“We weren’t going to kill you,” Tina said, wobbling on the stool. “I wasn’t going to kill you. I—we messed up.” A flood of color rushed to her cheeks. The last time she admitted something like that, she must’ve been twelve years old. Even when she lost a case, she probably deemed it “unwinnable.” Losing wasn’t part of this construct of Tina Chen. It was totally unacceptable.
“I’m sure that’s hard for you to admit.”
“Don’t patronize me, Kalos.” She glared at me, a little of her edge returning. Wiping at the smeared mascara, she added, “It wasn’t a bad plan.”
“What’d you mess up?” I said, gliding over this rough patch before she either began crying or reconsidered sharing. “You were going to tell me on stage.”
A small voice that I wasn’t even sure was hers said, “I don’t know.”
“Can I have this painting?” Ziva came trotting into the kitchen, bearing an abstract piece of art that looked like a collaboration between a fifth grader and a drunk. “It is so me.”
Jesus, this valley nymph was stealthy. I hadn’t even realized she had left the room.
Tina glanced at, furrowing her eyebrows. “Now you’re thieves?”
“Sure, take the painting,” I said, eager for Ziva to stop interrupting. “Consider it an olive branch for almost killing us.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” Tina said, looking distressed as Ziva disappeared out the front door with the artwork. “I told you that.”
“See, I’m not inclined to believe you. For obvious reasons.”
“I got you out of jail to locate the Talon of Frost, Mr. Aeon,” Tina said, rising to her full height and looking me dead in the eye. Don’t know where that burst of confidence came from, but I preferred it to the whimpering dog-in-a-thunderstorm act. “I hired Mr. Reynolds as my liaison, and for his expertise. He was supposed to point you in the right direction, without…revealing the group’s role in the matter.”
“So you’re his boss.”
“Yes,” Tina said. “He was to insulate me from exposure.”
“Wouldn’t want all this to go away.” I waved dismissively at the mansion. “So much for that.”
“The original plan had unforeseen deviations that necessitated your involvement.”
“I love it when you talk lawyer to me.”
Tina cleared her throat and looked irritated.
“What needed curing?”
“We brought the wendigo back from the dead,” Tina said, her voice just a whisper. “But we couldn’t control it.”
“Now there’s a goddamn understatement.”
No wonder Reynolds had been so drunk at the Cold Shot. He thought he had an entire clan of demon hunters—excuse me, Demon Jägers—ready to erase him from the face of the earth if he didn’t find a lead. Perhaps he had helped source this evening’s fine collection.
Too bad his boss was a big fucking empty pantsuit.
“A charming story, all things considered,” I said after a few minutes of silent contemplation. “But now, I must bid you adieu, Ms. Chen.”
“But wait,” she said, following me out of the kitchen. At the front door, she wrapped her hand around the front of my belt in an awkward attempt at seduction. It wasn’t a good mask for her. “Isn’t there something we can do to work this out? So that I don’t—”
“Get in trouble?” I looked down at her hand. “I think this contract is over, Ms. Chen. The less we see of one another, the better. But if you’re worried I’m a snitch, I could give a shit about you and your organization of imposters.”
Then I gently removed her fingers from the inside of my waistband, and headed out to the car.
*
Ziva and her painting skipped out at a fast food drive-through around two in the morning. One minute I was eating a cold hamburger, the next she was giggling and hauling ass across the parking lot, chattering away on her phone.
I didn’t have the energy or interest to pursue her. Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what she brought to the table, other than some mysterious need to find the Talon of Frost. She could wait in line. Apparently this stupid group of demon hunters had set off a cascade of dominos that they didn’t understand when they’d “brought back” the wendigo.
Whatever the hell that meant. Pretty hard to bring things back from extinction, even with magic.
Plucking a greasy fry from its cardboard container, I ran over the night’s events again, searching for leads. I could’ve pumped Tina for more information—quite literally, in this case—but that option lacked appeal.
What had she meant by losing control of it? Wendigos were feral, cannibalistic madmen driven only by instinct and a greedy lust for flesh. Convincing them to wipe out all the demons wasn’t a matter of signing on the dotted line or asking nicely.
I still didn’t want to admit they were back. Even if I was juiced to the absolute gills on essence, an adolescent one would probably leave me peeing blood for a month.
It was just dumb luck, surviving that first encounter. The confined space had concentrated the flames, making them thick enough to discourage the wendigo from trying to snack on Nadia and I. But you didn’t get this old without being a little fortunate.
Next time, though, I needed a plan. Preferably before the beast dropped any more bodies. The police had to be hitting the roof, what with their frozen, armless receptionist. And they couldn’t be pleased about Diana’s bloodless body showing up in broad daylight, either.
Marrack knew about the Journal of Annihilation, and understood that the fifth artifact would only be exposed when mortals knew of our presence. Given that he was now their leader, this had the Crimson Conclave’s mark all over it. After all, how did a group of rubes like the Demon Jägers even get on the trail of a wendigo? The species had been totally gone for three hundred years. You didn’t exactly stumble over them at Target while shopping for linens.
This beast was like a magical calling card announcing, hey, not everything is like you thought it was. The supernatural is real, bitches. It was calculated to a degree that Tina Chen couldn’t have foreseen.
I crumpled the remnants of my lukewarm meal into a paper bag and marched the trash across the lot to the receptacle. The night was cooler than normal, with a slight chill. Something strange hung in the air, and the pieces hadn’t fallen together yet.
Hopefully they wouldn’t all collapse on my head before I discovered the truth.
19
I woke up early the next morning, despite a night spent tossing and turning. Argos was already lapping at his coffee by the time I awoke. Bastard always had been an early riser. Made me look bad.
“Rough night, Kal?”
I glanced down at my wrinkled dress shirt and the clip-on bowtie still half-dangling from my neck. It looked rather like I’d spent the night in a bush.
“I’ve had better,” I said, picking up the empty coffee pot before deciding fuck it. I headed to the living room to join Argos. “Please tell me you found something on the Talon of Frost while I was gone.”
It was looking like it was the only thing to cure this wendigo scourge. And despite all the errands I’d run last night, I still had zero leads.
Plenty of information, though, most of it pointing to just how fucked I was. But nothing actionable.
“You ditched me for a party.”
“Believe me,” I said, shaking my head. “This was not a shindig you wanted to attend.”
He licked coffee from his snout and hopped up on the table. I should have barred him from drinking the stuff. It drove his border-collie excitement off the charts, almost to unbearable levels.
After a rapid-fire one-minute summary of everything he’d figured out during the previous day of study—none of which I could understand, since half of it was relayed in guttural noises and yips—I took a deep breath and rubbed my stubble.
“I got none of that,” I said as calmly as the continually growing pile of disastrous events would allow. “Literally none of it.”
Argos eagerly launched into another explanation, but I cut him off ten seconds in.
“Let’s start with some softball questions.” I gave him a stern look and he wagged his tail. “Did you help Kitsune yesterday?”
“Well, it’s funny you should ask that, because I did see her, and she claimed that you wanted her help with getting rid of Isabella, which I said was impossible because that shapeshifting asshole had been a pain in your ass before and she wasn’t trustworthy, but then—”
“Don’t forget to breathe, buddy.” I shuddered to contemplate what would happen if Argos got his paws on some cocaine, Scarface style.
Argos looked slightly sheepish. “It’s a new Arabica strain I imported. I used the French Press. All by myself. Did you see?”
“Yes, you’re a good dog.”
“Dick.”
I smiled. “So Kitsune came by. She show you the vial of blood?”
“It’s on the table.”
I rolled my eyes. It was too much to expect, her helping Argos make the damn potion so it would be ready by morning. Still, she hadn’t absconded with the vial, so that was a major silver lining.
I picked it up unscrewed the cap. “Yup, that’s blood.”
“She also mentioned that she hates Texas, and wants to leave.”
“A real tragedy,” I said, recalling the tracking chip in her neck. “Anything else?”
“According to her, Detective Scott’s got a thumb drive of files on you. Every sighting, every clipping—the guy’s obsessed. Hundreds of pages. He keeps it in a locked drawer next to his home computer. Where, conveniently, he also keeps the passcode to her tracker.”
“That is rather tidy.” I knew about his secret evidence drive. He’d gloated about it a couple months back, when I was behind bars. He could gather all the conspiracy theories he wanted, so long as they remained locked up. “What do I care?”
“She says the detective is planning on going public.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Well, shit.”
“Agreed,” Argos said, his tail slowing down. “For both of us.”
A glum silence overtook the room. Where this fit on the hierarchy of immediate problems was difficult to determine. Wendigos were eating people in Inonda, winter was coming early, old lovers were enacting revenge, and self-appointed countesses needed my help to keep their cushy mansions and avoid jail-time.
The workload would have been flattering, if every job wasn’t so damn lethal.
It made me wonder why this town remained endearing. I’d lived other places that were much safer. But maybe I had a little streak of Ziva in me, minus the gnat-like attention span. I yearned for excitement, to be in the middle of the fray.
Screwing the cap back on the vial, I said, “Ready to multi-task?”
“I could herd sheep right now.” Argos’ tail started wagging again like a motorized wind-up toy. Then his face grew serious. “Not that I would want to. Sheep are fucking disgusting animals.”
“Whatever you say.” I slid Isabella’s blood back across the table, so that it hit his paw. “The nastiest potion you know. Dial it up.”
He whined. “You know I don’t like making those.”
“We’re not gonna kill her,” I said. “And you can explain everything you learned about the Talon of Frost to distract from your guilty conscience while we’re cooking.”
“I didn’t learn much.”
“Does the Blood Frost ring any bells?”
“I saw it mentioned a couple times,” Argos said. “I’d have to read more.”
Shit. I was really running out of time.
“Tell me you at least have a potion in mind.”
“I do know one,” Argos said, his ears wilting slightly at the thought. “But I don’t know.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Life of a Thousand Cuts.”
“Don’t you mean death?”
“No,” Argos said solemnly, tail drooped low. “I mean life.”
With that cheerful introduction, we buckled down to make a potion that would torment Isabella Kronos into fucking off and leaving me alone forever.
Because when had that strategy ever failed me before?
20
A knock at the door interrupted us mid-session. I adjusted my goggles and tugged at the ends of my thick, black rubber gloves. Argos sat on a chair, wearing a reconfigured gas mask.
He hadn’t been kidding about this Life of a Thousand Cuts brew being heavy-duty. It’d taken us an hour just to cover the apartment in plastic film. I picked up my phone, which was safely inside a plastic bag, and checked the time.
Noon.
Potion-making was always an all-day affair. Probably why I hated it. And all the precautions made me wonder if I should be wrapped in plastic, too. Argos had assured me that wasn’t necessary.
“Make sure it’s not the cops,” Argos said, sounding like an overlord from another galaxy.
“What, was I born yesterday?”
The person started kicking the door.
“You better get that before they break in.”
“Just make sure nothing burns.” I tossed the gloves on the couch. I tried to press my eye up to the door’s peephole, but the googles blocked me. Instead of removing them, I decided to open up sight unseen.
I threw the deadbolt and the doorknob turned before I could even react.
“Hey—”
“Move out of the way,” Nadia said, barging past with an older man leaning up against her shoulder. She recoiled about three steps inside. “Oh my God, what’s that smell? It’s like rotting fish and shit.”
The man retched, blood streaming from between his white teeth. “Good to see you again Kalos,” he rasped, looking much older than when I’d seen him last. His emerald eyes, a dead ringer for his daughter’s, glanced at me, then shut.
“Javier,” I said. “Always a pleasure.”
He moaned something in response. Could’ve been because of his condition. Or it could’ve been because he didn’t like me very much.
“Help him,” Nadia said. “Please.”
“Not in here.”
I ushered her outside and shut the door, taking the dead-weight from her. Javier grunted and muttered something in Spanish.
“Yeah, buddy, I don’t like wizards and you don’t like demons. Tough shit.”
A few steps down the walk, I almost collapsed as a searing pain roared through my chest.
“Not you, too,” Nadia said, her frantic eyes flitting between the two of us, unsure who to help first.
Fingers curled in pain, I struggled into a semi-upright position. Javier Santos, for his part, was still lying face down on the pavement. His salt-and-pepper hair, done up in a bun, was drenched with sweat. The ridiculous black wizard robes weren’t helping his condition in the August heat, even with the recent cold fronts.
“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth.
“What were you doing in there?” Nadia said, her concern now focused on her ailing father. When she tugged him upwards, he left behind crimson droplets. Fully focused, now, I could see the front of his robes had been slashed open in an attack. No entrails, but the gouge was deep. “You smell absolutely awful, Kal.”
“You took him like this on the bus?” I stared at the gashes in Javier’s stomach. It was hard to be sure, but I knew of one creature lurking around Inonda that made those types of cuts.
It seemed like our resident wendigo had paid Javier a not-so-friendly visit.
“I drove his car,” Nadia said, pointing at an old beater in the lot. “I just—I thought you could help.”
“A hospital could help,” I said, still trying to
catch my own breath.
“Fine,” Nadia said, still holding him upright like a rag doll. He looked like a wounded marionette. “Then we’ll go.”
With great effort, she managed to rouse her father enough to get him standing. He wobbled like a drunk, bloody spittle dripping from his sallow lips, leaning into his daughter for support. With tremendous effort, they began walking slowly back to the lot.
“Wait.” The fog in my brain began to clear. “A hospital can’t help.”
“That’s what my father said. Why do you think I came to you?”
“For that date, maybe?”
She glared. Not the time.
I rubbed my own chest, which felt like a mountain troll was using it as a kick drum. Fine time for Isabella to resume her relentless Destroyer of Former Lovers spell. Using all of my reserve strength, I managed to stand. Then I began shuffling toward the car, passing Nadia and Javier at the curb.
“You aren’t going to help me carry him?”
“I got problems of my own, in case you haven’t noticed,” I said. “But there’s a place we can go to patch him up. Maybe.”
I reached into my pocket, feeling for the key. It was still there. A long shot, but there was nowhere else to turn right now.
“You have to do something,” she said, her voice a fierce whisper. “He can’t die.”
“As long as you drive.” I fumbled for the sports car’s keys. God, it was such a shame to treat a car like this so barbarically. But if I put the top down, she could just drop Javier right over the side, into the tiny backseat.
I managed to unlock the door and retract the roof.
Nadia reached the convertible just as the canopy finished disappearing.
“Push him over the side,” I said. She shot me a look. “It’s not like you’ll hurt him more.”
“You could help me lift him over.”
“My heart’s about to explode. Not an exaggeration.”
Javier groaned mightily as he tipped over the car’s frame on to the leather bucket seat. Nadia whispered sorry to him as she tucked his feet inside. I weakly tossed her the keys and limped to the passenger side.
As we pulled out, I made a phone call.
Blood Frost (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 2) Page 10
