“Shit,” Zane said. “You didn’t tell us that.”
“A lot has happened,” I said. “I’ve left a few details out. Anyway, the guy I had downstairs, Celso, gave me some names. Providence and Munificence. Munificence – I think – backs the Manellis and is in opposition to the TVS. I’m fairly sure Providence, whoever or whatever it is, heads up the Temple.”
Zane snorted. “Those names sound Southern to me.”
“It was implied they weren’t HuMan. They seem to inspire fascination and worship in people.” I sighed, trying to remember what Christopher had told me.
“You think that Providence thing got its claws in him?”
I nodded, slowly. “But I don’t think he’s being subjected to the role willingly. There’s another thing. Jana, the demonurge woman who headed up the TVS’ rituals before the Deacon... when I killed her, her body disappeared. She died on the fourteenth of August. Christopher told me his first fugue event was August seventeenth after he came home from a trip to Chicago. The three day waiting period has a great deal of occult significance. Vigils for the dead are traditionally three days and three nights long. I think Providence, or someone associated with Providence, did something to him to turn him into the Deacon.”
“That’s horrible,” Talya said. “You mean he doesn’t even know what he’s doing?”
“Jana was a demonurge, like I said.” I rubbed my eyes, thinking. “So he’s quite possibly possessed by... something. Now that I think about it, the Deacon’s appearance bears a superficial resemblance to Jana’s Neshamah.”
“Her what?” Zane asked.
“Jana’s soul. The souls of mages have a form, too,” I replied. “Hers was this tall, thin, robed figure, a DOG that was trying to look like an angel. It was all white and gold, not black and violet, but in terms of height, bearing, general appearance... there is a resemblance.”
“Yeesh.” Talya scowled, then cleared her throat. “Okay, the other organization... umm... do you know anything about Sebastian Hart?”
“Other than that he’s running for office?” Zane asked.
“Yeah. Hart is ex-military. Like, ages before he got into politics, he started a private military company, Graystag Securities Group,” Talya said. “A LOT of the PAC’s money goes to Graystag, which I’m pretty sure is illegal.”
“Laundering,” I said. “Has to be.”
“Graystag is really specialized,” Talya continued. “They provide security exclusively for mining and resource exploration operations. These are the fuckheads that evict Native peoples from their lands when companies buy the oil rights out from under them. They have a big operation in South America at the moment.”
“That explains why Sergei switched sides,” I said, grimly. “The CIA are the essentially the gatekeepers of the international drug trade in this country. They protect a bunch of the big narcos in exchange for access to anti-Communist militias. If Charles Bishop used Graystag to gain control of the Cali cocaine operation in Columbia, he’d have the Organizatsiya over a barrel. About sixty percent of all our money comes from warehousing coke and crack.”
“And you said the Deacon was fighting a war against Charles Bishop,” Talya said.
Zane’s brow was furrowed in thought. He wasn’t a stupid man, but he didn’t have the mercurial ability to make leaps of logic that Talya had. “Providence is behind the Deacon... so who’s behind Bishop?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said. “The Deutsche Orden, I assume. And they may be allied with Munificence, based on what Celso was saying. If that’s true… he also implied that they were involved in the presidential assassination.”
“Yeah.” Zane let out a tense breath. “Shit. This is way over our heads.”
“Yeah.” Talya chewed her lip. “But it’s kind of personal, you know? The kinds of things companies like Graystag do to First Nations people are just awful.”
“Indeed.” I regarded the spreadsheet thoughtfully. “But Zane is right. This is way over our heads.”
“We have to be able to do something,” Talya said. “We can tell Jenner and Ron, at the very least, and see what they say.”
“Something’s going on with Ron,” I replied. “I don’t trust him.”
Zane shook his head, stony-faced. “Ron’s been in the club since the beginning. He was Mason’s war buddy. His passing upset him about as much as it upset Jenner.”
“He lied to me,” I said. “He told me Jenner didn’t want me at the clubhouse.”
“He probably thinks he’s protecting her,” Zane said.
“Ron’s kind of... old-fashioned?” Talya rolled her eyes, and shrugged.
I made a sound of amusement. “Chauvinistic, you mean.”
“I’ll talk to him about it.” Zane stood up from his crouch, stretching his back and knees. “He listens to me. I think if he knows how deep this all runs, you’ll be the least of his problems.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t really know the guy well enough to say how accurate the assessment was. “Well, I’m getting a hotel room and sleeping for today. And then I’m going out.”
“Alone?” Talya’s face scrunched up in concern. “The last time you did that, we didn’t see you for days.”
“I have to. You all have to get ready for the fight with Otto, and if I’m caught... it’s better that only one person be caught.” I took a deep breath. “I can’t help but wonder why Otto picked now, of all times, to come and make an ass of himself.”
“They just smelled blood in the water.” Zane shrugged.
“They came from Chicago,” I said. “Given that Jana tried to kidnap me and take me to Chicago, and Christopher started having his episodes after coming back from the same city, I’m not willing to put it down as a coincidence.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s not a coincidence,” Zane said, shaking his head. “Assuming it’s not connected until we have evidence is reasonable. Chicago is a big city. Linking them up is magical thinking, Rex.”
I arched an eyebrow, staring at him. He wrinkled his nose. “What?”
Talya burst out laughing, but it took Zane longer to figure it out. “Oh... right. You’re a-”
“Magician, yes,” I said.
He flushed a dark reddish brown, and jerked his shoulders back. “Okay, you got me there. But let me tell you something: no hotel. You stay with us here, where you’re safe.”
“If the Vigiles find me-”
“Magic doesn’t work on us,” Talya said. “They can’t track us down. That’s why they’re so big on keeping tabs on young Weeders.”
“Any magic they’ve put on you won’t point to us,” Zane said. “Being around us offers you some protection.”
The offer was tempting. I was queasy with fatigue, the kind of exhaustion that no amount of coffee was able to help. The Yen was going to be the monkey on my back again soon, and I didn’t trust myself at a hotel bar, unsupervised. Besides that, we were already close to the airport here. By the description Celso had given me, East Hangar Road had to be close by.
“Come on, Rex.” Talya got up from her chair. “You’ve helped us heaps of times. Let us help you, for a change. When was the last time you slept?”
“Haven’t slept in... months, it feels like.” Frustrated, I rubbed my eyes. “Okay. But if anything happens-”
“We’ll bail out the windows and land on our feet like little kitty-cats,” Talya said. She offered me a hand, and I smiled faintly as I accepted. Like Jenner, Talya was disproportionately strong for her size. Physical strength among Weeders had more to do with animal form than anything else. “Come on. You can take Zane’s bed.”
“Thanks, Kitten.” Zane rolled his eyes as he bobbed back up to his feet.
“Well, he isn’t going to sleep on my Hello Kitty bedsheets, is he?” Talya turned her head as she tugged me toward the hallway. “He has to sleep on the man bed.”
“The man bed,” Zane echoed drily.
“Yeah! Sandpaper blanket, rock for a
pillow. The mattress takes steroids.” She let go of me to flex and make a face. “It means you wake up angry! Pumped! Hurrr!”
“If your bed is softer, I’ll sleep on the Hello Kitty whatever-it-is,” I replied.
“She might be too badass for you,” Talya said. “Not to like, boast or anything, but you have to be pretty badass to sleep on Hello Kitty sheets.”
“Kitten,” Zane said, looking up. “You’re about as badass as a jam doughnut, okay? I’m just saying.”
“Kittens can be badass.” Talya pointed at her own face. “You see these eyebrows? These are the eyebrows of a badass. You just wait until tonight when I ride in and I’m like: ‘Get out the way, bitches! It’s the Purrminator!’”
Zane and I cringed at the same time: me by rubbing the bridge of my nose, him by palming his entire face.
“Yeah! You heard me!” Talya pointed at him, then caught me by the sleeve and pulled me away to my repose, giggling all the while.
Chapter 34
A full-length mirror graced the dusty bedroom where Talya left me alone. I approached it side-on, gathering the fortitude required to look at myself, and was hardly disappointed by how revolting I was. My face was pale and jowly. I had grown a stubbled mess of gray hair over my scalp and jaw. My nose was slightly crooked. When I peeled off my clothes, I found swollen masses of bruises, inflamed cuts, and the puncture wound. Peeling the clothing off had ripped off a few of the scabs, and blood oozed out of at least ten inflamed cuts, lines slashed down my body. Twisting carefully, I was able to finally make a real assessment of everything. It looked bad, but not as bad as it probably had a couple days ago.
I climbed into a hot shower, letting the spray pound the bruises on my back, arms and chest, then went back to the quiet hush of the bedroom and flopped out onto the creaky bed. The air smelled like old paper, and the peaceful silence was absolutely surreal.
“Why do I care so much, Kutkha?” I sighed the question aloud. “The Tree, these Government assholes… none of it is my business.”
“Perhaps the better question is: what makes a man stop caring about such things?” He replied. “What is it that makes beings like Sergei, Yegor, and the Deacon? What is that which makes men unaffected by the sight of something awe-inspiring or horrific?”
Good question. No matter how many hits I’d pulled or how much shit I’d seen, that sense of wonder in the face of the Mystery had endured. I’d dreamed of the Garden several times now, and each time I’d seen it, it had changed me. I was in awe of it: of GOD’s skin, the incredible expanse of great, prismatic Trees. I could remember details with intense, supernatural clarity: their sighs and whispers, the way the MahTree’s leaves carefully and gently reached out and brushed the delicate glass-thread creatures that swam around them. Zarya had been born to one of those trees. Maybe the MahTree the Manellis wanted WAS Zarya’s mother. I couldn’t say why, but the way I’d felt around those trees was the same mix of emotions and instincts I’d felt when I’d rescued the first of the Wolf Grove children, Josie. They made me feel... protective. Fierce, even.
I’d rescued Zarya for a whole number of reasons. At first, they were purely selfish. I’d been driven by the pursuit of the Mystery, the Source and promise of power. Six months ago, I might have been too jaded to care about people fighting and dying over a tree. But now, I cared. I cared a lot. Yegor’s words had stuck with me, no matter how hard I’d tried to brush them off. While I’d been wrapped up in the ecstasy of the occult all those years, battling my pride and pretending I didn’t love Vassily, I’d been protecting a pack of traitorous, child-abusing fucks. I’d killed for them.
“I don’t know,” I admitted aloud. “I don’t know what it is that makes someone stop caring. But I have a question, and I’d appreciate an answer.”
“Speak.”
“Is my attachment to this, the need to find this Tree, tied to my other lives? The ones that came before this lifetime?”
There was a pause. “Yes and no. It is most connected to the ones that are operating simultaneously to this Now.”
It was rare to get such a straightforward response from Kutkha. “Simultaneously?”
“You are not ready for that story, my Ruach.” Kutkha sounded... anxious. “But one day, not really that far from now, you will be.”
Part of me wanted to argue. The other part of me wasn’t willing to. Kutkha wasn’t some absurdly patronizing shade—he was my Soul, with a capital S. If he said I wasn’t ready, I probably wasn’t. If I could prove myself able to learn and understand, he would teach me.
Sleep hit me like a speeding truck. One second, I was drowsing off, and the next, I woke into darkness. The clock told me that it was eight p.m., and twelve hours had passed between blinks. I still felt like shit as I pushed myself upright, spent a couple minutes scratching together the energy to move, and got out of the warm nest of blankets and cat to start my night.
The first order of business was getting rid of Celso. Zane and I drove him out to the swamps in the pounding rain, where he was given a Viking funeral in a shitty stolen VW Beetle and left to burn in a greasy plume of black smoke. Zane dropped me off at the shop. I borrowed a motorcycle and raingear, loaded for bear, and left Binah with a full bowl of food, a clean litter box, and a note for her care in the event I didn’t return.
East Hanger Road had an airfield on one side, and rows of huge cargo warehouses on the other. It dead-ended into a massive industrial park at the end, a desolate expanse of asphalt and prefabricated steel shelters, cold semis, and hangars. With the lights off and the cover of darkness, I cruised to a stop behind a large row of signs near the fence line. I could see a line of motorcycles parked deeper in the yard. Bingo.
With a heavy sigh, I cut the engine and took stock of what I had. The Wardbreaker, a spare knife—not my preferred one, the Vigiles had taken that—a spare bullet-resistant MiB suit, but no familiar, a fever, and very little energy for this spur-of-the-moment infiltration. Wearily, I checked over my gun and made sure I had spare ammunition and a clean silencer, then double-checked the rest of my tools. Exhausted as I was, I knew I had to follow this up. The immediate payoff was being able to give Jenner good intel when I finally got in touch with her. But it wasn’t just that: my soul was whispering to me, telling me that this was important. That it was all important.
The only ways in or out of the building were through the loading docks or the door at the short side of the warehouse. I wasn’t too keen on simply strolling in through the front, so I went around back, mounted the steps up to the loading dock furthest away from the front door, and fiddled with the lock at the base of the roller shutter. When it popped, I greased the door’s rollers and opened it just enough to slide underneath.
The warehouse was lit down at the other end, but those lights didn’t reach this end of the rectangular building. It was dark enough that I could safely crawl in, gently shut the door, and slip down behind a stack of plastic-wrapped pallets. From here, I could get a sense of what I was dealing with.
The pallets nearest me were full of garden mulch, soil, and fertilizer. The warehouse was cavernous, and the stock varied from dock to dock. I began the slow, quiet course down to the other end, ears cocked and eyes keen, and eventually began to pick out ‘AEROMOR’ on a number of the pallets and crates.
I was almost at the end of the building when heavy footsteps thudded right above my head. They were inside the warehouse office, one of those shipping-crate offices mounted over the cargo area. My pulse skipped, and I ducked down as several pairs of thick boots scraped against steel grating.
“Where the fuck are they?” The first voice was deep, masculine, but throaty. There was an odd rough strain to it, like the end of a crow’s caw... as if his voice would give out at any moment. Otto Roth. “What time is it?”
“Five past midnight,” the next speaker sounded nervous. It was Dogboy, his vampire lieutenant. “They said they’d be here zero-zero sharp with the Feds. I don’t know what’s keeping them..
.”
“Otto Roth doesn’t like it when people are late.” Otto’s voice dropped to a dangerous rumble. “Otto thinks the cops should have gotten their motherfucking pot plant and left by now.”
“Yaroshenko’s the Master of the Fifth Choir, man. He’s not gonna stiff us... it’s probably just traffic or something.
I was still, but couldn’t suppress a bitter smirk. You clearly know a different Sergei Yaroshenko than me.
The shadows wobbled across the concrete, cast long by the studio lights that beamed overhead. The hair on the nape of my neck prickled. There was something really off about Otto.
A few minutes passed, and then the rapport of a metal door opening and slamming echoed through the building like a gunshot. Ears cocked, I listened as shoes rang off the hard ground. Two pairs.
“Hey there, Joshy!” Dogboy called out, striving for cheerfulness. “Looking sharp, as always!”
“No need to be cute, Dogboy.” A stiff, formal Gold Coast lockjaw accent. I tensed. It was Agent Keen.
“Where are the Russkies at?” Otto, this time.
“They’re finishing up their business outside. Now, where is she? Is she safe?”
“The plant’s upstairs,” Otto said. “We put Christmas tree decorations on it for you.”
“I’m so glad we chose associates with such a wonderful a sense of humor,” Keen replied. “We are not pleased with you, Roth, and in no mood for antics.”
“What’s not to be pleased about?” Otto didn’t even bother to hide how smug he was.
“Apparently you felt the need to sow your oats with Kristen,” Keen said, each word formed sharp and cold. “Now, a Streetsweeper is loose. Would you know anything about that?”
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