by Andrew Dudek
“The sun’s up,” Amy whispered. “What happens now?”
I sighed and closed my eyes, savoring the smell of sex and perspiration in the room. “Now we get back to work and we send the three-headed son of a bitch back to hell. My sword is still lacking in power—”
“Mmm.” Amy rolled over to lay on her stomach. It pushed her breasts into a very intriguing position and I had to fight down the urge to explore the possibilities. “I’m not so sure about that part.”
I pushed away her hand, which was reaching for my hip, with a chuckle. “Maybe later, sweetheart. We have work to do today. As I was saying, my actual sword is out of actual power, so I’m gonna be limited in what I can do to fight the demon. I need to go talk to Louie and see what he can do about enhancing that charm.”
“See, I understand you’re talking, but what I’m hearing is, ‘We should stay here and bang a few more times.'”
I smiled. “I wish,” I said, and slapped her on the ass. “Get a move on, darling. Busy day.”
Amy got in the shower again while I made breakfast. As I opened the cabinets I realized I was whistling. I hadn’t thought I remembered how to whistle. For the first time I was feeling like I wasn't alone in this fight. With Amy at my side and the rest of the Round Table at my back, I was confident that I could handle Cerberus.
The shower went off and Amy emerged from the bathroom. She was wrapped up in a bath towel and nothing else and she sat down at the little table in my kitchen. She smirked at the two bowls of dry cornflakes that I’d lain out.
“The milk was sour,” I said.
“Man, you’re even more pathetic than most of the guys in the off-campus housing.”
I shrugged and stuck a spoon into the crunchy cereal. “No one ever accused me of being a domestic god.”
The house shook, less violently than the night before. The windows rattled in their frames and the fridge door popped open. Mrs. Chang’s wards were deactivated. I remembered what she’d told me: they wouldn’t be any use for a while. We wouldn’t be able to use them as a shield. Cerberus needed to be dealt with today.
Amy and I chatted while we ate breakfast. My old coffee maker gurgled and burped in the corner, and I poured out two cups. As I drank mine, Amy headed into my bedroom to get dressed. I took a quick shower, letting the cool water run down my back and soak my hair. As I was coming out of the bathroom, toweling off my hair and pulling on a cleanish pair of jeans, the doorbell rang.
“I got it,” Amy said. She darted past me and disappeared down the hall. I ran a comb through my hair before I realized it wasn’t the best idea to let the girl who was a target of the hellhound answer the door unsupervised, so I followed her to the front room of the apartment.
The front door in my apartment looks like a closet, but it actually leads to a dark, windowless staircase. Amy’s voice drifted up from the first floor. Calm, so she wasn’t in real danger. I checked the pommel on the sword, which hung on the coatrack near the door. Little blue veins ran through the now-white crystal, and I could sense a tiny bit of the magic returning, but it was still nowhere near ready for action. I left the sword where it was, but took the sheathed knife down and clipped it to the belt loop on my jeans.
There were bonuses to carrying the knife around and not the sword. It was still too long to conceal under a T-shirt, but it's a hell of a lot less unobtrusive. Especially when I managed to put a shirt on. Feeling vaguely like a badass, I headed downstairs.
Krissy was on the porch, a tray of takeout coffee in her hands. Her eyes landed on me as I descended the stairs and her face dropped. I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Krissy looked from my naked torso to my face, then to Amy, who I realized was now wearing the Pearl Jam shirt she’d taken from my closet. For a moment, for some reason I couldn’t begin to explain, I hoped that Krissy wouldn’t recognize it. I was disappointed.
“Here,” she said, handing Amy the tray of coffee. “I’ll see you at the office.” She turned around and tromped down the stoop to where where Earl James’s Toyota was idling.
Amy looked at me. “What was that about?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. “I think she figured out what we did last night.”
“So? You said you guys aren’t together.”
“We’re not,” I said. “But I think she still wants us to be.”
“Oh.” Amy laughed, though I didn’t think it was funny. I cared for Krissy and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I didn’t see her like that, not the way I saw Amy. “Well, this is gonna be awkward, huh?”
While Amy brushed her teeth and combed her hair, I called the number that Lou, the Claimed One, had given me. I was a little surprised when the riesensohn’s soft, incongruous voice answered. “Captain Carver?”
“It’s me,” I confirmed. “I have the charm that we were talking about.”
“Great. I’ll send someone to pick you up. Your office in fifteen minutes?”
The office was within easy walking distance of my apartment. Ten minutes, tops. “Make it twenty,” I said. The riesensohn was treating me like a unicycle-riding ape, and I hate that. I’m nobody’s monkey.
Amy emerged from the bathroom. Her hair was brushed back and tied in a short tail and she’d replaced the dirty and torn shorts she’d been wearing with a pair of my old jeans. She was also still wearing my tee. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was staking some sort of claim.
“That Lou?”
I nodded. “We better get going. They’re gonna pick me up in twenty minutes.”
The heat was a little more bearable this morning, but the day was young. The simmering sun promised another broiler. Amy and I walked to the office, despite the sun. I had a good parking spot in front of Mrs. Chang’s house, and I didn’t want to lose it.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Amy asked.
I shook my head. “I’m nervous about leaving you outside of some kind of protection. I’m gonna have Earl or Rob drive you into the city. You’ll be safe under Dallas’s wards.”
“I don’t want to be safe. I want to help.”
I closed my eyes. “I know you do,” I said, “but there’s not gonna be much you can do at Lou’s, anyway. Stay with Dallas, and help him do some research.”
She nodded, but she still looked troubled.
Earl’s Toyota and Rob’s Mustang were both in their usual spots. The gang was all here. Amy stared at the little stoop, where Rob was chatting with our mail carrier, a not-particularly-gracefully-aged woman of about fifty-five. There were indentations from her teeth in Amy’s lower lip, and she was trying not to let me see the worry in her eyes.
“Hey,” I said. I patted the salt-and-iron medallion in my pocket. “As long as I have this thing, I’ll know if Cerberus is coming at me. Hopefully Arjun and Lou will be able to turn it into an actual weapon. Then we can take the fight to the demon.”
Amy nodded, her face set like someone about to dive into cold water. She grabbed my collar, pulled my face to hers, and kissed me with force. “Watch your back, okay?” she whispered.
Rob looked at us with a raised eyebrow, but I couldn’t see much beyond Amy’s startling blue eyes. “I’ll be careful,” I said, and Amy marched into the office without another word.
The mail woman left and Rob sauntered across the parking lot to join me. He leaned casually against the hood of the Mustang. “Hey, boss. You tapping that?”
Despite myself, I smiled. “That’s need to know, Knight Haney.”
Rob grinned. “I bet it is.”
“Listen,” I said. “I have a meeting with some…tricky guys. I need you to take Amy into Dallas’s place, okay?”
He frowned and rubbed his stubbly jaw. There seemed like there was more gray in the man’s bristle than there had been when I first met him. I guess it’s hard, even for a veteran knight, when your captain treats you like garbage. “You got it, boss.”
Having Amy in the Hat would keep he
r safe, but it would also keep her separated from Krissy. I didn’t think Krissy would make a thing of it—I trusted her to keep her professionalism intact, at least until we’d dealt with Cerberus—but I wasn't sure Amy wouldn’t try to hash out the problems. This way, everyone was kept safely in their respective corners, and no one tried to kill each other.
A black sedan pulled into the parking lot. It stopped in the middle of the lane, idling. The steady thrum of the engine reminded me of Cerberus’ growl.
“Thanks, Rob—seriously,” I said, and climbed into the passenger seat of the car.
Arjun was driving. “Do you have the charm?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I did get laid last night, so I must have some kind of charm.”
He stared at me, unamused. I sighed. Like all geniuses, I’m under-appreciated in my time. I patted my pocket and said, “It’s right here.” Arjun nodded in some satisfaction, put the car in drive, and pulled out of the lot.
I closed my eyes, tired but not sleepy. I hadn’t gotten a lot of rest the night before, but I was still buzzed on that pleasant energy that good sex seems to generate. Arjun and his friends weren’t on my side, not really, and I had no delusions on that score. We were allies for the moment, but the minute it served their interests, I had no doubt that the riesensohn would put a knife in my ribs. But that was alright. They could use me all they wanted. I’d just use them right back. The important thing was getting the charm that Professor Bogart had made hooked up to whatever super-magic battery the Claimed Ones had.
Arjun flashed me a look out of the corner of his eye. I smiled, syrupy-sweet, and he turned back to the road. Of course, it wouldn’t pay to forget how powerful these guys were. Lou looked like he could tear me apart with his bare hands, even if you didn’t include his demonic powers in the calculation. I’d be a fool not to take them seriously.
Still, I was safe. For now at least. I allowed myself to doze a bit as Arjun drove me up and out of town, towards whatever suburban landscape housed the headquarters of the Claimed Ones.
Some time later, the car stopped and we got out. The blind woman was standing on the porch, her cloudy eyes still staring emptily. The blind woman stepped over to me and Arjun took her place on guard duty. Once more I handed over my knife and my switchblade, then the blind woman led me into the house.
Lou was waiting in his war room. He put down a pencil, which seemed tiny in his giant’s hand. The blind woman bowed, then took a step back. She didn’t leave the house, though.
“Captain Carver,” the leader of the Claimed Ones said. “Thanks for coming back.”
“No problemo,” I said. I was trying hard not stare at the bone spikes that emerged from his sleeves, and especially hard not to imagine what they could do to fragile human skin. I missed my sword. “We’re all on the same side, right?”
“Are we?” Lou’s voice was quiet, harsh, and…a little sad. “I understand that you don’t really want to help us.”
Chapter 24
Oh, hell.
“Who told you that?” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“When the Darkness was removed from Estella’s body, it took her sight. But it left her an even more powerful sense: she can read minds. And she told me that you’re having some dangerous thoughts. Like maybe you don’t really want to destroy the Sentinel.”
“What?” I said. “Of course not. Cerberus guards the gates to the Otherside. If we kill it, the border will just be open forever. It’s not as simple—”
“WRONG!” the riesensohn bellowed. Desks shook with the force of his anger. A pencil fell to the floor and rolled away with a clicking sound. “It’s exactly that simple. Our job—my job—is to end the Dark Ones. To kill them, Carver, not to send them home like lost kittens.”
The rage in the big man’s eyes was terrifying, and again I wished I had my sword. He looked like he was seriously considering attacking me. I’m no slouch in hand to hand, but Lou was so large he’d just run me over like a diesel truck.
“Look,” I said, “I get it. I hate demons, too, but the Sentinel serves a purpose. The longer it’s here, the weaker the border gets, right? You deal exclusively with demons, right? Well, I don’t. My job’s a little less specialized. And do you know what a weak border to the Otherside means? It means ghosts flying around like starlings. It means zombies running amok. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t already a revenant or two stomping around looking for vengeance. You have a job to do, man, but so do I, and Cerberus does more good at its post than it does as a corpse.”
Lou shook his head. “The Dark Ones’ll replace the Sentinel soon enough. Then things will return to normal.”
“Yeah, but how long will that take? Demons live a long-ass time, right? It might be years before they get around to putting someone in Cerberus’ place. It might be decades. Hell, it might be centuries.”
“I can’t help that,” he said. “I swore an oath.”
I was seriously considering how hard it would be to put the giant down when I realized something. Can’t help, he’d said. Not won’t help. Lou was a leader in a group dedicated to the destruction of demonkind. He couldn’t let his followers see him doing anything that might save Cerberus. He had a role to play in front of his people. I could understand that, and I could also understand that he couldn’t knowingly go against his people’s principles.
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “All of you guys have powers, right? What’s yours?”
He raised one arm so that the spikes in his elbow flapped like a bird’s wing and made a face, like he couldn’t believe I had to ask.
“So it’s all physical, right? No mind-reading or anything.”
Lou hesitated for only a moment, and then he realized what I was getting at. “Estella,” he said. “You can go now. It’s all right.”
I didn’t turn to look, but I could sense the presence of the blind woman there. She paused a moment, as if unsure whether it was a wise course of action. Lou nodded and I heard the creak of floorboards, followed by the sound of the front door opening.
“Stick with me a minute,” I said when I was sure she was out the door. “Hypothetically, if I told you that I’d realized you were right and agreed to destroy Cerberus, you’d have no way of knowing if it was true?”
The riesensohn’s upper lip twitched into something that resembled a smile. “We’re all friends here, Carver. I’d have no reason to doubt your word.”
“And based on that friendship, you’d do your mumbo-jumbo on this charm that I have in my pocket.”
“Absolutely.”
I grinned. “My friend, you’ll be happy to know I’ve changed my mind. The demon must be destroyed.”
Lou settled his expression into a sober nod. No hint of a smile on his mouth, now, though I thought I detected a bit of a sparkle in the eyes. “Great. Follow me.”
He shouldered through a narrow doorway and led me down a flight of stairs. The banister had been removed from the steps, which allowed Lou to descend into the basement without having to contract like an accordion. The walls of the basement had been cleared of any decoration—it was even painted primer white—and there was a slanted desk in one corner. I recognized it as an architect’s drafting table. Lou grabbed a folding chair and sat down at the table.
The top of the desk was littered with shot-glass-sized vials full of green and orange and blue liquids, as well as earth-toned satchels. A price tag on a test tube full of rodent bones said the collection had cost fifty bucks, and I knew the handwriting: this stuff had come from the Rabbit’s Hat. I smiled a little at the thought of Dallas dealing with the Claimed Ones. Well, it wasn’t like they were much weirder than his usual clientele.
The riesensohn stood in front of the desk, cleared away some of the detritus, and said, “Let me see the charm.”
I took it out of my pocket and put it in his outstretched hand. He didn’t look at it at first, just drew a circle in the middle of the table with a piece of purple chalk.
Then added a crucifix to the circle, making it into a targeting reticule. He put the wallet-charm in the center of the crosshairs and murmured to himself, “Yeah, this should work.” He stroked the leather with a finger like a pool cue for a long moment.
I coughed. “Did you want me to give you a minute alone with the charm?”
Lou flashed me a look and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s just really well put together. One of the best I’ve seen. The engravings are immaculate.”
“Can you improve it?”
“Of course. Whoever made this knew what he was doing, but he was mortal. The power of the Dark Ones is on a different level.”
“And you have that power?” I asked.
That was kind of disturbing. The Round Table’s current theory was that magic flowed from two separate places: Earth and the Otherside. Earth-based magic was the power that human magicians like Dallas and May—and April—could tap into. Stuff from the Otherside was different. Not more powerful, necessarily, but darker and less human. If Lou and the other Claimed Ones could access that kind of power…well, they weren’t as human as they looked.
“Something like it,” he said. My power comes from the same well as the Dark Ones. I can enchant the charm and turn it into the demonic equivalent of a nuke.”
“Oh. Neat. Would it be dangerous to humans?”
He gave me a look. “What do you think? Now be quiet and let me get to work.”
I leaned back and pushed a finger to my lips. Lou went to work. He waved his hand above the charm in a variety of strange, fluid motions: circles, diagonals, and crossed. His eyes were closed and he chanted a prayer in a language that hadn’t originated from Earth. The air heated up and the smell of sulfur rose. The purple cross on the table glowed brighter than any lightbulb, but only for a moment. Sweat poured down the sides of the big man’s face, but still he prayed. I folded my arms over my chest and tried not to break down in tears.
