Finder (The Watchers Book 6)

by Lilith Saintcrow

  That was the scandal. Something taking children and this, this thing . . . gods, is it Horace, or was it something Dark using him? She couldn’t tell. “You had to go away and come back.” If she could keep him talking long enough, buy some time, she might figure out its provenance.

  What she could guess at, she could fight. And Caleb and the Watchers might find her. If she’d bonded fully with him, the way a witch should, he could find her no matter what was in the way.

  Unfortunately, he was too much of a gentleman, and Jorie had been so focused on other things—

  Don’t think about that. She had all she could handle right in front of her. “Were you here before the city?” It was a desperate ploy, and the thing looked at her with Neil’s faded blue eyes as if it knew as much.

  “Awake at lassst,” he hissed. “All of usss, awake at lassst, little whore. The world is no longer asssleep. And you’ll help usss, down here. After a while, you won’t want to leave like she did, you’ll sssee. I’ll bring you mealsss, and you’ll give me sssons.” He twitched, teeth snapping at empty air, and she couldn’t help herself. Jorie cowered, sliding off the mattress, her head clipping the side of a shelf. The blood trickling from her nose had stopped, but if the little sharp-tooth puppets came back, would she get Darksick again and pass out down here? On that grubby old mattress, where the thing had dozed between wakings? Where it had crouched like an obscene surgical spider, snipping and poking at tiny bodies to make its simulacra of offspring?

  I’d rather die, she thought, and her entire body chilled as she realized that was definitely an option.

  “Dinner,” the thing said, matter-of-factly. “Ssso hungry. We’ll need it, to keep usss alive. Ssso much light, but I like the little onesss.” His lips stretched back, a rubbery grimace mocking Neil’s pained smile. Jorie had only seen him grin without reserve once or twice, usually when Sol was ribbing him about something. “Firssst the cake, then the wedding night. Get ready.”

  It lunged out the door. Rotten wood splintered as it slammed, and the light died.

  Jorie screamed again, another pointless reflex. She heard the thing laugh as it skittered away, splashing through stormwater, and there was another sound, too.

  A pattering, as if of little feet. The puppets were following their master, and Jorie’s breakfast was long gone or it would have come up in a hot, steaming, tasteless rush.

  Pass out later, she told herself grimly, biting off the scream. You have work to do now.

  The blackness pressed a bandage against her eyes. It smelled awful down here, damp and rotting, a reek maggots probably thought was perfume. Nothing she hadn’t smelled before, though—at least the Finding, gruesome as it was, had inured her to terrible sights and odors.

  As inured as you could get, anyway.

  Darkness. It was near total, the lichen refusing to glow now that its master was absent.

  Jorie concentrated, holding up her right hand. A hot, questing tendril of blood slid down her nape; she’d clocked herself a good one on the shelves.

  The thing living inside Neil was distracted, looking for something to eat. It had expended a lot of energy taking over his body and kidnapping her. There would never be a better time to stop it, and she was the one who had to.

  There was nobody else around, after all. Just like every other time she’d tracked a killer, the Finding outrunning conscious control, pulling her to face the terrible things people did to each other.

  “I am a willow,” Jorie whispered. “Rooted in the ground.” Her hand shook. All of her shook, and the blackness ate at sanity and hope. She rose, carefully, sensing another shelf and avoiding it just barely. Her aura was a steady unphysical glow to Sight, but she needed something else.

  It was one of the first things Dorinda had taught her, the thing that separated her kind from other psychics. She was a witch, yes, but there was another word for it, too.

  Lightbringer.

  A pale, fitful glow edged her fingertips, a clean golden shimmer. It faded as Jorie sobbed out a relieved breath, firmed as her concentration did. She couldn’t hold it for long, but the glimmer gave her hope.

  And, even better, it showed her the door. But worse, it showed a skinny, crumpled form to the right, wedged almost under a set of iron shelves with rusting supports.

  It was a body. It looked ancient, half-mummified, and its paper-skinned skull held a few threads of center-parted, wavy hair. The corpse looked curiously fragile, and there were marks on its bare arms and naked legs. Its clothes had been chewed, by tiny mouths full of serrated teeth.

  Horace Alton, I presume? Well, that answered one question—the thing inhabiting one of Altamira’s founding fathers had a much nicer, younger body now, and had discarded the old one. Jorie choked on a mad, terrified little laugh, bile scorching her throat and tongue. She heaved once, twice, managing to hold the light steady through sheer force of will.

  The thing probably thought she was mad with fear by now, and it wasn’t far wrong. But still, it was stupid, or maybe just too hungry to realize its mistake.

  It had left the rancid, rotting wooden barricade unlocked.

  On Principle

  THE OLD ALTON Mansion loomed under a lowering sky, a ramshackle wooden ruin eaten by creepers, moss, and blackberry vines. There was nothing living in its slump-shouldered halls, but the Honda’s bouncing headlights picked out a deep hole against the east side of the house, an edge of gleaming, glistening wet wood.

  Coal cellar, standing open. Caleb bet there would be a deeper hole somewhere in its gaping throat, leading to tunnels. He even had a good idea where plenty of those tunnels led since Tancred had put an overlay of whatever old sewer and drainage work against a map of Altamira, with Alton properties marked in red for his witch, just that morning.

  Everyone in the conference room had glanced at the crimson dot on the edge of Brickpool Park, but hadn’t thought anything of it. The glamour, thick and reinforced for decades if not a century or two, had held against even that concentrated attention.

  “I didn’t believe them at first,” the detective said as the Honda bumped to a stop. “Past two years I’ve been feeding them bullshit, all about how Jorie’s just a nutcase who bothers the cops. One of many, you know? They kept pushing. Not just her, but other names, too. Wanting me to check on them, see if they’re talented. I know I’m not the only one they wanted to recruit.”

  The man had no sense of self-preservation. “You really don’t want to be telling me this.” Caleb checked his knives, easy in their sheaths. He ran through his ammo count once again; if he had to shoot down there, digging his bullets out of the walls later to dissuade ballistics analysis or sympathetic magick was going to be a bitch. Still . . . it would mean that Jorie was alive and the battle was over; he’d do it with a song in his goddamn heart. “If I wasn’t so busy right now, I’d kill you on principle.”

  “They’re religious nuts. Evangelicals.” Sol Trevignan was pale, and his hand kept straying to the butt of his service revolver and falling away as he realized it would do no good. “You wouldn’t believe half the shit I found out about them, once I went looking. Dominion over all, they say, and that’s just the beginning. Hooked up with some Catholic splinter group—”

  “The Crusade.” Caleb’s throat was dry; he set the parking brake. “I don’t have time to listen to more bullshit. Stay here.”

  “I’m going with you.” Pale and wet clear through, the man kept going like the bulldog Caleb had imagined him just yesterday. “Jorie’s—”

  You keep your mouth off my witch’s name. “None of your concern, detective. Besides, you’d just get killed.” He hadn’t murdered the man yet because the Watchers arriving after Caleb would want him for questioning, and because Jorie wouldn’t want Trevignan dead even if he was a filthy Dominion pigeon.

  Maybe it was the Crusade who
had fired Jorie’s house, figuring a woman who could fight off a Slayer had to be what they were looking for. It didn’t matter.

  What mattered was getting down into that hole and finding her.

  “You don’t understand.” Sol reached for his door, too. “I want to help. Jorie’s good people. She—”

  “And you told Dominion that?” I’m sure it made all the difference in the world. Caleb longed to kill the man; he settled for killing the engine and ripping the keys free. Stranding the pigeon here for later pickup was all he could do.

  “I’ve been protecting her.”

  “Not enough.” Caleb grabbed the door handle; it was still wet from being open in the rain. He left the headlights on—if by some chance the cop could hotwire his own car, at least a Watcher could inconvenience him with a drained battery. “Stay here. When the others come, tell them where I went and what you’ve told me.”

  “But—”

  Caleb was already in the rain, blurring between curtains of falling water. How long had he been out, trapped in the burning car? Seconds, or minutes?

  He plunged into the cellar’s open, rotting toothsocket. The thing that had taken his witch had left its tiny footsoldiers behind to slow him down. They clustered, baring their sharp volcanic-glass teeth, and their swollen heads on thin stem-necks snaked deadly at almost waist-height. A normal man would want a gun for this sort of work, but Caleb was a Watcher, and it was the black-bladed knives he drew, their rune-chased blades lighting with low, fiery crimson. His swords would give him better reach, but he’d killed these little things before, and it was the knives they died best on.

  He was past caring that they had once been human. Now they were only obstacles, and the tanak roared inside him, jacking his adrenaline balance to provide greater speed but not enough to leave him a jittery mess, priming his reflexes, forcing Power through his aura until the redblack stain spread to cover his vision, a haze of bloodlust that stripped all glamour and other sorcery from his opponents.

  His backup would follow the bodies.

  Caleb got to work.

  Ordinary Consciousness

  THE TUNNELS WERE alive with tiny pattering footsteps, thin unhealthy giggles, and choking, livid darkness like bruised eyes swollen shut. The thing inside Neil had left an almost-visible black sludge-smear on the air itself, intersecting with older, just as rancid trails crossing and re-crossing. Her jeans were wet to the knee, her feet were numb inside her heavy, sloshing boots, and the light on Jorie’s fingertips wavered as her concentration did or when the thing’s trail thickened, a heavy slug-slime coating. The Finding helped, though, pulling her along on a rope instead of thread-thin fishing line.

  Whatever lay at the end of it was bound to be awful, but she was helpless to stop. Getting out of the dark, as marvelous as that would be, was only secondary to finding Neil and stopping what the thing inside him wanted to do.

  What it was probably doing right this second. She was always too late, the Finding never showed up in time to avert the horror except that one first time. She saw only the aftermath, and it was Neil’s task to bring justice to the broken families left behind.

  She always thought his was the hardest job and—if she was completely honest—was grateful she was spared it. Just like she was grateful for the Watchers, for the safehouse’s quiet and beauty, for her own house.

  It was stupid and petty of her to wish the Finding would go away so she could enjoy the nice parts of her life. With so much pain and destruction in the world, how selfish was she to want her own little corner, nice and warm?

  The route sloped upward now, re-crossing the same aging tunnel over and over because the water was now waist-deep in its throat, surging and foaming. Each time she had to ford its cold, sucking channel she was afraid her feet would slide, the boots like cement weights, and she’d be pulled under, drowning in filthy rainwater, down in the dark.

  Up she went, the Finding pulling and plucking at wrists, numb ankles, the fishhook sunk behind her bellybutton and fluttering like new life was supposed to. But not hers, of course—Jorie was only pregnant with disaster.

  It was all she brought to the world, Lightbringer or not.

  Struggling against the current, grabbing at crumbling brick, the light guttering and fading on her fingertips while she fought to stay upright. It felt like she’d been down here forever, bumbling along with the darkness like a wet bandage stoppering her eyes, nose, mouth, everything.

  You can’t save anyone, Jorie. Look, you can’t even save yourself.

  Still, she kept going, grimly determined, and a sobbing breath of gratefulness escaped her when the light on her fingers died one final time and the bricks she was clutching left dusty grit on her palms.

  Wait. I can see.

  There was other light now. Pale and fitful, but the glow was coming from uphill, the trail she was following arrowing straight instead of bending back to cross the main flue once more.

  Oh, thank the gods. She waded in water still flowing fast but not quite as deep, and the traceries of glowing lichen on the walls told her she was gaining on the thing.

  Which was not quite so gratitude-inducing, but maybe the Finding had brought her through safely, or maybe the thing was slowed by the current. Water was a great psychic conductor, but it also cleansed and washed things away. Pulling against that liquid drag stole warmth and energy from her. How much worse was it for the Dark thing crouching inside Neil’s body?

  I can save him. I know I can. Jorie let out another small, sobbing sound, and plunged, splashing, towards the light.

  It had occurred to her that she might have to scream through a wrought-iron grating to get some passerby’s attention, but taking over a physical body definitely forced some restrictions on the thing, because the trail led to sloping, rusting metal grate rising out of the water and a set of metal stairs like a fire escape. And there, at its top, was a maintenance door.

  Jorie scrambled out of the water, shivering, her legs throbbing-numb. Her scraped fingers left small bloody marks on the rusted iron banister as she climbed, and when she reached the top the idea of collapsing in a heap was powerfully attractive.

  But she couldn’t be sure the Watchers were coming. Something might have happened, Caleb might have been unconscious when the puppets got to him, and if she ever wanted to look in the mirror again without hating everything she saw, Jorie had to finish this.

  Or die trying.

  The Finding twitched, gathering fresh strength. It wanted to show her, but she hung grimly to ordinary consciousness and tugged at the doorknob.

  It refused to open, mostly because her fingers slipped and she was pulling instead of pushing. The door opened inward, probably so it couldn’t be taken off its hinges by any yahoo climbing around in the tunnels. Or maybe so you could escape a flood, who knew?

  Jorie plunged into a much drier corridor, one that ended in another set of stairs. The aching in her thighs and the dragging of her left leg was enough to force tears from her stinging eyes, along with the low electric emergency lighting.

  Oh, thank you, gods. I swear I’ll make an offering at the next festival; you can count on that. She wasn’t as big on the sabbats and esbats as some other Lightbringers, but maybe that would change.

  Her mouth set in a pained grimace, her boots sloshing, the Finding buzzing and burning in her bones, Jorie began to climb. Wet footprints showed two or three stairs apart; Neil was going fast.

  I’m going to catch him, she told herself. I’ve got to.

  The door at the top was locked, but Jorie held her palm an inch from the knob and concentrated. It was easier than calling light; the tiny mechanism was more than happy to help someone who coaxed instead of forcing.

  Her head hurt, too, spikes driven through her skull. Whatever was going to happen, it was bad, and it was close, rising thr
ough layers of precognition and the flow of time like a shark closing on an unwary seal.

  I’m getting really tired of maintenance tunnels. At least this one was much drier, and had linoleum instead of bare concrete. Bare metal equipment lockers hung on one wall, neatly labeled with peeling stickers, and the light was bright and welcoming though the fluorescent fixtures hissed and buzzed, rattling a warning. It reeked of chlorine, and she wondered if this was a sewage treatment plant.

  Wait. I know this place, I’ve been here before. The paint on the walls was familiar, and when she found yet another door and spilled through in a rush, she found herself in an equally familiar glass-ceilinged atrium. A Closed for Maintenance sign hung on the front door, and the reception desk was dark and deserted. The curve of glass bricks along one entire wall was an old friend too, and she knew exactly where the locker rooms were.

  It was the Alton Memorial Pool, buttoned up for winter maintenance. Jorie, dripping and filthy, stood by the front desk and wondered if she should grab the phone, call the safehouse dropline, and—

  Then she heard the screaming, a high piping child’s voice breaking with terror, and the Finding fused all the circuits inside her head, pulled on every vein in her body. She bolted for the women’s locker room, habit pulling her along the easiest path.

  That was the way to the pool itself.

  Watchers at Work

  THE THINGS MASSED again and again, trying to slow him down. The dark wasn’t bad—he’d fought blind before—but the puppets were seemingly endless, and the thing in Neil Harvard’s body was profligate with its army.

  A single man, no matter how well-trained, might have been overwhelmed. But Caleb was far gone, the tanak a smoking red wasteland inside his skull, a thing knowing neither surrender nor failure but merely the imperative of combat.