Finder (The Watchers Book 6)

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The canopy keeps the sunshine out, she thought dozily, and shapes ran like ink on greased paper before her staring eyes.

  Something landed on the side of the car. Two somethings, a pair. A pair of feet in tattered loafers that had once been spit-shined, and Jorie realized she was hanging in her seat belt like a discarded toy, her head tilted as she stared through the passenger window that was now a sunroof. Smoke ran in scarves and veils, billowing behind an indistinct shape with its wingtip-soles pressed on the window, and there was another rushing, liquid, heated sound.

  Fire. Uh-oh. Dozy alarm spilled through her.

  The shape above made a quick, violent movement. The passenger window shattered, safety glass showering starlike, and rain slithered through the hole.

  “There you are,” the thing crooned, reaching through the jagged aperture with familiar hands. “Naughty, naughty.”

  The Finding filled her head, and one of the tiny things climbing all over the car squirted through the broken rear window, chittering with glee. “Caleb!” Jorie screamed, but her seat belt was sliced by tiny claws and the thing with a doll’s blank face and rows of serrated teeth snarled in her direction before turning to her Watcher, who hung bloody and lifeless in the driver’s seat.

  She was lifted by clawed, terrifying hands, the stench of the thing filling the world. Worst of all was the face it wore as it tossed her over its shoulder, caveman-style. Long nose, straight eyebrows, curling sandy hair darkening under a lash of falling, icy rain.

  The thing wearing Neil Harvard’s body laughed, a thick burping chuckle, and the world turned over again because it leapt, stronger and faster than a human could, bounding up the hill while Jorie’s head smacked painfully against its back.

  “Now I’ve got you,” it said, and the glee in its voice was made a thousand times worse by the familiarity. “Now you’ll be good. A little old, yes. But good, good.”

  Jorie fled into merciful unconsciousness.

  SHE RETURNED with a violent start, sick and reeling, her stomach compressed as her head bobbled and the thing chuckled. It was talking to itself, Neil’s voice bouncing off wet concrete, and she couldn’t see because it was so dark. There was no light anywhere, and Jorie began to struggle against whatever was holding her over a strong, hard shoulder, stopping only with a hand clamped down on her leg with vicious, more-than-human strength.

  “Naughty, naughty,” it said in Neil’s voice, and the Finding, having shown her what it wanted her to see, receded in a clicking rush like the tide along a pebbled beach. “Too old, yesss, but good. We can live a long time off thisss one, yesss? Yesss, and make many more.” Its long sibilants filled her ears and her nose was full, too, of coppery liquid warmth.

  Nosebleed. Well, it was a car accident. “Neil,” she whispered, through the bouncing. All her breath was squeezed out when the thing sped up, the jolting wringing her lungs. He shouldn’t have been able to go for long with all her weight in a fireman’s carry—but whatever was in him granted him strength, almost like a tanak. “Neil, please. You can’t. You’ve got to fight it.”

  The thing laughed, Neil’s bitter little bark but twisted halfway into a mockery of any human amusement. She wasn’t unconscious with Darksickness—maybe because it was inhabiting a human body now, maybe because the little scrambling things weren’t around. The only sound was water dripping and Neil’s footsteps, too fast and light.

  Almost like a Watcher’s.

  “The blood always tellsss,” the thing said. “Your friend’sss not here, little whore. He’s gone into hiding. I have you to thank, yesss. Thought there wasssn’t another one left, but she hid him from me. No matter.” It chuckled again. “I’ll keep you nissse and sssafe, though. You know he wanted to? Your friend, he wanted you ssso badly. That’s how I got in, yesss.”

  Oh, God. Jorie tried to still herself, to be calm. Magick would help her here, if she could just concentrate. If the thing was inhabiting Neil’s body, there was probably a way to drive it out, and a witch worth her salt could find one.

  Or so she hoped.

  “Horace,” she gasped. “Horace Alton.” And I’ll bet Eugene wasn’t your grandson. You just had to stay away long enough for everyone here to forget. Or maybe this thing had gone dormant, hibernating until it was safe to come out again. Dozing for thirty years, waking to eat, then dozing again like someone on a family holiday, settled in a recliner while a football game blared.

  “Clever little girl,” it hissed. “Where there’sss a will, there’sss a way. I do have a grandssson.” Another thick, burping chuckle, silt clogging a drain. “And he came home. You sssent him to me, you little whore.”

  The thing began to laugh again, like it was the funniest joke in the world. Jorie throttled another scream and tried desperately, vainly, to think.

  Eventually it was going to have to set her down. And when it did, she was going to hit it with everything she had.

  Priority One

  GETTING DRAGGED out of burning car hadn’t been on his to-do list this morning. The Volvo was a mangled mass of metal, the red Dodge on its back oddly untouched except for its crumpled front end; at least Jorie’s car had cradled him and his witch admirably.

  Jorie had been alive, when taken. At least there was that, even though the Volvo was fully engulfed in flames now. Greasy black smoke poured up, tainted with Dark.

  Was there anything she wouldn’t lose before this was over? Wasn’t the world tired of taking away the things she loved? It was enough to make a man sick.

  Murderously, coldly sick.

  Caleb’s rescuer was a relatively slim man for his height, with a hard little potbelly that had probably developed when he was twenty. Still, he had some useful muscle. They reached the top of the hill, Caleb half-carrying what had to be a detective. The white Honda this guy had been trailing Marilyn Geddoes in before seeing a familiar red Dodge and deciding to follow stood on the access road, its driver-side door open in the hissing rain, its headlights cutting a cone through falling water. “Jesus Christ,” the man moaned. His voice was familiar, a big basso growl he’d bludgeoned Caleb’s witch with over the phone. “What the fuck?”

  Caleb seconded that emotion. The tanak growled, fusing hairline fractures in his ribs, and Caleb let go of his companion, broken fingers screaming as the symbiote decided now was the time to restore function there. “Sol Trevignan, I presume?” He shook out his left hand, ignoring the pain as metacarpals and phalange bones knitted themselves together with swift yanks. He grabbed his useless, dislocated right shoulder, looked up into the falling rain and iron-grey sky, and popped the humurus’s proximal knob back into its home with a short, excruciating jolt. “Get in the car.”

  “Who . . . the fuck . . .” Trevignan peered up at him. “You . . . Shit, man. You’re armed. You are a Watcher.”

  Caleb’s guts turned cold. A cop, knowing about the Circle? Great. Just great. “You have exactly thirty seconds to convince me not to kill you.”

  “Nice way of saying thanks.” Trevignan’s dark eyes were glazed with shock. He wasn’t balding yet but he was thinning up top, and his grubby tan trench coat had seen much better days. “I couldn’t figure out why all Jorie’s boyfriends looked the same. Then they contacted me.” He jabbed a blunt finger at the car. “Come on, get in.”

  “You’re in no shape to drive.” Caleb stayed where he was, even though every muscle in him was shrieking Go after her, go after her now, your witch needs you.

  She was still alive, because his heart was still beating. There was no devouring cardiac arrest meaning his witch’s pulse had stopped. Which meant whatever was in Harvard’s body had a use for her, and Caleb had two jobs right now. The first and most time-critical was getting intel and backup, and he was digging for the dedicated cell with bloodslick fingers, ignoring the pain. Hopefully the phone wasn’t battered beyond repair, and hopef
ully it could get a signal.

  If not, he was going to have to get creative.

  “Neither are you, asshole.” Trevignan stared at him, blinking furiously, and Caleb decided not to kill him just yet. “What are you doing?”

  “Backup.” And if my phone doesn’t work, I’m taking yours. He was going to take it anyway, to make sure the cop couldn’t pull another fast one.

  For all Caleb knew, this man and Harvard—or whatever was in the detective’s body now—were in cahoots. Partnership went deeper than marriage, most of the time.

  Almost as deep as blood, though not nearly as deep as the bond between Watcher and witch.

  His fingers left wet crimson smears on the phone’s screen; there were a few bars of service, thank the gods. “Dispatch,” a Watcher said crisply, and relief burst inside Caleb’s chest.

  “It’s Caleb,” he said, enunciating clearly. “My witch has been taken. I’m in Brickpool Park, south end, but the thing’s moving fast. It’s keeping her alive and there’s a heavily glamoured location here to be cracked and stacked. I need everyone, right now. I’m gonna start tracking her.”

  “Caleb? Okay.” The Watcher, thank the gods, didn’t hesitate. “Lorenz gave your calls priority one. We’re on our way.”

  Great. All I have to do is make enough noise for you to find me through the damn glamour this thing’s got going on. At least Jorie had broken the shell of magick, carefully leading her Watcher right to the edge of it, coaxing him into seeing what he and every other Watcher had overlooked for years, a tumor growing in Altamira’s belly.

  It beggared belief. Her talent had teased at the shell of seeming and misdirection the thing had been accreting for decades, maybe even centuries, and she’d gone after it with a tenacity that would make even the most seasoned investigator envious. She probably hadn’t even known what she was hunting, only that it needed to be done.

  Just like a Lightbringer. And Caleb, without that light, had bumbled along blindly behind her, too stupid to keep her from being taken.

  Or worse.

  He hung up, eyed the detective. The man was shivering; without a tanak, he was at the mercy of the elements. “What the fuck do you know about Watchers, Detective?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” Trevignan shifted uncomfortably, swaying. “I thought Geddoes was a crackpot, but Jorie’s always reliable, and those assholes . . . Well, when Neil started making noises about tracking this shit down, I listened. Then he went and got himself fuckered up, and—listen to me, you asshole!” He backed up a step, two, his hands rising in the classic take it easy, man stance, even though Caleb hadn’t moved. “He’s related! He’s Eugene Alton’s great-grandson!”

  What. The fuck. The sensation was like klieg lights switching on inside Caleb’s head, a thick, clotted glamour almost as old as Altamira breaking under the weight of a Watcher’s suspicion and a witch’s dogged, quiet, persistent work. “Shit,” he said, softly, and tipped his head back, jaw working.

  Now it made sense. Every last inch of the whole rotten situation.

  Don’t go off half-cocked. Think about this, Caleb. Think very carefully, because if you make the wrong move here, a witch dies. Your witch dies.

  Even gazing at the pictures of Horace and Eugene side by side, he hadn’t realized how much both of them looked like Neil. How was it possible? The Dark didn’t breed.

  At least, not nowadays. There were whispers, old half-forgotten stories about terrible things. None of which mattered at the moment, really.

  “Look,” Sol Trevignan said. “I will explain everything, I swear to God, but we have got to go get her. That thing’s dangerous, we’ve gotta go get Jorie.”

  What’s this we, white man? Caleb’s chin came back down, and he found, with a sharp slicing relief, that he knew what to do next.

  The rage was there, clinical and cold, but it wasn’t ruling him. Not yet. There were tiny scuttling sounds in the undergrowth—the puppets, sensing that the fire hadn’t done the work for them, were massing for outright attack. “Hand over your phone. Get in the car.” His voice was a harsh croak, so different from Jorie’s soothing restfulness. “And start talking.”

  If I lose my witch, I’ll kill you right before I kill myself.

  The more important thought, beating like his stupid, senseless heart, was the reminder of what was now his only job—going after her, now that backup was on the way and warned to keep looking until they broke the glamour. Hold on, Jorie.

  Just hold on, I’m on my way.

  Awake at Last

  THE TUNNELS WERE old, mostly crumbling brickwork but a few with walls half carved out of bedrock. They were awash, too, leaves floating on freezing torrents, the thing in Neil’s body slowing as it negotiated a tangle of splashing turns. She tried to fix them in her memory, but it didn’t work. Besides, being carried half upside-down and bounced around like a stuffed animal wasn’t good for anyone’s sense of direction.

  A pale, leprous light bloomed from lichen spreading along brickwork, tiny living tendrils providing enough glow to see by as they passed at high, flickering speed. The sewer system, old Altamira’s sanitary pride, must have been a set of regular highways for this thing. Thank goodness they were mostly overflow for storm drainage now, since the great fury of expansion done in the fifties to keep veterans home from the wars busy and their families fed to fuel a population boom had probably updated almost every sewer in the city.

  It was bad enough to be carried around by something Dark inhabiting a friend’s body, but if she was dragged through raw sewage, she might just go mad and save the thing the trouble of killing her.

  “Neil—” She choked, tried again. “Neil please, you have to fight it, you have to!”

  “I told you, he’sss not here!” A great gassy, rancid chuckle boomed through the tunnels, and the thing put on more speed. Every sibilant was a mouth-filling hiss, like it enjoyed chewing the words. “You can ssscream if it makes you feel better. I’d like that.”

  Oh you sonofabitch. I bet you would. Jorie tried to breathe, to be calm. Her nose was full, and the throbbing in her face pushed through a screen of adrenaline. She was going to hurt all over once the fight-or-flight drained away.

  If you’re still alive, that is. He wants something out of you, Jorie.

  If he wasn’t carrying her underground as a snack to be put in a larder for later, that was. No Dark she’d ever heard of behaved like this. Generally, they wanted to eat you right where they caught you.

  It would take more than a car wreck to keep Caleb down. He’d be coming after her, probably with backup. Unless the little puppets with their sharp wicked teeth got to him while he was unconscious?

  That was a bad thought, and she was unprepared when the thing skidded to a stop, throwing up a great sheet of filthy water. The splashing died down, became dripping, and there was a metallic jingle.

  Keys. It has keys. Okay. That meant it was used to being physical, and that there were some limits placed on it by that very physicality. Jorie’s lips parted; she struggled to control her breathing. She was a witch, dammit, and just because most of her talent lay in Finding didn’t mean she was helpless.

  Or so she hoped. A spike of pain lanced through her head; she cried out weakly.

  Hinges creaked. Light bounced off disturbed water, dappling the walls. Neil slid carefully through a high narrow aperture, a rotting wooden door swung shut, and Jorie slid from his shoulder, collapsing on something damp, semi-soft, and moldering.

  It was a mattress. An old one, its striped cotton cover dreadfully familiar, the long-faded stain in its middle filling her throat with bile as she scrambled desperately to get off it, flashes of terrible things pouring up her sensitive hands, detonating inside her head.

  This was where the thing brought its meals for consumption. It was where he made the dolls. />
  The thing laughed; its merriment boomed off the walls, dying with a soap-slathered gurgle. Neil stood near the door, watching, and the tiny room was crowded with wooden shelves, some haphazard but others good solid oak, rivulets of that strange fungus on the walls casting uncertain, fitful light.

  The stain was the shape of a body. How long had the thing rested here, bathing in gods-knew-what? Maybe it had been looking for a newer, younger body for a long time.

  A very long time.

  The jumble of shelves leaning against every wall, crazy-quilting in every direction, were empty. And Neil’s familiar face was suffused with an unphysical darkness, a plummy congestion of hatred. He stared down at her, his hands working, his Police Academy ring another glittering, baleful eye.

  “They’re out in the dark,” he said, softly. “All the little children, bringing good thingsss home to Papa.”

  Oh, gods. “Children,” she whispered through numb lips. The Finding had only showed her what it could through a screen of obfuscation and her own appalled revulsion at what this . . . this thing had done. Anyone conscious and sane might well refuse to see such horror, taking refuge in metaphor.

  Jorie gulped in deep heaving breaths, her own hands tingling. If she could gather enough Power, she might be able to blind him temporarily and run. “It started out with children, didn’t it, Horace?”

  “We wanted them so badly.” A rippling, roiling shrug, Neil’s body behaving oddly. Maybe the thing inside it had forgotten how human beings were supposed to move. Or maybe Neil was still in there, fighting desperately against the invasion. “But then they came, with their torches and pitchforks. The common crowd.”