“Yes.”
There was that glance at Claryce again. Now I knew. He’d lied to me before. Claudette’d been there at the climax, too. Been there and died.
I had no intention of saying anything in front of Claryce. We had Holmes to worry about, anyway, and very little time left, if I understood Kravayik correctly. Holmes clearly thought that he’d come up with a way to enable his mortal shell to contain the energies stirred up by the Frost Moon’s wake.
“Fetch, take a peek outside and see if any of Holmes’s goons are paying attention to over here.”
“Yes, Master Nicholas!” He quickly trotted off, perhaps moving a little faster so as to try to help me forget what I—or more likely Claryce—had seen.
“Nick, we need to get Oliver out of here. I won’t leave him in danger.”
“You heard her, Kravayik. If Fetch gives us the all clear, you help her get him to his car. Then, I want both of you to drive off until you can drop him safely somewhere—”
“I’m not leaving you!” she protested.
“Only way to help him,” I pointed out. “Fetch and I’ll follow them. We’ll stay hidden unless there’s absolute reason to do something.”
She frowned, but she knew I was right. It made no sense for all of us to carry Oliver off, and I wasn’t about to leave the hunt for Holmes to Kravayik.
Fetch came back. “They’re in the building across, in the store where we fought the Wyld.”
“Yeah, I thought so. We’ll slip out the back. Lon—”
Her Lady’s enforcer had slipped out on us. I swore. For all I knew, Lon had every intention of swooping in on the gang and ripping them apart until it forced Holmes’s location from one of them. He’d expect that I might not like that and had made certain to leave before I could order him to not slaughter everything in sight.
“Claryce. Kravayik. Take Oliver. Fetch, to me.”
I didn’t bother to see if anyone obeyed. I knew that Claryce would never leave Oliver where he was and Kravayik would not abandon her in turn. That last look he’d given her had not only verified his lies concerning Claudette’s death, but one shocking truth I should’ve seen much earlier.
Kravayik’d loved her. Not Claryce, but Claudette. The supreme assassin of the Feirie Court had fallen for a human.
It explained a bit more about his abrupt and complete conversion to the Church. I’d always wondered how the events surrounding my own encounter with Kravayik had moved him so much that he’d forsaken his eternal existence and high station.
I knew then that he’d also been the one to see to her burial in Saint Boniface.
By this time, I was around the side of the building and coming back up near the one next to it. The path wasn’t the straightest, but I had to sacrifice time for stealth.
Fetch kept pace at my side. He could’ve easily run ahead, but I couldn’t afford him being noticed. The regular thugs weren’t a problem, but I had no idea what I was facing in the twins. I still wondered where Holmes had picked up that pair. For some reason, they were two pieces that didn’t seem to exactly fit.
When I was certain no one was looking, I crossed to the back of the building where once the Murder Castle stood. Once there, I paused and looked up.
“Show me,” I whispered.
The dragon only grunted. As the world changed to emerald, I stared with disappointment at the nothingness above the storefront. I’d wondered if maybe the fire hadn’t actually destroyed Holmes’s sanctum but that rather he had hidden his sanctuary through magic. Apparently not.
I heard murmuring inside. Disgruntled voices.
Oh, allow me this grand gesture . . . the dragon mocked.
The next second, I could hear the voices clearly. The conversation concerned money . . . and the lack of it, thanks to promises Holmes had apparently made to the men.
“Five days, we been promised!” roared one man. “Five days!”
“We been promised plenty of rubes, but we seen nothin’ yet,” added another. “And now Frankie’s gone and the others are dead!”
That furious declaration was followed by a moment of silence . . . and then a low voice that I could barely make out even with the dragon’s hearing hissed, “Your needsss . . . will be addresssed.”
“Yeah, so you and your bookend brother keep sayin’!” the second hood went on. “We’ve talked it over, and if the bucks ain’t comin’, we’re headin’ back to Hymie and the gang.”
“There will be no need for that. . . .”
I heard a click behind me. I turned to face a startled hood who’d clearly chosen somewhere in the back to answer nature. Cigarette in his mouth, he gaped at me, then moved his hands from his belt—the source of the click—and grabbed for an automatic in the left-hand pocket of his coat.
Fetch moved before I did, jumping the goon. The pair went flying, the goon landing hard on his back.
Unfortunately, in the process, the gun went off.
Fetch’s prey let out a howl as the bullet tore a red valley in his thigh. Fetch did him the favor of whacking him hard on the side of the head, knocking him out.
Inside, the conversation turned into a collective shout. I heard a familiar clacking noise and ducked.
Evidently not at all caring what they hit, someone fired a tommy. The door I was standing by and its surrounding walls were quickly perforated.
The firing went on for several seconds. I gave the gunman points for spreading out his shots. Two grazed me, one in my sword arm and the other in a leg. Both were painful, but didn’t slow me much.
Hoping that Claryce and Kravayik would use the confusion to flee with Oliver, I pushed myself around the corner of the building. Now, I could hear the clatter as someone shoved open the door I’d just abandoned.
It said something that they weren’t afraid such noise would bring the cops. I had no doubt that someone in the nearest station had been paid well to ignore any sounds out of the ordinary.
Without warning, someone stood in front of me. There’d been no door from which he could’ve jumped, and the next nearest corner was too far away. That was why it didn’t surprise me to see that it was one of the twins. He’d popped in the same way he or his brother had done in the car during the chase.
Like previously, he also carried a dagger with a strange hollow point. He lunged at me, not at all caring that I had Her Lady’s gift drawn.
Then, a piercing pain ran through the right side of my neck. I realized I’d been tricked by distraction.
But with a growl, Fetch buried his teeth in the leg of my second attacker. Twisting his head, Fetch put the other Schreck off-balance.
The twin in front of me abruptly backed away. Fetch let out a frustrated howl the reason for which I saw as I collapsed against the wall. The twin he’d brought down had vanished.
I wasn’t surprised a moment later when I discovered his companion had disappeared, too.
But that still left us with a bunch of angry mobsters.
One hood came around the corner ahead. He took a shot with his automatic, but, like so many of his kind, didn’t have the best aim from such a distance. I ignored him for the moment, more concerned with who was coming through the door behind me.
Sure enough, it was the tommy gunner. He was a thin Mick who hadn’t shaved in days. The tommy looked huge in his hands, but he held it like someone who’d been using it for quite a while.
He fired another burst the moment he laid eyes on me. I threw myself against the opposing building as the rain of bullets reached me. Another one caught my shoulder. I grimaced, but turned on the gunman.
The tommy gunner shifted stance. I knew I’d miscalculated. He compensated for my speed and fired.
This time, I took several bullets.
I should’ve been dead. I would’ve been dead, but the dragon reacted instantly. His power forced most of the bullets from my—our—body, sending them flying in several directions. At the same time, he worked to quickly heal me.
The tommy gunner g
asped. I lunged the final distance, swinging at the same time.
Her Lady’s gift sliced off more than half the submachine gun’s barrel. The goon instinctively let go of the weapon even though it probably would’ve still functioned well enough at this range.
I slugged him. I tried never to use Her Lady’s gift on humans, however vile they might be. I’d always had the suspicion that any human life it took meant it sucking the person’s soul into its blade. I was fine with that when it came to the Wyld, who had no souls—just spirits—but not with humans.
Which didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened a few times over the centuries. Now and then, I was given no choice.
As the gunner fell, I stopped and groaned. The dragon had quickly done what he could, but there were still bullets lodged in me and they were wreaking hell on my body. I fell against the wall, suddenly barely able to keep my grip on the sword.
Fetch came to my side. I expected him to force his muzzle under my arm so that I could lean on him, but instead, after a brief growl, he took hold of me with hands.
“Forgive me, Master Nicholas,” he rumbled.
“Not . . . exactly in any condition . . . to complain.” I let him guide me along the wall. “Get me to—”
“Geez!” Another mobster, his automatic already pointed at us, gaped at Fetch. He was too far away for either of us to reach before he could fire, but near enough that even he could get a good bead on whoever moved.
Another hood, this one with a hooked nose and a thick, orange-red brow of hair, joined him. He didn’t look as startled as the first. Like the crook at my feet, he carried a tommy.
“Don’t stand there gapin’!” the second man snarled, his voice the first of those to raise a complaint inside. “They’ll bleed like the others, remember? Just fire!” He aimed the tommy.
“Yeah, yeah!”
Fetch roared and threw me behind him, but before anything else could happen, a shadow spread behind the two mobsters.
Lon.
One side of the cloak, which I was beginning to believe was an actual part of the Feir’hr Sein, draped over the thug with the automatic. He vanished in the darkness without a sound.
The second hood realized something was happening behind him. He spun around, trying to fire at the same time.
One deathly pale hand thrust out, seizing him by the throat and slamming him against the wall. He dropped the tommy as he hit. His eyes bulged as Lon brought his murky face close.
As the Feir’hr Sein moved in on the second hood, the cloak unfurled from the first. A pile of dust that I realized was all that remained of the one thug scattered. A clatter on the ground proved to be the automatic and several tiny items, including buttons and other bits of metal.
“Lon!” I shouted.
The Feir’hr Sein pressed his ghoulish face against the mobster’s. The crook tried to shriek . . . and Lon poured into his throat.
It took only a single breath. Suddenly, the thug straightened. He quietly turned to look at me.
For a brief moment, the monstrous eyes of the Feir’hr Sein shone through.
A siren screamed. Someone’d called the cops.
“Fetch!”
“Yes, Master Nicholas.” He began shrinking. His hands and arms became paws and forelegs. In a moment, he was once more a four-legged beast.
I took my attention off Lon for just a second when Fetch began changing. I knew I’d made a mistake, but by the time I looked back, the Feir’hr Sein was already gone. He had a new body with which to move among mortals.
Shots rang out up front. A tommy chattered.
Something dropped on my foot. Glancing down, I saw one of the bullets I knew had come from my body. Another popped out of my chest, landing on the ground next to the first.
I felt as if a weight’d been lifted from me.
You are very welcome. . . .
“Thanks,” I muttered to him. “I mean that.”
Try not to get us killed so quickly again, then. . . .
I couldn’t argue with him. It exerted both of us a lot when he had to do this. There was always that shared concern that one day we might not have the strength. For all we’d been through, neither of us was ready to accept death without a fight.
I doubted that Claryce’d managed to find somewhere from which to call the police. There’d been no working telephone in the building where we’d confronted Oliver, and I thought I knew Claryce well enough to think she’d see to his life first. Therefore, someone else had called.
The gunfire continued, mostly from the outside, I noticed. I was fine with letting the cops deal with Holmes’s human goons. With Fetch trailing me, I sheathed Her Lady’s gift and headed around the opposite direction. I cursed the fact that I’d parked the Packard nearby. Still, maybe the cops hadn’t noticed it yet in the heat of battle.
When I thought I was far enough away, I headed back toward the street. Fetch started to move ahead of me, but I blocked him with one hand and he fell back in place behind me.
Then, Lon—or rather, the body the Feir’hr Sein wore—backed into sight. He put one hand behind him, and I saw the fingers twist until they became the clawed appendages of Her Lady’s enforcer.
A figure holding a gun on the Feir’hr Sein—a gun that would do no good against the creature—stepped into view. As it did, Lon’s hand briefly shut, then opened.
A small sphere of black energy formed in the palm. I didn’t need sixteen hundred years dealing with Feirie to know just how wicked a thing Lon’d just created.
And only then did I see that the figure holding the gun on Lon and entirely unaware of the incredible danger he was in was none other than Detective Alejandro Cortez.
CHAPTER 21
“I’ve got a perfect shot on you! You don’t want to do this, Bo, you know?” Cortez shouted to what he thought was just a minor hood. “Hands up!”
The Feir’hr Sein started to move the hand with the sphere.
I had no choice. “No, Lon!”
The head jerked slightly in my direction. The sphere faded away, and the hand reverted to human.
That solved one problem, but not the other. Fortunately, Cortez took care of that by jerking his eyes from the Feir’hr Sein to me. It was barely for the blink of an eye, but that was enough for Lon even in his borrowed form.
Still, Cortez reacted pretty quickly to the Feir’hr Sein, returning his gaze to Lon and firing.
Firing at nothing.
“Easy, Cortez!” I called, moving toward him. “He’s not one of them.”
“Nick Medea . . .” The detective didn’t look very pleased with me, not that that was any surprise. “You do pop up in the oddest places, you know?”
“Not so odd for me, Cortez. I came down here for that client I mentioned earlier. Planned on giving them the story you reminded me of, the Beast of Chicago, remember?”
“Yeah, the Beast.” Despite the acknowledgement of what we’d discussed, Cortez continued to eye me with more than his usual level of suspicion. “You just happen to be here when these hoods decided to gather, eh?”
I raised a hand. “I can swear by Our Lady of Guadalupe that I didn’t plan on them being here.”
He frowned, clearly debating on just what to believe. Farther away, the sounds of gunfire began subsiding. From the detective’s calm demeanor, I wagered he was pretty certain as to the outcome. “Yeah. All right. I got enough to do without more questions that aren’t going to get me anywhere, you know?” He lowered his gun. “But I got one I do want to ask you. You call and let us know this batch was here?”
“With what phone?”
“Yeah, yeah, there is that. So, not you. Funny.” He holstered his gun and pulled out his Luckys. “Funny. . . .”
“What’s so hilarious?” Cortez was definitely no fool. I was curious what he had in mind, just in case it might end up being a clue to my own situation.
“Well . . . maybe it was a squealer, you know? Someone doing a double-cross on the gang. Had that happen on
ce. Might explain the suddenness of the call, eh?”
Someone shouted from the direction of the gun battle. Cortez and I looked back. A capped officer came running.
Cortez stored the Luckys away and pulled out his service weapon again. “What’s going on?”
“They’re all dead!”
The detective frowned. “They didn’t surrender?”
“Didn’t have a chance, sir.” The cop was another young one. He didn’t hesitate on the “sir” like maybe the sergeant at the station might’ve. “When they stopped firing, we moved in . . . and found the rest of them dead.”
“Let’s see this. Nick Medea, I want you with me.”
I couldn’t very well argue, but then again, I was pretty curious as to what’d happened. At first, I’d thought maybe Michael’d called, but this didn’t sound like something he might’ve done. Maybe Holmes had ended up doing what I would’ve thought he’d do in the first place . . . cleaning house of burdensome servants . . . but I couldn’t help thinking there was more to it than that.
When we got to the spot, no one questioned my being there. I found that odd, also. Once again, I considered the strange position Cortez appeared to have in the Chicago Police Department. He had no fixed beat unless you counted the entire city, and his cases seemed to be all the peculiar, even sinister, ones that’d make or break most other cops’ careers.
“So, there across the street is where Miss Simone met Bond?” he asked as we walked.
“Yeah.”
“Heard from him since?”
“She would’ve told you, Cortez.”
He chuckled. “You, not her.”
“Ah. No. I would’ve told you, too.”
“Yeah, I suppose you would’ve. Think these poor fools had something to do with him?”
I was saved from responding by the horrific scene we encountered inside. Six bodies lay sprawled in various positions inside the building. I could see that one near the door—his hand still on the chopper he’d been firing—had probably been shot down by the cops, but the rest lay too far inside. It would’ve taken quite the marksman outside to hit any of them.
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