by Andrew Dudek
“Why are you following me?”
He was late-night-infomercial thin. I could feel the bones of his shoulder. He was bald and he had dark skin and Indian features. His white T-shirt and khaki slacks were both several sizes too large. He didn’t respond.
I pushed the blade a little harder into his throat. “Answer the question.”
His hand grabbed my arm—surprisingly strong for such a thin man—and pried the knife away from his throat. And then he was gone. I blinked, and he was ten feet away, his hands in front of him in a vague combative pose. I scowled and lunged, slashing with the knife. He slid away, fluid as a rolling river. Twice more I attacked and both times he slipped away.
“Okay,” I said. “What are you?”
No human moved that fast. Some vampires could, but it was broad daylight, and vamps tend not to do their own grunt-work like following monster hunters. My instincts are pretty well tuned to detecting supernatural energy in people, and I didn’t pick up anything here: this guy, whoever he was, was human. But his speed was way too much. So he was also something else.
“I’m a man,” he said. He had a faint English accent.
“Nope,” I said. “People don’t move that fast. What are you, some kind of speed demon?”
His eyes widened. “I’d…prefer it if you didn’t use that term.”
“What, demon?” I stared at him, and he nodded. “Is that what you are, some kind of self-hating demon?” It wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing I ever heard of, but it would have been pretty far up there.
“No,” he said. “I’m a Claimed One.”
I frowned and kept my eye on him. He was fast enough that I wouldn’t be able to do anything if he decided to attack, but I felt better making sure he was where I could see him. For now, anyway.
“Claimed by who?”
“By a being like the one you’re looking for.”
Something clicked. “A demon. So you’re possessed?”
“I was possessed. But I was freed. Since then, I’ve made it my mission to fight those monsters when they come to this plane of existence.”
“I can understand that.”
“And I understand that there’s a demon nearby. A powerful one, if my friend’s readings are right.”
I nodded. “Big guy, looks like a dog. Three heads.”
The Claimed One’s eyes widened even further, and he spat on a nearby Dumpster. “I’ve heard of it. They call it the Sentinel. You’re trying to kill it, correct?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. Mostly I’m just trying to keep it from hurting anymore people, but if I have to put it down I will.”
“Then we’re on the same side.” He gave me a small smile. “I can help you find the Sentinel.”
The thin man seemed earnest enough, but that’s never proof of anything. Anyone can fake that. He wasn’t human anymore, not completely, and he hadn’t really told me what he was. That set my hackles up. Still, if he could help me find Cerberus, didn’t I have to take the chance?
I followed the Claimed One out of the alley. He headed to his car, which was double-parked halfway down the block. I went to my car, which was where Krissy had left it. The two girls were still inside.
“What was that?” Krissy asked.
“It’s…” I ran a hand through my hair. “It’s a weird story, and I don’t really know. The upshot is, this guy says he can help us kill Cerberus. I need to go with him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Amy said, and slid out of the car.
“Me, too,” Krissy said.
I shook my head. “Neither of you are coming with me. This could be dangerous, and I want to check it out.”
“Oh, well, if it’s dangerous, it makes perfect sense for you to go alone,” Krissy said.
Amy shook her head. “No offense to any of your other guys, but you’re the only person in the city that’s made me feel safe since I first saw that thing. I’m not leaving your side.”
I closed my eyes. Really, I didn’t like the idea of bringing either of them with me on this trip. But Cerberus was still out there, and I had no idea how long April Strain would be able to keep the Leash around its metaphorical necks. Arguing would just kill time.
“Fine,” I said. “Amy, you’re with me. Krissy, I need you to head back to the office and tell the others where we’ve gone.”
She opened her mouth, argument in her eyes, but I cut her off with a shake of my head. “That’s an order, Page Thomas. Back to the office.”
Krissy scowled, but she nodded, muttered an affirmative, and drove away, leaving Amy and me alone on the sidewalk.
The Claimed One’s car moved slowly up to take the Taurus’s place. There was a popping noise as the doors unlocked. Even this close up, the windows were basically opaque. It was creepy, like looking into a black mirror.
“Well,” I said. “You ready?”
Amy laughed and shook her head. “Not at all. But I guess we better do it anyway.”
Chapter 19
We rode in the Claimed's car. He was a better driver than I’d given him credit for—he managed to keep moving at a steady speed, no easy accomplishment in New York traffic. He lost cool points for the concentration it seemed to take. Or maybe he just wanted to look busy so I wouldn’t try to talk to him.
Amy and I were both sitting in the backseat. We chatted among ourselves as we rode. I was doing my best not to be unnerved by the windshield and the windows, all of which were tinted on the insides just as much as on the out. I couldn’t see out any better than I could in. The Claimed, who I realized bore a passing resemblance to Gandhi, seemed to have no trouble. Was the windshield blessed in some way? Did his eyes just cut through the glass like an eagle’s through water?
So weird.
“Where you from originally?” Amy asked.
“Grew up in the Bronx,” I said. “What about you?”
“Corporate sector brat,” she said with a wry grin. “My dad was a mid-level executive with about a dozen different companies while I was growing up. Manhattan, when I was little; then Boston; Miami; L.A.; Chicago; Panama City, for a while; and Santa Fe. That’s where I was living when I turned eighteen.”
“What’d you do after that?” I asked.
“Traveled for a while. I joined a group of Navajo mystics out of Albuquerque. They were amazing, but for some reason their magic methods didn’t click with my talents. Stayed there for a year or so. Afterwards I went up and down the country, looking for a real magical teacher.”
“Ever find a good one?”
She laughed. “Not really. One thing I found out was the Magic Council doesn't take kindly to hedge witches. I had a pretty solid foundation in a few different mystical traditions, so none of the fully trained and certified practitioners were interested in taking me on as an apprentice. So overall I spent about five years picking up spells here and there, learning some tricks.”
“What brought you back East?”
Her smile faded, just a bit, and turned darker. “I was in St. Louis, about six months ago, making money hustling tourists with a shell game—you know put a rock under three cups, shuffle ‘em around, and make folks guess which cup it was under, only I’d use a minor transportation spell to make sure they were always wrong—when a girl I knew mentioned she’d heard a rumor about some kind of real talent who was gonna be teaching a class in Newark. I hopped on a bus and enrolled at JCPU. And that’s how I met the Professor. That’s how those girls died.”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t your fault.”
She snorted. “Of course it was. The Professor couldn’t have summoned a demon as powerful as Cerberus by herself. Sage, Chyna, Marigold, none of them had the raw juice she’d need. I did. The only reason the Professor’s plan worked was ‘cause I was there.”
The Claimed glanced into the rearview mirror, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Hey,” I said and put a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault. April doesn’t care about other people’s live
s. You couldn’t have known that. You couldn’t be expected to have known.”
Amy raised a hand and placed it gently on top of mine. She pulled it down so that both of our hands were in her lap. One of her fingers ran along the back of my hand and I felt a little shiver of sensation. She looked into my eyes, and I looked back.
Her eyes were a brighter shade of blue, I think, than any I’d ever seen. They seemed to sparkle in the almost pitch dark interior of the car, and there were sparks of some kind of energy in them. A twinkle in the eye, I guess you’d say. But even with that, she looked sad. Tired. Drained. I ran my thumb along the back of her hand.
There was a sense of knowing in her eyes, an idea that she could…almost see into me. She read me, understood me.
I swallowed and leaned closer.
“You know something about what I’m feeling, don’t you?” she asked. Almost a whisper.
I nodded. “I’ve lost a lot of friends. Some of them—a lot of them—felt like my fault, but…”
“But what?”
I shook my head and laughed a little. I was close enough to her face that the expulsion of breath made a strand of her blond hair stir. “I was gonna say that I don’t blame myself anymore, but that wouldn’t be true. I guess that’s who I am. I’m always gonna blame myself.”
She laughed and I felt her breath on my forehead. “See? You talk a big game, but you’re just as much a softy as I am.”
“I’m not soft,” I whispered.
“Mmm.” She leaned forward so that our foreheads touched. “I bet you’re not.”
I closed my eyes. I leaned forward. Our lips brushed together.
Before the kiss could go any further, the Claimed One in the driver’s seat coughed. “We’re here.”
I laughed and Amy leaned her head against my neck. Our hands were still locked together. I tapped her denim-clad leg.
“Continue this conversation later?” Amy asked.
I coughed and pulled away. “Yeah. Maybe.”
She frowned.
The Claimed One climbed out of the driver’s seat.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go see where we are.”
It was a driveway in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. An ordinary looking suburban mom went by, pushing an ordinary-looking suburban stroller. She waved to the Claimed One, a polite smile on her face. He lifted one hand in acknowledgement, but neither of them said a word. The lawn was brown and scratchy, the grass just tall enough to look like a fire hazard. There were two other cars parked on the street in front of the house, and an old motorcycle chassis covered with a tarp in the corner of the lawn. A pair of tall, old trees flanked the house—oaks, I thought. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood, and since the windows in the Claimed’s car were blacked out, all I knew was that we were about an hour outside of the city. The air was a bit fresher, the heavy stink of pollution less pronounced. Somewhere upstate, I figured, or maybe Connecticut.
The house itself was squat, a basic, one-story starter home. The siding was grungy. The gutters were still stuffed with last year’s leaf-fall. The front windows were soaped over and basically opaque.
A woman sat in a rocking chair on the front porch. Middle age, her eyes were milky white and obviously blind. Her head was as hairless as the Claimed who’d driven us out of Queens. Amy and I mounted the steps towards the porch. The woman nodded, just a little, barely enough to even notice, and the Claimed held up a hand.
“You need to leave your weapons out here.”
“The hell with that,” I snarled, my hand dropping to the handle of my knife. “I don’t trust you people, and I’m not going in there unarmed.”
“Then you don’t get to see our leader.”
“Listen, you bald-headed freaks—”
“Dave.” Amy put a hand on my arm. There was a little surge of energy and I felt the muscles in the arm relax. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. “I don’t sense any deception. Danger, either. They don’t mean to harm us.”
I put a hand on her hip and pulled her close enough to whisper. “You sure?”
She kept her eyes closed another moment more before responding, “I think so. Though I’m not always the best judge of that sort of thing. Remember the Professor?”
I let out a little laugh, then looked at the Claimed. He smiled, every bit the apologetic personal assistant. I shook my head, feeling disgusted with myself for even considering it, and unbuckled my belt.
The only visible weapon I had was my hunting knife. My sword was in the trunk of my car, back in Queens, and the switchblade was tucked inside my boot.
I wrapped the thick strap of leather around the sheathed knife and handed it to Amy. “Fine. But she’s holding onto it.”
The Claimed bowed his head. “As long as she waits out here…”
“Alright, let’s go.”
He smiled again. “And the knife in your boot, please.”
I scowled. The Claimed’s dark skinned face betrayed no particular emotion at my attempt to sneak one over on him. I crouched and pulled the switchblade from its strap inside my shoe and handed it to Amy.
“Happy?”
“Of course. Right this way.”
The Claimed led me into the house, leaving Amy and the blind, bald woman on the porch. I heard the beginning of a conversation (“God, it’s a hot one, isn’t it?”) before the door swung closed under its own power.
The front room was crammed full of desks. Near the back of the house, several desks had been pushed aside, leaving a wide-open space in what had once been a kitchen. A map of the tristate area hung on a wall. Orange thumbtacks marked several locations.
A man stood in front of the map. His head scraped the ceiling and he would have had to go through most doorways one shoulder at a time. He was as bald as the other Claimed Ones and he wore a biker’s leather jacket. It resembled mine, which I normally wore in the cooler months, but his had bony spikes embedded at the elbows. Wait, no. The spikes came through the leather, like they were growing out of his body.
I suspected the man was riesensohn, a human with giant ancestry: most of the time, humans don’t get as big and tall as this guy was without a little supernatural blood in the mix. But that wouldn’t explain the spikes. Riesensohn generally look like regular people, just…bigger. This guy was something else.
“You’re the knight of the Round Table? The one who’s hunting the Sentinel?”
How did he know that? The Claimed One hadn’t made any calls since he'd picked me up. I hated not knowing was going on. Made me testy.
“What the hell is going on?” I snarled. “I’m already sick of being jerked around by you freaks. I can only imagine how pissed I’m gonna be if it keeps up.” I dropped my voice. “And, to paraphrase a great man, you won’t like me when I’m pissed off.”
The riesensohn eyed me for a moment and he laughed. “I like this one.” He had a strangely high voice for such a large man. “You can go.” The Claimed who had driven me here bowed his head and left the kitchen. A moment later I heard the front door open, then close. “I’m Louie. Have a seat.”
I sat. “Dave. What’s going on?”
“We are the Claimed Ones.”
“Okay. I got that. What does that mean?”
He sighed like a vacuum cleaner. “Dozens of people are taken by entities that permeate the barrier with the Otherside. You’ve probably heard of some cases. It’s normally called demonic possession and the victims generally die. Sometimes, though, they’re saved, either through an exorcism rite or sheer willpower and the entity is forced out. But sometimes, when a Dark One is driven from a human body, it leaves bits of itself behind. This bit of Dark magic…well, not to put too fine a point of it, leaves us with some small magic ability. We use this ability to protect the people of this plane from the creatures of the Otherside. We’re not unlike your Round Table in that way.”
“So let me just get this straight,” I said. “You were possessed. Now you’re not, but you’ve got nift
y superpowers like the speed force or bone spikes, and you fight demons.”
The big man smiled. “Basically.”
“And you’ve been watching me, right? For a couple of days. That was one of you outside my apartment the other night.”
Louie nodded. “That was Arjun. He’s been following you since just after the Sentinel came to this plane. I figured the Round Table would get involved. He wasn't supposed to bring you in, not until he was sure you were trustworthy, but you forced his hand.”
“Yeah, sorry I made my demonic stalker a little uncomfortable.”
The riesensohn smirked. My barb hadn’t penetrated his skin, which I was beginning to suspect was literally pretty thick. “You’ve actually seen the Sentinel?”
“Three times.”
“And how did you survive?”
“Luck, mostly,” I admitted. “And the right tools: my sword, and a friend of mine gave me a charm that warns me when the demon is nearby. It doesn’t seem to slow it down at all.”
“Can I see it?”
“I left it with some friends.”
Louie clicked his tongue and scribbled in a notebook on the counter. He flipped to a clean page and looked at me.
“The girl that you brought with you. She’s one of the ones who summoned the Sentinel, correct?”
“Yeah, so?”
The big guy closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked troubled. “We’re not religious, really. But we do have certain by-laws. Certain actions require certain punishments.”
I held up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you right there. I’ve placed the girl under the protection of the Round Table. If you want her, you’re gonna have to go through a lot of angry people with magic swords. You better be sure executing this girl is the hill you want your organization to die on.”
“Summoning any demon is a major offense to my people. But the Sentinel is no ordinary demon.”
“Yeah, I’ve gotten that. Apparently it’s the father of the hellhounds.”
A noncommittal grunt. “Possibly. But what we know for sure is much more important: the Sentinel is the guardian of the border between this plane of existence and the Otherside.”
