“What’ve you got?” Octavian asked, shutting his door and clicking his key ring so that the lock chirped.
Frustrated, Keomany moved into the street, searching to see if the thing had moved. What did she have? Nothing but soaking-wet clothes. The rain felt strangely warm, which was unnerving, and her clothes were sticking to her in uncomfortable places.
“Come on,” she said to herself. “Where did you go?”
A burst of laughter drew her attention back to the group of revelers saying good night in front of the Thai restaurant. She looked over, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes, and watched a blond woman huddled arm in arm beneath an umbrella with an older black man. The couple made their way along the sidewalk to a silver Jaguar. The man took out his keys and the car beeped, lights flashing as it unlocked. He went to open the door for his companion.
“Kem, what did you see?” Octavian prodded her. “We’re getting soaked out here.”
Keomany was about to look away when the man went down hard. His wife let out a squeal of alarm even as he shouted, cursing, and Keomany heard the question in his tone. She took a single step in their direction before the man started to scream. His wife shrieked his name as he reached for her, his arms flailing as something dragged him underneath the Jaguar.
Octavian bolted past her, running for the car. Keomany raced after him, the only sound now the screaming of the blond woman and the wet clap of their heels on the sidewalk. The others who’d come out of the Thai place with them were calling, hurrying toward the Jaguar as well, but Octavian got there first.
“What is it?” the blonde cried, turning to Octavian even as she backed away from the car. She made no effort to help her husband, shying as far from the car as conscience would allow. “Help him, please!”
Octavian threw himself onto the sidewalk, reaching beneath the car.
“Roland!” the blond screamed. “Roland!”
Keomany reached the driver’s side of the Jaguar and followed Octavian’s lead. She went down on her knees first, then forced herself to ignore the rain-slick pavement and the puddle beneath her, going down on her belly and peering into the darkness under the car, calling for Roland.
A hand thrust out from beneath the car and Keomany grabbed for it, in time only to catch a handful of Roland’s jacket sleeve. He jerked back and forth, hard enough to drag her several inches, her own hand tugged under the car.
“Something’s under there with him!” Octavian snapped.
Now she saw it moving, a shadow thing made of coalblack ribbons.
“Keomany, get back,” Octavian said. “I’m moving the car.”
Just before she released Roland’s sleeve, Keomany felt the man go still. The only movement was a twitching from the ministrations of the thing under there with him. Something slashed out from beneath the car, black and gleaming, and cut through her wrist. She pulled away and staggered to her feet in time to see Octavian stand, clawing at the air with his fingers contorted, a golden light crackling around his hands in spheres of magic.
“Out of the way!” Octavian shouted at her.
Only then did she realize that he didn’t intend to lift the car.
Keomany jumped aside, cradling her arm against her. There was no cut, but her hand felt numb and swollen, though it looked completely normal. As she stared at it, she saw a black figure, a wraithlike oily smoke, slip from beneath the car and dart up into the stormy sky, clutching a squirming blob of soft, colorful light in its hands. The people who’d been with Roland in the restaurant saw it, too, pointing and muttering and wondering.
Octavian thrust out his hands and a blast of golden-red light slammed into the Jaguar, blowing it across the street, where it rolled onto its roof and crashed into a parked SUV. Car alarms wailed, but the others in the street were silenced, staring at Octavian in awe. All save for the blond woman, who ran to her husband and knelt by him on the wet pavement. She did not touch him, though. Only stared.
For a few seconds, Keomany only stared as well. Then she went to join Octavian on the sidewalk. No one rushed to checked Roland’s pulse; there was no point. What remained of the powerfully built man was a withered husk, as though he had been dead for months.
“What happened to him?” one of Roland’s friends demanded.
Octavian shot him a regretful look. “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”
The blond woman, Roland’s wife, looked up at Keomany and Octavian with an expression of such sorrow that Keomany could not meet her eyes.
“How did you do that? What are you?” she asked.
“Just people,” Keomany told her, wondering what the thing had done to Roland, and what it had done to her hand. “People who want to help.”
OCTAVIAN took Keomany’s arm and hurried her into the shelter of a dress boutique’s awning, a couple of stores away.
“What exactly did you see?” he said, examining her hand and keeping his voice low enough that they would never hear him over the wind and rain. “What are we dealing with?”
The wail of a police siren filled the air. Blue lights danced off the downtown façades as a patrol car came skidding around a corner. Someone had called 911.
“Some kind of specter? I don’t know,” she said. “I saw something on a roof, and then another in the air. I told you to pull over because I saw one sticking to the side of a building. I think it’s the one that got that guy.”
She gestured toward the dead man, whose wife still knelt, weeping and bereft, at his side. The police car stopped and two cops climbed out and started toward her, both of them looking around warily, one with his hand on his service weapon. They looked skittish, like this wasn’t the first crisis they’d encountered today. Octavian figured they’d been trying to figure out all day why their picturesque little town was falling apart.
“What do you think is wrong with my hand?” she asked.
Octavian frowned. “I don’t get a sense you’ve been poisoned in any way. The numbness may be just a reaction to contact with it. But I’m going to do a purge spell on you tonight to make absolutely certain.”
“No way,” Keomany said. “I’ve seen how those work. I’ll sleep for hours. This chaos effect is only going to get worse. You’ll need me.”
“You said two or three days. I’ll need you more in the morning than I do tonight.”
She flexed her hand. “It’s feeling a little better already.”
He could see she was lying. “We’ll talk about this when we check into the hotel. Now back to whatever that was. There’s nothing else you can tell me?”
“Remember the things that served the Tatterdemalion?” Keomany asked.
Octavian’s insides went cold. “Do you think it’s back?”
“No,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so. This doesn’t feel the same. The circumstances aren’t the same. Hawthorne isn’t cut off from the rest of the world. And the Tatterdemalion was about possession, not about chaos. This is not theft, it’s like . . . an eruption. An infection. These things are part of it, but I don’t know what they are. You’re the one who knows demons and all of that.”
“Okay,” he replied. “But are these things the source of the chaos, or just a symptom?”
Keomany considered it, then gave a small shrug. He didn’t blame her. Earthcraft didn’t really work that way, not even for Keomany, who was more in tune with nature than any earthwitch he had ever encountered. Gaea had touched her personally, had spoken to her directly, in some way that Octavian knew he would never understand. If Gaea really was nature itself, some spirit that embodied the entire planet . . . that was a level of power and spirituality that he had never encountered. In history, many cultures had believed that all life was connected, that the planet had a singular life force shared by all living things. What Keomany had sensed was a disruption in that life force, in nature. Something had corrupted a part of the order of the world. It might be beyond her craft to be able to pinpoint the nature of the bits of chaos they encountere
d. But they had to find the source of the chaos and put a stop to it.
“All right,” he said. “The cops are going to want to talk to us. Let’s make it quick.”
“You used magic to toss a car across the street,” Keomany said. “They’re going to want to do more than talk.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Octavian said, looking past her toward the police. “If they try to detain us, I’ll cast a . . .”
His words trailed off. Beyond the grieving woman kneeling by her dead love, beyond the friends clustered under their umbrellas bearing witness, beyond the policemen and their car with its swirling blue lights, he saw a new light.
“Something’s burning,” he said.
Firelight bloomed in the sky, making orange and black shadows on the storm clouds. Back the way they had come, near the beach, a fire had broken out. Keomany turned to look at it and the cops and others noticed them staring east, toward the water, and they all glanced that way as well.
“God damn it,” one of the cops said. “What the fuck is this, now?”
Octavian nudged Keomany toward the car, and they hurried toward it. The older of the two cops, a graying guy who moved like an ex-soldier, turned and saw them.
“Where do you two think you’re going?” he asked.
Octavian made a fist, feeling the magic surge through him, just in case he needed it.
“To have a look at the fire,” he said. “One of you want to come along? There could be people in trouble.”
“That’s the fire department’s job,” the former military man said, his chin high, all about protocol and authority.
“Minutes could mean lives lost,” Keomany said. “There are things happening in this town none of us understand, Officer. We just want to help.”
The cop studied them, but only for a second. Octavian saw the thought process in his eyes. The officer wondered if they were trouble, but then decided that if they were, he was more than capable of dealing with them.
“Tony,” he said, turning to his young partner, a twenty-something guy who looked like he’d been in one too many bar fights and wouldn’t hesitate to start another. “Call in the . . .” He seemed about to use some kind of dismissive word for the dead man, then glanced at Roland’s weeping widow. “Cover the body and then call this in. They’ll send backup and someone from the coroner’s office.”
Octavian didn’t have the heart to tell him that an examination of the crime scene wasn’t going to turn up any evidence that made sense to anyone.
“Let’s go,” the cop said, walking over to the car.
Octavian climbed into the front seat of his car. Keomany seemed about to offer the passenger seat to the cop, but he opened the back door and slid in without hesitation.
“What a Godforsaken night,” the cop said.
Octavian agreed, but did not respond. He started up the car. As he pulled away from the curb and did a U-turn, he glanced at the people out in the rain with their umbrellas, watching as Tony the cop covered Roland’s withered corpse with a plastic tarp from the trunk of the police car, like they had skipped straight from death to funeral with nothing in between.
“Now that we’re all cozy, in out of the rain,” the graying cop said, “why don’t you tell me who you are and what brings you to Hawthorne.”
Octavian glanced in the rearview mirror, then over at Keomany. He often ran into people who recognized his face or name. To some he was famous, and to others notorious. It troubled him more to be celebrated than to be despised, because the people who hated him had clear motives. They were easy to understand. They hated vampires or the supernatural in general, or they thought that his magic meant he was in league with Satan and ought to be burned at the stake, or worse. The people who loved, or even worshipped, him were harder to understand. Some were simply openminded and understood that he only wanted to help, but others admired him for the same reasons the narrow-minded hated him . . . because he had once been a killer and a blood-drinker, a warrior. Or because he wielded magic, and they hungered for some of that power for themselves.
When people didn’t know him, that could make things easier, or it could make things harder.
“My name is Peter Octavian,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror again. “My friend is Keomany Shaw. You have some dangerous magic happening in your town. Keomany . . . sometimes she can sense that sort of thing. We’re here to help.”
“Dangerous magic?” the cop asked, practically sneering.
Octavian nodded. “You don’t believe in magic?”
“Not much choice, the way the world is these days,” the cop said, his disapproval evident. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“No, you don’t,” Octavian agreed.
The cop laughed. “As long as we’re agreed on that. On the other hand, after a day like today, I’ll take help where I can get it.”
Neither Octavian nor Keomany replied.
Octavian drove them down to Shore Road and turned left, and they saw the burning building instantly. Some kind of music club, complete with old-fashioned marquee. People were helping each other across the street toward the boardwalk along the beach. Some were bleeding and others were coughing from the smoke that poured out of the front doors of the club. Flames had engulfed the upper floor and burst through the windows. Broken glass littered the street. The rain hissed as it touched the flames. But Octavian’s focus was on the fire itself, which burned a sickly orange but had within it threads of greenish flame that were not found in nature.
“Son of a bitch,” the cop muttered. “It’s just getting worse, isn’t it?”
“What’s your name, officer?” Keomany asked.
“Jim Connelly.”
“You may not like magic, Officer Connelly,” Octavian said, “but we can help if you’ll let us.”
Octavian pulled the car to the curb and killed the engine.
“Fuck, yeah,” Connelly said as he popped the door and jumped out. “Help away.”
The three of them hurried toward the confused crowd, many of whom were still spilling from the burning club. The smoke mixed with the rain and made it hard to breathe. Wet ash made the pavement slippery.
A black girl ran up to them, grabbing Officer Connelly by the arm.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, frantic, her face smeared with soot and tears. “My friend Makayla . . . she’s still in there. You’ve gotta get her out. Those fucking crazy people are going to burn to death in there, and they’re not going to let her out. Help her!”
“What crazy people?” Officer Connelly asked. “Did someone start the fire?”
The girl threw up her hands. “I don’t know. It just . . . we were dancing. Everyone was dancing and it was totally amazing. Then it got out of control. People started fighting, like really just beating the shit out of each other. The fire started during the fight, back at the bar, all the alcohol went up so fast, but they kept fighting. One guy . . . oh, God, one guy clawed this other crazy bastard’s eye out. And they started to look like . . . their teeth were all sharp and they just looked wild, like animals. And they’re not coming out. They’re still fighting! Makayla got beaten up. I don’t know if she’s conscious. She’s going to die if you don’t help her!”
Octavian touched Officer Connelly’s arm. “We’ve got this.”
Connelly looked at him in surprise. “You sure?”
“Just remember we’re on your side,” Keomany told him.
Octavian started toward the club, weaving through the people still staggering out. Keomany joined him, and they heard Connelly on his police radio, calling in to report the fire and the violence. Already they could hear fire trucks screaming in the distance.
“Be careful!” the girl called to them. “They went totally nuts. They’ll kill you.”
“We’ll be all right,” Keomany called back to her.
“Just watch out,” the girl said. “It’s not just the crazy people. The vampire’s still in there, too.”
Octavia
n stopped short and turned back to stare at the girl.
“What vampire?”
CHAPTER 7
THE patients in the psych unit at Hawthorne Union Hospital were having a long night, which meant that for the staff, it was going to feel like an eternity. Dr. Jenny O’Neil hated stormy nights almost as much as she hated the full moon. There were those who attempted to dismiss the effect that the lunar cycle had on psychiatric patients, but as far as she was concerned, they were idiots who had never had to spend the night in a hospital psych unit when the moon was full. Lightning storms had a similar effect, though not as pronounced.
Tonight, though . . . it was worse than any full moon. Tonight the patients were going bugfuck crazy.
“Marlon, help me out,” Jenny said, beckoning to the chief orderly, a devastatingly handsome man with milk chocolate skin.
“What do you need, Dr. O’Neil?” Marlon asked as he joined her at the nurses’ station.
The chief orderly stood six foot six. His nose had been broken more than once, and showed it, but that imperfection only made him more attractive. Jenny had to pretend she didn’t notice. But she had to pretend a lot of things to get through a day on this job, the first of which was that the potentially violent patients didn’t scare the crap out of her. Jenny knew how to fight. You didn’t grow up in a house with the neighborhood’s notorious O’Neil brothers—all older than her—and not learn how to defend yourself. Add to that the self-defense classes that she had taken in the early years of her residency in psychiatric medicine, and Jenny had become capable of taking care of herself. But at five foot two and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, she still appreciated having monstrously powerful orderlies around to back her up when things got out of hand.
Tonight, for instance.
“We need to take precautions,” Jenny said. “This place is sounding like some Victorian asylum tonight, and I don’t want us losing control. We need to get on top of it now.”
Marlon nodded firmly. He didn’t give her the patronizing smile some of the orderlies did, looking like they wanted to pat her on the head like she was a little girl. Those guys inevitably ended up learning that they could get hurt on the job if they didn’t take her seriously. But Marlon had been on the unit for six years, and had seen a few things. At thirty-four, Jenny might be nearly a decade younger, but he respected her both as his superior and as a formidable woman, and if he caught any of the other orderlies doing any less, he made their lives miserable. Every day she wanted to kiss him for it, but never would.
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