As the hair and makeup virtuoso helped me put on my—or at least my borrowed—jewelry, it occurred to me it was like I was getting ready for the prom of the damned.
I wasn’t wrong.
After refusing the several pairs of high heels that were offered to me—if I had to run for my life it would not be in stupid horror movie heels—I finally consented to a pair of easy slip-on flats. I’m nearly six feet tall. I can get by without heels.
There was a fur stole for me to use. It was shiny, sleek and silvery, and I’d bet real money it was made from the skins of baby seals who had been slowly clubbed to death. Slowly, to make the suffering last. When the makeup girl left, I told Mr. Trash Bags to make himself at home as a liner to the fur stole. If he complained, it was the sort of under-the-breath muttering where I couldn’t even understand the words.
Management emailed me a map of the convent and some photos of the interior. He’d marked the route to the lamia den. Unfortunately, there were no maps of the underground passages, so if Ray and I had to go that way, we’d have to wing it.
This place had such a nice variety of rocks around it, the butler didn’t take very long to find me one that was a close approximation to the Kumaresh Yar. It wouldn’t pass even the most cursory close inspection by anybody who knew anything about black magic, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have something I could flash to pull a fast bait and switch.
The real artifact went to Mr. Trash Bags with orders to defend it as well as he could. It probably made a slight bulge underneath the fur, but honestly, the fur was so thick that you’d have to look really close to notice it. Those clubbed baby seals have extra thick fur, possibly in a vain attempt to keep themselves from the clubbing.
“No matter what happens, you keep hold of this. Hide it. Don’t let the bad guys see it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good boy.”
“Mr. Trash Bags. GOOD BOY.”
The lawyer had left a small metal gun box on the table downstairs. Expecting ostentatious junk, I opened it, looked it over—a pistol, a bunch of extra mags already loaded, so brand-new it still even had the invoice—then gave an appreciative whistle.
Hansel came in, now dressed in an immaculate tuxedo. “Is this to your liking?”
“Yeah.” I pulled the pistol out and worked the slide to make sure the chamber was empty. I usually built my own guns—I’m a 1911 girl—but this was good.
“I was told this was a suitable weapon.”
“No kidding. It’s a Grayguns Compact custom P320 with a reflex sight.”
“I’m afraid I do not know what any of those words mean.”
“It means it’s pretty damned solid and been worked over by someone who knows what they’re doing.” I didn’t normally run a micro red-dot sight on my handguns, but I’d practiced with them enough to get over the learning curve. I checked the chamber again out of habit, picked a target—that potted plant would do—and dry-fired. Click. Flat trigger, good geometry, very nice.
“I assumed all your clients were assholes, but at least one of them has excellent taste in working guns.”
“He has several of these. Like you, he is a professional, but in a very different and unrelated field.”
“Come on, Hansel, you can admit you know John Wick.”
“Who?”
“The guy, they killed his dog…”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Never mind.” There were ten magazines already loaded with 115 grain Federal hollowpoints. Great for humans, and I just had to hope there weren’t any werewolves invited to the party. I took some mags out and started sticking them into Hansel’s jacket pocket.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“Look at this dress. Where exactly do you think I’m going to hide all this stuff?”
“These are besom pockets. You’ll ruin the lines! I am your bidder, not your Sherpa.”
He was going to be my hostage if he didn’t shut up, but the scowl I gave him must have convinced him that I meant business.
* * *
On the limo ride to the convent, I walked Hansel through plans B and C, then I used the untraceable phone to call back to base. It was late here, so it would be afternoon in Alabama…I think. I’d been in too many time zones in the last twenty-four hours to keep up. It was to tell them what I was about to do, but I was hoping for good news. I’d be ecstatic if somehow Owen had come back. As much as I hated to drop this in his lap, I would be so grateful to have him here.
But when I called, I got the young orc, Shelly. “MHI busy please hold for person talk.”
If Dorcas had an orc manning the phones, things were tight. “Shelly, it’s me, Julie. I’m still trying to get Ray back.”
She seemed overjoyed to hear from me, distraught at my not having yet recovered my son, and told me, “Is much important get back great hero baby!”
I didn’t know if she thought Ray was the hero, or that meant me, or Owen, or what. When I asked about Dorcas, Shelly immediately dropped the phone and went to get her. I gave her the quick version. Dorcas, too, was disappointed that I didn’t have little Ray with me, and by disappointed you should read mad as fire and swearing up a blue streak.
“Goddamn no good monster motherfuckers,” and that’s even angrier in Southern-grandma voice. “What would a bunch of greasy assholes want with our baby?”
That was a rhetorical question. She’d seen some horrible things in her time. “I’m going to try and win him back, but I’m willing to bet my mother will have a representative there. She might even be there herself.”
“That bitch is not your mother. Your mother was one of the most wonderful women who ever walked the Earth. That’s a demon in your mother’s body.”
“I know,” I said patiently. “But it thinks she’s my mother and is trying to be a great mother, just like the real one was, which means she wants little Ray to bring up her way and not mine.” I waited till the cursing stopped, and then I asked, “How’s your head?”
There was a cackle. “I’m fine, girl. It takes more than a concussion to sideline me.”
I could tell she wasn’t telling me the truth. “Dorcas…”
“Okay, he hit me hard enough I’ve gone blind in one eye, but, don’t worry, one of the orcs said my vision will probably return, and it ain’t even my shooting eye. By the time you bring Ray home, I’ll be back to normal. And you’d better be back here with that little boy, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” From how jittery she sounded I suspected she was running entirely on coffee and energy drinks. “How’s Albert?”
“You want to speak to him? The egghead is back in his library, ready to help.”
I thought I must have misheard. “He got shot in the chest. Like yesterday! He can’t possibly be back at work.”
“Well, he wouldn’t be if the MCB hadn’t stepped in and told the cops to make the whole thing go away. Next thing I know he stumbles in here, pale as a ghost, still wearing a gown, bleeding through his bandages, carrying his own IV, and that tough little bastard declared, ‘somebody get me an orc healer, ’cause Julie needs my help.’”
“Wow.”
Hansel was sitting across from me. He recognized my shocked expression. “What is wrong?”
“My coworkers are incredibly badass,” I told him.
“One of Gretchen’s sisters mixed up some evil-smelling potion to slather him in, complaining about how useless human doctors were the whole time. He looks like shit, can’t hardly move, but says he’s ready to go.”
“I’d love to talk to Albert, thank you. And you take care of yourself, you hear?”
Moments later Albert picked up.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
“I could lay in a bed there useless, or I could be here ready to help. I’m hopped up on orc potions, I’ve got a chair with wheels, and a troll for an assistant…I’m ready to rock.”
He d
idn’t sound good. He sounded like death warmed over. He sounded like he was trying to talk without moving too fast.
“You lost a lot of blood.”
“And they put more in. Now you want to talk about business or our feelings?”
“You’re brave when you’re on painkillers.”
“I’m flying high, boss. I got your last report. The thing you blew up in France is a bicho-papão. It’s a category of fey who get called upon to correct egregious crimes. Stuff I found was that he punishes children who refuse to take naps. Our ancestors must have been crazy. What are you going after now?”
I gave him the quick recap.
He was quiet a long time. “I don’t want to rain on your parade, Julie, but while Management isn’t one of the bad guys, that doesn’t necessarily make him one of the good guys either. He’s helping fund the attack on Asag, but he’s still a dragon. How many stories do you know from history where the dragon was the good guy?”
I looked over at Hansel who was politely staring at the window. “I think he’s okay. Speaking of…”
“Nada on Severny. The way it’s locked up, either the Russians are jamming it or there’s a supernatural communications lock.”
“Or our people are dead.”
“If they were dead, there wouldn’t be anything to block. When have you heard of a bad guy not gloating?”
“Oh. True.” That gave me hope for the first time in a long time. “Is the New York team still stuck in Germany?”
“SJK arrested them. They can hold them for another twenty-four hours without charges, and if you’re not caught by then, they’ll probably just make some charges up. The French government is pissed off too. You blew up their favorite informant.”
“He deserved it.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“You know very well I’m not having any fun. Did you get briefed on my main target?”
“Brother Death. From the mind control and the fireflies, he’s probably an Adze. Problem is, they’re super rare and almost unheard of operating outside of Africa. There wasn’t a whole lot about them in the archives.”
I knew how Al worked. He did this weird, hyperfocus thing, where he’d study something around the clock, chasing down threads. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he wouldn’t let a little thing like a sucking chest wound get in the way. “What’ve you got so far?”
“Sunlight doesn’t harm them. The tribes who got tormented by these things didn’t have a good way to stop them. Supposedly if you learned their real name, if you said it, it would stun them for a minute so you could get away. It was supposed to freeze them and stop them from using any of their powers, but not for long.”
“Which is why this particular asshole uses a nom de plume.”
“They’re always described as petty, spiteful things. They would possess people and then use them to cause all sorts of trouble, then dump the bodies when they got bored. The sign that an Adze is getting to somebody is that their eyes turn a weird green.”
I remembered that Wynne had oddly bright green eyes when we’d first met, and though I’d not caught it at the time, they’d been a normal blue as he’d died. “Did Amanda have in colored contacts?”
“Good guess. The orcs found them before they burned her, which means our bad guy is smart enough to use modern methods to compensate. That’s just for the living though. Supposedly they can take over a corpse with impunity, so watch out for zombie meat puppets too. It’s unclear how many living people an Adze can influence at once, but all the legends make it sound like the lazier and stupider you are, the easier you are to grab, while those with good character take a lot more time and effort to wear down. Of course, that might just be moralizing creeping into the old stories; you know how that goes.”
“Amanda was solid, so assume he was right under our noses for a while.”
“All accounts agree they can use black magic, so watch out for that. Some of the legends say they can summon ghosts if they’re in a place with enough latent magical energy. They’re supposed to be great at hiding, but at night the Adze would come out in their true form to sneak into the villages to drink blood and spread disease. Anthropologists thought that they were just stories to explain away malaria and bad luck, but I’ve got a partial handwritten report here that your grandpa fought one in the Congo back in the sixties.”
For the briefest instant, I thought to myself, Good, I’ll just ask him about it, but then I remembered he was dead. It was a sudden gut punch. “All I need to know is, is he killable and how?”
“I don’t know. The Boss said they shot it with a ton of silver, but it turned into a cloud of fireflies and got away. It’ll re-form if even one of them escapes. He thought maybe if it was stunned with its name first, it wouldn’t be able to escape but he never got to test the theory. The contract got pulled and they had to flee the country. Political stuff. Very Dogs of War.”
“Look, Al, this might not go well for me. If I don’t make it, we need to put somebody else on the trail. The only thing that matters is getting Ray back.”
“Dorcas is piecing together another team from all over and will be flying them to Lisbon, and this time it’s off the books. Screw the officials. They’re just tourists. They’ll find weapons when they get there. We’ve also got calls on the down low to European Hunters we trust to get there. You’ll have help by tomorrow, but for tonight’s party you are shit out of luck.”
“It sucks being on your own,” I muttered, then I looked over at the lawyer. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Hansel said. “I am content not to count in that particular equation.”
“There is one weird possibility for help though. That douchebag Grant left for Europe after he got the charges against me dropped. I trust him less than the dragon, but he’s already there, probably with the idea of helping you. Word is he went off on his own, without MCB approval.”
That was kind of surprising. “He’s probably going to get eaten by Franks when he comes back.”
“He might have ended up with an official excuse though. Something is going on in Portugal. The area of Porto has had several supernatural incidents in the last few hours and it’s now moving south.”
“That’s probably related to Brother Death’s invitation.”
“Regardless, they’re having problems. Word is that ASS is asking for assistance.”
Okay, now I knew I had misheard. “Ass?” I asked hesitantly.
“Oh, yeah, the Portuguese counterpart of MCB.”
“But ASS?”
“Well, it doesn’t mean that in Portuguese. It’s the Agencia de Segurança Sobrenatural. Of course, the MCB call it PASS, i.e. Portuguese ASS, but Earl says that’s nonsense and calls it Portass.”
“Earl would.” Horrible phrases were coming through my mind. We pulled the information out of ASS. If the MCB got a message saying ASS got pounded this weekend, would the sender be bragging or explaining why MCB should not count on backup?
“The important thing is that ASS called for advisory assistance, and an MCB agent happened to already be in the area, so Grant got seconded to them. From what I’ve heard he’d just barely gotten off the plane when the MCB director ordered Grant to help a private company there called Dark Fate on some containment.”
In hunting circles, other companies were, as Earl said, either “assholes” or “all right.” I didn’t know where that company fit. “Dark Fate? That’s a stupid name. I’ve never heard of them.”
“I haven’t either, but that should give Grant some official clout with the local officials. He might even be able to get the EU agencies off your back.”
This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t worried about getting arrested. “Maybe I should call him.”
“Or he might just rat you out the second you talk to him, to curry favor with his bosses. Your call.”
The auction would be held at the stroke of midnight. I couldn’t let the government interrupt that and endanger Ray, but afterwards…I h
ated changing plans on the fly, but time was short and options few. “This is what you’re going to do. At exactly ten minutes after midnight my time, I want you to call Grant, give him an anonymous tip, tell him where I’m at, and that the place will be swimming in monsters.”
“Can do. He’ll send in the cavalry.”
And I’d either already be on my way to the airport with Ray in my arms, or I’d be dead and Grant could zip my corpse into a rubber bag.
“We are almost at our destination,” Hansel warned me.
“Okay. Al, I’ve got to go. Don’t work too hard.”
“Don’t worry. If I work too hard right now, I just pass out, so it’s self-correcting.”
“I’ll remember this at bonus time.”
“You’d better.” Albert turned solemn. “Be careful, Julie.”
CHAPTER 16
The houses started looking older as we got closer to the convent. Not old old, in the sense of dilapidated, just old in the sense that most of them had been built before the twentieth century and probably before the nineteenth. Knowing vaguely about Portuguese history, I thought that they’d probably been built in the eighteenth century, at the height of Portuguese wealth, when gold from the colonies was falling like a torrential rain upon the continent. These were the types of buildings that American tourists saw, and which greatly impressed them with the wealth of socialist systems, never mind that pretty much all of them had been built before Marxism was a glimmer in Karl’s eye.
“This place we are going was partially destroyed in the great earthquake of 1755. The city lost a few hundred feet to the sea. There were stories of submerged churches, the bells ringing with the movement of the waves,” Hansel told me.
So perhaps the buildings around us, four or five stories tall and made of pale golden stone were part of the reconstruction after the quake. They were clearly built to last, foursquare and solid, looking like they’d weather the centuries without a change. Around them, though, was superimposed the pattern of a modern European city: multilane streets clogged with tiny cars, tying themselves in knots around multilane, incomprehensible roundabouts. Despite the rock-steady driving of our chauffeur, the Portuguese had perhaps half the restraint and respect for human life of Italian drivers.
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