The vampire glided closer to the reeve. “So you say.”
Why wasn’t he killing it?
A shiver ran along the bloodsucker’s flanks. It hugged the ground. The reeve hissed again and froze, petrified. Convulsions rippled down her long legs.
No. He couldn’t possibly.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“We’re only a mile from the Casino. Well within my range.” Ghastek’s voice sounded distant like it came from the bottom of a barrel. The reeve and vampire shivered in tandem.
“You can’t navigate them both!”
“We shall see.”
No, we won’t. I headed for the reeve, saber ready.
The reeve swayed on her feet and slashed at the vampire. Scarlet lines swelled across the vamp’s chest and sealed.
“I’m so glad you decided to play,” Ghastek’s voice said from the vampire’s mouth.
“Hey, would you look at that shit?”
I turned on my heel. The patrons who’d fled at the first hint of trouble had come back and were enjoying the spectacle.
“Clear out!” I barked.
They paid me no mind. Asshole innocent bystanders.
The reeve’s mouth gaped open and Shepherd’s voice issued forth, dry and sibilant, full of echoes of dead leaves crushed underfoot. “Surrender, human.”
“Bolgor the Shepherd, I presume?” The vamp reared.
A spasm gripped the reeve. She crashed to her knees, her shoulders trembling. The Shepherd rasped. “You cannot stop us. The gate of the Otherworld yawns wide. The Great Crow leads the host. Look into the darkness, human, and you will see your death riding to greet you!”
“That’s a lovely speech. Almost Shakespearean.” Ghastek’s vamp rocked forward and the reeve mirrored its motion.
Magic drenched us. Instantly the bodies littering the ground melted into sluice.
The black mass of the reeve’s hair snapped. Thick cords bound the vampire, squeezing its throat. The bloodsucker made no move to resist. I was almost to them.
The puddle to the left of me shrunk, evaporating at a record rate, but before it vanished completely I saw it shake and felt the ground kick my feet.
A loud thud came from the right. A rickety wooden wagon at the northern intersection rocked and crashed onto its side, splintering into shards. A hulking figure emerged from the wreck: eight feet tall, green, moving ponderously on columnar legs, his head topped by a horned helmet. At least one hundred pounds of chain mail wrapped around his torso. His shoulders would’ve made Andre the Giant weep. A long meaty tail hung from under the chain mail, shaking as he ran.
“Kneel before Ugad, the Great Crow’s Hammer!” The Shepherd hissed in triumph.
Ugad the Hammer, huh? “You’ve got delusions of grandeur. ‘Bubba’ would’ve done him just fine.”
The juggernaut stomped toward us. The spectators scattered like so many mice. Stunned into sudden silence, the fetish vendor gaped at the approaching monstrosity. He fumbled at his charms and shook a small circle of ribbon at the monster. Ugad paid it no mind. His right thigh brushed the cart, spinning it onto the sidewalk. Bright charms spilled in a calico mess on the pavement.
The monster accelerated. With a shock I realized he wore no helmet. Those were his horns, growing from the skull covered with swirls of tattoos.
Behind me the vampire hissed. I glanced at it. The reeve had backed away. The vampire sat alone. Ruby-red eyes glared at me full of hunger, unleashed, unchained, all consuming. No navigator rode this mind.
“Ghastek!”
No answer. Ghastek had lost him.
The vamp gathered like a coiled spring, leaped at me, claws poised for the kill…
A shaggy body rammed the vampire in mid jump. With a snarl, Derek dragged the bloodsucker down. The vampire sank its fangs into his shoulder.
Ugad bore down on me.
I dodged left and sliced at the tendon in the back of Ugad’s knee. The cut should’ve taken him down, but instead he spun around. A huge tail swung at me, the meaty protrusion at the end whistling like a club hurtling through the air with great speed. I jumped aside and sliced at the tail. The monster moaned and backhanded me. I saw it coming, but caught between his tail and the hand, I had nowhere to go.
The blow swept me off my feet. I flew and landed hard on my shoulder, sliding across the asphalt. The impact numbed my back.
I jumped to my feet and rolled, just as the tail swung over my head. A huge foot chased me and stomped the asphalt where my head was a moment ago. Ugad bellowed in frustration, making the thick network of veins on his neck bulge. So many places to cut. If only I could make him shorter, so I could get up there.
Another stomp. I leaped back.
Ugad swiped at me. I stood still for him. Whatever it takes to get to the target. A shovel-sized hand closed about me, pinning my sword arm, and dragged me up, off my feet, toward Ugad’s piggish eyes. My bones groaned in protest.
The monster’s face swung into view. His dim eyes lit up with cruel glee under the tangled mess of tattoos on its forehead. The tattoos…
The jagged lines etched on his scalp suddenly made sense, flowing into a word of power. Pain exploded at the base of my skull and drowned the world in a bright fiery splash. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t scream, I felt nothing. Caught in a typhoon of pain, I wrestled with the word. I had to make it mine or it would fry my mind. I had to say it.
A clump blocked my throat. My voice refused to obey. Pain shot and twisted through my body, as if tiny needles pierced every cell of me. The pain burst and I screamed the word to escape it. “Osanda!”
It hurt so much.
I am dying.
The reality rushed at me with crystal crispness. The monster’s knees hit the asphalt. White shards of broken bone thrust through the ruptured muscle. Ugad moaned, a sound filled with bewilderment and pain.
Kneel. The word commanded the target to kneel. I had been hoping for “eat dirt and die.”
Ugad crushed me, shaking me with the last of his strength. Compared with the pain of the power word, the steel vise of his fingers felt almost weak.
Never mind comparing—kill now, compare later.
I passed Slayer into my left hand and slashed across Ugad’s thick neck, opening a wet, red second mouth under his chin. Red and gray blood gushed. The monster’s maw gaped open in one last, silent scream. He released me and toppled forward, breaking into liquid as he hit the ground. Greasy fluid splashed me. My lips burned from contact with an alien magic.
I spat, trying to wipe away enough goo to open my eyes and only getting more goo onto my face. I tasted blood sharp with my magic on my lips. A nosebleed. Shit. I fumbled for the gauze, or I’d have to set the whole scene on fire to hide my magic. I pulled it blindly from my pocket and wiped my face, finally clawing my eyes open.
The bloodsucker lay broken, its chest a mess of crushed ribs, a trail of wet, soft clumps that used to be its heart leading from its body to Derek, who sprawled on his back, unmoving.
The reeve hovered over Derek’s prone form. Her hair bound his throat. At least forty feet separated us. I would not make it in time.
The Shepherd’s whisper emanated from the reeve’s mouth. “Surrender or it dies.”
I dropped the gauze and slid my hand up my thigh to the throwing dagger on my belt.
“It dies!” the Shepherd hissed.
I hurled the dagger. The blade bit into the reeve’s head, popping her eye like a ripe grape. The impact knocked her back and I threw the shark teeth at her, one after another. The short triangular blades punctured her throat and cheeks. She rocked forward, stared at me with the gaping hole of her eye socket, and broke into water.
I ran to Derek, and I put my head on his chest. Heartbeat. Strong, solid heartbeat.
The vamp’s blood smeared his whole head. I couldn’t tell if he was hurt.
“Derek! Derek!” God, whoever you are, I’ll do anything, please don’t let him die.
H
is eyelids trembled. Monstrous mouth opened. He sat up slowly.
“Where does it hurt?” I nearly slapped myself. Only the most accomplished of the shapeshifters could speak in half-form. Derek wasn’t one of them.
“Everrrryear.” The word came out mangled but recognizable.
“Everywhere?”
He nodded. “Okray.”
“You’re okay?”
He nodded again.
I wanted to cry with relief. My chest felt heavy like it was full of lead. “You can speak in half-form.”
“Yeahhh. Veen praaasing.”
“Been practicing. That’s good.” I laughed a little. “That’s real good.”
He grinned. Bloody shreds of vampiric meat stretched from between his crooked fangs, wet with drool, and I nearly lost my lunch. “Come on, pretty boy, before this place swarms with People, or we’ll never get out of here.”
I found my gauze, grabbed the horses, and we took off down the street just as the first smear of necromantic magic announced the arrival of the vampiric scouts.
Chapter 18
Derek favored his left side. His horse refused to bear him. I couldn’t blame the horse. I wouldn’t want his demonic, undead-blood-smeared, wolf-smelling ass riding me, either. But it made us slow.
Three blocks away I commandeered a rickety buggy from an old woman. Commandeered was too strong a word—I flashed my ID and promised her far more money then I had at my disposal. Considering that I still had my sword out and my hair and face were decorated a lovely brown shade of drying blood, she decided arguing too much wasn’t in her best interests. In fact, she told me I could have the buggy if I didn’t hurt her.
I told her to bill the Order, packed Derek into the buggy, hitched the horses to the back, and drove the big dappled draft horse to the Order.
Within five minutes Derek fell asleep. His skin split, shivered, and a huge gray wolf lay in his place. The beast-form took a lot of concentration to maintain. Left to its own devices, a shapeshifter’s body went either man or animal in a hurry. I guess with the flare, the animal must’ve taken less energy. And that was the trouble with shapeshifters. They were psychotic, fanatically loyal to the Pack, and they needed a nap or a dinner every time they exerted themselves.
But then if I went up against an aged vampire gone berserk, I’d want a nap, too. He killed a vampire. By himself. No help, no magic, just his teeth, and claws, and raw determination. Bloody amazing. I had the next wolf alpha in my buggy. Here’s hoping he’d remember me when he made it into the big leagues.
The sunset burned down to nothing. The magic crashed again, hard. Not a trace of it remained, yet the city knew it was there, waiting like a hungry predator in the night, ready to pounce.
My head pounded. My ribs ached with every breath, but nothing seemed to be broken. Thank the Universe for small favors.
Gradually my brain started up, at first slowly, like a rusted watermill, then faster, trying to sort through the nonsense the Shepherd spouted. He had said something about the Great Crow leading the host. A host of reeves could do a lot of damage. I didn’t want to dwell on the full implication of that mental picture.
So a host of reeves with the Great Crow in the lead. The Great Crow could stand for Morrigan, except that Bran turned a reeve by the pit into a porcupine, and Bran served Morrigan. Only a man worried about offending his patron goddess would’ve balked like he did at the idea of swearing by her name.
So Morrigan and Bran on one side, and the Fomorians and the Great Crow on the other. So far we had stayed strongly in the realm of Celtic mythology. I couldn’t recall any Great Crows in Irish mythology other than Morrigan. Esmeralda had all those books in her trailer…maybe one of them would mention this Great Crow.
It would only take fifteen minutes to detour to my apartment. Derek’s breathing was even, he wasn’t bleeding, and he didn’t seem in distress. I wanted to check on Julie, but fifteen minutes wouldn’t make that much difference.
Why did the Fomorians attack me in the first place? That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. First they attacked Red, who had stumbled onto them, or at least so he claimed. Then they attacked Julie. Now they attacked me. Why? What would make them risk a confrontation with a vampire and a werewolf, not taking into account the fact that I had already made three reeves into wet and smelly spots. Revenge? The Shepherd didn’t strike me as a hotheaded, “revenge at all costs” type. He was more of a calculating, “friz-ice in his veins” kind of enemy.
I replayed the chronology of the events in my head, trying to find some form of connection. First, Red got jumped by reeves and had his neck scratched. Next, he and Julie went to look for her mother at the Sisters’ gathering place. From there, I took Julie home. Red followed us and gave Julie a monisto. The reeves attacked Julie. Then I left Julie in the vault and the reeves attacked me.
That last bit made no sense. An attack on me and Julie in my apartment I could understand. Then, the odds were clearly in the Shepherd’s favor. But attacking me the second time, when I had a werewolf and a vampire with me? And out in the open? It’s almost as if he had been desperate.
And how did they find me? They didn’t track me by scent. Atlanta’s streets are too polluted to provide a good scent trail. They didn’t track me by sight, either. They would’ve had to be close to do so, and Derek would’ve smelled them.
The only way they could have tracked me was by magic.
Red had said that reeve hair grabbed like a lasso. The hair was only active during a magic wave. Then the reeves attacked my apartment, also during the magic wave. And finally, they struck at me just when the magic wave had ended. It was as if an invisible magic scent somehow stained Red, then Julie, then me, and the reeves followed it like hounds.
Red, Julie, me. Was there a pattern here? What could’ve connected us all? Perhaps Red became polluted with some weird residual magic. Julie touched Red, and I touched Julie, transferring the traces onto myself. But residual magic usually didn’t survive technology, and the magic had been shifting like crazy.
Maybe I was thinking about it wrong. Maybe the reeves were tracking something specific. Something that exuded a definite power signature. Something that only acted up during the magic waves, a beacon like Whomper. Something that passed from Red to Julie and from Julie to me. But what?
The monisto. Red gave it to Julie, and Julie gave it to me.
I pulled the necklace out and tried to examine it, glancing at the road once in a while. A simple cord, knotted together from dirty shoelaces. There were probably two dozen coins on it. Let’s see, a Kennedy half-dollar, a quarter, a twenty-peso coin, a Georgia peach quarter—wow, rare, a token from the mall carousel with a little horse on it, a Chinese coin with a square hole in the middle—where did he get this one? A miniature, dollar-sized CD marked Axe Grinder III, a video game maybe? A rough disk with a loop in the center to pass the cord through. A Republica NC Pilipinas coin, Philippines? A little triangular charm with a loop on top, inscribed with an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol. A round coin, too worn to determine if anything was on it originally. A square bronze charm with a rune on it. A Jefferson nickel…
One of those was special. Which one? It would have to be one of the older-looking ones. Of course, with my luck, the Shepherd could be a crazy numismatist just dying for a Kennedy fifty-cent piece. Maybe I could set a trap with a handful of change. Here, Shepherd, here boy, look, I have a Susan B. Anthony dollar, you know you want it.
I put the monisto away. I could stare at it all night trying to pinpoint the reeve magnet, or I could just ask Julie, the human m-scanner extraordinaire, which one felt weird to her. If I was right.
I felt no protective spells on the monisto. Perhaps Red found something that belonged to the Shepherd, a charm, a magic trinket. More likely, he stole it and added it to the monisto to hide it. Unfortunately, the object emitted magic, and whoever carried the monisto became an instant reeve magnet. If I was right, Red had realized he was being tracked, and h
e handed that thing to Julie knowing that the reeves would return to claim it. He didn’t give it to her to protect her. He gave it to her to shift the focus off himself, to point them to a new target. Kid or not, that was a lousy thing to do.
By the time I pulled up in front of my apartment building, I was pissed enough to thrash him. Red was a problem. Julie loved him beyond all reason, and he pretty much used her whichever way he wanted. I tied the reins to one of the posts in a metal row set up for precisely that purpose. Something was seriously wrong with Red. I understood why: because he was on the street, alone, hungry, bullied, left to fend for himself. But I’d known street kids that grew up into people with a decent moral code. I had a feeling Red’s moral code consisted of one line: Red does best for Red.
I ran up three flights of stairs to my apartment only to find a solid door blocking the way. I had no key.
I ran down to the first floor and banged on the super’s door. “Mr. Patel?”
Mr. Patel was the nicest super I had ever had to deal with…and also the slowest. Brown like a walnut, with sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, he moved with luxurious leisure, too dignified to accelerate. Trying to nag him into hurrying up would slow him down to the speed of chilled molasses. It took him a good five minutes to find the key ring, after which he proceeded to climb the stairs with venerable decorum. By the time he finally opened the door and deposited the right key into my palm, I was dancing in place with frustration.
I ran into the apartment, grabbed Esmeralda’s books, ran out, slapping the door shut behind me, and rushed down the stairs, passing bewildered Mr. Patel on the way.
* * * *
The vault door stood ajar.
A single bulb illuminated its round contours, and the door shone with reflected light at the bottom of the narrow stairwell, like an enormous metal coin.
It should’ve been locked tight.
I descended the gloomy stairs, one at a time, saber in hand. I had smelled wolfsbane out front. Wolfsbane was used to throw shapeshifters off track. Somebody knew I had Derek with me. If it was directed at me, that is.
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