“What is it, Lassie?” Giguhl said. “Is Timmy in the well again?”
“G, stop it,” I said. “Ava, is it Boyd?”
The hellhound whined and pulled against the leash.
“All right, let’s go.” I picked Giguhl off the ground and put him on my shoulder a split second before Ava took off like a bullet. As we ran, I reached into my pocket and called Adam.
“Hey, we have a bead on him.”
“Where?”
I looked ahead in the direction Ava was running and realized she was headed straight for the cemetery that lay next to Interstate 10. “St. Louis Cemetery,” I said. “Meet us near the front wall.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Don’t go in before we’re there, Red.” I could tell from the tension in his voice that he was imagining me getting hit by the same spell that had almost taken down Ava.
I snorted. “I’m a chthonic demigoddess, Adam. It’s gonna take more than a necromancy spell to bring me down.”
By that point, Ava had reached the cemetery’s white walls. Over the top, I could see the roofs of the hundreds of above-ground tombs that made up New Orleans’ most famous City of the Dead.
“I’d prefer not to have that . . .”
One second Adam was speaking into my ear through the phone. The next, he appeared to my left. “. . . theory tested.”
I shook my head at him. “Show-off.”
He smirked at me and kissed my forehead. Behind him, Leo wasn’t looking so hot. His complexion was greenish and he swayed into the wall.
“You all right?” I whispered.
Before he could answer, the hellhound moved toward him and pressed into his side, as if to steady him. His hand rested on the dog’s back for a moment as he regained his composure. “Next time give a man some warning, mage.”
“Sorry,” Adam said, sounding genuinely chastened. “I forget not all beings have traveled magically before.”
Leo shook his head. “No worries.” Absently, he patted the hellhound’s head and took a deep breath. “Okay, where are we?”
The three of us knelt down next to the wall with the hellhound and the cat watching our backs as we strategized. “St. Louis Cemetery,” I said. “It’s famous for being the place where the voodoo queen, Marie Laveau, is buried.”
“It’s also known as the most dangerous cemetery in the city at night,” Adam added. “Lots of junkies and criminals.”
“And asshole necromancers, apparently,” Leo concluded. “Makes sense he’d come here. The death energy in this place is off the charts. After his run-in with you two, he’d need to recharge.”
Adam nodded and looked at me. “So how are we going to play this?”
“We need to take him alive.”
Leo snorted. “Like hell. He almost killed Ava. I say we take him down.” Beside him, the hellhound snorted her support of Leo’s plan.
“I get it, but what if he’s working for someone else? If we kill him, we lose the chance of finding out if there’s a larger conspiracy at play here.”
“Who would he be working for?” Leo asked.
The list of enemies from my past was long but not very distinguished. Adam had plenty of his own, as well. And judging from what I’d seen of Leo and Ava, they’d hardly been candidates for sainthood. “Anyone, Leo. He could be working for anyone. But we’ll never know that unless we catch him alive.”
“He’s gonna throw some serious shit at us. We may not have the choice of taking him alive.”
I paused to consider the truth of that statement. Finally, I nodded. “Okay, fine. We try to take him alive until that option isn’t possible anymore.” I looked Leo and the hellhound in their eyes. “But if either of you take him out before that time comes, you will have to answer to me. Trust me when I say that is not a conversation either of you will enjoy.”
Leo snorted as if he’d heard his fair share of people bluffing power they didn’t possess. “You talk tough.”
I touched his hand. A purple flash of magic shot up his arm and straight into his head, where it filled his brain with images of the sorts of things I could do to him if he pissed me off. It was just a flash of images—like a movie in fast-forward, but by the time it was done a couple of seconds later, his eyes were wide like a spooked horse’s and his skin was milky pale.
The hellhound whined next to him and pressed its head into his shoulder. Leo shook himself and swallowed hard.
“Do we understand each other?”
He nodded but wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. “Got it. Leo lives until that’s not an option.”
“All right,” I said, dismissing the tension. I wasn’t going to hold a grudge against Leo for doubting my power. But I didn’t miss the look Adam shot me. He clearly felt my little display was overkill. I ignored him and got down to business. “Let’s move in. Ava, I think you should be in your human form. Let’s keep the hellhound a surprise.”
“What about me?” Giguhl asked while Ava shifted back. The demon cat was sitting on the ground on his hip with his head cocked at me.
“I want you at full strength when we go in there. If he starts zapping us with necromancy spells, you’re the only one who will be totally immune.”
Giguhl nodded and changed back into his demon form. The shift from cat to demon brought with it a puff of purple smoke and the stench of brimstone. Unlike Ava, the demon didn’t arrive fully clothed when he shifted. Belatedly, I pulled a pair of running shorts out of my knapsack and handed them to him. “Cover yourself, dude.”
He grinned at me. “If you want to intimidate this Boyd guy, it’d be better if I were naked.”
“We want to intimidate him, G,” Adam said. “Not make him laugh.”
That earned the mage a middle claw. “Bite me, mancy.”
Ava looked at me like she was having second thoughts about being seen with us.
She shook her head and turned to check her weapons.
I shrugged and went back to checking my own ammo. It had been a while since I’d had the chance for a good fight and I found myself looking forward to it. I just hoped Boyd didn’t have any more nasty surprises up his sleeve.
AVA
Usually, I had to admit, doing a big group outing to fight a mage who could kill you with a touch was my nightmare. The last time I’d tried to do a group activity involving magic I’d wound up the surprise human sacrifice of the night, and then I’d gotten turned into a hellhound for my trouble.
But as we walked down the main avenue of the cemetery, I found myself tapping my fingers against my leg, worried about Leo and Adam and even that weird cat demon. Sabina could take care of herself, I figured. She seemed more pissed off than worried.
Fog started to curl around our ankles, black as pitch and smelling twice as bad as that stuff that the demon gave off when he changed shapes. Leo groaned.
“I hate overdramatic mages. Just come out and fight like a man.”
Adam grunted his agreement. I thought that given another ten or twenty years those two might almost sort of get to be friends.
“Ask and you’ll receive,” Boyd rasped from up ahead. He was standing in an open area, mausoleums on three sides, a little conjured fire burning for flare around his feet. That was what gave off the noxious smoke. It started to blur my vision, my eyes watering.
“You like that?” he called to me. “A little spell to confuse your senses. Breathe enough of it and you’ll be on the worst trip of your life.” He grinned at all of us. “Or you could just leave. Avoid being poisoned, avoid dying. Let me do my business and get gone from your fair city.”
“Hey, asshole,” Leo said. “If we came all the way out here, clearly we’re not leaving.”
“Give it up, Boyd.” Sabina’s voice cut through the crackling of the flames. “You have nowhere to run.”
Boyd’s grin got wider, and every hair on my neck stood up. I couldn’t even yell at Sabina to look out, it happened that fast—he threw a spell at her that cut through the air like a freight
train. Adam let out a yell, and tried to push her out of the way. The spell exploded between them, and they both went down. Adam fell way harder than Sabina, and she scrambled to cover him with her own body as he panted.
I glanced at them as Leo faced Boyd, feeling an unexpected pang. Nobody had ever come close to doing that for me, not even Leo. Not that I wanted him to. I was a lot tougher than he was, even as a reaper.
“Cute,” Boyd said. The smoke was really fucking with my eyesight and my balance, and I coughed as Leo slung a spell at Boyd. He missed, chipping a chunk out of the mausoleum behind Boyd’s head. “Not so cute,” Boyd tsked. “Just sad.”
I tried to block a spell from hitting Leo, I really did, but I wasn’t fast enough. Leo wheezed under me, pushing at my arm to try to get me off him. “I’m okay, Ava,” he rumbled in my ear. “I’m okay.”
I looked back at Boyd as he advanced, flames parting before him, coming to stand over me. I really hoped that this would work.
“And you?” he said, giving me a light kick before he stepped back, spreading his arms. “What could you possibly do to me all by yourself, little girl?”
I gathered the last of my strength. I was going to have to time this just right. “You’re right,” I croaked. “I give up.”
Boyd nodded. “Then walk away, bitch.”
I gritted my teeth as I got up, leaving Leo where he was. I walked far enough to get away from the worst of the smoke, then stopped. “On second thought,” I said, as I shifted back into the hound on the fly. “I think I’ll stop you here and now.”
I ran full tilt at Boyd, ignoring the acid burn in my lungs, hit him in the chest with my paws hard enough that I felt one of his lungs collapse, and took him to the ground. I locked my jaws around his amulet and yanked once, twice. The flames sputtered around us, his magic interrupted for a split second. Boyd was screaming invective, but I didn’t listen. When I was the hound, humans all sounded the same.
SABINA
The instant the hellhound rolled off Boyd with the necklace in her mouth, the rest of us hauled ass. The impact with Ava had knocked the wind out of Boyd, but he wasn’t down for long. By the time we reached him, he was up on his feet, albeit a bit unsteady. Seeing the hound with his necklace hanging from her sharp teeth, he lunged. The hound’s head lowered and emitted a feral growl that had the mage pausing. Then, as we watched, the hound tossed back her head and tossed the necklace down her wide throat. A loud gulp acted like an exclamation point at the end of the move.
“Give it up, Boyd,” Adam called. His voice sounded a little weak, which only made me angry all over again.
“You’re all idiots,” he said. “That necklace isn’t the source of my powers. It boosted them, but I can still fight without it.” As if to prove his point, he lifted his hands and waggled them. Blue energy arced across his fingertips.
“Oooh, super scary jazz hands,” I said. “Whatever will we do, boys?”
As if we’d prearranged the move, Leo and Adam fell in beside me. I took Adam’s hand in my left. With my eyes on Boyd, I groped the air, searching for Leo’s hand, but instead I got a handful of hellhound fur. I dragged my gaze from Boyd to smile down at the dog. At the same moment, a shock of magical energy zoomed up my right arm.
Apparently, swallowing the amulet had given Ava some of the necromancy powers Boyd had held. On the other side of Ava, Leo placed his free hand on Ava’s coat and jerked his hand back as the energy hit him too. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered. The hellhound made a low growl, which sounded like a curse. More gingerly, Leo touched her again. This time, when the energy hit him, he grinned at the canine.
Boyd stood in the center of our circle with his arms crossed. “You can’t do shit to me,” he said. “I’ve got powerful friends.”
I laughed. “I can assure you that my friends are way more fucking powerful than anyone you know, magic boy.”
He squinted. “You’re as big of a bitch as Clovis said you were.”
Adam’s hand contracted on mine. I froze. “Hold on a damned minute. Do you mean to tell me that your ‘powerful friend’ is Clovis Trakiya?” I threw back my head and laughed.
Boyd’s confidence faltered. “He hired me to send Leo after you two. Said it would kill two birds with one stone.”
Years earlier, Clovis had tried to create a war between the Dark Races using Adam and me as pawns. At the time, I’d let him live because I’d yet to come into my full powers. It was one of my biggest regrets. I almost wanted to thank Boyd for giving me the excuse to correct that mistake.
“I know why Clovis wants us out of the way, but why Leo?” Adam asked. He glanced at Leo, who shrugged.
“I don’t know. He said he owed a favor to some reapers or something. Look, it’s not my business. I only did this to get the amulet.” Before the last word left his mouth, he raised his hands and shot a zap of magic at Adam.
I leapt in front of him to block the shot. My chthonic magic rose so fast it made me a little light-headed, but it blocked Boyd’s magic. He was right. His magic was still pretty strong, but it definitely lacked the kick it had with the amulet.
Before he could renew his energy, I regained my original position. I grabbed Adam’s hand and Ava’s fur. Giguhl and Leo closed the circle around Boyd as I called up the rest of my power.
The magical circuit connected almost instantly. Unused to managing so much energy, the hellhound yelped beside me, but I held on tight. The wind whipped up around us, creating a cyclone effect. In the center of the circle, Boyd’s wild gaze darted about. Blue energy danced around his body as he tried to gather enough strength to defeat all of us.
But the combined power of Adam’s magic, my chthonic powers, the amulet in Ava’s belly, Giguhl’s demonic energy, and Leo’s impressive necromancy created a shimmering plasma dome that surrounded all of us. The magic didn’t hum—it screamed. Bracing myself against the pressure, I managed to shout, “Now!”
The power we’d raised coalesced into a throbbing ball of energy over Boyd’s head. He fell to the ground with his hands raised in vain. The ball dropped. It engulfed Boyd and tore open a rift in the fabric of the mortal realm. Boyd disappeared into the wormhole.
Releasing power is always tricky. It feels a little like licking an electrical socket. One second, the four of us were holding the power of millions of megawatts of magical energy, and then the next it whooshed from our bodies. I stumbled back into a tomb, Adam bent over with his head in his hands, and Leo stumbled a couple of steps before vomiting. Giguhl just slapped his claws together and said, “Good riddance,” but his green skin looked a few shades paler than usual. While the rest of us had practice adjusting to the sudden shift in magical barometric pressure, Ava did not. That’s why when I regained my footing it took me a moment to realize that the hellhound had collapsed onto the grass.
“Shit, Adam, help me!” We lunged toward the too-still canine. She didn’t appear to be breathing.
“What do we do?” he asked.
I shook the massive chest of the unconscious dog. Nothing.
At that moment, Leo pulled himself together and came over. “What’s—” He finally saw Ava lying on the ground and fell to his knees next to her large body. “Ava?” He shook her just as I had, and still nothing happened. He looked up wildly. “Help her!”
I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. Using my fangs, I ripped at the soft flesh of my inner wrist. Without being asked, Adam opened the hellhound’s massive maw.
“Wait!” Leo began but it was too late. Blood flowed down the dog’s throat. After a few moments, I removed my arm and placed a hand over the wound. Ever since I became a demigoddess I could heal myself with just a thought, so the wound closed instantly.
“Now what?” Leo said, sitting back on his haunches and looking defeated.
“Now we wait,” I said quietly.
“No,” he shook his head. “Will she become a vampire?”
Before I could answer, a loud whine escaped the hel
lhound’s mouth and the massive body reared up and fell into Leo, pinning him. “Ava!” he yelled, wrapping his arms around the animal. The hound trembled and whimpered, but her eyes were open and I could have sworn I saw Ava looking back at me.
She struggled to be free of Leo’s hold, and he let her go with great reluctance. Four paws as big as saucers stumbled across the grass. I rose to follow just in case she needed help, but before I could reach her, a sound like a demon escaped the shuddering body.
The hellhound’s massive head lowered. The teeth ratcheted open and ropes of drool spilled onto the matted grass.
“What did you do to her?” Leo yelled. He started to run toward her, but Adam held him back.
In the next breath, the dog’s mouth opened all the way and a stream of brackish bile spewed from that gaping maw.
“She’s turning, isn’t she?” Leo said. “Oh God!”
“Dude, chill,” I said. “Her body is just cleansing itself. She’s not going to become a vampire. It doesn’t work like that.”
Just when I thought she was done, a large item lurched out of the hellhound’s mouth and plopped into the puddle of vomit. The amulet. “Well, that sure beats the alternative exit,” I said. I looked at the guys, grinning. They didn’t seem as amused. I guess not everyone has the stomach to watch a hellhound vomit vampire blood and magical amulets.
Before I could tell them to lighten up, Ava suddenly shifted back into human form. She lay on the grass, blinking, until Leo skidded over to kneel beside her. “Ava?” He touched her face. “Are you okay?”
She spit onto the ground, wiped her hand across her lips, and said, “I need a fucking drink.”
An hour later, we sat around a table in the courtyard of my favorite bar, Lagniappe. Some nights it served as New Orleans’ best drag club, and that night was half-price beers, so we ordered two buckets of ice-cold Abita Ambers.
“So Boyd was working for Clovis all along?” Giguhl asked between licks of his own bowl of beer. Since we were in public he had to be in his hairless cat form.
Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories Page 3
