got in my car and pulled away, seeing nothing in the rear view but a climbing mountain of flame from the gargoyle pyre. I hit the highway and sped south.

  As I drove, I thought about Kinnara. I thought about her eyes and her body. God help me, I replayed every moment we spent together, the way we moved together.

  It had been a while since I’d been with Lorelei. Being with her was tender and slow, sensual. She liked it wild every once in a while, but for the most part, it was more emotional, somehow deeper. To me, she was a true lady. She had a class and sophistication borrowed from a forgotten age. But we weren’t equals. Lorelei was a goddess. She was porcelain in my hands, and I never felt worthy to even be around her.

  Kinnara was all hunger and awoke something in me I hadn’t been willing to explore before. It was animalistic and wildly passionate. She felt more my equal, ate red meat, didn’t tie men to a table and split them open to drink their fluids. Well, maybe one fluid. She did like to get her hands dirty.

  My head was swimming with conflicting emotions. Part of me cared, somehow, for Lorelei. It wasn’t love. At least, she wasn’t human; I don’t think it could ever be love, but it was as close as it could ever be. Yet, still another part of me felt something for her sister. And try as I might, I couldn’t sort things out.

  It wasn’t long before I pulled onto the driveway of the manor.

  Every time I passed between a set of foo lion statues, I could almost feel their eyes on me. Out of the corners of my eyes, it almost seemed like the statues moved as I neared, but when I looked directly at them, they looked as normal as they ever did, one paw atop what looked like a circus ball.

  I pulled the El Camino to a stop behind the house and got out to find Crestmohr looming around the corner. Thai and Taboo were at his heels, and as the hounds saw me
, they’re ridges went stiff, their eyes went wild, and they bared their fangs in an angry growl.

  These were animals that knew me well. They’d fucking saved my life. It wasn’t like them to behave this way.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  Crestmohr regarded me with a curious expression as well. “John Swyftt,” he said, but the way it came out, it almost sounded like a question. “Did you ever find your thunderbird?”

  “No,” I said. “But to be honest, I’ve been a bit busy, what with the trolls and gargoyles and other bollocks. If it helps, I think you’re right about it. Seven’s killer was a sodding earth dragon, and the storms…”

  “Yes?”

  I shrugged. “You don’t wanna hear about it, mate.”

  “Humor me.” It didn’t sound like him. He always spoke so, well, like Tonto on old episodes of the Lone Ranger.

  “Okay. Turns out one of the Fallen is in town, some bloke named Aegir…seas and storms and all that rubbish.” He seemed to tense. “You’ve heard of him?”

  “I have,” he said. “And more. What would be many, many years ago now, he and I met.”

  I stared at Crestmohr’s face, gazing into his ageless features. “How many years?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You have met him also,” he said after a minute.

  I nodded. “How did you know?”

  “I can feel him on you. As can the dogs. The Fallen are diseased, John Swyftt. Men should not deal with devils. Their damnation is like a fever, and it catches just as easily.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “You are marked, and all now know it. Angels as well as devils. It will protect you from some and keep you from others.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “Mind the gargoyles you speak of. They will come for Aegir, but they may smell him on you.”

  “You really know how to liven the mood, mate,” I said. “Is Ape inside?”

  He nodded.

  As I walked up the back steps to the house, I had a thought, and stopped. “The bonnacon still in the stable?”

  “It is.”

  “I think we might need it later. Rino was trying to use it to defend himself from the gargoyles. We could use that kind of weapon. You think you can transport it for me?”